What should I use if I like Ubuntu but not snap, just Debian? Or are there alternatives around? Seems like Ubuntu has the best hardware and driver support so just curious what's new in Linux land.
I switched to Debian and have been happy with it. The release cycle is less frequent than Ubuntu Desktop, which means fewer disruptions, and Debian Backports make it easy to pick new versions of the important stuff. Flatpak is also available on Debian.
Linux Mint is widely praised for being basically Ubuntu without the worst Canonicalisms (such as Snap). They maintain a Debian edition in parallel to their main one, as an exit strategy in case Ubuntu ever becomes unsuitable for their base. Some people already use that as their daily driver.
Just in case you're not aware, the default desktop environment on whatever distro you pick doesn't have to be what you use. I switched to KDE Plasma when Gtk-based desktops became intolerable, and haven't looked back.
Do the Mint team treat fixing the other half of the problem, the GNOMEisms, as out-of-scope?
Asking because I maintain my own pile of gsettings and .gtkrc tweaks as mitigations yet pain points remain, apparently unfixable outside the source code.
Their approach to GNOMEisms is to officially support three desktop editions: Cinnamon (based on GNOME 3), MATE (based on GNOME 2), and Xfce (based on more recent Gtk). I don't think they try to tame modern GNOME, and I wouldn't expect them to, since that would be an endlessly difficult moving target.
If you want more detail, you should ask someone who still uses Gtk-based desktops, or try them yourself. I gave up on Gtk a couple years ago.
MX Linux also looks interesting. Like Ubuntu, it's a Debian derivative. It offers a supported path for avoiding systemd and has an official KDE Plasma edition, both of which appeal to me. I haven't had a chance to try it yet.
Now Debian is packaging non-free drivers in the iso images directly. I would suggest to try Debian first, if it works well for you just keep it.
If you feel the need for newer packages, try other alternatives (or Debian unstable). I’ve set down on Fedora with XFCE, it’s really stable yet packages feel new.
Dunno about the this release, but till 24.4 it was simply a matter of removing some packages then holding/masking the primary snapd one, followed by manually adding the official PPAs for Mozilla’s stuff (or just use the Flatpak).
Of course, there’s still the philosophical and long term issues with staying on a distro that’s promoting and continuosuly expanding the thing you dislike…
This is a bad strategy, I fell victim for. I configured so it would use apt instead of snap package, but canonical silently stopped shipping packages and I was running some packages that were not updated for a long time and debugging weird bugs, because I didn't assume that this was a problem. If one wants Ubuntu, one must accept snap. If you use apt with disallowed transition to snap, you might be stuck with old packages that were transitioned to snap.
My choice for now is Debian, didn't finish transition yet, very annoying to plan this in my schedule. I'll churn from Ubuntu after more than 15 years of daily driving... I also don't like ubuntu user with uid:gid 1000 in their Docker images. It's a cancer.
+1. I recently picked up a secondhand Framework, and, after almost 15 years of holding out with Mint + MATE, berated myself for resisting change and put in an unreasonable amount of effort trying to modernize and reacclimate to Ubuntu + GNOME 3.
It was painful, with an endless laundry list of things to troubleshoot, tinker with, and add to my digital notebook in attempt to get anything resembling a personally ergonomic workflow.
I implore anyone to just go with Mint or anything else that takes care of ripping out snaps for you if you don't want snaps (but otherwise still like or are used to most things about Ubuntu). There were too many downstream and other issues, related and unrelated, for my sanity.
This is what I do, because on my work computer IT imposed Ubuntu.
I initially tried to just use snaps but firefox was crashing quite often so I had to go with adding the mozilla's repository and of course configure the fake "firefox" package that actually installs the snap to be low priority for apt.
Like someone else said, if I have to dig through settings to do that then I might as well use Windows. It's better to use something that doesn't even have snap in the first place via another distro than play cat and mouse with Canonical.
I have a year ago switched from Ubuntu to Fedora and I like it. Clean and stable. Uses Flatpak. I'm using Fedora Workstation which is the default, but Fedora KDE Plasma seems to be nice as well if you want to have more configuration options available directly in the GUI. And the layout is more Windows like with start button menu etc for people coming from the Windows side.
I distro hopped for a while and settled on Linux mint. Uses flat packs. Hits the spot for easy to use and easy to maintain without needing to use terminal scripts to get things my way. Just my opinion.
I’m curious about proprietary Nvidia drivers. Ubuntu normally comes with fairly outdated, if not obsolete ones, but there’s a semi-official PPA with more recent versions. How does Debian handle this?
Debian has their own nvidia driver packages (it's nvidia's drivers repackaged in a nice way that integrates with the system well). I can't say if they're "outdated" or how different they are from what ubuntu ships, but they've always worked very well for me.
Debian offers Nvidia drivers as well although they tend to be outdated. Thankfully you can use Nvidia's official .deb repos to get the latest drivers on both Debian and Ubuntu.
Awesome, this must be a recent thing, when I last checked about a year ago the latest drivers from restricted were a couple versions behind. Many people always complained about it on reddit, AskUbuntu etc, which is where I found out about the PPA.
We deployed 570 and 580 in the April-June 2025 time frame, so I'm not sure what you were looking at, but they've tried to keep up with the latest for a while.
I have used Pop OS for years and for me it was the most smooth desktop environment I've ever used.
They have been working on a custom Desktop Environment which sadly still isn't very stable yet. Promising development, but putting me off of using Pop for a while.
I just put the new popos on my laptop and am still running the old version on my primary desktop. Agreed that Cosmic is not quite ready for prime time yet, but it is pretty impressive the state it's in for how new it is. Haven't had any show stopping bugs on the laptop, just a few small quirks.
Anyway, the main issue with Debian, Ubuntu, and Nvidia is about licensing. GNU/Linux is free software, and Nvidia drivers are not. Loading a non-free driver is known as “Tainting the Kernel”.
If you want something desktop oriented and Ubuntu based without the focus on snaps, take a look at Linux Mint: https://www.linuxmint.com/ (there's Cinnamon, Xfce and MATE versions; personally I think Cinnamon is pretty good nowadays)
Both are great. I'm currently using the Debian Editon, that at least for me works out of the box. The transition from the Ubuntu-based traditional edition was seamless. I used Mint MATE before.
The issue is them adding it back, sometimes even on apt upgrade, or silently installing it as a dependency for certain apps without mentioning it unless you look closely. That gets tiring after a while and I gave up on Ubuntu as even after having removed snap multiple times it always returned.
Not listening to users is what drove me away from windows. Not a fan of snaps either (or forced windows updates). Recently re-tried linux going to debian instead, which i really like. Reminds me of the old dos days. Gnome was a no-go, kde was nice but too buggy, cinnamon turned out to be perfect. So here i am, on linux finally, enjoying having my computer back and playing around like its 1992 again.
I've not used Linux on the desktop for some years⁰ but as I move back this sort of thing is why I'm not considering Ubuntu². If I want to dig into settings like that to keep my preferences I might as well stick with Windows.
Yes, the control to be able to tweak the system to my liking is one of the attractions or Linux, but not when I have to in order to avoid behaviours that I don't want being reasserted.
[not that I expect nor particularly want Ubuntu to change, I just accept that I'm not part of its target audience and I'll be better served elsewhere - choice is a great thing!]
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[0] heading back there now as Windows11 is not happening on my home machines¹, I feel that I shouldn't have let Windows10 happen, looking back.
[1] aside from the laptop that came with it that I'll keep there for Office and DayJob compatibility for a while.
[2] Currently running Debian³ on the other laptop, main desktop will likely go that way if it isn't decommissioned completely, and I use a dock with the laptops instead.
[3] As that is what I use server-side more often than not.
Or, for a more server-appropriate example, 'frr'. The BGP daemon. It's not just desktop things like 'firefox' before someone tries that angle.
I haven't tried it in a few LTS releases and I'm away from a computer. Still, I'd bet this release continues the pattern. Fat chance Canonical decided to go back to more build targets/backporting/testing.
I was using Ubuntu and installed the apt version of Firefox as the snap version would not open html files in locations like /var/tmp and would not work with USB devices. Every time I ran `do-release-upgrade`, all of that work would need to be redone. It was very annoying.
Ubuntu is the Windows 11 of Linux. You have to do brain surgery on it post install, to remove unwanted crap. At least there's the option of using a different distro.
Debian is fine but their kernels are so old if you have any new hardware it can be clunky and you have to fiddle with backports of the bleeding edge version
Gaming-oriented distros like CachyOS and Bazzite might be what you want. I'm on Cachy and can recommend it. Because they try to "just work" without jumping through hoops.
Even though I very much intenseley dislike the completely unintuitive idiosyncratic package management that Arch has. Which is further not helped by the fact that Cachy's default GUI for it isn't even integrated properly.
I was in the same spot recently, and my friends recommend Linux Mint. It is built on top of Ubuntu LTS, and no snap. I've been using it for the past few weeks in my old desktop computer. Definitely Good. Perfect fit for your needs
> What should I use if I like Ubuntu but not snap […]
Because of business needs, if you're stuck with using Ubuntu (at least in some situations), an `apt(-get) purge snapd` helps. It's in all of our auto/post-install stuff.
Easier said than done, surprise: apt, who we know and love, is redirected to Snap for an ever-increasing number of packages.
"Don't use Snap", you say? I'll do you one better! Skip Ubuntu. 'Just' use anything else more suitable. Debian is an excellent replacement being upstream, but I hold no illusions over undeclared requirements.
> With 24.04 at least, doing an 'apt purge snapd' seems to be quite useful. Is that not sufficient?
For the moment, later pulling a package that is redirected would undo that effort. As the peer points out, too, that would likely rip out stuff you're using without having already configured preference.
One could maintain a boundless list of configs pinning repository preferences... or they could use a distribution that doesn't have a predisposition towards Snap.
Some server stuff is hit too! I learned about this pattern through the BGP daemon 'frr'. No idea how many server packages are/may be captured by Snap, but it's worth being aware of. Imagine my surprise. Remove it and bam, no networking.
I can't believe people like Snap when in the name of security it breaks basic things such as accessing a folder on a different mount point that the user normally can access perfectly fine.
A packaging system should not break the basic abstractions of an OS.
Yeah, this was the frustrating bit to me. I use Firefox to look at stuff that lives in /tmp/, Snap Firefox can't do this. I'd remove Snap Firefox, pin the priorities and it would still silently crawl it's way back in after a week or two no matter what I tried. I gave up Ubuntu. Earlier versions used to respect the priorities but something changed.
“Urban myth” kind of suggests that it was never true, which isn't the case, though it is one of those out-dated truths that doesn't go away quickly.
At one time Ubuntu as the easiest distro to get certain hardware running with because of the inclusion of proprietary drivers & codecs (unlike its Debian parent, amongst others, at least at the time) and making them easy, near-automatic, to configure compared to others that did include them. The distinction is long gone, and Ubuntu is simply one of several (many) good ones in that regard, but the perception that others have not long since caught up persists.
It used to be true. I've never had problems using the proprietary Nvidia drivers on Ubuntu. You used to have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get them installed on Debian. Now Ubuntu lags behind on kernel versions leaving new hardware less usable.
Snap is preinstalled on all official Ubuntu graphical editions.
However, Xubuntu's _Minimal_ install does not include any snap packages at all, not even a browser. This means it's trivial to remove snapd:
sudo apt purge snapd
Then you can install the `extrepo` command, and use it to install Firefox ESR direct from Mozilla's repos, or Chrome from Google's repos.
Once it's online you can copy and paste a couple of commands to "pin" snapd and prevent it from being reinstalled. Then you can switch to current Firefox or anything else without snapd sneaking back in.
Xubuntu Minimal is also available as a separate ISO file, which is not true of any of the other flavours.
This looks like it might be the best solution, no snap, maintained by an actual system integrator and laptop maker, and I also like the new Rust-based desktop environment. I wonder how well it runs on Framework laptops or MacBooks as well.
Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Linux Lite, Pop OS, and several less famous distros are all based on Ubuntu. New versions of all of them will follow this new LTS release in time.
Mint forked GNOME 3 to make something more Windows-like.
Zorin customised upstream GNOME with a lot of extensions.
Pop removed it and replaced it with their own homegrown desktop, written in Rust. It's actually pretty good and works well.
PopOS started as Ubuntu with better hardware enablment but it has evolved far beyond that. They have been removing all the snap stuff. The have done tons of work on DE (Cosmic) and in general don't go along with Gnome or Ubuntu strangness. But yes its Ubuntu and Debian derived.
Linux Mint is widely praised for being basically Ubuntu without the worst Canonicalisms (such as Snap). They maintain a Debian edition in parallel to their main one, as an exit strategy in case Ubuntu ever becomes unsuitable for their base. Some people already use that as their daily driver.
Just in case you're not aware, the default desktop environment on whatever distro you pick doesn't have to be what you use. I switched to KDE Plasma when Gtk-based desktops became intolerable, and haven't looked back.