AugustWest

Your experience is very different from mine. I usually have to dig in and fix crap that shouldnt be wrong in ubuntu long before I even get to the upgrade phase! Lots of circular problems: oh this snap doesn’t have the full dependencies. Thats ok, I know how to edit them. Except that didn’t work, so lets add the PPA. But that was out of date, lets build from scratch… and so on.

Edit: Let me add something: Glad it worked for you. And Ubuntu is Linux, and we have that in common, and I want to make sure this type of discussion is always framed under “SAME TEAM!”

Wow, that is impressive. I have been using Linux full time since around 2003. Have had it on a lot of machines in a variety of flavors. Ubuntu was always the one that did something stupid that I had to figure out to fix, and by stupid I mean Canonical’s choices more than anything else. Your example gives me hope at least.

I am using an Arch rolling now that was installed about 5 years ago, and it has been far easier to maintain than anything else. Maybe that is because change is incremental, instead of all at once. My laptop has Fedora for a couple of years and that too has been painless. I have not done a single thing except click update on that machine.

The other desktops/laptops are a variety of Debian, Suse, and Slack just to keep things interesting, but are not used nearly as frequently, so dont get updated as often.

Seriously? You have successfully managed to upgrade Ubuntu since 2014? Just to be clear, on desktops?

So you went through 3 desktop environment changes, systemd changes, snap environment changes, and it all worked? I am shocked.

Like I said the last time I even tried Ubuntu a default out of then box feature was broken by default.

And with desktops, it’s always some thing: the snap needs editing and is missing dependencies, a ppa is required, etc. On the server it’s fine but the desktop environment usually requires effort every other update.

Like I said, even at ububtu 4 I broke it in a week and went back to Debian.

I put Fedora on a laptop as a whim almost 2 years ago.

My main computers are arch, but. I had an iso handy and hadn’t used anything from based in years.

I am surprised at how quickly it gets updates. Gimp was at 3 before arch stable.

Anyways, I just keep updating the laptop and it just keeps working. I have yet to actually do anything for maintenance on it.

Ubuntu? Never. I have had longer less problem free with Arch than Ubuntu. Last time I tried it for a project it was broken on install.

I am all for Debian, love it. But Ubuntu has been crappy since day one.