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Switched from NixOS to Ubuntu Desktop on my Framework Laptop 13
I've just switched my vote from NixOS to Ubuntu across on the Framework Laptop 13 Linux Distro Survey.
Linux Distro Survey - Framework Laptop 13
After a couple of years using NixOS (which I still use on my main desktop PC), I had reason to re-install my Framework Laptop 13 after some hardware issues, and tried all kinds of Linux distros, even some BSDs.
When I finally installed Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, it was like a breath of fresh air, everything works "out of the box", all the software I use is available one way or another, and it is easy to maintain.
It's very clear from my mini distro hopping experiment why Ubuntu is so popular, and the base for so many other distros (I nearly settled on Ubuntu Studio, that was really nice). Ubuntu is very well put together, you can tell a lot of time and effort has been spent thinking about and working on the OS built on top of the rock solid Debian base, and improving the desktop experience.
I left Ubuntu until last to try because it uses GNOME for its desktop, and in general I am not a fan of the direction the GNOME desktop's workflow has developed in the last few years. However, the Ubuntu desktop experience is very sensible, bringing back useful things like the system tray, and implementing a number of other little user experience tweaks that make things that little bit smoother. The changes made in the Ubuntu desktop version of GNOME add up to something quite nice.
Some of the other distros I tried also use GNOME, or GNOME technologies as the base of their desktop, but are different enough on the surface that you hardly realise. GNOME have made a nice desktop toolkit that can be extended upon to make your own experience.
Sure, I know I can switch to pretty much any desktop environment or window manager my heart desires on Ubuntu, or pretty much any other distro for that matter, but part of my mini distro hopping experiment was to try and use the stock or recommended experience as much as possible to reduce friction.
I'd better list the distros I tried. Here they are in alphabetical order:
In my distro hopping, if the OS didn't have a clear favourite desktop environment or window manager setup, I tended to use i3. i3 is my preferred window manager for its user experience, and it's generally easier to set up and better supported than Sway. I have been using both i3 and Sway with NixOS on my laptop, and my NixOS desktop PC has been running i3 for years, and so I have a good set of scripts and utils in my dot files for enabling all the hardware support and other goodies that a window manager like i3 lacks in comparison to a desktop environment.
It's interesting that I somehow managed to avoid any Arch based distro, I don't think that was intentional, I've used Arch based distros in the past and they're fine (I used EndevourOS for a year or so).
I did however intentionally avoid anything based on Fedora. I first used Red Hat Linux back in the late '90s, when I picked up a boxed version of RHL 5.1 or 5.2 from Waterstones (can't remember actual version, although I'm pretty sure the box was grey in colour). It was my 2nd foray into Linux and was amazing, Linux had come a long way since I first tried it a couple of years earlier. I've not really used it much since, only as RHEL on client's servers, as I'd ended up using predominantly Debian and OpenBSD for personal machines by 2000. Seeing as it's seemingly all-in on stock GNOME, and owned by IBM, I couldn't be arsed with it.
I also seemingly pretty much avoided Linux distros that use Flatpak as their preferred "next gen" package format. I'm not a fan of Flatpak, it never seems to work well for me, Snaps on the other hand never let me down 🤷. It's been a while as they were the first couple of OSes I tried, but I remember trying a couple of Flatpak packages while using Elementary OS and Zorin OS, hitting some issues, and ended up swapping them out for snaps or debs. Is it the law that if your distro ends with "OS" you have to use Flatpak as your preferred package format? 🤔
It does feel like I'm drawn to the slightly more niche distros. I really wanted Alpine or Void to work out, but they're a fair bit of work to get sorted, and I bounced off them (not for the first time, and probably not the last).
Having a good play with the various BSDs was an eye opener, in a good way. I initially bounced off of FreeBSD as I had problems just getting a desktop up and running. I then went through my old favourite OpenBSD, which is great, but suffers from a lack desktop software compared to FreeBSD, before having a look at the new to me NomadBSD. NomadBSD was really nice. Although positioned as primarily for running from removable media like a thumbdrive, you can install it to your internal disk. I really liked it, and being back in the BSD world made me smile, having spent many years working on SunOS/Solaris, using OpenBSD for personal server stuff, and Mac OS X/macOS since the early 2000's. However, something weird happened with the NomadBSD install after an update that left it in a weird unbootable state unless I jumped through some BIOS hoops, so I took that as a sign to try another distro. GhostBSD was next, and that was super nice too! I could probably have stayed on GhostBSD, but I found that the project, while built on FreeBSD, is just enough different, and set up with some (albeit quite nice) slighty different defaults, that getting support and trying to follow FreeBSD guides to configure GhostBSD got a little tricky in some scenarios. With that nice easy on-boarding experience that GhostBSD gives to what is mostly FreeBSD under the hood, I had another crack at FreeBSD.
One thing I haven't mentioned yet is that for a good chunk of these distro hops, while I was using one distro on my Framework laptop, I'd often audition the next candidate on my 2017 Entroware Apollo laptop.
At the moment, my Entroware Apollo laptop is still running FreeBSD, it's lovely. Sure, there are a few things here and there that mean it's got just a fraction too much friction to be my primary laptop OS just now, but it is so close. Having learnt a lot from running GhostBSD, when I had another go at running FreeBSD, it kinda just worked, and is currently up and running with my usual i3 desktop. If it wasn't for some some software that has been built with only Linux and the GNU utilities in mind, I'd probably be using FreeBSD on my Framework laptop too, maybe even my desktop PC!
It's made me think about how Linux specific Snippet Expander is. It was always intended to be first and foremost for Linux, but maybe I should see if I could get it working on the BSDs too. I have done a quick test to see if it'll build, no dice, but I bet with a little work and contributions to Wails I might be able to get it to build.
Having reluctantly bounced off of FreeBSD for use on my primary laptop, here I am using the "no one will get fired for using ..." distro of choice these days, Ubuntu Desktop.
Ubuntu lets me do all the kinds of stuff I might need for my personal computing needs, including open source development, email, browsing, and watching DRM encumbered streaming services such as Apple TV+, Disney+ and Netflix.
I'm not saying I'll be using Ubuntu Desktop on my Framework laptop forever, but it sure is nice to have a rock solid, no-nonsense, low friction OS where I'm not missing out on anything, and it is easy to use.
Maybe I'm just getting old.
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"Switched from NixOS to Ubuntu Desktop on my Framework Laptop 13" was published on July 20, 2024.