I am forced to use Ubuntu 24.04 on my work laptop because that's the only Linux my company supports (and I refused to use a MacBook). Desktop experience is quite horrible and buggy compared to Fedora with up-to-date KDE Plasma on my own laptop. Quite unfortunate that both of the big players - Red Hat and Ubuntu default to GNOME. What is giving hope though that Valve made the correct choice for the Steam deck desktop mode.
Their insistence on Snap over Flatpak is just confusing the ecosystem, not helping it. I get it's a lock-in thing for them (Snap is locked to Canonical's proprietary store and only allows Ubuntu runtimes) but that's a harmful thing to do.
I don't per se mind using snaps instead of flatpaks (though I do prefer the latter). What bothers me is that Canonical replaced Firefox in their apt repos with a fake package that installs the snap version of the app. If I choose to install via apt, it's because I want the standard version of the app, and I don't appreciate bait and switch nonsense trying to push snap usage. That was when I lost interest in using Ubuntu, I don't want my OS trying to override my decisions.
Yeah I think it's just a way to try and extract some money from the ecosystem.
But many people will never pay for Linux and it's even causing people to move away (eg to Mint which removes snap)
Perhaps it makes sense in the enterprise market though. They're always trying to push launchpad to us at work and I'm sure this will integrate with snap. But launchpad doesn't work for us because it only works with Ubuntu. So it's just a non starter for us, we have more distros to support. Sure Ubuntu is the biggest in our environment but we want a single pane of glass for everything. More similarities between distros would make that a lot easier.
There's nothing in there that interests me. I love it.
I want my OS updates to be boring. Granted I'm using Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE) so the Gnome stuff has nothing to do with my use, but the fact that there is nothing there that I have to fix or anticipate or work around or develop a new workflow for is terrific. That's what I love about the Ubuntu family - the last time I had a major upheaval with my desktop system was the year after KDE 4.0 was released... I think over a decade and a half ago. I really have not had to think about my desktop since.
I was luckily able to avoid snaps during their early years. By the time I was forced to use them, e.g. with Thunderbird, they were actually great at integrating with the desktop files when I wanted, but isolating the program otherwise. I suppose that I dodged that problem.
I used this for a long time and still do sometimes. However, Arch works well enough now that I don't need to bother with Windows anymore. It is much more efficient for working with containers as there is no VM involved.
I am forced to use Ubuntu 24.04 on my work laptop because that's the only Linux my company supports (and I refused to use a MacBook). Desktop experience is quite horrible and buggy compared to Fedora with up-to-date KDE Plasma on my own laptop. Quite unfortunate that both of the big players - Red Hat and Ubuntu default to GNOME. What is giving hope though that Valve made the correct choice for the Steam deck desktop mode.
Their insistence on Snap over Flatpak is just confusing the ecosystem, not helping it. I get it's a lock-in thing for them (Snap is locked to Canonical's proprietary store and only allows Ubuntu runtimes) but that's a harmful thing to do.
I don't per se mind using snaps instead of flatpaks (though I do prefer the latter). What bothers me is that Canonical replaced Firefox in their apt repos with a fake package that installs the snap version of the app. If I choose to install via apt, it's because I want the standard version of the app, and I don't appreciate bait and switch nonsense trying to push snap usage. That was when I lost interest in using Ubuntu, I don't want my OS trying to override my decisions.
Yeah I think it's just a way to try and extract some money from the ecosystem.
But many people will never pay for Linux and it's even causing people to move away (eg to Mint which removes snap)
Perhaps it makes sense in the enterprise market though. They're always trying to push launchpad to us at work and I'm sure this will integrate with snap. But launchpad doesn't work for us because it only works with Ubuntu. So it's just a non starter for us, we have more distros to support. Sure Ubuntu is the biggest in our environment but we want a single pane of glass for everything. More similarities between distros would make that a lot easier.
> constant focus for us is making applications packaged as snap feel fully native.
> laying the groundwork
So with constant focus, how many more years before the feeling is reached on top of that groundwork . The map is rather fuzzy
There's nothing in there that interests me. I love it.
I want my OS updates to be boring. Granted I'm using Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE) so the Gnome stuff has nothing to do with my use, but the fact that there is nothing there that I have to fix or anticipate or work around or develop a new workflow for is terrific. That's what I love about the Ubuntu family - the last time I had a major upheaval with my desktop system was the year after KDE 4.0 was released... I think over a decade and a half ago. I really have not had to think about my desktop since.
A key difference is support lifespan, though: 5 years of standard security maintenance for regular Ubuntu[1], and 3 years for Kubuntu[2].
[1] https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NobleNumbat/ReleaseNotes/Kubuntu
Yes though you can easily install kde on normal Ubuntu.
snaps and rust coreutils gave me a lot of headache in the beginning.
I was luckily able to avoid snaps during their early years. By the time I was forced to use them, e.g. with Thunderbird, they were actually great at integrating with the desktop files when I wanted, but isolating the program otherwise. I suppose that I dodged that problem.
>> Ubuntu on WSL
I used this for a long time and still do sometimes. However, Arch works well enough now that I don't need to bother with Windows anymore. It is much more efficient for working with containers as there is no VM involved.
Alright PopOS team... time to get cosmic out the door.
I've officially missed a whole cycle!
jkjk, thanks for the hard work, I'll wait as long as it takes.
Cosmic desktop shipped in PopOS 24.04 a few weeks ago btw