I get what Canonical was going for with snaps but wow did they ever ruin Ubuntu’s reputation. It used to be the clear choice for anyone who wanted a generic Linux where you don’t have to configure everything yourself. Sure some people didn’t like Unity but the core distro still worked well and was stable. With snaps, package management has become more complex than other distros while decreasing performance if memory limited (and who isn’t nowadays). The number of times I’ve had something not work in the “stable” snap package is far too many, and it’s pretty much always fixed by installing the same package with apt.
I get the reasoning for sandboxing applications, but they needed to wait until it was more stable to make the default. At this rate I doubt we’re ever going to get a truly mainstream desktop Linux distro rivaling macos and Windows…
In my opinion, Linux Mint has filled this gap. If anyone asks its a good recommendation to ensure they don’t have to jump through hoops to get a stable system out of the gate. Essentially the stability of debian and usability of Ubuntu without snap
100%. It’s the goto starter distro for good reason. Ux is familiar, and it works ootb.
They’ve also got the LMDE, which is mint based on Debian rather than Ubuntu. Haven’t tried it personally, but I’ve heard good things from people who are determined not to touch anything Ubuntu adjacent for whatever reason, whilst still providing an ootb environment that is stable and ux friendly.
Ubuntu is Debian based anyway, so I’d imagine parts of Ubuntu have been pulled out to bridge the gap between Debian and mint, but given mint are anti snap; that’s something that definitely wouldn’t be copied over to LMDE (and like you pointed out, is disabled in standard mint anyway).
I liked unity when they were trying to do interesting changes. I especially liked the attempt at making apps work with the menu at the top of the screen instead of the top of the window (Mac OS style).
When they gave up on that, it became pointless with nothing useful to add.
I get what Canonical was going for with snaps but wow did they ever ruin Ubuntu’s reputation. It used to be the clear choice for anyone who wanted a generic Linux where you don’t have to configure everything yourself. Sure some people didn’t like Unity but the core distro still worked well and was stable. With snaps, package management has become more complex than other distros while decreasing performance if memory limited (and who isn’t nowadays). The number of times I’ve had something not work in the “stable” snap package is far too many, and it’s pretty much always fixed by installing the same package with apt.
I get the reasoning for sandboxing applications, but they needed to wait until it was more stable to make the default. At this rate I doubt we’re ever going to get a truly mainstream desktop Linux distro rivaling macos and Windows…
In my opinion, Linux Mint has filled this gap. If anyone asks its a good recommendation to ensure they don’t have to jump through hoops to get a stable system out of the gate. Essentially the stability of debian and usability of Ubuntu without snap
100%. It’s the goto starter distro for good reason. Ux is familiar, and it works ootb.
They’ve also got the LMDE, which is mint based on Debian rather than Ubuntu. Haven’t tried it personally, but I’ve heard good things from people who are determined not to touch anything Ubuntu adjacent for whatever reason, whilst still providing an ootb environment that is stable and ux friendly.
Ubuntu is Debian based anyway, so I’d imagine parts of Ubuntu have been pulled out to bridge the gap between Debian and mint, but given mint are anti snap; that’s something that definitely wouldn’t be copied over to LMDE (and like you pointed out, is disabled in standard mint anyway).
Good new is that there are many different options outside of snap and Ubuntu
I liked Unity, but Ubuntu has always been a crashy mess.
I liked unity when they were trying to do interesting changes. I especially liked the attempt at making apps work with the menu at the top of the screen instead of the top of the window (Mac OS style).
When they gave up on that, it became pointless with nothing useful to add.
Yeah it also created yet another distribution method which is annoying. We have wayy to many in Linux