this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 91 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Ubuntu is just getting worse and worse. I was pretty happy running Ubuntu server for years after moving from Gentoo; I jag lost interest in spending time taking care for that server and wanted something easy.

I went to Debian half a year ago and it's been great. Should've done it earlier.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I gave up Ubuntu when they switched Firefox to a snap

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I gave up Ubuntu when they switched to the Unity desktop. ugh!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Yup, that was a whole kerfuffle. That is what got me to stop installing Ubuntu.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (7 children)

I never understood why people run Ubuntu on servers. It's madness. Ubuntu is a fork of unstable Debian packages. You don't want unstable on your server!

Ubuntu on Desktop I can understand. Back in the days the Debian release was really long so much software was a tad outdated after a couple of years. But Debian had a much faster release cycle now, and had pretty much incorporated all the good stuff from Ubuntu and left the bad behind.

[–] nous 95 points 6 months ago

Ubuntu is a fork of unstable Debian packages. You don’t want unstable on your server!

Unstable does not mean crashes all the time. What makes them unstable on Debian is they can change and break API completely. But guess what, Ubuntu freezes the versions for their release and maintains their own security patches, completely mitigating that issue.

There are other reasons you might not want to use Ubuntu on a server but package version stability is not one of them.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Ubuntu is a fork of unstable Debian packages

And where do you think debian stable packages come from exactly ?...

it's basicaly the exact same thing. In both case :

  • At some point freeze unstable (snapshot unstable in case of ubuntu),
  • fix bugs found in the frozen set of packages,
  • release as stable.
[–] LeFantome 19 points 6 months ago

We should be clear on our terminology here. Debian Unstable is called that because the package “versions” are not stable ( change ). It is not really a comment on quality although more frequent change also implies more opportunities for issues to be introduced. In Unstable, Debian may introduce disruptive changes either to configuration or even to the package library itself.

Regardless, taking a snapshot of Debian unstable and then separately supporting those packages completely eliminates these issues. That is what Ubuntu does.

Ubuntu LTS now offers up to 10 years of support without having to upgrade a release. This is far more “stable” than anything in Debian, including of course “Debian Stsble”. In fact, it exceeds the stability of Red Hat Enterprise.

I have not used Ubuntu in many years but I have been considering using it again for some server use cases precisely because it is now so “stable”. I still do not like Ubuntu on the desktop and do not like snaps in particular. I do not think snaps impact any of the server packages I would use though and I do not expect Canonical to introduce them during the support lifetime of a particular release.

For personal use, the 10 years of support is entirely free. That is pretty compelling.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ubuntu on Desktop I can understand.

Not anymore. A whole extra, unneeded, proprietary, locked-in package system. Ads in the default install.

There's Mint, Pop!, and plenty of other options that actually respect the user.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Definitely. But back in the day it was good for desktops. Ubuntu has never been good for servers.

[–] LeFantome 3 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

It was awesome back when during the install you could just select "LAMP", and a full stack web server suite would be automatically set up and configured correctly out of the box. But those days are long gone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

A lot of distributions do that. OpenSuSE does that. And at least it's the kind of industrial rated system that will just keep chugging along no matter what you throw at it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yeah now they do. Back in the early 2000s, I only remember Ubuntu having just a single option to install everything needed to be up and running on first boot. Everything else needed some tweaking of configs and quite a bit of domain knowledge to get started at the time. It's what jumpstarted me into PHP development.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

sudo tasksel lamp?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Mhm I have Ubuntu LTS on my server because my VPS provider provided me with it. :/

[–] [email protected] -3 points 6 months ago

You don’t want unstable on your server!

"But they are maintaiend for 5 years!"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

I feel that.

Three years ago I moved to fedora and RHEL based distros like Rocky for my devices and servers because I’ve gotten suck of Canonical’s shit. Don’t regret it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I'm personally interested in Rocky Linux (for servers)