Afternoon all.
I’m looking to make the switch away from Windows, and I wondered if people had any advice, distro suggestions and so on.
My main use cases for my PC are Gaming, Writing and Image editing. Things I’d love to have working are all my games, Epic, Steam, GoG and Game pass. I already use OpenOffice so I’m probably fine with that. And I currently use Photoshop, so a good alternative for that would be good. Finally Spotify, Discord and VPNs etc
Any and all help and suggestions would be welcomed, thanks in advance.
I’m curious why I never see Ubuntu recommended in these kind of questions. I do see people suggest Ubuntu-based, but then name Mint or others and not an Ubuntu variant. Is it strictly a Canonical dislike or anti-snap thing, or something else? The reason I ask is that I’ve tried many different distros over the years on and off, but this time when I went all in because of Microsoft’s pressure, I went with Ubuntu 22.04, and it’s been flawless. So it just seems weird that it’s never named while others that I know of but seem very niche are mentioned.
Ubuntu installs snap version of Firefox by default which for me had issues accessing files on my home folder so downloading files was weird. After installing normal version from Mozilla everything worked fine until during an update Ubuntu would switch back to snap version without asking. If I wanted my OS to do things behind my back I would just use Windows.
Long-time (and current) Ubuntu daily-driver here. When I first started dabbling 20 years ago, Ubuntu had unparalleled out-of-the-box driver support for things that required third-party drivers. It gave them an era of dominance that had a secondary effect of “if I have a Linux problem and Google it, Ubuntu guides are the most likely to exist” which kept me using it to this day. Is it the best? Probably not, but I have twenty years of automation built around it and it’s comfortable.
The people that still use it today are the functional tinkerers. I don’t generally engage with these threads because I assume that every user making these posts isn’t searching for the answers that are already out there in previous threads. The paths that lead to Ubuntu aren’t the same paths that the “I use arch btw” people take. It’s a case of the kinds of users that choose Ubuntu, don’t go out of their way to interject that they’re Linux people. We’re just regular people that don’t want an adversarial relationship with our operating system.
Snap, esm, Ubuntu pro, they all get out of your way with a simple command or single line in a config file, and they respect the same signaling they’ve used since each product’s inception. I want a product that is both open-source and financially sustainable, because it leads to stability in my life. If windows had easily togglable telemetry and functional automation I would never have switched in the first place.
Your point of Ubuntu guides is one reason why I settled on Ubuntu this time around. I didn’t want to have to dig deeper to make things work when there’s usually Ubuntu install instructions. Granted they can often be just .deb, but Debian is a bit too far for me (I tried it a number of years ago and it was too “Linux” for me. But Mint (which I do like, and actually have on a spare laptop) is too Windows-like and doesn’t feel like I can alter it like I want. I guess I’m just saying that Ubuntu has always hit that sweet spot for me, and this time around I’ve stuck with it and very rarely boot into Windows now. So when I see everyone recommending everything else but not mine, I wonder if I missed a memo.
Ubuntu isn’t really made for regular users, canonical doesn’t care about you, they’re in it for the server / enterprise money; they’ll regularly take decisions that go against your best interest like pushing snaps and adding ads to the terminal.
These days you don’t need .deb files with how ubiquitous flatpaks are becoming so there’s no real reason to stick to ubuntu anymore. If you like the ubuntu release model, fedora should be the closest alternative. It’s still sponsored by a corporation, but they have a loose hand over the distribution.
I like the long-term overlapping security release that server-first focus gives me. I rely on it even. My daily driver is built from Ubuntu server headless LTS, X11, Awesomewm. My automation really only needs updates every 5 years, and I get the option to update it every 2. The same script I wrote to remove the esm motd message 10 years ago still works. I don’t know what else people want from canonical.
I agree that Ubuntu is a solid distro and would recommend it before Mint, it’s just not at the top of the list anymore. But if you’re happy with what you have, that’s all that matters.
Ii had stability issues related to Wi-Fi on Ubuntu, which i could not explain, while debian was fine. Something funny in the Ubuntu releases for me.