I have an old laptop that I use as a Minecraft server as well as running RPG campaigns during game night. I’m getting tired of Windows 10 and I’m looking for a good replacement. I don’t have a lot of experience with Linux lately, the last time I did anything with it was maybe 10 years or so ago and I used Ubuntu, which I’ve read here is maybe not a good choice any longer. Stats of laptop are below. Recommendations are appreciated, thanks.
Processor Intel® Core™ i7-4800MQ CPU @ 2.70GHz 2.70 GHz Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.8 GB usable) Graphics Card NVIDIA Quadro K2100M (2 GB), Intel® HD Graphics 4600 (113 MB)
Ubuntu is still fine. some people are angry at canonical for “company things” but it’s a well supported major distro.
Putting “company things” in quotes like you don’t believe people when they say Ubuntu has let them down…
Ubuntu is fine for very beginners, but don’t lie and say “it’s fine”, only to have any competent user discover very quickly that snaps take precedence over deb, snaps will be reenabled on minor release upgrades, even if you disabled them, ubuntu’s built-in NVIDIA install support has become abysmal, ubuntu has recently made the choice to fall out of step with its own supported DEs with regard to xorg support, etc.
That’s not true. I believe them. I just don’t care.
That’s not entirely true. Snap is a good reason to avoid Ubuntu as you’re not given the choice whether day to day apps like Firefox are a native app or snap app. You can only have snap versions. The lack of choice in having a slower less efficient version of apps forced on users without official alternatives is a good enough reason for people to recommend avoiding Ubuntu.
That is regardless of all the commercial and proprietary concerns people have.
That does not apply to Ubuntu based system like Mint where users are given choices and still benefit from other aspects of the Ubuntu ecosystem.
I don’t disagree that snaps aren’t the best thing but Ubuntu does allow you to turn off auto updates now if you want and although it took a little extra setup, I also use the .deb version of Firefox right now. It works well. I’m running Kubuntu 24.04.
For servers especially, Ubuntu can be a really good option. I’ve heard some people actually like snaps for servers because the auto update so its one less this to worry about. Yea you can setup a script to do that too but its a nice to have for some folks.
All that said, its not for everyone, but for servers I think Ubuntu is a good option just for compatibility alone, not to mention the documentation, tutorials, etc.
Thats just my opinion though.
Uh huh. Ubuntu is fine.