I’ve been using Ubuntu as my daily driver for a good few years now. Unfortunately I don’t like the direction they seem to be heading.

I’ve also just ordered a new computer, so it seems like the best time to change over. While I’m sure it will start a heated debate, what variant would people recommend?

I’m not after a bleeding edge, do it all yourself OS it will be my daily driver, so don’t want to have to get elbow deep in configs every 5 minutes. My default would be to go back to Debian. However, I know the steam deck is arch based. With steam developing proton so hard, is it worth the additional learning curve to change to arch, or something else?

  • SavvyWolfEnglish
    36•2 years ago

    If you like Ubuntu but don’t like the direction it’s going, you can try Mint. It’s Ubuntu, but with the bad decisions reversed. Or use LMDE, which is Mint but Debian based.

    • @[email protected]English
      7•2 years ago

      I just run Ubuntu on an old Mac for email and browsing.

      Just curious, what are these bad directions?

      • @[email protected]English
        22•2 years ago

        Some people like to rag onto Canonicals bad decisions. These include:

        1. Putting ads in the terminal
        2. Use of Affiliate links in the DE
        3. The forceful use of Snap
        4. The proprietary Snap infrastructure
        5. The feeling of being abandoned, in favour of the server market (lack of desktop innovation)
        6. Lens search, that allows company (eg: Amazon) tracking.
        7. Anti-privacy settings enabled, by default.
        • Thjoth
          10•2 years ago

          I didn’t know about any of these, but terminal ads by itself would be enough to make me switch to something else. So would the affiliate links. Why would they think that’s a good idea? Well, aside from money, obviously.

          • @[email protected]English
            10•2 years ago

            I think you just answered your question

            But the ads are just for Ubuntu pro, which is free for personal use so it’s more of a tip. And the Amazon part was to my knowledge just in the unity days. Not defending Canonical, just showing more of the picture

            • @[email protected]English
              5•2 years ago

              I knew “ads in the terminal” was hard to believe for some reason. I’m guessing it’s easily disabled too.

              • @[email protected]English
                2•2 years ago

                They were just MOTDs, which are few lines of text displayed on the terminal when you first launch a session. You just have to edit one line in a config somewhere to get rid of them. Annoying but not exceptionally so.

                • kateEnglish
                  1•2 years ago

                  Not just MOTDs, they’re in apt now too

              • @[email protected]English
                1•2 years ago

                They were easily disabled, but if I wanted to spend my time disabling annoying shit that’s on by default, I’d just run Windows :p

                • @[email protected]English
                  2•2 years ago

                  Haha I mean fair, sort of. But if Ubuntu worked for me better than pop os in other ways, I could easily justify commenting out that line in a script or whatever

                  • @[email protected]English
                    2•2 years ago

                    Yeah in the end it’s all just nerd gripes. I sold my old computer to my non-techy friend with Kubuntu and he likes it just fine :)