The Future direction of Linux

[spamegg]

I do not like the immutable buzz for a very naive reason: it takes control away, and turns the distro monolithic just like Windows. You can't swap a desktop on those distros, because it's not just another package. You can't upgrade to a mainline kernel, or remove Firefox either.

Immutable probably won't affect the individual desktop users too much, but will be used in servers instead. This is a good video covering pros / cons of immutable and comes to a similar conclusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hiPFEUoUyI

[gugalcrom123]

I do not like the immutable buzz for a very naive reason: it takes control away, and turns the distro monolithic just like Windows. You can't swap a desktop on those distros, because it's not just another package. You can't upgrade to a mainline kernel, or remove Firefox either.

Immutable probably won't affect the individual desktop users too much, but will be used in servers instead. This is a good video covering pros / cons of immutable and comes to a similar conclusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hiPFEUoUyI

So basically the use will be software appliances?

[spamegg]

So basically the use will be software appliances?

Yes, kind of.

The LTS approach is also a similar idea, the immutable idea is just taking it much further. LTS fixes the software base for 5 years so that businesses that run their servers on them do not have to worry (too much) about breaking changes or having to do costly upgrade / migration of their software.

Immutable distro takes this further and aims to make the entire system exactly reproducible, so it can be copied / moved around / deployed more reliably. This also makes a good fit with the containerization that has become popular in recent years.

Immutability is coming to the forefront only now because it has been a more research-oriented idea that is now starting to mature and find use in industry. In programming / computer science, immutability is a feature from what's called "functional programming languages" like Haskell that are much more mathematical and research focused. This is a programming paradigm where changing the values of variables is not allowed. One of the cutting edge immutable distros, NixOS, has its package manager based on Haskell. Now they are applying the same idea not to code, but to packages. Same idea: instead of not allowing variables to be changed (in code), it's not allowing packages (or rather, the whole system state) to be changed.

[MurphCID]

I have noticed a big difference between the Debian distros and those based on a "Red Hat like" .rpm distribution. Specifically flatpaks and "non-free" software. Fedora, Mageia, etc that I have tried all require you to jump through hoops to install and make active flatpaks and unlike Mint (and POP, and I suspect others) that allow for the seamless installation and update of flatpak applications. The seamless updates of flatpaks as Mint does it, is one of the better features which I suspect will drive Linux adoption, and take some of the "Computer geek only stigma" away from Linux.

Another issue between the distributions is printers, in Debian based distributions printers are found, configured and installed seamlessly, usually where I never even have to do anything, the printer just appears ready for use. In rpm, it is like the old days of Linux (late 1990's, early 2000's) where you have to manually find, configure, and set up the printers. In 2023 it is unacceptable that printers are still in the 1990's in terms of installing one.

Terminal use: I, personally, still think that there is too much reliance on terminal vs GUI, but that is a personal choice, The Fedora distros seem to want you to do more configuration in terminal that seems to be handled behind the scenes with the Debian based distributions. Purely based on perception, the "Red Hat like" distros seem to be as a general rule, less polished, and less advanced than the Debian based distributions. The sole distro I have not tried that is a Red Hat Like distro is OpenSuSE which I have heard has some amazing tools in YAST.

So for the future, it seems, to me anyway, that the Debian descended distributions are the most forward looking of the distributions of Linux.

[rambo919]

My general feeling is Ubuntu is ultimately going to completely abandon Desktop for Enterprise the way Red Hat has in all but name with Fedora being increasingly just a beta distro. At the same time Ubuntu and Red Hat are going to become Microsoft partners at least unofficially where they start sharing telemetry as part of the deal and it will be rationalized the same way UEFI overreach is. Bit by bit they are going to attempt to lock down users in more and more ways that if they succeed no one will be able to escape.... and it makes perfect business sense if you think about it just a little bit.

As others have stated it literally is quite inevitable that PPA's will be effectively discontinued and replaced with snaps in Ubuntu itself, at which point they will start to naturally die off.

At some point Mint is going to be forced to abandon the Ubuntu base once they go too far and focus all resources into making LMDE into a direct competitor with MX Linux basically doing what they do but perhaps still leaning to some lesser degree on Ubuntu. What makes MX Linux work as a Debian derivative is they packages the most required packages themselves while largely falling back on flatpaks for the rest.... which is something that every other distro is increasingly doing anyway.

Now I have never used LMDE but my impression is this does not lean as heavily into the Distro providing up to date packages and mostly just adds the Mint experience to Debian.... which is not enough.

The problem with Debian is.... it's being taken over by the zeitgeist while no one is looking as the Preining saga illustrated and I don't see any real resistance to the radicals because everyone is too scared to look bad or attract negative attention. What's going to happen there is up in the air though so things might improve or everything might fall apart due to faction fighting.

Regarding Flatpaks, whether anyone likes it or not it IS the future now.... the major problem with it is still it's size though and how clumsily it spreads itself over the system basically on one hand forcing you to sometimes redownload the entire thing during updates as well as every time you have to for whatever reason reinstall or move your OS.

Now, I can understand that for some this is not a problem anymore because they are isolated from what can go wrong, but living in a 3rd world country constantly on the brink of civil war and remembering how useless the internet connection used to be and how easily it could be once again..... having a an easy and completely offline reinstallation solution is paramount. There is increasingly even in the first world no real guarantee that the cloud will always just be there so it's foolish to assume that whatever you need will always just be downloadable whenever you need it. This is the major drawback of flatpaks as well as (but to a lesser degree) the general way that repos work, the assumptions of availability and speed of download.

There are many coming problems that people have to start thinking through now before they become real issues. There is no point to tip toeing around the problems that are forcing themselves upon us as if if we ignore them they will simply go away.

[MurphCID]

My general feeling is Ubuntu is ultimately going to completely abandon Desktop for Enterprise the way Red Hat has in all but name with Fedora being increasingly just a beta distro. At the same time Ubuntu and Red Hat are going to become Microsoft partners at least unofficially where they start sharing telemetry as part of the deal and it will be rationalized the same way UEFI overreach is. Bit by bit they are going to attempt to lock down users in more and more ways that if they succeed no one will be able to escape.... and it makes perfect business sense if you think about it just a little bit.

The problem with Debian is.... it's being taken over by the zeitgeist while no one is looking as the Preining saga illustrated and I don't see any real resistance to the radicals because everyone is too scared to look bad or attract negative attention. What's going to happen there is up in the air though so things might improve or everything might fall apart due to faction fighting.

Regarding Flatpaks, whether anyone likes it or not it IS the future now.... the major problem with it is still it's size though and how clumsily it spreads itself over the system basically on one hand forcing you to sometimes redownload the entire thing during updates as well as every time you have to for whatever reason reinstall or move your OS.

On the first part I have to agree, and I see it coming. As for Debian, I am not so sure, although their caving to the people who need the firmware might be the first brick to fall from the wall, or it might be a brick placed in the wall, I am not sure. Flatpaks, everyone complains of the size, but I never seem to notice, especially since how size efficient Linux is compared to other operating systems out there. I use Flatpaks consistently and I seem to have more space than I ever had with other operating systems. A 500gb NVMe drive on Linux feels like a 1TB NVMe drive on the others.

[argentwolf]

A 500gb NVMe drive on Linux feels like a 1TB NVMe drive on the others.

As strange and ill-logical that it seems, I get your feel...

[rambo919]

On the first part I have to agree, and I see it coming. As for Debian, I am not so sure, although their caving to the people who need the firmware might be the first brick to fall from the wall, or it might be a brick placed in the wall, I am not sure. Flatpaks, everyone complains of the size, but I never seem to notice, especially since how size efficient Linux is compared to other operating systems out there. I use Flatpaks consistently and I seem to have more space than I ever had with other operating systems. A 500gb NVMe drive on Linux feels like a 1TB NVMe drive on the others.

The main problem in the making is so far I have about 17 flatpaks.... what happens when almost all my post install programs are flatpaks?

No one has run the figures I think for basically replacing maybe half a regular combined repo with flatpak versions.

[rossdv8]

I use Flatpaks consistently and I seem to have more space than I ever had with other operating systems. A 500gb NVMe drive on Linux feels like a 1TB NVMe drive on the others.

Not a complaint, but an observation. I wondered why suddenly after years of running mint easily in 15GB to 20GB root partitions, my systems suddenly needed about 10GB more root space, running the same Apps. But my /home drive didn't seem to have any problem.
A search eventually found close to 9GB in a folder called /usr/var/lib/flatpak
But wait - there's more, she said.

The folder in there called /repo/apps only had about 700MB made up of 16 App folders includiung around 4800 files between them.
The folder called /repo/objects was 7.8GB and had . . . 256 folders containng close to 100,000 files spread between them.

And while I haven't investigated further, this is consistent across a couple of computers. Doing a sudo flatpak repair doesn't reduce the size because all those files are needed.

It makes sense though. As I understand it, a Flatpak contins not just the code for the App, but all (or at least 'most') of the dependencies a normal App would pull in from other areas of /root/
So more or less every system resource every Flatpak App needs, is duplicated. IN every Flatpak that needs each of those particular resources.

However, that should make the things pretty portable.
Not as portable as an AppImage, because those live in /home somewhere and tie up the same amount of resource space (except they use /home/ space) and they can just be copied onto a thumb drive and run on any Linux computer without any installation.
But AppImages still take up the space.

I shouldn't try to explain stuff when I'm tired and when everyone probably already knows it.
The point is. 16 Flatpak Apps and System Files are taking up almost 10GB of /root. That's more than a whole install of Mint used to take up in /root.
and half of the recommended minimum /root partition size now!

[SMG]

The point is. 16 Flatpak Apps and System Files are taking up almost 10GB of /root. That's more than a whole install of Mint used to take up in /root.
and half of the recommended minimum /root partition size now!

From where are you getting your recommended sizes? If you read the Linux Mint installation Guide, it says:

Linux Mint requires one partition to be mounted on the root / directory.

The Linux Mint operating system (without additional software or personal data) takes roughly 15GB, so give this partition a decent size (100GB or more).

The kernel itself has been growing in size as those who have continued to make small boot partitions have discovered after having problems updating.

[MurphCID]

A 500gb NVMe drive on Linux feels like a 1TB NVMe drive on the others.

As strange and ill-logical that it seems, I get your feel...

Yeah, I figured you would, Linux is just so space efficient, the smaller drive "feels" like it has more actual usable space than a 1 TB under Windows.

[The Muffin Man]

If we all want to run Flatpaks and Snaps, we might as well be running Slackware.
What's old is new again.

[MurphCID]

If we all want to run Flatpaks and Snaps, we might as well be running Slackware.
What's old is new again.

If I was Linux savvy enough I would install and run Slackware!

[rossdv8]

From where are you getting your recommended sizes? If you read the Linux Mint installation Guide, it says:

Linux Mint requires one partition to be mounted on the root / directory.

The Linux Mint operating system (without additional software or personal data) takes roughly 15GB, so give this partition a decent size (100GB or more).

The kernel itself has been growing in size as those who have continued to make small boot partitions have discovered after having problems updating.

From what it used to say. I haven't read it in ages, so it might have changed a bit. My point is that you can no longer run Mint in a 15 to 20GB /root partition. And aside form the Kernel growing, Flatpaks take up about 8 to 10GB of that /root partition now.
In the past we installed programs that only added a little to /root, and depended on a lot of already installed shared components. Most of those are now packaged inside Flatpaks, Appimages or Snaps - and inflate /root.

There have been posts on various forums about /root appearing to shrink for no reason.
So what I am suggesting is that /root needs to be somewhere close to 100GB.

I am happy that it is now 'suggested' in the docs. Probably has been for ages, but I never noticed because I'd been using that as default for some time.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

...you can no longer run Mint in a 15 to 20GB /root partition. And aside form the Kernel growing, Flatpaks take up about 8 to 10GB of that /root partition now.
In the past we installed programs that only added a little to /root, and depended on a lot of already installed shared components. Most of those are now packaged inside Flatpaks, Appimages or Snaps - and inflate /root.

There have been posts on various forums about /root appearing to shrink for no reason.
So what I am suggesting is that /root needs to be somewhere close to 100GB.

I am happy that it is now 'suggested' in the docs. Probably has been for ages, but I never noticed because I'd been using that as default for some time.

My /root has 51.3GB in it.

[MurphCID]

I am not sure if that 51+ gb is a good thing or bad? I just am always impressed with how space efficient Linux actually works out to be.

[caerolle]

Yeah, I figured you would, Linux is just so space efficient, the smaller drive "feels" like it has more actual usable space than a 1 TB under Windows.

On a side note, and I know everyone here probably knows this, but with Firefox being the only app actually explicitly launched, with the same tabs open in both, and all tabs refreshed, my Mint installation uses half or less of RAM space that Windows does. Sooooo much stuff running in the background on Windows. Also, I am running Windows on a new gaming computer with a current gen i7 with 32 GB of RAM, while my Mint box has an 8th gen i5 and 16 GB of RAM. In addition, though probably not relevant to this comparison, the Windows box has a current gen, fairly powerful graphics card, and the Mint box just has integrated graphics. From 5 years ago.

The Mint loads even graphics heavy sites just as fast as the Windows box, and the type on sites in Firefox on the Mint box look as good as those on the Windows box. Last time I used Linux (~10 years ago), type was really borked and ugly.

Really, for most of my needs my Mint box works as well as my Windows box, cost less than a tenth as much (old and refurbed, but still), and is like 1/20th or less the size. I would guess it uses far, far less power, and I could pick the thing up and take it anywhere I had access to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

Linux desktop has just come so far since I last used it, and I am just amazed. Of course, my use case is extremely simple, but would easily meet the needs for anyone who only works in a browser, which I would guess is a lot of people.

FWIW

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I am not sure if that 51+ gb is a good thing or bad? I just am always impressed with how space efficient Linux actually works out to be.

It's dramatically smaller than Windows ever was. I have a lot of programs, some quite large, such as my PDF creation/editing program, and some flatpaks.

[MurphCID]

I am not sure if that 51+ gb is a good thing or bad? I just am always impressed with how space efficient Linux actually works out to be.

It's dramatically smaller than Windows ever was. I have a lot of programs, some quite large, such as my PDF creation/editing program, and some flatpaks.

Yeah, my basic Windows installation is over 130gb, and my current Linux one is 39.1 gb less than a 3rd of Windows, with all of the Mint added software, as well as flatpaks for Libreoffice, Thunderbird, Rhythmbox, VLC, and Zoom. Once I add games to Windows it gets bloated really fast. So Linux is far more space efficient.

[argentwolf]

Yeah, my basic Windows installation is over 130gb, and my current Linux one is 39.1 gb less than a 3rd of Windows, with all of the Mint added software, as well as flatpaks for Libreoffice, Thunderbird, Rhythmbox, VLC, and Zoom. Once I add games to Windows it gets bloated really fast. So Linux is far more space efficient.

Linux users don't have a real appreciation for the total number of device drivers packaged within Windows, and whine because we have to download our specific driver(s) in most cases to get the basic devices working...Linux doesn't really have any more than 'it' needs to run on yesterdays hardware.