this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Linux is Linux and you will be running the same or similar apps on most distros. One of them isn’t magically going to use less RAM. That’s dictated by the apps you run and the kernel’s memory management. Hell, you want to use RAM. It makes things faster and it’s doing nothing sitting there unused.
Just find something you like and stop worrying about it. Endeavour is a fine distro. If you want something a little more minimal then go with Arch. Fedora works too.
You could even use Ubuntu. For all the shit it gets for being a noob distro, there’s nothing really wrong with it. There’s this ridiculous notion that you’re supposed to start there and then move to a more advanced distro. They are all packaging similar software and have a convenient package manager. Unless you have a specific use case, there’s less difference than you think.
One note about Ubuntu, snaps are the thing wrong with it. They've gotten better in the latest release, but they still create annoying extra mounts, can be slow to start on lower-end hardware, and occasionally have issues with themes.
Which would be fine if they didn't trick the user into using them, and make it a pain to try and get rid of them.
Snaps have been awful in the past, but they are dramatically better in 23.10. With most of them, there’s really no noticeable difference. LibreOffice is still pretty slow though.
I don’t get the complaints about mounts. So you run the mount command with no arguments and there’s a bunch of them. What’s the big deal? If need be, just use grep to filter out snaps.
I wouldn’t say they are tricking users either. They are transitioning to a new package manager. For better or worse, snaps are the future of Ubuntu. They are handling the transition by layering snapd on top of the legacy base.
I’m not some rabid Ubuntu fan. I’ve never used it beyond just checking it out from time to time. But, objectively, it’s a great distribution. They pretty much check all of the important boxes. It’s easy, it’s reliable, it’s secure, it’s a mature organization, there’s good community support as well as paid support, and it’s Linux. Unlike Red Hat, they give away the same exact product they sell to enterprises and even provide years of updates without a support contract. They do a hell of a lot to push Linux forward, particularly on the desktop, and we all benefit no matter which distro we use. They’re ok in my book even if snaps are meh.
Sounds like enough little annoyances and workarounds that I wonder why bother with it when something like Mint provides the same experience out of the box without those issues.
I used to recommend Ubuntu as the most basic, vanilla Linux desktop experience, but I just can't anymore.
I wouldn’t say that having played with the new one for a few days. Spin it up in a VM and check it out. It looks good, it works well, the new App Store app is actually good. It’s so much better than that crap Gnome Software app. It’s still a good recommendation for new users - probably a better one now than the last couple releases. I think 24.04 will be very popular when it comes out.
I dabbled with Mint around 2010 or so. It was a nice distro back then. I haven’t seen it recently. Might have to take a look.
That's fair, I have heard that the most recent version is a big leap forward, so it's possible the next LTS will finally be worth it again.
There are many ways to work with mounts and you can't always just grep your way around it.
For example, when I use ZuluCrypt to mount an encrypted volume, the list is cluttered with a million snaps. It's annoying and slows me down. This is a problem with every utility that deals with mounts.