Why switch?

I played with the idea of switching for quite a while. Having switched my daily driver from Windows maybe 6-9 Months ago I made many mistakes in the meantime.

Good and bad

This may have led to a diminshed experience with ubuntu but all in all, I was very pleased to see that Linux works as a daily driver. Still, I was unhappy with the kind of dumbed down gnome experience.

Problems

There were errors neither I nor people I asked could fix and the snap situation on ubuntu (just the fact that they’re proprietary, nothing else).

Installation

Installing debian (and kde) was easier and harder than I expected. The download mirror I used must not have been great although its very close to my location because it took ages although my internet connections is good.

Apps

Since I switched to Linux, I toned down my app diet a lot. Installing all my apps from ubuntu was as easy as writing a short list and going through discover. Later I added flatpak which gave me a couple apps not available through discover (such as fluffychat). The last two I copied directly as appimages.

Games

I was scared that the „old kernel“ of stable debian would be a problem. As it turns out, everthing works great so far, a lot better than on ubuntu which might or might not be my fault.

Instability

Kde does have some quirks that irritate me a bit like installing timeshift (because I tried network backups which dont work with it and the native backup solution does not seem to accept my sambashare) led to a window I could only close by rebooting.

Boot time

What does feel a bit odd is the boot process. After my bios splash, it shows „welcome to grub“ and then switches to the debian start menu for 3 seconds or so, then shows some terminal stuff and then starts kde splash and then login. This feels a lot longer than ubuntu did. Its probably easy to change in some config but its also something that should be obvious.

Summary

So far I‘m incredibly happy although I ran into initramfs already probably because of timeshift which I threw out again. I might do a manual backup if nothing else works. My games dont freeze or stutter which is nice. All apps I had on ubuntu now work on debian and no snaps at all.

TL;DR: If you feel adventurous, debian and kde are a pretty awesome mix and rid you of the proprietary ubuntu snap store. It also doesnt tell you that you can get security upgrades if you subscribe to ubuntu pro. Works the same if not better.

  • sabreW4K3@lemmy.tfEnglish
    3·
    10 months ago

    Ubuntu is a great gateway distro. When I dumped Windows back in the Windows 10 days, Ubuntu made it an easy transition, time elapsed and there were things that didn’t work right that I found frustrating. I eventually ended up trying out Fedora and the rest was history. I’m glad you found a good fit for you.

    • Petter1@lemm.ee
      1·
      10 months ago

      These days, Linux mint should be recommended for people coming from windows. I rate their desktop environment and intuitive style better and faster understandable for people coming from windows compared to ubuntu. If a person always wants the newest stuff recommend OpenSuse Tumbleweed now, since it a is rolling distro but very stable and you don’t have to use Terminal at all, there.

    • ffhein@lemmy.world
      0·
      10 months ago

      It used to be at least, but I’m not so sure that it still is. I’ve been using Linux full time for over a decade, mostly Xubuntu but also other distros and vanilla Ubuntu. Last year my wife decided that she wanted to ditch Windows for good so we installed Xubuntu on her pc, her netbook and our new htpc, and I was surprised that we ran into so many different issues. I could solve some of them but I think it would be much more difficult for a first time Linux user, and potentially give them a bad first impression of Linux OS:es.

      • sabreW4K3@lemmy.tfEnglish
        0·
        10 months ago

        What kind of issues did you run into if you don’t mind me asking? I jumped ship from Ubuntu just when they started with the snap nonsense, so things I found egregious, like them dropping Unity, aren’t really valid in the grand scheme of things.

        • ffhein@lemmy.world
          1·
          10 months ago

          Small disclaimer: I’m not claiming all these issues can be said to be 100% Ubuntu’s fault, but if recommending a distro to someone who wants to try Linux for the first time they probably won’t care about anything other than the compound experience. I used Xubuntu for many years and remembered it as very stable and the vast majority of things being easy and working out of the box, which is why I was so surprised that I had to spend hours troubleshooting various things that I never had problems with previously.

          Some issues and annoyances I remember off the top of my head:

          Unable to wake computer after monitor turning off due to inactivity. Happened to all 3 computers which have very different hardware, which seemed a little strange to me. Did some troubleshooting on my wife’s desktop PC and IIRC it appeared to be the program which would ask for your password crashed, causing the computer to turn off the monitor signal again. Uninstalled the xfce4-screensaver package and disabled password on resume on her PC which fixed it there, but her netbook needs to have password and I think it still sometimes has this issue (she doesn’t use it very often). On the htpc I both uninstalled xfce4-screensaver and disabled all monitor power saving, but recently it has started turning off the monitor signal after inactivity anyway. At least it always wakes up from this state.

          However, the htpc sometimes fails to wake up the monitor/tv after hibernate. The computer wakes up but the monitor doesn’t, and the only solution I know is the following procedure: Wake the computer up, press ctrl-alt-f1 to switch to a different vtty, press the keyboard shortcut to hibernate the computer, wake it up again, press ctrl-alt-f6 to switch back to the graphical desktop. For some reason that works…

          Every time the htpc wakes up from hibernate there’s a notification saying something about the computer being reconnected to the network. There’s a button on the popup for “don’t notify me about this again” but it makes no difference, the popups keep coming. Can ofc. be disabled entirely from some other settings, but it’s not working as expected.

          Watching movies in Kodi doesn’t work. It starts playing it without sound, then it begins to stutter after about 10 seconds and it gets worse until Kodi freezes entirely. Haven’t had time to properly debug it, but it worked just fine on Arch (which I wouldn’t recommend to a beginner for other reasons :)) which the previous htpc had. Instead we use VLC for the time being.

          We watch various series on youtube and dropout.tv so we have a browser tab permanently open for each, often with longer episodes paused in the middle. About once per month there’s a popup telling us that we must close the web browser so that snap can update it. The popups don’t time out, and need to be clicked to go away. If you click to ignore it too many times it will forcibly close eventually. Occasionally this causes the web sites to forget what we were watching, and it can take a bit of time to find out where you were in a 3 hour D&D actual play. Probably snaps working as intended but both of us find it annoying.

          Over all our Brother laser jet + scanner is great with Linux, but I had to spend a few hours to get all features working on my wife’s PC while it was pretty much plug-n-play on my current install of Fedora KDE.

          Wife’s PC had issues with monitors losing their relative position and orientation. It might’ve been triggered when one of the cables glitched a bit, and it doesn’t happen now that they’re screwed in properly, but I think the OS ought to remember the configuration better. It also moved the monitors so they weren’t adjacent, which made the mouse pointer behave very weirdly when moved between then until she rearranged them in the settings.

          There were some other things that I’m not able to recall right now too, nothing too serious for someone with Linux experience. My wife used Ubuntu at university so she’s not computer illiterate, but I don’t think she would’ve had the time and energy to spend hours troubleshooting issues, searching online and digging around in config files, so she probably would’ve switched back to Windows since it mostly worked for her.

  • BaumGeist@lemmy.ml
    2·
    10 months ago

    Please report back in a few weeks and a few months, and maybe even a year or two down the road.

    Generally “I’m really (happy/upset/confused/sad) with it” after only a day isn’t really good feedback for people thinking of changing, but it does provide a good baseline to measure against once you’re more familiar with it, and getting glimpses into your learning curve might be really helpful for people looking for advice on which OS to go with.

    • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.comOP
      1·
      10 months ago

      I agree that normally, it isnt. But my post also was about the installation process and the changeover from one distro to the other. They were both very smooth. I was prepared for a lot more issues.

      Generally yes, I will report back further down the line.

  • stevecrox@kbin.run
    1·
    10 months ago

    The splash screen (boot screen instead of text)used to get me. It provided by an application called ‘Plymouth’.

    You used to need to install it and configure grub, however I think if you go into ‘System Settings’ and type ‘Splash’ KDE has an option to install and choose the screen

  • comicallycluttered@beehaw.org
    0·
    10 months ago

    After my bios splash, it shows „welcome to grub“ and then switches to the debian start menu for 3 seconds or so, then shows some terminal stuff and then starts kde splash and then login.

    Yeah, the reason for this is that sometimes Debian doesn’t enable Plymouth splash screens by default, so you just see the text stuff. It actually annoys me a bit.

    Not on my computer at the moment, so I can’t remember the exact packages you might need, but if I recall, they should be plymouth-themes and kde-config-plymouth (so that you can choose the splash screen theme in your system settings). You can also find other themes online, but I forgot the name of that website where all the stuff is. Pling? I think it’s that.

    Anyway, once you have the themes installed, you need to sudo edit /etc/default/grub and append "quiet splash" (with the quotes) to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= (“quiet” might already be there).

    You can also change the value of GRUB_TIMEOUT= in that file to whatever your preference might be for the duration of grub’s boot menu, but there might be other things you need to adjust in order to hide it completely and still be able to access it if necessary.

    After that, run sudo update-grub so that it’s using the new config and choose whichever theme you want in the system settings.

    Alternatively, grub-customizer is a GUI app that you can install to do all of the above (which will also update grub when you save your changes). Just don’t touch anything that’s not relevant. Stick to just the duration of the grub boot menu and add the splash parameter. Ignore boot priority, etc.

    It should feel less “slow” to start up once all that’s sorted.

    • Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee
      0·
      10 months ago

      I did this recently but for gnome. There are some cool custom splashes at gnome look - maybe there is something similar for KDE too.

  • wildflower@lemmy.world
    01·
    10 months ago

    It also doesnt tell you that you can get security upgrades if you subscribe to ubuntu pro

    Wow, do Ubuntu not have security updates in the “free” version?

    • Rustmilian@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      All of them receive security updates.
      Wether you’re a pro user or not only matters if you’re an LTS user.

      • waigl@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        10 months ago

        With the LTS versions being the best and obvious choice for your average non-technical user who just wants to get some work done…

        • Rustmilian@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          10 months ago

          The normal 6 month stable releases are perfectly fine. Infact they can be the better choice depending on hardware age.

          • waigl@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            10 months ago

            Depends a lot on what kind of user. I specified “non-technical” with a reason. I have, in the past, recommended Ubuntu to a small number of friends and family members. These are people who aren’t particularly comfortable using computers in the best of times. They very much don’t need the newest, best and most shiny versions of everything. They need to do billing, taxes, correspondance, email and various other tasks related to their small business, they need that to work reliably, and if at all possible, to work exactly the same way as it did the last five years. And if there is any pop-up they don’t immediately understand (for example because it’s in English instead of their native language, yes that still happens in Ubuntu quite a bit), they will call me on the phone.

            I don’t know if you’ve ever had to support non-technical end-users, but for some of them, even something as seemingly trivial as a menubar that has moved from the top to the side can be issue that needs explaining and training. For that kind of user, I really do want to postpone all updates beyond pure bug and security fixes for as long as reasonably possible. Five years sounds reasonable. Six months does not.

            • Rustmilian@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              10 months ago

              Ubuntu is not Arch Linux. The 6 month release doesn’t give you the “the newest, best and most shiny versions of everything” in the first place.
              If they don’t like change so much as to not being able to handle some minor UI updates, then their better off using a Chromebook lol.
              You’d just be making it harder for them to move from the outdated software in the long run, because literally everything changes between moving LTS from the 5y EOL period instead of gradually over each major normal 6 month releases.