I always wonder why Ubuntu is even on the radar anymore. It is a pile of questionable decisions with a billionaire ego bus factor. If you like apt, just use Debian. sid is fine for desktops if you are moderately technical.
The biggest thing that has prevented me from switching prod systems to Debian is that the window for updates is fairly small, at around a year. 13 came out Aug 9, 2025, and 12 goes EOL June 10, 2026. Compared to Ubuntu 24.04 coming out in April 2024, and 22.04 goes EOL in May 2027 (a year after 24.04). So Ubuntu covers 2 releases plus a year.
I know a lot of people feel like this isn't a big deal, but even with Ansible it can be hard to get our fleet of a few hundred machines all upgraded in a year window, being already busy. Some of them are easy, of course, but there are some that take significant time and also involve developer work, etc...
Don't get me wrong, I think Debian is great. But in the data center, there's definitely a case for a longer support window, and I like that about Ubuntu. RHEL is even better for that, but it is very nice that Ubuntu free and Ubuntu commercial are the same, but with RHEL there is that split to CentOS being the free one (haven't used RHELs in quite a while, obviously).
Except their LTS is a lie or maybe plausible deniability for businesses that DGAF. They have no idea what they are doing with backports and lack thereof. And if you aren't paying you aren't even receiving many of the updates.
And if you aren't paying you aren't even receiving many of the updates.
Are you sure you didn't mean RedHat? Last I checked there's no requirement to pay anything in order to use an LTS release of Ubuntu. Even if you go with Pro to get those extra years of Extended Support (to make it ~12 years?) you still get up to 5 licenses for personal use. No money asked, no *BS* subscription model. Isn't that more than enough any non-commercial user?
Read https://ubuntu.com/security/esm carefully. The chance of running everything out of 'main' is close to zero. I am shocked by how little people understand this.
Main is all you need to set up a working system and deploy services. Much like BaseOS in RHEL you get full support for those packages for 5+5 years. With snaps you effectively get rolling releases of LXD, microk8s, openstack, docker and other relevant things. What else do you need? Seriously, how come this isn't enough for a non commercial user?
Because this is Stockholm syndrome, better community options prevail, main is not all people deploy and is not the only repo default enabled. openstack, docker are legacy tech, never encountered anyone using LXD or microk8s thankfully I'll steer clear of that snap garbage barge.
However, I've been extremely happy with Devuan. It is Debian minus some bad decisions the Ubuntu voting block forced upstream (for instance, there's no systemd).
Comments
I always wonder why Ubuntu is even on the radar anymore. It is a pile of questionable decisions with a billionaire ego bus factor. If you like apt, just use Debian. sid is fine for desktops if you are moderately technical.
The biggest thing that has prevented me from switching prod systems to Debian is that the window for updates is fairly small, at around a year. 13 came out Aug 9, 2025, and 12 goes EOL June 10, 2026. Compared to Ubuntu 24.04 coming out in April 2024, and 22.04 goes EOL in May 2027 (a year after 24.04). So Ubuntu covers 2 releases plus a year.
I know a lot of people feel like this isn't a big deal, but even with Ansible it can be hard to get our fleet of a few hundred machines all upgraded in a year window, being already busy. Some of them are easy, of course, but there are some that take significant time and also involve developer work, etc...
Don't get me wrong, I think Debian is great. But in the data center, there's definitely a case for a longer support window, and I like that about Ubuntu. RHEL is even better for that, but it is very nice that Ubuntu free and Ubuntu commercial are the same, but with RHEL there is that split to CentOS being the free one (haven't used RHELs in quite a while, obviously).
Except their LTS is a lie or maybe plausible deniability for businesses that DGAF. They have no idea what they are doing with backports and lack thereof. And if you aren't paying you aren't even receiving many of the updates.
Are you sure you didn't mean RedHat? Last I checked there's no requirement to pay anything in order to use an LTS release of Ubuntu. Even if you go with Pro to get those extra years of Extended Support (to make it ~12 years?) you still get up to 5 licenses for personal use. No money asked, no *BS* subscription model. Isn't that more than enough any non-commercial user?
Read https://ubuntu.com/security/esm carefully. The chance of running everything out of 'main' is close to zero. I am shocked by how little people understand this.
Main is all you need to set up a working system and deploy services. Much like BaseOS in RHEL you get full support for those packages for 5+5 years. With snaps you effectively get rolling releases of LXD, microk8s, openstack, docker and other relevant things. What else do you need? Seriously, how come this isn't enough for a non commercial user?
Because this is Stockholm syndrome, better community options prevail, main is not all people deploy and is not the only repo default enabled. openstack, docker are legacy tech, never encountered anyone using LXD or microk8s thankfully I'll steer clear of that snap garbage barge.
Debian is almost as broken as Ubuntu.
However, I've been extremely happy with Devuan. It is Debian minus some bad decisions the Ubuntu voting block forced upstream (for instance, there's no systemd).