Running Debian. Snapless and Ubuntuless Ubuntu
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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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".
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 🫠
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.
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.
He can get single packages from a different source without sacrificing the whole system
I wouldn't consider using testing a sacrifice.
Irrational FOMO
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.
At this point it's just easier to use Mint or another distro.
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.
I just use Linux Mint :)
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.
I love mint. I use it everywhere. You wouldn't recognize it anywhere I use it though. I customize the hell out of it. Right now I got this retro Ubuntu thing going on, running Unity DE and no snaps. not that I'm wholly against them, I just don't have them.
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.
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.
My solution is to use MX, based on Debian. All packages came as .deb so a simple sudo apt install firefox is working.
Moving to a different distro :) Experimenting with nixos right now, already got native Firefox working :)
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You can just download the firefox tarball from their own site. And that will just update itself.