Close to abandoning the Ubuntu ship.

[simple_gifts]

Been using Ubuntu since about 2006; prior to that I used SuSE (I even BOUGHT the boxed set @ CompUSA in Orange CT)

Pretty happy with it and the most recent release has ZFS option which I find very attractive

Was chatting it up with a coworker who works out of KS and he indicated he thought Ubuntu was a dog performance wise. He convinced me to load up Debian and compare..... He was right.

It appears lots of stuff running on Ubuntu to make it user friendly; stuff i probably don't need since I am a casual linux admin @ my day job.

Was somewhat interested in never having to do a clean install of an OS again and started looking @ RebornOS which is based on ArchLinux; ArchLinux is a rolling release linux distribution which means software is tested and released and the system is always kept up to date; there is no "version" to run other than "the current"

The RebornOS installer dispenses with the difficulties with installing Arch and also allows a choice of over 10 UI during the install.
I will cut to the chase and say this OS is fast, like really fast. I am running it on a 2012 i7 16Gb and SSD and it flies. There are a few oddities that even a normal linux user might not want to grapple with (e.g. out of date keyring, flakey tool for package management (use the command line) But it is a really good option for the patient user who wants to maximize the use of older hardware. Currently running the XFCE desktop, which is about as thin as it comes.

-Thomas

 

[MRC01]

Another Ubuntu fan here, at least XUbuntu, which I've used for the past several years.
If you like Ubuntu and XFCE, have you tried XUbuntu?
Also: you might consider finding out what exactly is the "lots of stuff" in Ubuntu that you don't use, and uninstalling it.
Or, maybe it's time to jump into a new distro. It's fun and educational, if you have the time.

 

[javacontour]

And here I just got Ubuntu 22.04 running in Hyper-V with sound and full screen video...
If virutalbox is going to take forever to provide TPM support, I might as well try some other virtualization solutions.
Yes, my desktop/hostOS will remain Windows because frankly, it just works today.

My day to day work is largely in Oracle Linux, but the host OS on my laptop and desktop is Win10.
Never hurts to test drive another distro...

 

[terry274]

I ran Arch Linux for quite a while. Constant updates are something of a pain. I went to Debian and I like their release cycle much better. You still get updates, both feature and security. But they generally only take a few seconds to apply and you don't have to reboot.
And yes, I noticed that Debian was faster than Mint on the computers that I tried.

 

[wwillson]

I use Linux on the command line every day and might start the GUI every six months. I just don't see the reason to use Linux GUI when I have a Windows 10/11 desktop. I do have a couple old quad core PCs that I use as servers with a ton of RAM and hardware RAID, but frankly they are so slow compared to a modern PC that I have zero desire to run a GUI of any OS on them. The old PCs run Debian command line and Linux VMs like a wildfire.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Generally, I have found that the more work you have to do to get your system set up as a daily (desktop) driver, the more choices you've had to make. The more choices you've had to make (presuming they were high quality decisions), the more the system is suited to your activities and the less the system is encumbered with unnecessary technologies. I've always known, all things being reasonably equal, Debian to outperform Ubuntu while also being lighter on resources, while being only marginally less convenient to set up due to me having to make some choices. But Ubuntu makes things stupid/easy and the LTS releases are very stable and predictable and there is no shortage of documentation and community support. And if a vendor makes their software to run on only one distro, it'll tend to be Ubuntu.

Distros like Arch and Gentoo are an enormous amount of fun in the same way that driving a vehicle that you've darn near built with your own hands is fun; but I have had the unrelenting myriad updates break things on me a few too many times to consider them for daily driver use, desktop or certainly server. None of the breakages couldn't be fixed, but unless you have the time to tinker as a hobbyist then it's just a pain in the keester that few have time for; like driving that hand-built vehicle for 2 hours and then fixing it for 2 hours.

 

[simple_gifts]

the more the system is suited to your activities and the less the system is encumbered with unnecessary technologies

QFT; that is why i gave up on Windows years ago. No tools. 1 "barely" configurable interface, stuff you need to have, but don't want, constant telemetry to the home planet.

I have a work laptop W10 and also a VM under KVM of Windows 10 which i had been using for Adobe Connect.

I understand people enjoy and are comfortable with W10/11 but at this point in my life/career I don't have much, or any, use for it.

Distros like Arch and Gentoo are an enormous amount of fun in the same way that driving a vehicle that you've darn near built with your own hands is fun; but I have had the unrelenting myriad updates break things on me a few too many times to consider them for daily driver use, desktop or certainly server. None of the breakages couldn't be fixed, but unless you have the time to tinker as a hobbyist then it's just a pain in the keester that few have time for; like driving that hand-built vehicle for 2 hours and then fixing it for 2 hours.

this is my primary fear.....

 

[uc50ic4more]

I ran Arch Linux for quite a while. Constant updates are something of a pain. I went to Debian and I like their release cycle much better. You still get updates, both feature and security. But they generally only take a few seconds to apply and you don't have to reboot.
And yes, I noticed that Debian was faster than Mint on the computers that I tried.

Debian Stable isn't going to get you feature updates unless you enable or pull from the Backports repositories. Stable tends to be a complete snooze-fest as far as features or even bug fixes. But when the very name of the release channel is "Stable" then presumably the users like "snooze-fest". Testing is where you're going to remain abreast of, or at least juuuuuust behind bleeding edge; and that only slows when the developers "freeze" the versions of packages in in preparation for a new Stable release every 2 years or so. Unstable is more akin to the chaos of Arch where new packages are showing up constantly.

Ubuntu, on the other hand, will keep very few packages up-to-date even with the LTS support cycle (Firefox comes to mind; but they've now offloaded maintenance of Firefox directly to Mozilla who handle the Snap package which remains up-to-date) and will release some bug fixes and feature updates, even on an LTS release. Clearly they make more of an effort to be a desktop-friendly distro.

Although I haven't put eyes on it in a while, I liked Mint's approach to updates: I recall they had a dialogue with some options, like "Keep me up to date", "Just don't screw anything up" and "Just security updates" or something.

I think all three approaches work well for their respective distros. If I had to manage a worldwide community of developers ranging from students to engineers then I'd use Debian's methods, too: Stable, Testing and Unstable, supporting only Stable and using the others as development channels to inform it. Ubuntu is a commercial company with staff and at least a portion of their effort is making a desktop distro so it makes sense that they are a little more aggressive with updates, especially with browsers and other dynamic, disruptive technologies. And Mint is a much smaller team whose focus is much tighter than the other two, supporting only desktop users.

 

[el Nuke]

I have a box with Mint’s LMDE installed as part of a triple boot setup (regular Mint, Mint LMDE, and Win10), and I have noticed I boot it more often now than the Ubuntu version of Mint…or Windows for that matter.

I suppose the Debian differences ultimately are what make me prefer it to the Ubuntu version of Mint, but I don’t really think of it that way. It’s just easy to do the things I want to do, and much less painless when something breaks, when I use the LMDE version.

 

[uc50ic4more]

I have a box with Mint’s LMDE installed as part of a triple boot setup (regular Mint, Mint LMDE, and Win10), and I have noticed I boot it more often now than the Ubuntu version of Mint…or Windows for that matter.

I suppose the Debian differences ultimately are what make me prefer it to the Ubuntu version of Mint, but I don’t really think of it that way. It’s just easy to do the things I want to do, and much less painless when something breaks, when I use the LMDE version.

Given the orders of magnitude more attention that "regular" Mint gets over LMDE by the Mint developers, that really speaks to how perfect Debian is as a "base" distro on top of which a more specialized distro can be made.

 

[Al]

been using it as long as the OP. I just got a good computer and finally switched to windows. For the average user ubuntu has no advantages anymore. To me its to pia to use.

 

[Zee09]

Yup I dumped Linux about 5 years ago. It was fun playing with all the distros but in the end I use my machines for business and it was just too much drama...