I’ve been using Linux Mint since forever. I’ve never felt a reason to change. But I’m interested in what persuaded others to move.

  • AVincentInSpace@pawb.socialEnglish
    572·
    11 months ago

    Admittedly, it’s been a few years and I’m coming due, but let’s see what I can remember…

    • apt will brick itself if it gets interrupted mid transaction with no clear recourse apart from a total reinstall, so try not to get greedy and Ctrl+C if it looks like dpkg is hung
    • trying to install any software that isn’t already packaged explicitly for Ubuntu is a nightmare because there is no equivalent of the AUR for people to push build steps to and you’re quite often left guessing what dependencies you need to install to get something to compile
    • snapcraft, need I say more? Firefox takes several minutes to start up, we don’t talk about disk usage, installing a package with apt will sometimes install the snap version anyway requiring a Windows-registry-edit-esque hack to disable, and the last time I checked in, the loop devices it creates didn’t even get hidden in the file manager.
    • I’ve also definitely encountered my fair share of bugs and broken packages which are always fun to fix
    • Exec@pawb.social
      152·
      11 months ago
      • apt will brick itself if it gets interrupted mid transaction with no clear recourse apart from a total reinstall, so try not to get greedy and Ctrl+C if it looks like dpkg is hung

      You can dpkg -r the package you tried to install then apt won’t complain about missing dependency packages for your app as it won’t be marked for to be installed

      trying to install any software that isn’t already packaged explicitly for Ubuntu is a nightmare because there is no equivalent of the AUR for people to push build steps to and you’re quite often left guessing what dependencies you need to install to get something to compile

      There isn’t a big global community repo per say like aur but anyone can host their own repos with PPAs, you just need to add them to your lists

      Most apt quirks are there with Debian too, not just an Ubuntu thing. The rest of the things you mentioned are fair.

    • mwguy@infosec.pub
      6·
      11 months ago
      • trying to install any software that isn’t already packaged explicitly for Ubuntu is a nightmare because there is no equivalent of the AUR for people to push build steps to and you’re quite often left guessing what dependencies you need to install to get something to compile

      In fairness it does have the PPA system which predates the AUR and does provide a good job of providing third party amd semi-third party software.

      But you’re right that Ubuntu has sold out on building snaps for software instead of ppas.

    • someacnt_@lemmy.world
      1·
      11 months ago

      What do you recommend for ubuntu alternative? I want to leave for something else, but I also want all my programs to install and work fine. If an app supports ubuntu, would it support debian as well?

    • ditty@lemm.ee
      1·
      11 months ago

      That Ubuntu would install the snap version of certain apps when I installed them directly in the terminal was the main reason I left Ubuntu after a few years. So annoying!