> I would prefer to stay on a Debian based distro so PopOS looks promising.

Have you considered using Debian?

Personally, I prefer to run regular updates often and full-system upgrades rarely/never, but I also want to use software that isn't ancient. The LTS model gives me half of those things.

I don't know if that's what you're hinting at with your comment about newer kernels, but I've found the testing and unstable branches of Debian to be a far more pleasant experience overall than Ubuntu (either the LTS or the full-upgrade-every-six-months variants).

They're both rolling releases. Don't let the names fool you... If you follow a small handful of best-practices (e.g. enabling apt-listbugs) they can be quite stable. The system on my old laptop has been running without major issues for almost a decade.

Any other tips besides apt-listbugs? I've long eschewed Debian because the stable branch is painfully so, I had some bad experiences with testing years ago, and I've felt that unstable was too risky to use as a daily driver.

The other sticking point is ZFS. Guess I'll have to spin up a VM and play around a bit before I switch to Pop! or straight Debian.

Canonical's obsession with snap is about to push me away from *buntu, and I'm ready to bail out. I had misgivings about snap from the first I'd heard about it, and my misgivings are turning out to be well-founded.

Here are the official suggestions:

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable#What_are_some_best_pr...

apt-listbugs is really the main one for me.

When I upgrade, I pay close attention to the package change lists. If packages are set to be removed, especially a lot of important looking packages, I cancel the upgrade and investigate. Usually this means that something has gone wonky with dependencies, or not all of the packages that need to be upgraded in lock-step are available yet. Usually this resolves itself after a few days, but sometimes you can coax a partial upgrade if you find the culprit package and hold it.

Speaking of holding, apt-mark hold/unhold (or equivalent - I think there might be a better way to do this now) is your friend. I usually end up holding packages like the ones mentioned above that erroneously want to remove half the system, as well as any packages that apt-listbugs complains about, unless I've reviewed the bug report and am okay with it. I'll periodically unhold everything (apt-mark showhold | xargs sudo apt-mark unhold), then retry an upgrade to see which bugs or dependencies have been fixed, and then hold any remaining offenders again. Usually this will end up "releasing" package upgrades in chunks depending on the dependency graph.

Apt should probably be louder when big parts of the system get marked for removal. I think this the primary way testing/unstable systems end up breaking, and it's completely avoidable.

I second this, debian testing has been my daily driver for linux for as long as I can remember - I first tried out debian in 1996! But have been using it as a main work OS since about 2007/8.

My current workstation is running my debian OS that's just been continuously updated since about 2012.

My thought process has been in progress over the last 5 years or so. Every time they release a new LTS really.

I have flirted with the idea of using Debian testing as a rolling release but generally ended up back on Ubuntu out of laziness as I liked the happy medium of Ubuntu LTS releases between stableness vs cutting edge while avoiding the typical undercooked Canonical "big bang" changes they have in their .10 releases.

Maybe 20.04 is the release that tips me over the edge!

I tried Debian 10 for several months. It all looks really similar, but that's because of Gnome, or whatever desktop you use. With Ubuntu 20.04 I've turned back to Ubuntu for desktops. Debian is my preferred distro for servers, but Ubuntu just works a lot better on the desktop. It has its issues as well, and I'm not a fan of the snaps. I've compromised because I'm most familiar with Ubuntu, and because it has the best support community with Askubuntu.

I don't care about the default DE that much as I run my own minimal setup, it's more about freshness of packages/kernels and stability for me.

Unbunu provides a nice middle ground between the very stable but very stale Debian (stable) and the and the bleeding edge of something like Arch. Ubuntu does nice stuff like releasing newer kernels for LTS releases but the NIH annoyances have grated on me for the last few years (Mir, Upstart, Snap etc...).

Pop_OS Dev here.

> Does Pop inherit Ubuntus snapification with 20.04?

Not out of the box. You can manually install snapd and use snaps on Pop, but all of the software we ship is Apt packaged, and Flatpak/Flathub are supported out of the box. Additionally, some apt packages which install snaps in Ubuntu (like Chromium) install the apt version of the application in Pop.

> Do they release newer kernels for the LTS releases like Canonical does with Ubuntu LTS?

Yes, we track the latest Ubuntu kernel and ensure that the newest one available is installed. Our kernel is usually a bit newer than Ubuntu's (due to our focus on System76 hardware which, being new, often requires a newer kernel for all hardware features to work correctly). Obviously the newer kernels also have benefit beyond just S76 hardware, and Pop is in no way restricted from running on non-System76 machines.

> Do they pack ZFS in the kernel like Ubuntu?

Yes.

All of those are selling points for me along with your first class support for Nvidia drivers. I'll definitely be giving it a go over the weekend!

One followup question; how easy is it to uninstall your default DE/do you provide a minimal install without the DE?

While I appreciate your hard work on the user-friendliness of it I've spent the last god knows how many years building my workflow around i3 I'm loathed to give it up which means 99% of the desktop will sit unused.

Keep up the good work, you folks are doing great things and are a boon for the Linux ecosystem!

Edit: Also any chance of UK keyboards on your laptops? Or have I missed an option when speccing a machine up?

I can't speak for the lower two questions, but Pop has gone the other direction on snaps. The default method of app installation is apt, but if that is unavailable, it will use flatpak from flathub.

That's good to hear. I do prefer Flatpaks to snaps since they don't auto update and you can have multiple repos.

They have the Pop shop too, which seems to do something that’s not apt, haven’t had good luck with that, the versions are often out of date.

Good to know, thanks for replying!

How would you describe the "Canonical way of doing things"?

Choosing to do their own thing instead of helping define and adopt the development community consensus approach, spewing FUD and criticism of the community for 2 or 3 years, then finally giving up and adopting what the rest of the community did in the first place.

It looks like it is an attempt at bizdev.

With Mir, it was an attempt to own it, so when some mobile vendor wants to implement it for their devices, they have to consult with them and get some licenses. With Unity 8 and Ubuntu SDK, it was similar. Once prospects of Ubuntu mobiles failed, it was abandoned.

Wit Snap, it is an attempt to own the Linux app distribution space (that's why you cannot have 3rd-party repos), so anyone who want to distribute snaps, has to talk to them.

I have nothing against Canonical trying to make money; but inserting themselves as a monopoly on some layer of Linux stack isn't the way to do that. Community will always route around.

Yup, pretty much nailed my thinking.

I didn't know chromium was shipped as a snap on Ubuntu now. That explains it being real slow to start.

> I would prefer to stay on a Debian based distro so PopOS looks promising.

I agree, I had been using Debian as my primary distro for about ten years when I gave PopOS a try and have been using it since. Although I like PopOS I wish they were building on Debian.

> Do they release newer kernels for the LTS releases like Canonical does with Ubuntu LTS?

I am on 18.04 LTS right now and was very surprised when PopOS did a major kernel version bump to 5 which seems very strange for a LTS. It has also broken my ability to install `linux-image-virtual` which requires kernel version 4.15 and has caused some problems recently. This has me considering switching back to Debian.

> Do they pack ZFS in the kernel like Ubuntu?

PopOS 18.04 does not pack ZFS, I have installed it to make use of reflinks for DVC.

> Does Pop inherit Ubuntus snapifictation with 20.04? Not to the same extent. The Pop Shop tends to have newer versions of the software they pride themselves on and it is not snap'd. God I hate snaps. Say you want to run Darktable and have your photos on say a ZFS pool? pain in the friggin ass.I just rebuilt my CentOS 7 box to Ubuntu 20.04 after ZFS and Nvidia kernel woes finally drove me to abandon my beloved distro (I am a RH admin so it took a lot to get me to that point but have never really managed to get into Fedora)but the friggin snaps (and the subsequent drop in support from lots of projects to easily build for Ubuntu) were so painful. The minute I saw that PopOS 20.04 had been released I converted from Ubuntu to PopOS and have thus far been very happy.

> Do they release newer kernels for the LTS releases like Canonical does with Ubuntu LTS?

As far as I can tell PopOS is a pretty light layer on top of vanilla Ubuntu. You can still install everything from the Ubuntu repos etc.

> Do they pack ZFS in the kernel like Ubuntu?

I did a conversion and my ZFS install came over just fine (and my pool import from my janky CentOS built pool was shockingly simple-- only hiccup was that I didnt have SMB and NFS installed yet when I did it so the exports failed, but everything else worked).

Now my only complaint is that the Ubuntu implementation of Gnome does superkey+arrowkey Windows style AeroSnaping and In the two days or so I used it I got really used to it and that is not the default behavior in PopOS and haven't figured out how to tweak it yet. Its a really nice desktop environment and I have heard great things about the Pop Shell but havent played with it much yet. Now I just need to figure out how to prune out all the snap crap I installed and all the libraries I installed trying and failing to compile stuff from source. I am lost without yum. I know people hate it but I know it like the back of my hand and apt is different enough (and Canonical documentation is laughable compared to RHEL) to make me feel a little lost in the weeds. But native ZFS and Nvidia have been a godsend. A modern implementation of kvm/qemu is super nice-- my VMs are so much easier to manage now. And I'm really looking forward to playing with Wireguard again now that it has kernel support.

You can modify your keyboard shortcuts in Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts.

Since I'm mostly using Linux as a server OS I decided to ditch Ubuntu LTS and go straight to Debian. Why go with a middleman if I can just use the original distro?

Ubuntu does have some advantages over Debian (Stable vs LTS) on the server IMO:

Packages are generally a bit newer vs. Debian

They release newer kernels throughout the release

A defined 2 year release cycle

Generally better supported by 3rd parties

Support available if needed (I've never used it but some businesses won't buy anything without support)

Debian works fine on my 2016 XPS 13 and my 2012 x230.

To be honest all Ubuntu would give me these days is a preconfigured DE, but XFCE default on Debian works fine for me.

Also, now I run the same distro on my Dev box as in production ;)

You are on your own on the kernels. I have been running 5.6 on my laptop with 19.10 and am kinda dreading upgrading to 20.04 and probably having to rebuild the kernel.

pop doesn't even have snapd installed by default