It sounds really strange, that you end up with the problems you described given your usage.

My systems are heavily modified/tweaked, so one would expect I would experience the problems you describe.

Given your usage, using an immutable distro sounds like a no-brainer to me, immutable Linux was created with your usage scenarios in mind.

In your shoes I would still try to pin point the root cause of the error, because in theory™ your usage should not be a problem for any of the mainstream Linux distros and we don’t know if an immutable distro solves your trouble.

Given your 6 montish circle it sounds like some kind of accumulation? If the computer runs stable for several month, IMHO you can rule out hardware problems, unless you have a kernel update every 6 months… :-P

Can you be more specific about your hardware, laptop model and Ubuntu version you are using?

If you ever figure out what happened, or if you try out an immutable distro and it runs for a year for you, give us an update! :-)

IMHO you should first figure out what exactly happens/goes wrong with your Ubuntu installations.

Immutable distros might or might not be a solution, but if the core of the problem is really the quality of the Ubuntu updates for example, you could try to run Debian (stable).

But again, the suggestion to use Debian is throwing a solution in the room which might not fit your problem.

Just as a reference point: I am running Debian stable on Laptops, Netbooks, Raspberry Pis and in virtual machines (AMD64/AArch64) and have no weird bugs, everything works for years now and runs smooth.

Concerning the Steamdeck… I love them, they run perfectly fine, but unless you are tweaking them/do more than run games, you cannot really compare them to what happens on your desktop.

Vivaldi is a great Blink-engine based browser, my fallback in cases Firefox fails to render a page I really need.

Outstanding are the official flatpaks for amd64 and Aarch64.

(I do not understand why it is impossible for Mozilla to provide an official Aarch64 flatpak.)

Awesome, @hades@hades@lemm.ee . Thank you so much for pointing me in the right direction! :-)

Tried GIMP, Firefox and Chrome - does not work.

Thanks for your suggestions, added the output to the original question!

Thanks for your answer, I guess fair enough. ;-)

Good luck for your survey!

Sorry, but how are a lot of the questions relevant for this community?

Especially concerning the (family) income, age, being neurodivergent etc. These are sensitive information and seem more fitting for a market survey/selling ads.

What is your goal with the answers? What are your research questions? How will the answers help this community?

This. I really don’t understand the down-votes - using the correct words makes life easier for everyone, including the OP.

So Firefox Nightly for Linux on top of Arm64 hardware, like Apples, Lenovos, a whole bunch of Chromebooks etc.

Wow, only took them … years!

If perhaps pretty please Mozilla realizes that an official ARM64 Flatpak is the perfect distribution channel for their nightly (and hopefully soon stable) ARM64, I’ll be happy and they did a great service to the Linux community. (Especially regarding Fedora Atomic Desktops / Aeon.)

I wonder, if you are asking two different questions:

1. Why don’t you receive notifications about updated packages?
2. Two: Security and bugfixes

For 1. it depends which desktop environment you use, Gnome/KDE have this update notifications out of the box, for other DEs (Xfce, LXDE, etc.) you might need to enable this with the installation of synaptic or similar.

For 2. Debian stable does not ship bugfixes but Debian stable ships security fixes. I highly recommend to subscribe to Debians Security mailing list, especially for security fixes concerning browsers and other stuff.

Edit: I have enabled automatic updates and I still receive regular notifications via Gnome Software, at least once per week.

Thanks a lot for your answer! :-)

How do I enable DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS for all connections in NetworkManager in Debian 12?

It is easy to configure custom DNS servers for all connections via a new .conf file in /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d with a servers=8.8.8.8 entry in the [global-dns-domain-*] section.

How can I configure NetworkManager to use DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS via a conf file?

Debian is for sure not more secure than most other distributions/operating systems. (Might be true for what you tested).

Not even mentioning the famous Debian weak SSH key removed up (ups), Debian is notoriously understaffed to take care of back ports of security patches for everything which is not the kernel/web server/Python etc. (and even there I would not be too sure) and don’t get me started on starting services/opening ports on an apt install etc.

Depending on your skill level/experience/will to suffer:

• Do every modification via the command line interface and keep notes
• Create an Ansible configuration for your setup and you have
  • Instant perfect setup for your next installation
  • Ability to replicated your current setup exactly in a virtual machine, tweak it to your liking in the machine via Ansible and replicate your config back on the metal

Another perspective: Your question implies you want to try out things with Debian. If this assumption is correct, I would highly recommend you just create a virtual machine with qemu/libvirt and learn within this environments/try out things there before doing stuff ‘on the metal’.

Of course backups are always a good idea and once you got your feed wet you might want to learn about ‘Infrastructure as code’. Have fun!

Symlinks are fully transparent for all software just opening the file etc.

If the software really cares about this (like file managers) they can simply ask the Linux kernel for additional information, like what type of file it is.

IMHO the answer is social, not technical:

Backwarts compatibility/legacy code is not fun, and so unless you throw a lot of money at the problem (RHEL), people don’t do it in their free time.

The best way to distribute a desktop app on Linux is to make it Win32 (and run it with WINE) … :-P (Perhaps Flatpak will change this.)

This.

It is a ‘built-in’ social problem: Only people who care enough to switch to Linux do it, and this people are pre-selected to have strong opinions.

Exactly the same can be observed in all kind of alternative projects, for example alternative housing projects usually die because of infighting for everyone has their own definition of how it should work.