I've been a very happy Ubuntu/Kubuntu user since more than a decade, but I'm seriously considering switching distros because the encroachment of snap, which I feel is not ready yet for such critical applications like Firefox.

I'm going to try 22.04 before deciding, but I'm eyeing Manjaro or Endeavor OS in case I jump ship. I'm also eyeing Qubes OS, but it looks needy and resource heavy.

I’m guessing Snaps are great for what they were designed. IOT devices.

They are good for server installations as well, except Docker/containers are almost always a better solution. Although the auto updating features make it a good solution for potentially creating self hosted services.

They’re just a terrible fit for the desktop. Unsurprising because they were never designed for the desktop.

Same here: Ubuntu was my first distro, and I've been using variants of it since 2006. This winter, I switched to OpenSUSE, with Ubuntu's insistence on pushing snap on me being the biggest reason.

I share the concerns about snaps. Ubuntu was the first Linux distro I actually started using as my daily driver in 2005, and I've been using it ever since. At first I used to upgrade all the minor releases, these days I'm just on whichever LTS release. It's funny how over the years I know less and less about Linux. It just works.

Why have you chosen OpenSUSE and how has your experience been? I've been eyeing Debian, as it's pretty similar and I already have it on a server. My main concern with switching to a completely different distro would be that the packages are sometimes named differently.

Or I could switch to NixOS if I wanted things to be actually better, but the idea that I'd have to spend time nurturing my system just doesn't sound that appealing in 2022.

I don't think I had any specific reason for picking OpenSUSE, at least none that I can remember. Their Tumbleweed rolling release seemed interesting to me.

As for the experience, I mostly like it. There is some re-learning to do (zypper not apt!), but the vast majority of things are the same. Since the distro isn't as popular, there are fewer asked-and-answered questions out there, but most Ubuntu answers work with minimal adaptation and the OpenSUSE wiki is pretty good.

Another downside of going non-Debian is that proprietary software may be less well-supported. I think I only have Steam and Spotify, and they have worked well so far.

Thank you for your answer!

I moved to pop_os for the same reason. I like the flatpak emphasis of it better as well.

I am trying Pop! on an old laptop, so far I have liked it, though I am not sure flatpak is a silver bullet for FF either - I upgraded another equally ancient (circa 2010) laptop to Jammy and discovered that the Firefox snap couldn't even play videos without skipping and freezing. I thought I'd try flatpak instead, but it was nearly as bad, and eventually I blew away both and went the PPA route.

I don’t think there are any distros that are pushing Flatpak as the ultimate solution the way Ubuntu is snaps.

Ubuntu’s aggressive approach with snaps would have been bad enough if snaps were the perfect desktop app solution. It’s a lot more frustrating considering snaps are probably the 3rd best new packaging option behind Flatpak sand appimage.

For sure, I do agree that Flatpak is better than Snap in general (and appimage works fine too, I guess its lack of a, uh, 'snappy' name for the format has kept it from getting as much mindshare...) In principle all three of them seem acceptable for apps I don't use much, or don't need maximum performance from, but for my main browser...

Debian is still Systemd based. If you want to get away from that you need something pretty bizarre like Alpine or Gentoo.

You can install a sysvinit based stock debian if you wish. I've done it a few times recently, on low memory systems (<512MB) it does make a noticeable difference. It's mostly supported in terms of running, though the install is a bit manual:

https://wiki.debian.org/Init

There's also instructions for converting a running system, but I've had no luck with that. It just resulted in an unbootable system for me as it couldn't fully remove systemd there.

edited post, didn't mean that I have a problem with systemd, just all the extra stuff that canonical has created as "launch on boot" daemons/services which are unique to ubuntu only and no other linux.

Very frustrating just how much CPU/memory a blank Ubuntu install uses while idle vs Debian. For largely the same resulting system. I always prefer Debian because of crap like that.

There's also Devuan - https://www.devuan.org/ - A debian Frok without systemd. Don't know how well maintained it is though.

Devuan is an option too. It's Debian without systemd and gives the choice of SysVinit, OpenRC or runit.

I personally have a few years of good experience with Void Linux.

Sure but systemd doesn't bother most people. Some of the arch based options also let you get away from systemd without a whole lot of effort.

The last time I apt get installed xfce it was really really bad. Is there a recipe on how to get an xubuntu level of polish, manually?

I believe you need to install xfdesktop4 and then select that in your login manager. If that doesn't work go through other packages that would have been installed: https://packages.ubuntu.com/jammy/xubuntu-desktop

Can you name the pieces of polish you miss? I run XFCE literally for decades, and I like it for being featureful enough without getting in the way.

I think Linux Mint's xfce version is nicer than xubuntu.