Running Debian. Snapless and Ubuntuless Ubuntu
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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I switched two of our boxes over to Debian "Bookworm". And so far, I am completely happy with the change. On desktop, it's still a little rough around the edges, and a few oddities need to be ironed out here and there, but that's nothing compared with the ocean of pain that were snaps for me and my company.
Still a little nostalgic, though, after 17 years of Ubuntu 🫠
Now that Debian is will to ship “non-free” drivers and firmware, I think it has become far more viable.
It always did, though. Just unofficially.
Was it unofficial? I thought it was merely opt-in, but still official
Yeah just in separate repo that wasn't enabled by default
The install images that included the non-free-firmware were marked as "unofficial".
Snapless Ubuntu is called Linux Mint, no guide needed.
but it's limited to Ubuntu LTS versions
that's not necessarily a downside.
How is only having an LTS version vs. having a choice between using an LTS version or a non-LTS version not a downside?
The LTS versions are more stable, so why bother with non-LTS versions? If you want faster updates, you probably want a rolling release like Arch or openSUSE Tumbleweed.
I've used a lot of Ubuntu over the years starting on 9.04. Let me tell you the six months releases are ass and always have been.
Also I'm switching to Debian.
True but it depends on your usecase- of you need all the fancy new stuff and want to move on quickly you should go another route instead of fucking around with forced software you do not want. Maybe Debian testing or Fedora? If you do not care about the newest stuff I guess Mint is a perfect fit.
Just use debian testing or unstable.
This.
I just went from Arch to Debian 12 Bookworm. Running the stable branch, but so far most of the packages are rather recent. Kernel is 6.1 instead of 6.4, but I could switch to the Testing or Unstable branch to get the "bleeding edge" packages/kernels if I need to. But honestly so far it's been a real pleasure to use. Everything is just working and is stable.
Debian 12 was just released. Compare it to Arch even six months from now and see how current the packages are. Then compare it again in 18 months.
I am a happy Arch user but I must admit the constant kernel updates can seem a bit much. An experiment I have considered is moving to Debian 12 and using distrobox to get access to Arch repos and the AUR. I would use the Debian stuff as much as possible but for anything missing or anything that I really need to be more current, I could just fall back to the Arch repos.
It could be the best of both worlds.
FYI Arch offers linux-lts. You can install that and linux-lts-headers and switch grub/whatever your boot loader is to default to that and forget about running the bleeding edge kernel. Linux 6.4.x has been literal dog shit with several ugly amdgpu bugs and suspend is randomly borked about 1/3 of the times I try to suspend my PC for the evening (and issue I'm not experiencing alone).
So, yeah. Give the linux-lts linux-lts-headers packages a try. You get the benefits Arch's cutting-edge packages on a stable kernel.
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I switched from Arch to Debian Stable as well. I grabbed the Xanmod kernel repo for a more recent kernel, and use Flatpaks and Homebrew for some cutting edge stuff. I don't miss anything from Arch so far.
don't miss anything from Arch so far.
same I switched to debian testing. best experience. never had issues since a year. Arch usually borked once in this period.
Debian testing works fine for me.
Just use Debian Stable
He mentioned wanting more up to date packages. I like debian stable, but it's not exactly known for being the latest and greatest.
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My solution is using a distro that doesn't try to force snaps on me.
If you want the ubuntu base, why not use mint?
Mint would be based on Ubuntu 22.04, but I'd like to have something more up-to-date. I believe all other .deb based distros have the same issue that they are not as up-to-date as Ubuntu 23.04?
None of them are like arch where you can read news about an update and find that you just have it installed already.
Given you're on ubuntu and therefore not at the bleeding edge anyways, it won't be a big difference. My personal choice for stuff that just needs to work is debian. I carry debian LTS with the full KDE pack on my ventoy and it's been great. I also heard very good things about testing and Sid, but I haven't tried them myself.
I just use Linux Mint :)
Feels like you don't want to use Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is going the way of snap-only and it might as well pick an Ubuntu-based GNOME distro. There's a bunch out there, but PopOS can be pretty easily stripped down to a vanilla GNOME system. You could even just modify Mint and install GNOME on top of that.
How about VanillaOS? That's an Ubuntu (soon to be debian) based plain GNOME system with support for a range of packaging formats.
You could also go for Manjaro GNOME edition, but not as stable.
Zorin is cool but not as barebones for a GNOME spin.
Could also look at Linux Mint (Cinnamon/MATE/XFCE) or Feren OS (KDE).
True. I focussed on the GNOME options for OP but KDE-Neon is a great snapless Ubuntu distro
Oh yeah, for sure. I was just throwing out some other ones to check out if they had a different preference on DE or just wanted to check out something different from GNOME. Just adding on to the options!
So you're using Mint with extra steps.
I am using a single package from Mint, the rest is Ubuntu 23.04. Mint would otherwise be based on Ubuntu 22.04?
Yes, Mint 21.x is based on Jammy.
Unless you get LMDE which goes back even more to be based on Debian directly.
Pop!_OS is "Snapless". Our Firefox builds come directly from Mozilla in the deb format.
Sure, but what about your chromium builds? (as mentioned in my post, replacing the firefox snap with a firefox deb is easy enough on Ubuntu, chromium is the more difficult one to deal with)
Chromium is better served through third parties like Vivaldi. Or by Chrome from Google. Most of which offer debs. We recommend Firefox though.
Switched to Linux Mint. But not because of Snaps but rather RAM usage. Mint is lighter and faster. On cold boot it uses just 745mb versus 1.6GB on Ubuntu Gnome.
I don't mind Snaps but I also won't go out of my way to install it because there is no must-have snap that I need.
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This may be useful for you (Especially if you use KDE Plasma) : Automated script to remove all traces of Snap, including reinstalling a standalone version of Firefox.
You can just download the firefox tarball from their own site. And that will just update itself.
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If I were going to do snapless Ubuntu, I'd probably just install Mint. It seems a lot easier.
Of course, since I use Fedora I don't have to worry about any of that nonsense. I gave up on Ubuntu years ago.
Moving to a different distro :) Experimenting with nixos right now, already got native Firefox working :)
NixOS is amazing. I use it as a daily currently, but I haven't yet unlocked the full power of Nix.
I do nothing.
- I use the Firefox snap. It takes like 800 extra milliseconds to start up on my 10y old laptop and it moves my profile dir. It otherwise impacts my life not at all and is just fine. If it ever bothers me, there PPAs, flatpak, or a dozen other ways to install Firefox that are all perfectly simple.
- I install other stuff from flatpaks or PPAs or using docker.
The angst around snap is inscrutable to me. There are 30 million easy ways to install software and they all work on Ubuntu. There is nothing in my life that's easier to ignore than snap.
I'm basically doing the same, but those "pending update, close the app to avoid disruptions" popups are kind of disrupting.
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