[ META ] What is the community's opinion of Pop!_OS?

It’s an Ubuntu downstream maintained by Linux box maker System76 which is targeted for both general usability and design/media applications. They will soon be debuting their own home-spun desktop environment, Cosmic DE, which is highly anticipated by the Linux community.

How does the community here feel about this distribution and the company that has brought it to us? How do you feel about the projects that they’re working on, and their goals for the distribution moving forward?

burgermeister,

Visuals were striking, but on non-System 76 hardware the thing as a whole broke several times cuz updates. Would love to try out some System76 hardware one of these days though.

azron,

Ive had good success across three non system 76 machines. It is Ubuntu under the covers. I’d expect most of it to work as well as ubuntu does.

gregorum,

Personally, I’ve installed it on at least a couple of dozen machines that definitely weren’t from system 76, and not one of them them had a problem.

I’m curious, what sort of issues did you have?

burgermeister,

Simple updates brought the system down, it was long enough ago that I do not remember the exact cause but I remember the frustration lol.

haui_lemmy,

Funny. I‘m using it on an asus a15 and its rocksolid so far. Sorry you made that experience though.

suodrazah,

I like their window manager, pop-shell, and use it on Fedora. I used to daily Pop but just can’t stand Ubuntu.

VerseAndVermin,

As someone newer who has only used Ubuntu and Mint, what do you get elsewhere?

PerogiBoi,
@PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca avatar

Why can’t you stand Ubuntu?

krash,

I imagine it being about snaps. People seems to hate snap with a passion.

I still use Ubuntu in certain cases. Their LTS offerings are excellent.

PerogiBoi,
@PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca avatar

Yea but why?

makingStuffForFun,
@makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml avatar

Use it on my lenovo carbon x1 flawlessly. Love it.

Fizz,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

I like their company and what they do for Linux. I wish I had a use for a laptop but then I would be stuck between system76 or framework.

haui_lemmy,

And tuxedo. Depending on your country.

hperrin,

The UI seemed like it wasted a lot of space. I hope that Cosmic is better in that regard.

jjlinux,

I have a Gazelle 16 laptop, and was in PopOS for a while too, even before this laptop, when I had a 17" Alienware. However, I’ve moved on to Fedora now, and can’t go back to anything Ubuntu or Ubuntu based again. Fedora is just too great a balance between stable and cutting edge, Ubuntu feels old real quick, and so do all it’s derivatives and downstreams.

I loved the Gnome based Cosmic, best Tweak of Gnome ever in my opinion, but other than that, I just can’t leave Fedora behind anymore. Even Ublue distros are amazing.

gregorum,

Care to elaborate on what really sold you on fedora?

Also, the new cosmic DE will be available for all distros

gigatexal,
@gigatexal@mastodon.social avatar

@gregorum @jjlinux newer packages and it wasn’t arch. Plus I like dnf.

different_base,

Not OP, but my reasons for choosing Fedora is, it just works. I use the Atomic version of it which is an image based operating system. Installing packages or updates does not leave the system unstable. I can simply rollback to previous version. Also Fedora pushes entire Linux community forward by adopting potential technologies like Flatpak, PipeWire, Wayland etc earlier compared to other distros.

(I also run NixOS which I believe has more potential and solves many problems than Fedora).

Having said that there are two downsides to Fedora.

  • Fedora is closely associated with Red Hat. I wish it is purely community driven.
  • Fedora does not offer LTS kernels (Maybe it would threaten Red Hat, if Fedora is too stable).
jjlinux,

First, an integral distaste for everything remotely associated with Ubuntu, on a principle as well as on a stability and usability front. As I mentioned, the best balance between stability and cutting edge tech is on Fedora and other Fedora based distros. No other come close to that balance. See some people mention DNF, but for me that’s just another packager, could not care less.

As for the atomic versions that I see many mention regularly, I’m giving them a try, even have bazzite running on my laptop right now trying to see if I can actually like it, but it’s not looking promising. Atomic versions I’ve tried seem to be slower than regular distros for boot an apps launch (work fast enough after, though). Then there’s the fact that, while they are great for “fire and forget”, that same feature makes them very convoluted to achieve some system level stuff,reqyiring morework and tinkering than with a regular distro.

jjlinux,

First, an integral distaste for everything remotely associated with Ubuntu, on a principle as well as on a stability and usability front. As I mentioned, the best balance between stability and cutting edge tech is on Fedora and other Fedora based distros. No other come close to that balance. See some people mention DNF, but for me that’s just another packager, could not care less.

As for the atomic versions that I see many mention regularly, I’m giving them a try, even have bazzite running on my laptop right now trying to see if I can actually like it, but it’s not looking promising. Atomic versions I’ve tried seem to be slower than regular distros for boot an apps launch (work fast enough after, though). Then there’s the fact that, while they are great for “fire and forget”, that same feature makes them very convoluted to achieve some system level stuff,reqyiring morework and tinkering than with a regular distro.

JoMiran,
@JoMiran@lemmy.ml avatar

I have used it on my Lenovo X1 Extreme as my daily driver for years. Bulletproof.

azron,

I generally find it to be a family friendly sheen on top of ubuntu so I’ve been installing it for friends and family lately. I would prefer debian based but shrug. They’ll probably get there eventually.

MigratingtoLemmy,

I wish they based it on Debian. It definitely earns my personal recommendation for default distros alongside LMDE

haui_lemmy,

I dont understand why they didnt. Debian with gnome is essentially the same imo.

mmstick, (edited )
@mmstick@lemmy.world avatar

Ubuntu is Debian with more up-to-date packages and a lot of additional third party packages. There’s a lot of companies who produce development toolkits, frameworks, and applications that are explicitly built for the Ubuntu base. Some governmental agencies and organizations also require access to packages and repositories that have been audited by security agencies, which Ubuntu has gone through the process of getting certification for certain kernels and their Ubuntu Pro repositories. All of which are useful for real world customers.

Regardless of shortcomings in Snap, Pop does not rely on Snaps, and offers its own packaging for things that would otherwise require Snap on Ubuntu.

haui_lemmy,

Thanks for elaborating. Learn something new every day. :)

I use pop os extensively so I knew about that but the government/security stuff was interesting. The main reason I went away from ubuntu was snap and pop is very useful.

acockworkorange,

If a company with some resources makes a good Debian unstable based distro with a decent release cycle (could even be yearly), they’ll dominate the desktop market.

deadbeef79000,

I really don’t like that underscore.

gregorum,

Agreed

bionicjoey,

The correct way of saying it out loud is “pop exclamation point underscore O S”

swooosh,

And I thought it’s popos which is German and stands for asses

gregorum,

No, you’re thinking of SUSE, which is German for “boringbutstablelinuxdistribution”.

Oddly, that short word-long word English/German translation thing works both ways.

deadbeef79000,

No, your thinking of RHEL which is danish for “redhatsegregiouslicensingbullshit”.

gregorum,

Funny, it used to stand for “payfortwentyfloppiesorcompileitfromscratchwedareyou”

It only took me 28 hours after a seven day download at 28.8 KBPS on my 25MHz 486 Packard Bell POS, but those motherfuckers never got a penny from me!

deadbeef79000,

Gentoo enters the chat

gregorum, (edited )

Don’t you even fucking get me started, I am so serious, lol

Edit: gentoo was why I said, “fuck this, I’m buying a Mac,” and refused to even think about Linux again for 5-6 years. And I have the OS X/macOS’s being UNIX to thank for that, btw.

The “shield” Apple puts over its OS can be pierced by powerusers who know how to use the terminal, and there are package managers like Homebrew that allow users to install ports of Linux/UNIX/BSD userland apps. In reality, macOS is an extremely-customized build of BSD that’s locked down in many ways, and runs a proprietary filesystem and on property hardware. (That’s a lot of suck, yes). But, otherwise, it’s still POSIX, and so similar to Linux as to easily facilitate a transition. And, because of it, I drifted back to Linux.

Not necessarily because of macOS’s shortcomings, but because I like to tinker and fiddle, and Linux scratches that itch.

deadbeef79000,

I’m reasonably sure it’s the popping sound you make with your mouth oh ess.

starman,
@starman@programming.dev avatar

PopOS would be better (IMO)

deadbeef79000,

I quite like “Pop!OS”.

Or perhaps a play on IBM: OS/Pop!

Now that I think about it. It’s just the !_ being beside each other that bugs me: OS_Pop! is cool.

ulkesh,
@ulkesh@beehaw.org avatar

You and me both. I’d rather it just be Pop!OS. Or just, Pop. Or the better term: Soda.

eveninghere,

Me a programmer has a bigger issue with !

1984,
@1984@lemmy.today avatar

This sounds like written by an Ai or some marketing person…

Ordinary people don’t use phrases like “box maker System 76” or “highly anticipated by the Linux community”…:)

gregorum,

I’m sorry you think that.

Get out more.

Tattorack,
@Tattorack@lemmy.world avatar

No, he’s right. You sound like you’re writing a corporate ad.

helpmyusernamewontfi,

greg just fucking cooked

WastedJobe,

He’s got a point though, these sound more like ‘online article on tech website’ phrases, less like a community post. Not meant to be insulting, I just like to analyse language.

dtrain,

I thought the exact same thing. It’s written like the uncanny valley of English.

WastedJobe,

Used it for a good while, but I moved to Nobara for more up to date packages. Might look into it again when Cosmic releases, it looks promising. I just hope they have some way to use Gnome extensions (or a replacement).

mmstick, (edited )
@mmstick@lemmy.world avatar

GNOME Shell extensions are JavaScript monkey patch injections to gnome-shell’s JavaScript process. They’re only compatible with the exact version of gnome-shell that they target because most of them require to override private internals of gnome-shell that are sensitive to order of injection and names of private variables and methods.

COSMIC uses a modern Wayland-based approach to shell interface design with layer-shell applets. Each applet is its own process, using the layer-shell Wayland protocol to render their windows as shell components, and communicating with the compositor securely with the security context Wayland protocol. The protocols they use are standardized, so they will be stable across COSMIC releases. Other Wayland compositors could integrate with them if they desire to.

haui_lemmy,

I use pop for my nvidia laptop and it works great. System76 seems to be on the right track and I‘m curious what they have in store for the future.

KrapKake, (edited )

I think their current modified gnome is the best desktop that exists anywhere. Cosmic is a full desktop environment with an actual (auto) tiling window manager… a combo I think should be more common in desktops. The way they implement the tiling makes it really easy for beginners to use because you can turn it on/off by keyboard shortcut or clicking the plugin icon, and because you can just drag n drop windows to change their tiled positions (along with keyboard shortcuts if preferred). It’s hard to go back regular “window managers”.

The System76 devs have good ideas, they seem really cool, and sane! They have been a net positive for the Linux community and desktop development IMO. I am SO hyped for the new Cosmic DE!

MalReynolds,
@MalReynolds@slrpnk.net avatar

You realise KDE’s had tiling for years, right? (Bismuth and then native)

folkrav,

Bismuth (and Krohnkite before) never worked nearly as well for me, and AFAIK are both abandoned. The built in tiling is closer to FancyTiles/tiling zones, not auto-tiling like Pop Shell. Pop Shell also has been here for “years” by that metric lol

MalReynolds,
@MalReynolds@slrpnk.net avatar

Fair cop, a matter of definition of good enough, I guess.

mmstick, (edited )
@mmstick@lemmy.world avatar

There’s a very large gap between having tiling, and having excellent auto-tiling capabilities with intuitive shortcuts and behaviors. COSMIC’s autotiling was designed from the ground up to be just as usable with a mouse as it is with a keyboard.

KrapKake,

Well not really because I never stuck around on KDE very long. But I’m aware you can have tiling on any DE if you want. Its about the out of box experience you get on Pop. Its also important (for me) that the tiling is done automatically, no fiddling.

Muffi,

Made the switch to Pop!_OS from Win10 half a year ago, and my machine’s been purring like a happy cat ever since. All my games still run (thanks, Proton!) and some even had a significant performance boost (RDR2 being the best example) with a 3090. Only problem I had was getting DaVinci Resolve to work properly, but I caved and bought the Studio version which runs perfectly.

governorkeagan,

Your story is almost a carbon copy of mine. Really enjoyed using Pop.

HereIAm,

I’ve only used DaVinci for small projects, so I don’t know their eco system too well, but what made you buy a product when you were having problems getting it to work? :O Does the studio version offer better hardware acceleration or something like that?

Muffi,

It had to do with encoding which works out-of-the-box in the Studio version, and not at all in the free version on Linux. I could’ve solved it by using something like Handbrake, but I didn’t want to add the extra step to my workflow. I also bought my Blackmagic 6K second-hand, so I’ve been wanting to properly pay them for their awesome products for a while now anyway.

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