Kubuntu vs ????

[grahammechanical]

To get back to topic ...

I would not be surprised if the Kubuntu minimum ISO image is in fact the Ubuntu minimal ISO image from which we can choose whatever desktop environment and software we wish.

It seems that there actually is a mini ISO for Ubuntu 20.04. I was not sure if there was one.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1233...l-iso-20-04lts

Seeing that it is available from an archive called legacy-images I am not sure for how long the mini ISO will be available from Canonical. I think the preference of Canonical is that we use the server ISO and install whatever desktop environment and software we want.

Shall I? Yes, I will! I will throw the cat among the pigeons and say that I guess that Canonical is intending that Ubuntu Core becomes the mini ISO once it becomes possible to install desktop environment and User Interface snaps on Ubuntu core.

Read what Redhat is going to do to Fedora to make it an Immutable operating system. It reads very much like what Ubuntu core is but is further advanced in the desktop environment area. Canonical has been focused on the Internet Of Things and is only now considering making Ubuntu an immutable OS.

https://fedoramagazine.org/what-is-silverblue/

Regards

[Shibblet]

To get back to topic ...

I would not be surprised if the Kubuntu minimum ISO image is in fact the Ubuntu minimal ISO image from which we can choose whatever desktop environment and software we wish.

It seems that there actually is a mini ISO for Ubuntu 20.04. I was not sure if there was one.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1233...l-iso-20-04lts

Seeing that it is available from an archive called legacy-images I am not sure for how long the mini ISO will be available from Canonical. I think the preference of Canonical is that we use the server ISO and install whatever desktop environment and software we want.

Shall I? Yes, I will! I will throw the cat among the pigeons and say that I guess that Canonical is intending that Ubuntu Core becomes the mini ISO once it becomes possible to install desktop environment and User Interface snaps on Ubuntu core.

Read what Redhat is going to do to Fedora to make it an Immutable operating system. It reads very much like what Ubuntu core is but is further advanced in the desktop environment area. Canonical has been focused on the Internet Of Things and is only now considering making Ubuntu an immutable OS.

https://fedoramagazine.org/what-is-silverblue/

Regards

Thanks for the info!

I'm trying to picture "kde-desktop" as a Snap package.

[CatKiller]

I'm trying to picture "kde-desktop" as a Snap package.

I'd imagine that it would work quite well, since KDE applications use the same set of frameworks libraries. You'd just make a snap of those, like this one, and then all the KDE applications snaps would connect to that using the standard snap connections mechanism.

[Shibblet]

I'd imagine that it would work quite well, since KDE applications use the same set of frameworks libraries. You'd just make a snap of those, like this one, and then all the KDE applications snaps would connect to that using the standard snap connections mechanism.

And I guess I am going to de-rail my own thread here... but what causes Snaps to run so much slower than packages? In almost every Snap I have downloaded, I do not get the same "quality" of use as I do with the basic packages.

[CatKiller]

And I guess I am going to de-rail my own thread here... but what causes Snaps to run so much slower than packages? In almost every Snap I have downloaded, I do not get the same "quality" of use as I do with the basic packages.

They don't run slower. They start slower, the first time you launch them, since the squashfs filesystem they come in needs to be decompressed, and the sandboxed environment provided for the application needs to be set up, but they don't run any slower at all.

The slow startup and the restrictions for the sandbox are the issues that people have with them. The devs have been experimenting with different compression routines, so the former is better than it was, and the latter is a necessary part of the sandbox; I'd imagine that there will be less friction there as developers get more experience.

Plus, people that aren't using Ubuntu are suspicious of the snaps being maintained by either the application developers themselves, helpful passers-by (just like PPAs), or by Ubuntu devs. As an Ubuntu user, that's exactly what you'd want, though. Plus there's lots of noise because the Mint developer was grumpy that everyone talks about Pop OS these days instead of Mint, and he wanted some publicity.

[Dragonbite]

Plus, people that aren't using Ubuntu are suspicious of the snaps being maintained by either the application developers themselves, helpful passers-by (just like PPAs), or by Ubuntu devs. As an Ubuntu user, that's exactly what you'd want, though.

I don't know. I really didn't like having to rely on PPAs so I am happier with Snaps than PPAs and am most happy if it is maintained by the project themselves in any format.

Plus there's lots of noise because the Mint developer was grumpy that everyone talks about Pop OS these days instead of Mint, and he wanted some publicity.

Ha! Haven't quite heard it that straight forward, but I can see it though.

Funny thing is Pop! OS has moved to Flatpak instead of Snaps.

[mastablasta]

To get back to topic ...

I would not be surprised if the Kubuntu minimum ISO image is in fact the Ubuntu minimal ISO image from which we can choose whatever desktop environment and software we wish.

it's a basic OS with some tools and utilities, but without any extra apps (e.g. without office, browser etc). as if you really installed only basic desktop and kernel. as i remember when i ran Xubuntu in virtualbox, you would get this by installing Ubuntu minimal, then adding only XFCE. so you would get the XFCE but not the full Xubuntu "experience".

However, when I booted to a previous kernel, everything seemed to work just fine. So, maybe "stablity" isn't the right word, because with the right kernel, it ran great.

stability means packages don't change and stay the same. on LTS they remain more or less the same through the 5 year support (which can be extended). i am on 18.04 currently with kernel 4.15. as i have very old hardware this doesn't matter too much. but on my kids PC we installed HWE kernel which brought in kernel from 19.10 at the time but kept other packaged same.

The first problem is the direction that Ubuntu is going with Snaps... moreso, the direction Ubuntu has already gone with Snaps.
I am not a big fan of Snapsl (yet). I like the idea of how they work, but they currently limit some system functions, and tend to launch slower than standard packages. Regardless... at this point, I would rather stick with standard packages.

well, if it works...

these kind of packages bring all sorts of possibilities for the future and rather than dislike them we should help improve them. just saw a video of Linus complaining how difficult it it to package and maintain for Linux distros as there are so many of them and have different library versions. Debian stable (see meaning of stable above) for example has very old packages and the diving app he is making really needs the new ones. but if you install the new ones you break the OS (dependency hell?!). anyway snap is one of the solutions for such cases. you pack once and it works on many distros (old and young). additionally you can have multiple version of same app. maybe version 8 of Libre office had really good MS office compatibility, but that version 5 really had no issues with certain file you use. well you can now easily have version 8 and 5 installed at the same time.

And to be perfectly honest, my second problem is that this doesn't bode well for the future... Removal of choice is really against most of the fundamental principals of GNU/Linux in general. I'm not going to go full on Stallman here, but a pretty popular application has just been thrown under the bus. This may be the direction Canonical goes with all of their applications. And they haven't worked out all the bugs yet.

not really. you can always create your own chromium PPA and maintain it. the freedom is still there. maybe not so convenient for the user, but it's not like you are locked into repos (like with Apple store).

Flatpack, snap and similar need to improve, but at the same time they offer so many new possibilities to the OS and are the right step ahead.

as for the original post - check out OpenSUSE KDE. give it a spin in virtualbox or with live boot. i was seriously considering it due to its ease of use. however eventually basic Kubuntu won me over after Mint KDE (at the time) had too many mistakes upon release.

[malspa]

How nice that Snaps opens up all sorts of possibilities for the future. But if that's the only option I have for installing one of my favorite apps in Kubuntu, I'll probably dump Kubuntu. (I don't use Chromium.) But that's okay; as I mentioned in post #2, I'd go with a Debian netinstall. I'm a long-time Kubuntu user, but it isn't the only distro I run, and I can get along fine without it. I'll wait and see what happens with the next LTS. I'm not really liking the way Canonical pushes things at users sometimes, I guess.

[SeijiSensei]

I'm running Kubuntu 20.04 and 21.04 on a few machines. Never was I required to install a snap except for Chromium which I hardly ever use. Every other package on my system was installed using apt. Why do you think snaps are a part of Kubuntu?

If I had to run snaps for every piece of software I use regularly, I would change distros. So far, though, that's not the case with Kubuntu, at least for me.

[VMC]

Yes. The first thing to go is snap. Kubuntu apt installs all the programs I need without snap.