<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">On Mon, Oct 20, 2025 at 11:05\u202fAM Doug Moen <<a href="mailto:doug@moens.org" target="_blank">doug@moens.org</a>> wrote:</div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Fedora and Mint both support flatpak, and neither has snap support in the default install. I don't like snap because it isn't open source and Ubuntu takes away user control that you get with flatpak, and that lack of control was creating issues for me. I switched from Ubuntu to Mint to get away from Snap.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">I remove the snapd package from all Ubuntu systems that I have/manage.</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">Works like a charm on Xubuntu LTS and Ubuntu Server LTS.</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">From that moment on, I never never have to interact with snap at all.</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
Mint has an in-place upgrade just like every other traditional Linux distro. It's just risky and flaky. Major version upgrades are a nightmare process, an attribute that Mint inherits from Ubuntu. The Ubuntu documentation has similar scary warnings to Mint about backing up your data before attempting a major version upgrade, in case the upgrade fails or breaks packages and you have to do a clean install to repair it. I had problems with Ubuntu too.<br>
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Getting away from that Ubuntu upgrade nightmare was my motivation for installing Kinoite. <br></blockquote><div><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">My experience has been quite the opposite here. </div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">I used Kubuntu daily from 2006 (Breezy Badger?) until ~ 2016.</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">Around that time I switched to Xubuntu due to some KDE issues.</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">And I have been on Xubuntu ever since. </div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">During those two decades, I have had multiple Ubuntu Server.</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">I only stay with LTS releases, and never install interim ones. </div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">I always upgrade in place (using the do-release-upgrade command), </div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">and have not once had a system level failure that caused me to reinstall </div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">from scratch. I did face issues with some packages, but the desktop always </div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">works. I think only once did I have a case where the desktop would not </div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">start, but that was overcome somehow.</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">I did do a fresh install on occasion, e.g. one time I could not open the</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">new (to me) laptop easily to replace its SSD with my old SSD. </div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">But lately, I have been overcoming that obstacle by imaging the disks </div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">over the network, so even that use case is no longer a cause for a fresh install.</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">(Side track: Here is an article I wrote on <a href="https://baheyeldin.com/linux/how-to-migrate-old-linux-computer-disk-to-new-computer.html">how to migrate your disk to another </a></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><a href="https://baheyeldin.com/linux/how-to-migrate-old-linux-computer-disk-to-new-computer.html">computer over the network)</a>.</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">Another thing that is different in my case, is that I stick with .deb </div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">packages that are from the Ubuntu repositories only, and a few </div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">others that I have used for a long time (e.g. Mozilla Team for Firefox</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">ESR, Opera, and a few other things).</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">I do compile from source occasionally, when I need a certain newer</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">version of a package. </div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">If I were to guess, perhaps some of the software you install manually has </div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">overwritten stuff in official packages, causing the botched upgrades? </div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">Mileage may vary, and all that ... </div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">But ... once someone has gotten used to the Debian packages, and its</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">ecosystem, they can never go back to anything else.</div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default"><br></div><div style="font-size:small" class="gmail_default">TLDR; My experience with Ubuntu upgrades has been very smooth. </div></div><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature">Khalid M. Baheyeldin<br><br></div></div>
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