this post was submitted on 08 May 2024
259 points (88.4% liked)
Linux
48397 readers
684 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If I'm honest, it's because Pop!_OS isn't really that good. What does Pop!_OS do particularly well other than "download this one for Nvidia drivers"?
I'm sure I'll return to Pop eventually, maybe on the next release, but right now I'm struggling to get everything I want out of it with my hardware.
My biggest point is that it works out of the box and that it feels more premium compared to Ubuntu. It also auto updates nowadays and they build special mechanisms to preserve your battery if used on a laptop. Soon they will come out with their own desktop. They specifically focus on people who develop. Just sounds like a good option for OP. Compared to more difficult installations.
It's not hard to feel premium compared to Ubuntu these days. Canonical gave up trying to be an end-user desktop OS years ago. Look at their corporate garbagepuke website these days. Ubuntu is now merely the other Red Hat; it's an enterprise grade thing that normies should ignore.
Mint runs circles around Pop!_OS in the "just works, just keeps working" department.
What are the advantages of Mint then compared to pop os? In what terms does it run circles around pop?
In my experience?
Mint has been around longer and has had more of the lumps smoothed out. Mint, and their flagship DE Cinnamon, has always been about actual usability. There's a pragmatic streak that runs through Mint that isn't there in some other distros.
It has been my experience that Mint is usually the one that "just works" and the one that "continues to just work." Cinnamon's UI strikes a balance between KDE's "ALL THE FEATURES! MAXIMUM CLUTTER!" approach and Gnome's "Nuance doesn't exist, implement as little functionality as possible so the window stays empty and beautiful" approach. You won't find yourself asking "why can't it do this?" the way you do with Gnome-based distros. You don't have to start installing extensions just to get things that were considered basic features twenty years ago. You aren't sent to the terminal particularly often, you can genuinely manage most of the system from the GUI.
I would also say that Cinnamon is going to be more familiar to a Windows user than Gnome. Trying to use Gnome the way Windows users are used to handling things, say by minimizing and maximizing windows, is deliberately a pain in the ass on Gnome, and has a tendency to make newcomers think "Man this shit is unusable." Cinnamon doesn't have that problem; it's still fun convincing people that I'm running Windows 9.
Pop Shop is good, their updates are great and don't break the system like a lot of other distros, and their version of Gnome is polished and sleek.
Praising Pop!_OS for their update process rings really hollow given they apparently don't run an apt update when launching the Pop!_Shop. Remember when Linus Sebastian borked X11 trying to install Steam? That issue with Steam had been detected and fixed before that happened, but for some reason Pop!_Shop was trying to pull from an outdated apt cache. That and I can tell you from personal experience the way you check for updates is you open the "Installed" tab and...wait. Such Apple, very bullshit. Not borking things by applying updates is more of a factor of being a Debian descendant and using APT rather than Pacman.
Pop!_OS' version of Gnome is very trendily themed but it's still Gnome, the user interface that hates interfacing with users. Every time I saw someone who tried and then immediately gave up on Linux saying something like "Linux is worthless you can't even rename a file" I'm like "You used Gnome didn't you?" Gnome is the second most user hostile UI I'm aware of after the FCC's website.
To each their own, I suppose. I love Gnome. It's my favorite DE across any OS.