Hello there!

It’s funny, I just made the switch this Monday. I got fed up with Microsoft’s bullremoved being shoved down my throat. I was going to keep Windows 10 for as long as possible, but a recent update that installed Copilot on my machine was the last straw. I have been a Linux user since 2000 and have been using Ubuntu (and switching flavours) since 2004.

I had a big conversation on the Linux Gaming community about choosing a new distribution as a daily driver. You can see it here.

I wanted to get people’s opinion and it started a big thread with lots of responses. It led me to try many distributions to see which ones would be the best fit and read a lot about people’s experiences with them as well. In the end, I decided to stick with Kubuntu which was already installed as a dual boot on my system even though I didn’t use it much except to tinker from time to time and it was doing a great job. Gaming on it was also working fantastically well. And I knew that every time I booted into it it would always work unless I really started messing with system files and didn’t know what I was doing.

So Monday I had a day off and did the jump. Backed up my system, downloaded Kubuntu 24.04.1, booted off the USB stick and wiped the whole system clean.

But I learned something about Kubuntu (and Ubuntu in general) during that experience that made me regret keeping that distro. I knew that Canonical had developed their own sandboxed package system like Flatpak: Snaps. They were already available in 22.04, which I was running, but I didn’t really pay attention. Upon installing Kubuntu 24.04, I realized just how much Canonical insisted that Snaps be used. Some software is now exclusively available as Snaps and nothing else. This unacceptable for me.

To be fair, Snaps aren’t THAT bad. It’s pretty comparable to Flatpak in general in terms of features except for the fact that they are stored locally in their compressed form while Flatpaks are uncompressed. So the startup time of Snaps is slower. But they both offer sandboxing and therefore an added layer of security. This is great for apps like internet clients (browsers, email, etc.) or even servers or any kind of software, especially in an immutable system meant for IoT. Baeldung’s website explains the differences pretty well.

I’d probably use snaps for certain scenarios, but I think Canonical is pushing the limit by forcing people to use them. And also they’ve said they wouldn’t support Flatpak in future releases, even though it has become very popular and is being adopted much more than Snaps by third party software providers. I’m fairly certain Snaps are going to go the same way as Bazaar and Unity over time. In any case, I’ve been able to get around Snaps enough that it’s tolerable for the moment.

So now I’ve been considering starting over with Debian stable instead. I’m already used to Apt and .deb packages and the Debian way of doing things. I’m looking for stability over having the latest and greatest software and honestly, a 2 year release cycle is not that bad. Plus there’s backports as well. Almost everyone is saying “Debian is too far behind! Packages are too old!” but what’s “old” anyway? 6 months??? Honestly that’s not a big deal for me. I just want my system to boot and be very confident that it’ll work and won’t break during my next apt-get upgrade. Debian offers this peace of mind. But, after using Ubuntu for so long with all its quality of life improvements, Debian looks pretty rough around the edges in comparison.

I think I’ll stick with my Kubuntu for a bit and see how it goes and if I really get frustrated at Snaps, I’ll switch to Debian. But, right now I’ve spent enough time setting up my system that I feel too lazy to switch.