> their attempt to use their desktop presence to push Ubuntu-specific technologies like Mir, Unity, and Snap.

Snap was here before flatpack, what should a company like Canonical do if they want to try something new? Use planted developers in GNOME or other projects to push projects as dependencies into all distributions?

If you do not like Canonical do not use their products, use other distro or BSD. Unity was a nice attempt to get a simple desktop that is not a slave of GNOME designers ideas, unfortunately it fails but I do not understand why people like you are against of options (only if the option is from Canonical) even if Canonical always tried to support all the DEs.

> Snap was here before flatpack, what should a company like Canonical do if they want to try something new? Use planted developers in GNOME or other projects to push projects as dependencies into all distributions?

They shouldn't hardcode Snap to depend on snapcraft.io, its really that simple.

I understand that, maybe they will do it in future or someone will fork it to change the store url,,, but do we want each distro to create it's own snaps, we get back to duplicated efforts in packaging and review(snap team reviews apps that ask for elevated permissions)

Not every distro but different stores with different policies for including snaps. I personally am completely uninterested in using any of the security and usability disasters that are the new universal package types but that would definitely make sense.

Snaps could work great on servers, at work we have a CentOS server (via hosting is not our own), I am a developer not a sysadmin and I don't want to mess with the package manager and break something on this server(it is running a bunch of stuff)...anyway today I had to download and run a linux binary , it was a .tar.xz and it worked, would have been even better if I could be sure this binary was sandboxed.

On the desktop I use Kubuntu LTS, snaps will allow me to test or run software that is not in the repo or it is an older but sable version in the repo, IMO snaps provides extra options so if you do not need it you should not use it.

> Snap was here before flatpack

https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9oddtb/flatpaks_sand...

Dude Canonical had a package manager similar to snap for mobile, snap is inspired from that. Plus flatpack is a side project of a RedHat dev, this explains why it moves slow, also flatpack is desktop based where snap works with servers and IOT

Anyway I see some colaboration between the 2 projects so let's not create conflict between this 2 projects where there is none, snap covers more at this moment then flatpack

>I don't see how Ubuntu is any less complicated than say, Fedora.

You mean the distro that coudn't even play an mp3 out of the box? Jeez, I don't know how non-tech people could see this as more complicated...

But now it can play MP3s out of the box. Not that I'd ever suggest Linux to someone who doesn't know what a codec is anyway. Fresh installs with friends/family are always fine, but its after an major version upgrade (or many years of version upgrades) that the system will eventually get into a state where Dad can't debug it. I stopped this recommendation after a family friend (who bought a laptop with Ubuntu) had a system update that overwrote xorg.conf, leaving them completely without a GUI.

ChromeOS is an ideal Linux for users like this. Keep updates atomic and the underlying system completely hidden.

I disagree I have some friends and family who rarely use a computer and I installed Ubuntu because they didn't want to buy a new one and Vista simply sucked. As long as you dont dist-upgrade everything is rock stable.

I set apt-get upgrades to go every month or so automatically. Kernel upgrades happen on reboot. Doesn't even notice!

> I set apt-get upgrades to go every month or so automatically. Kernel upgrades happen on reboot. Doesn't even notice!

From experience, this is a terrible idea.

ChromeOS is the only one that I have never had issues with when it comes to silent updates. Windows (document deletion in RS3), MacOS (scanner issues in Sierra), Ubuntu (rsyslog errors preventing Bionic upgrades) have had various issues over the years that I would not impose upon non-technical users. Granted these were major releases, but silent updates are generally trouble.

I like the definition above; a non-technical user is one that does not know what a codec is.

>> I set apt-get upgrades to go every month or so automatically. Kernel upgrades happen on reboot. Doesn't even notice!

> From experience, this is a terrible idea.

> ... Granted these were major releases, but silent updates are generally trouble.

Running major updates automatically doesn't seem like a good idea, no.

But I've had few problems with running security updates automatically.

How long ago that `xorg.conf` update was?

What I don't like about Fedora is its release cycle, forcing you to upgrade every year or so. With Ubuntu I can still be getting updates for a sytem installed four years ago now. I also don't like the lack of many packages inside the official repositories, compared to Canonical's. And lastly, well, I feel a little bit uncomfortable when using their specific tools like, for example, dnf, or their configuration conventions, which differ from that of Debian based distributions. This is a matter of taste, though.

Would RHEL/CentOS not serve a similar purpose to the Ubuntu LTS releases, if a little less suitable for workstation use?

I guess so. I've never used CentOS but it may be somewhat similar, despite being considered more of a server distribution.

CentOS would be more similar to Debian stable

As a Fedora user, I'd be one of the first to admit that Ubuntu is more user friendly. The installation of the graphics drivers for example was a HUGE pain on Fedora. Getting everything in gnome setup was quite a chore. Printer setup was a pain

That said, i've found the long term stability of Fedora to be better than Ubuntu. The main reason I switched was I had a few instances where I upgraded, and several things on my system just broke. That hasn't happened to me with Fedora.

I've found that, at least with Fedora 28, Nouveau is sufficient, surprisingly even for a modern GTX 1070. Of course I'm missing out on much of what it is capable of however for a standard desktop experience it's fine. I still use Windows for any games. If you wanted CUDA on Linux then I suppose it might be better to stick to the beaten path.

From Fedora 26-on Drivers have been pretty good. Nvidia card works great with the binary-blob from the RPMfusion repo, and no issues with using the Brother network printer.

Pre-26 I'd agree with you.

to be fair, snap is the only technology that canonical got right from the start and is actually really good, even on other distributions.

Fedora is a community distro.