Ready to jump ship from Ubuntu

General Linux Question
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Final straw - Canonical are forcing all future updates of Chromium to be from SNAP…

I hate SNAPs! How can a great BLOB of a snap be any better than a debian DEB package?

e.g. : the calculator app in Ubuntu? It’s a tiny app, but it’s a SNAP install, it should start INSTANTLY, but no, it takes 10-20 seconds to start (sometimes longer, sometimes doesn’t start), and it’s a slug too… I usually end up doing quick calculations in the CLI…

Anyway I’ve just tried apt-mark on chromium-browser to “hold” it, and now the whole apt sh!tpile is broken… can’t upgrade anything else either… nothing… no “sudo apt upgrade”…

Bluetooth is a steaming pile of cr@p in Ubuntu too… my MS Designer Mouse just stopped working, and in “Settings” - it shows Bluetooth is off, when I press it “on” (in the gnome settings applet) it comes on, but never shows any bluetooth devices… If I close “settings” then fire it up again, Bluetooth shows as off again…

So - I’ve looked at Mint recently, didn’t really like it can’t remember if it was Cinnamon or Mate… and I’ve tried both, not really to my taste…

It’s looking like I might go Debian Buster, or maybe flirt with elementary again?

Heck - might even risk Fedora!

What else is there? I’d prefer something downstream/upstream of Debian that’s NOT Ubuntu based…

I guess there’s always/also Manjaro - but I’d prefer to kinda stay in an ecosystem I know, and I know DEB/APT and RPM/YUM/DNF…

What about MX ? I reckon I might give that a go… gonna try it in vbox now…

And no - I started with Slackware 3.x in the 1990’s, so not willing to go Arch, or Gentoo or Slackware…

… update …
got bluetooth working again : “sudo systemctl restart bluetooth.service”… but still going to distro-hop for a bit… don’t want vast bloated SNAPs, heck, chromium itself is already pretty bloaty…

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Crumbs!

First snag… MX Linux doesn’t by default, use systemd… you can select to use it from GRUB if you want… but I don’t wanna have to remember that everytime I boot (and it’s two menu layers deep)…

I’ve gotten so used to systemd, it’s almost ubiqitous… here’s the killer feature I like out of systemd, it’s running a service as a “user”…

e.g. systemctl --user $SVC_NAME $ACTION

In my case, that’s resilio sync… The work around for upstart or sysvinit systems? Run the rslsyncd daemon as user “rslsync” and add your user account to the /etc/group file (to the group “rslsync”) then log out and back in again, so you can change/delete/add files you’re syncing… it feels like a kludge, and could be a show stopper… You can only use/choose folders that user rslsync has access to… Doh!

Looks like I might be in the market for a Debian “re-spin” ISO with non-free wifi drivers (and RMS can go boo hoo hoo)…

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Hi Daniel,

You are not alone, I don’t like these snap/flatpak/appimage approaches either.
In case I need an app, I look for a deb. So far I always found a ppa, for Chromium I found this:
https://launchpad.net/~chromium-team/+archive/ubuntu/stable
May be you could use it and keep Ubuntu? (I don’t use it, I use Firefox)
But also found the Opera stable ppa for my wife, because she doesn’t like other browsers, just the Opera…
I feel there’s a great chance that you can find the deb, or a ppa (which provides you the deb) for anyt app that you need.

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The more I use Deepin in my VM the more I like it. MX Linux was not bad either. Still using Mint Mate for main OS, been trying to get Gentoo installed for a month now. Get to the " emerge --ask sys-kernel/genkernel" command and get a license change error, haven’t figured out how to change the license. Any idea?

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I tend to keep my systems generally on Debian Testing (currently Bullseye). Since Ubuntu got famous with Unity, I knew that they care mostly about branding and less about customization features. That’s why Debian also fits.
Unfortunately, the downside is that Ubuntu just has the best hardware support available. Period.

Last month I needed to set up a new laptop for someone. I fucked around with that laptop for hours because Debian is so custom, it does not understand where the screen is when you are running a Radeon GPU… Next day I gave up.
I said “fuck it” and downloaded Kubuntu, while being totally exhausted by the stress with Debian.
Nervously I booted it up, installed it…
…
…
Guess what. It worked right out of the box. No configuration needed. AT ALL.

That is one of the reasons I appreciate Ubuntu after all. If you just need shit to work, you tend to use Ubuntu. If I will have to get a laptop for work at some point, I will definitely fall back to Kubuntu, as soon as Debian shits on my face again…
Can’t afford looking like a dumb bitch, because Debian dOeS NoT FiiNd sCrEeN OoG oOg…

So the point is:
I agree with your view on snap. The last thing I need on my system is some hipster packaging and repository system, that slows down shit and forces shit onto your ass, for no good reason…
HOWEVER…
I rather have shitty snap on my Kubuntu, than opening a work laptop in front of colleagues of our partner company and then see Debian booting into console, because it is too retarded to find the screen, like any other famous OS does out of the box.

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To be fair, I would never include AppImage in the category of where Snap and Flatpak resides, because you never get an AppImage forced upon you. It does not have a repository system. It’s just a standardized way of packaging your software, but the distribution almost always succeeds occurs through the vendor’s website. Most of the time, they offer .deb, .rpm and AppImage packages. It’s usually your choice to choose an AppImage or not.

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@daniel.m.tripp Are you running an SSD or HDD? Reason I ask is because that can and does play a huge factor in how quickly apps load, even simple ones like calculator.

I’m not familiar with straight Debian, but I am with Mint and Manjaro. Recently I switched back to Manjaro after seeing the significant improvements they’ve made in the last 6-12 months in regards to their package manager. I love the fact that I can search and choose which app package to install, from AUR, official repos, or snaps, all consolidated within the one package manager. You can even search and build from Git with 1 or 2 clicks. As someone who’s not overly savvy with the CLI, this saves me a lot of time and hassle. That being said, the Pacman CLI commands are fairly easy to learn. Running sudo pacman -Syyu in Arch/Manjaro is the same as running sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade in Ubuntu, for example.

Anyways, not sure if this is helpful at all for you, but I’ve found Manjaro to be one of the best distros for out-of-the-box hardware detection and compatibility. Might be worth giving it a try? :slight_smile:

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I have used, loved, and screamed praises for OpenSuSE for decades.

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My Linux journey started with Slackware 3.0… if you wanted ethernet, you had to compile your own kernel knowing the IRQ and DMA settings of your ISA bus NIC… same if you wanted to use a Soundblaster ISA card… same if you wanted to use Soundblaster’s proprietary CDROM interface :smiley:

Next was RedHat (before they got all “enterprisey”) - that was better… in 1999, I was doing Y2K “audits” and I discovered a 486 “server” used by an accountancy firm to act as a squid proxy server (via dialup), and mail relay, it was running Slackware 4.x or something, and EVERYTHING, dial up, mail relaying, squid, was setup using hand written shell scripts by some propellor head geek… Sure I could support that, but what about the next poor sod “engineer” sent on site who only knew Microsoft/Novell? I formatted it and installed RedHat 6.0 - was it “anaconda”? The menu driven config doohickey? Anyway - I used that (some menu driven console/terminal curses interface for common sysadm tasks) to setup Squid, sendmail MTA (pre postfix days) and PPP/dialup… I was impressed… easy to document for the next poor sucker sent to that site…

Next Linux was Suse Enterprise 9 (I think?) - I was very impressed. I ran a home server on it for a few years, even ran a BBS/Forum on there… Also used the desktop from time to time, but it was mostly a server.

Then VMware released the VMware “Player” 2004/2005 - and a “marketplace” to download virtual appliances… I found one that was called “Browser Appliance” it was a Linux distro that ONLY ran Firefox… but it was very well polished, slick even, found out it was some new fangled distro called “Ubuntu”…

Anyway I had a spare laptop at home, quite a nice Toshiba thing, with an aluminium body, good battery, built in wifi (this was 2004/5 remember - not everything had wifi back then)… I’d had lots of mixed experiences (less than satisfactory in most cases) attempting to run Linux on laptops… but I decided to give this Ubuntu thing a go, booted the Toshiba off a Ubuntu CDROM, wham! EVERYTHING, I mean EVERYTHING (e.g. WiFi!), worked! Out of the box - no fiddling… Installing Windows on this Toshiba was a trial in itself, download driver after driver, ad nauseam… and still showed “unknown device” in device manager… not with Ubuntu… 100% productive out of the box…

Ubuntu was plug and play… a no brainer… but you still got a NIX environment with bash shell!

So - I was sold, on Ubuntu… I kept running Suse as my home server O/S for a few years… but eventually went FreeNAS…

Oh yeah - for most of those years, I ran Smoothwall or IPCop as my home router / firewall, on a 486 - it was great… rock solid… Still got that 486 in my shed somewhere, had intentions of trying DSL (damn small Linux) on it… 486DX266, 64 MB of RAM, it was a beast in its day :smiley: … but these days, I just use whatever router / VDSL modem my ISP sends me… I’d really like to use m0n0wall or pfSense, but that’s overkill really…

Note: all my main Linux machines are running off SSD… the main one (I’m waiting on a replacement battery for) runs off a 500 GB NVME… the one I use at work has a 500 GB mSata… my desktop machine has a “regular” SATA 256 GB SSD, but I keep a 1.5 TB mechanical HDD on there too - to offload data when the 256 GB approaches capacity… the only other Linux machines I have, that don’t run off SSD, are RPi’s and other SBC’s and run off SDCard (or eMMC).

So - all my main Linux machines are SSD… the Ubuntu calculator app runs from a SNAP, and takes way longer to load than it should… everywhere I’ve tried it… this irks me, it’s not unusable, but it irks me so much I usually go to the terminal to do calculations I can’t be bothered doing mentally…

One other possibility I thought of? I’ll just remove Chromium and run Google’s Chrome… that’s not a SNAP yet, and google have their own PPA for it… and I don’t really care too much about Google, I’ve gone browser hopping in the past, always come back to Chromium/Chrome… it’s just too damn convenient…

So - I reckon I might just stick with Ubuntu… but I’m heavily tempted to go distro hopping again… I might check out how hard it is to get Resilio Sync to work in Manjaro… I was impressed with Manjaro XFCE running on an Atom based netbook (2017? but they stopped releasing i386/i686 ISO’s)…

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Go with that one, if the distribution choice keeps your head currently heated, anyway.

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I just remembered one huge steaming pile of GOTCHA that will stop me distro hopping, or even installing Ubuntu again from scratch… my work’s CheckPoint VPN… I hate it… it sucks balls, horrible fuzzy balls with unhygienic unsavoury looking bits of lint and other detritus stuck to them…

Anyway - it’s working on / in my 18.04 desktop (Phenom II X6), my 19.10 laptop (Dell E7270 that’s awaiting a new battery), and my work 19.10 laptop (Dell E7250), but not on my “interim” 19.10 laptop (Dell E7440) that I’m using till new battery arrives for the E7270.

The difference between Ubuntu on the E7440 and the E7270? I installed/configured the “snx” Checkpoint product on the E7440, got it working, under Ubuntu 19.04, then upgraded it to 19.10. On the E7270, where I can’t get this hideous piece of software (also have huge “ethical” problems with the “country of origin” of this product) to work, I installed “snx” (and pre-req i386 libraries) AFTER upgrading 19.04 to 19.10… bummer!

What’s life like without the Checkpoint SSL VPN client working in Linux? Abominable! Before I got it working I had to use either my iPad - or - a Windows 7 VM… Yeah - I do a reasonable amount of work “after hours” via VPN tunnel… I’d rather anything, but using Windows 7, or even the iPad (e.g. remote desktop is almost unreadable on the iPad screen for my 58 yo eyes - and even worse at 3 in the morning!).

Just thinking about that, gives me a headache… I’m half tempted to buy more mSATA or NVME drives so I can clone / backup (e.g. before upgrading 19.10 to 20.04 in a couple months)…

And it was a fluke I even got it working - found a website in Spanish, that had an install guide for the VPN client - AND - an “snx” binary installer (I could download) that worked with the version of the firmware my Employer uses (the one I can download from my Employer’s VPN server does NOT work with any Linux I’ve tried it on - and I’ve tried a bunch).

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Perhaps slightly off-topic, but have you tried FlashPeak Slimjet browser? In my opinion it’s brilliant, beats Chromium hands down and installs via .deb.

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I read that, then I read all your other comments I have no idea of much of what your writing about, not a problelm though I can find out, time is a problem, it you know so much and this I dont understand, why are you having trouble with snaps. is it only choice? Now let me say this, I have no idea why there are so many ways to down load the same programs, when all I have to do is go to software manager and install, I do understand how to download from source using instructions, but not any where near as well as I would like, I have tried other distros, but keep coming back to Linux Mint Cinnamon, or staying with it for a while now, although getting some annoying problems with mouse and touch pad, and whole writings disappear before my eyes, this has happened before, so I take of the stuff/ files I need and do a clean install again, Thats why I was asking before about the best way to file transfer to a USB or off board hard drive. I have tried Debian and liked it, but I have to learn about loading with source code, synaptic packages are all good but then problems updating them using terminal, but that my problem so many ways to download the same things and yet all no clear way to just do it. No problem sudo apt get all that not a problem, Boy it takes some sorting out. NO clear up front no mistake way. If some book on just Debian and deb packages only, nothing else how to manage and down load .deb just that only.

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MX all the way.
Debian based, so solid, and better supported. apt as standard. Systemd sucks so no loss there.

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Hey I’m not sure too! :thinking: @Lennox - My old HP G60-120EM Intel(R) Core™ Duo 2.00Ghz 3.00 GB RAM runing Trisquel GNU-Linux 8.0 having not noticed any delays I clicked the calculator – instant. Clicked LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet – ok perhaps one second. So I thought; this calculator is so basic let’s install something scientific: found gnome calculator and installed it in under a minute via dongle connection – up and running just fine in any of the five modes – no problemo! Closed it down then fired it up – instant. :smiley:
Have stayed with ubuntu 16.04 (kept updated) for now on my faster Dell Latitude Intel(R) Core™2 Quad CPU Q8300 @ 2.5GHz 4.0GB RAM it too has no problem with calculators and happily runs 3D FreeCAD and wine Serif PhotoPlus.
Tried many, many distros lately and think MX was about best – might jump too. Like Trisquel ethos; so it will remain on the old HP – roll on version 9! Favorite toy at moment is Tails 4.2.2 on a stick packing Tor Browser; so fast and silent that I keep forgetting that I am only in 4GiB RAM. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Well I finally did it - no - I didn’t dump Ubuntu - but I ditched Chromium (in favour of Google Chrome)… yeah probably not a huge difference, but it’s enough for me…

Why? Well it’s now a snap, and DESPITE turning off “Hardware Acceleration” - Chromium insists on over-riding the system cursor setting to some tiny thing about 2 pixels high or whatever (that I cannot see with my 58 yo eyes and coke bottle lensed spectacles)… exit Chromium, fire up Google Chrome, and it’s got my desktop’s version of my preferred cursor, size and everything (I use a “left” handed version of ComixCursors) and I can actually see it!

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I ‘know’ chromium is supposed to be faster and more secure than Firefox or DuckDuckGo but personally, I just hate everything Google does so anything other than a Google ‘app’ will be an improvement in my opinion.
Hell, between Google, Apple, SONY and Cannon, Microsoft is now number 5 on my ‘don’t like’ list

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Who told you that?
…

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Anecdotally, I’ve found, with only one tab open, Chromium seems to work better than Firefox (or was it Ice Weasel? Same difference), with only one tab open, on a single core ~600 Mhz ARM device with 0.5 GB of RAM running Debian 8 :smiley:

Chromium’s kind of a pig… I kinda prefer actual Google Chrome ('cause it installs as a local binary from a DEB file, instead of a monolithic SNAP)…

Also anecdotally : Chromium is a giant CPU hogging PIG on a Raspberry Pi 4 with 8 GB of RAM, and Firefox wipes the floor with it, Chromium’s an ugly smear on the floor after Firefox has done its business (when we’re talking about having multiple tabs open at once). Which reminds me - I need to update that other thread about my adventures with ARM : summary : TL;DR : an RPi4 EVEN WITH EIGHT GIGABYTES of RAM is not going to replace a 64 bit quad core Intel/AMD system with 8 or 16 GB of RAM any time soon (I’m saying 18-36 months at least - I could be dead of Covid19 by then).

My ~10 year old AMD Phenom II X6 (with 16 GB DDR3 RAM and six cores) WIPES the floor with the RPi4 (with 8 GB DDR4)… I am disappointed… I was hoping for more from a RISC CPU…

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Hey Guys you make me a little nervous with the downsides of chromium but as any mechanic or “spanner man” will tell you the addition of a little Vanadium will work wonders :thinking: :face_with_raised_eyebrow: :grin:
New phone with GrapheneOS has a Chromium based browser OMG :astonished: :scream:
It is called Vanadium which harmonizes or integrates with the OS of my phone. A bit too techy for me - but you guys…?
A little digging after reading your posts surprisingly revealed that…

Browser and WebView

Vanadium is a hardened fork of Chromium developed by GrapheneOS and used to provide the WebView and optionally the standalone browser app. It tracks the Chromium release cycles along with having additional updates for downstream changes to the privacy and security hardening patches, so it’s updated at a different schedule than the monthly Android releases.

The browser and the WebView are independent applications built from the Chromium source tree. The GrapheneOS browser build is located at external/vanadium and the WebView is at external/chromium-webview.

See Chromium’s Android build instructions for details on obtaining the prerequisites.

Also - I am confused by statements here…