Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I’m moving Derpy over to yet another installation of PopOS. Let’s get started!
PopOS is an Ubuntu-derived Linux distro. It’s website has install images for both the LTS or latest versions, each with options for NVIDIA or other graphics cards. Not knowing anything about which one to pick, I installed the NVIDIA and later the generic latest release images.
To date, I’ve found PopOS to be the easiest Linux distro to install. I don’t find it perfect: their GNOME 3 based desktop environment isn’t aimed at a Windows-like workflow, as I’m used to, but their website has step-by-step instructions to install a number of well-known alternate desktop environments. The GUI package manager has a few issues, but I’m convinced that’s normal in the Debian family and the proper command isn’t all that hard to learn. My biggest complaint, though, is that I’m having random Discord/Internet blinks. They’re common enough to be annoying, but too rare to readily diagnose.
The Structure of Maintenance
In one vision of a perfect world, people would only ever download raw source code to compile locally, a process Manjaro has streamlined. The Debian family’s apt repository nicely emulates another “perfect” vision where software is curated – the correct precompiled package is downloaded and installed automatically.
Neither format has an infinite capacity for continued support. Where Arch family distros simply run whatever is newest, Debian-family distros tend to accumulate changes until they produce a new, discrete version. For added stability, LTS versions are maintained so users have an option to go several years without having to go through the hassle of a major update.
Popularity of Ubuntu
Anyone who knows anything more than the name Linux almost certainly has also heard the name Ubuntu. For some, the name Linux only popped up after looking into that Ubuntu machine in the library that somehow isn’t a Windows or a Mac. Its popularity is in part due to its wide software base, drawing from both Debian’s and its own official repositories, as well as any number of PPA’s people have set up. This popularity snowball extends to software available only by downloaded from trusted websites.
Derpy’s Final? Form
One of my primary reasons for installing PopOS on Derpy Chips is having an Ubuntu-compatible research desktop that can access this software base. Unfortunately, while investigating software I want to use in worldbuilding, I found my version of PopOS simply lacked prerequisite packages. Backports were hard to find and compilation was taking too long.
What I didn’t realize my first time installing PopOS was that downloadable 3rd party software isn’t always compiled for the latest and greatest versions of Ubuntu. It could also be a question of maintenance. If you only have the resources to upkeep a few versions of your software, it makes the most sense to focus on LTS releases. This is why I downgraded to the LTS version of PopOS. I didn’t have much to back up, and I was most of the way back in a single evening.
Takeaway
If you are ever faced with the option of installing an LTS release, you really need to consider the application. If you have a dependence on 3rd party software, you may find yourself more readily at home using an LTS version. If you don’t care about any special software and want the latest and greatest without giving up too much stability, a major release may be for you.
Final Question
Have you ever taken measures to make a correct decision, only for another factor to muddle things up anyway?