Ubuntu has too many problems for me to want to run it. However, it has occurred to me that there aren’t a lot of distros that are like the Ubuntu LTS.
Basic requirements for a LTS:
- at least 2 years of support
- semi recent versions of applications like Chrome and Firefox (might consider flatpak)
- a stable experience that isn’t buggy
- fast security updates
Distros considered:
- Debian (stable)
- Rocky Linux
- openSUSE
- Cent OS stream
- Fedora
As far as I can tell none of the options listed are quite suitable. They are either to unstable or way to out of date. I like Rocky Linux but it doesn’t seem to be desktop focused as far as I can tell. I would use Debian but Debian doesn’t have the greatest security defaults. (No selinux profiles out of the box)
Yeah I do not want Arch or recent packages. I want something I can set and forget.
Right now Pop OS and Linux mint seem like the best options even though they both lack the support of a larger company.
Both Pop and Mint offload much of the heavy lifting to Ubuntu. They are not rolling everything from scratch.
True, but unlike Ubuntu they get it right
I was responding to “they both lack the support of a larger company”.
I run Mint Cinnamon. It’s been Rock solid for me. You can modify, add, remove whatever you want. With Flatpacks you are mostly up to date. If you want to install a newer kernel you can, and if you have Timeshift running and something breaks, you just roll back.
I see Mint as an Un-enshittified Ubuntu.
I find cinnamon very frienly and comfortable, which I need in a daily driver. To play I have things like NixOS. I could Arch, but I’m not vegan. :)
That said, I’m giving Fedora Kinoite (Atomic) a try in a VM
Arch can definitely be a “set & forget” type of distro. Just install it, use it correctly, and that’s really it. No need to upgrade to new releases; just keep the system up to date…
I don’t want to keep the system up to date
Fair enough…
The idea that downloading gigabytes of packages every week is a normal and required aspect of using a computer is part of why I left Windows…
Doesn’t have to be every week. Could be every other week or at least once a month. I haven’t used Windows since 2002, but personally, I update once a week, and it never takes all that long, maybe 2-3 minutes tops. But I understand that it’s not for everyone…
2-3 minutes on what kind of internet connection? How long at 10Mbps?
Computer is connected to the router via ethernet. The connection to the router is I believe fiber optics…