Year of Linux on the Desktop
Year of Linux on the Desktop
2024 is the Year of Linux on the Desktop, at least for my boyfriend. He's running Windows 7 right now, so I'll be switching him to Ubuntu in a few days. Ubuntu was chosen because Proton is officially supported in Ubuntu.
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Aha, just popping in here to suggest taking a look at PopOS!
Proton works extremely well on it, its compatible out of the box with everything Debian based (this includes Ubuntu) so it has a huge selection of free software, has great documentation for the PopOS! specific stuff and for all the debian/ubuntu stuff you can nearly always use older wikis on the internet if you run into a snag, and its got a custom DE that I personally find better than KDE and Ubuntu's latest rendition if GNOME.
Also, while Ubuntu is going hard into Snaps, which I hate, PopOS! is going into flatpaks, which are less bad than snaps, but still stupid imo.
If you care, its fairly easy to disable and/or remove flatpaks from PopOS. It doesnt come with any preloaded afaik, so all you have to do is go into the PopShop (the app store) settings and just remove the flatpak source.
Ive run Proton on Steam via debian sources on PopOS! for years, works fine.
Oh right! I am fairly sure that PopOS! nowadays just comes by default with graphics drivers pre-installed and preset to automatically update with the rest of your software when you run sudo apt update. All you have to do is pick the Nvidia ISO if youve got Nvidia, or the standard one if youve got AMD.
A lot of packages come only on flatpak these days. So limiting yourself to system packages only is not really a good idea. And other than disk space usage, I don't really see any issues with flatpak. It's a great solution especially for smaller projects, that don't have resources to create packages for every format.
Really? The only exception I have ever had to make to using deb sources for every kind of software I have ever needed is Bottles.
What other software is only flatpak available?
Anyway, I think flatpaks are just reinventing .exes. Yep lets do the equivalent of installing DirectX 35 times all over again. For older hardware and those with less access to internet, flatpaks are not great.
Further, because flatpaks do not have their dependencies updated as frequently, this paradigm is less secure than having all your dependencies updated whenever you run apt update.
I've been running PopOS! for years now on a HP slice with 8gb of RAM and its still flawless and feels so modern! Making the switch was definitely the best thing I ever did
The trend is that the app developers officially support and push updates for the flatpak. So you always get the latest source directly from the devs. This makes packaging organic, instead of deb/arch/rpm/etc packagers trying to catch up (those packages are often waaay out of date, even on arch occasionally)
Well if this trend becomes the norm then that is great, but in my experience the opposite is true, dependencies get updated first, then things built off of them get updated later.