Ubuntu 26.10 (Stonking Stingray) released(lists.ubuntu.com) |
Ubuntu 26.10 (Stonking Stingray) released(lists.ubuntu.com) |
If you use the words like "still" and "at least", there is little enthusiasm. But that's how a long-term relationship looks like I guess.
It's clear to me that Ubuntu is no longer in fashion. So what is popular these days? From what I heard, I think it's Fedora or Arch (such as Omarchy), but only with some slick UI stuff like Hyprland and Caelestia.
If the person can put in the work and doesn't need bleeding edge software: Debian Stable.
If the person can put in the work, the machine is in a secure environment, not going to serve anything and is a desktop system: Debian Testing.
If the person can't put the work and wants something working: Fedora.
If the person wants to dive deeper: Arch, Gentoo, LFS.
Note: Debian needs some work not because it doesn't work out of the box, but it doesn't do any customization on packages. So tailoring things according to your taste takes time. Then it becomes so customized it almost reads your mind and feels like home.
The reason is that, people eventually need proprietary / old / unsupported software, and AUR often has it out of the box, and when it doesn't, at least the dependencies are already there. On the other hand, beginners (even some experienced but busy guys) might agree with a problematic `apt` plan and uninstall the desktop, and it goes downhill from there (can't repair the system because they never built it in the first place, or cannot go back to the original configurations, etc). For instance this can happen because the user tried to install a `deb` package for an older release.
That being said I can't remember seeing fedora fail this way, though the user might have to manually clone / build a dozen more git repositories to install the same unsupported software. This was a deal breaker two years ago (lack of AI help), but now it's just time consuming.
Still, I can't recognize the distro anymore. We got ads, things being pushed down the community's throats, the insane hiring process, and so much more. I have very fond memories of my time as an Ubuntu member, and I wouldn't be where I'm today if it wasn't for what I did as a member, but I left years ago when all of this started.
Been using openSUSE ever since. I don't contribute to openSUSE as I did Ubuntu, as I don't have the time anymore, but the decisions are sound, the system works incredibly well and stable[1], and the voice of the community is heard by leadership. I'm pretty happy with the choice.
[1]: Heck, it works so well that I even run Tumbleweed, a rolling release distribution, on servers.
Debatable.
- Snaps.
- Replacing something battle-tested with something written in Rust, MIT licensed, with 140 CVEs and other bugs (uutils).
- Pulling rugs and replacing debs with snapswithout telling it, because "it creates positive pressur e on the snap team and drives the quality higher".
- Staggered rollout of some updates, so update is there but you can't update because the your system didn't feel like updating yet.
- Promising to open source Snap store to allow alternative stores and forgetting what they had said.
- Bullying Debian to push their changes to Debian to offload software maintenance (they wanted to make netplan the default in Debian, for example).
Note: You can disagree with this, and we can discuss this with cool heads, if you prefer.
But of course feel free to distro hop yourself.
I ended up installing Mint and it's Good Enough™
- in the server
- desktop ui
- NAS
- ci
- dotfiles
- ultra compact docker image
- microvms
- development environments
- SmartTV? NixOS
- build your docs? NixOS
- wanna control a fleet? NixOS
- build ISOs?
- wanna control brew declaratively? NixOS
- secure environment? NixOS
Ubuntu used to be the Debian that just worked without tweaking.
Today I find Debian to be the one which’s works without tweaking, and Ubuntu the one where one has to undo/disable lots of Ubuntuisms.
So for me: Server is Debian. Laptop is Arch.
* https://packages.ubuntu.com/stonking/coreutils
See "Ubuntu 26.10 completes transition to Rust-based coreutils" from last month:
(I'm fine with Wayland for those who want it but it still breaks things I've used)
Or at least acknowledged them?
Instead, I'll probably move everything over to Void next.
If so, why pay for that rather than upgrading? Honest question.
LTS also only covers core OS components with security updates, not the 30k+ packages available in the repo...
That's well spelled out here: https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle
You can also just upgrade your LTS and continue to get support for free.
Previous releases was MIR, Upstart, Snapd… This release it’s no X11 and GNU Coreutils replaced by buggy Rust rewrites.
Debian feels more like pure FOSS and in general just better. None of that icky flavour in the back of your mouth.
Absolutely. Injecting ads into the desktop and cli, having a package manager that runs as a root service, their decades of poor upgrade testing, etc.
I have never found them to be trustworthy when other, better options exist.
And as a software maintainer who publish to all distributions, I wholeheartedly agree.
They are moving with self-interest, not with a collective interest. Considering what Ubuntu means, that's bitterly ironic as well.
Shame.
1. the update process is separate from the main system update -- "close this program to update, or will forceably update in X days" notifications;
2. breaking desktop file links where an update can create a duplicate file and after the old snap is removed it removes your pins to the taskbar;
3. possibly breaking other things due to the way the snap directory for the app is not stable.
And this, among other things, is why I like the agency that small companies should be able to offer you.
IT guy: We must upgrade our shockingly ancient [database|OS|whatever]. The long term support patching costs are $X thousand and we are out of compliance with corporate security policy and they are threatening to deny our exception.
Exec: How much does the new license cost?
IT guy: $Xk + $1.
Exec: Is corporate security going to pay for it?
IT guy: They don't usually do tha...
Exec: No.
IT guy: Bu...but...
Exec: One more word out of you. Just one more word. Fucking try me.
All applications need maintenance. Either you do it at application level to keep on top of its dependencies or you do it at OS/3rd party level. Either way, someone wants to get paid.
Yes, that is the entire point of what I said.
> most stuff these days could probably be shoved into a container and thus extremely distro/version agnostic
It depends on if it's an in-house app or managed and built by a 3rd party (may void contract). Also depends on the risk of life/monetary loss if something goes sideways.