I don't use Ubuntu but I threw it on a laptop to give to my dad.
He's a very basic tech user he basically needed a web browser and somewhere to backup/view his photos off his phone, And even he ran into issue with snaps!
I tried to switch everything over to flatpak but the OS just kept pushing back trying to reinstall SnapD until I ran some script off Github, It's the exact "I know better than you" bullshit that pushed me away from Windows.
I am on Debian and Pop. However, if they're dropping the deb distribution, what does that mean for the non Ubuntu folk? Maybe I've misunderstood it all?
Everything is going to snap in Ubuntu. It's why I don't use it 🤷
It even recently made my life very difficult because something I did recently only worked on chromium non-snap, but ubuntu provides no easy way to use the non-snap version. Most frustrating experience on that distro ever. Unfortunately, it can't be replaced as it's on a relative's computer...
I run Ubuntu on my home servers, simply because I always used it, resources and help are plentiful and it's well documented. I thought.
Took me a while to realize that after moving to a new machine and upgrading to 22.04 docker was installed as a fucking snap and a bunch of my apps didn't work because of that. I got it all running now, but every VM and LXC I'll install going forward will be running Debian instead. Fuck this annoying shit.
Edit:
Or I might try out Mint Mate, since it's what I know best (aka Ubuntu) without snaps. What would you guys recommend for a basic homelab?
Yeah, I was sitting next to the laptop's owner who was in a hurry and already huffing and puffing. Didn't want to mess up their system by pinning stuff and installing certs or running into issues with "repository not found" issues. In the end, switching to another computer was much faster.
Ugh had a similar experience at work related to the chromium package. In our case it had to do with the arm64 build of chromium in an environment that can't run snaps (docker), so we were pretty much entirely without a solution.
Serious question, genuinely curious; Beyond more recent package versions, why do people choose Ubuntu over plain Debian? Debian has been exceptionally stable for me, pushes no proprietary BS, and is as easy to intall and setup as any other distro I've used. Plus, for the average computer user, all the packages are recent enough that things should work as expected.
I think looking nicer is very subjectve. I personally prefer default Gnome over Ubuntu's tweaks. However silent grub makes complete sense. Word vomit every boot does look very hack-ish if you arent used to it.
I tried Debian recently (with Cinnamon, since I don't like Gnome), but I found it was lacking some polish and niceties that I get from Linux Mint. I do use LMDE instead of the Ubuntu base though.
Totally understandable, QOL and creature comforts are important. To be fair, I'm personally the type of user who prefers a spartan system that I can then tailor to my needs, rather than lots of features OOTB. To each their own I suppose.
I stand corrected. All programs should have access to anything, anywhere, and be linked to liblzma just in case if some arbitrary file is compressed. Thank you for setting me straight.