[HN Gopher] Ubuntu Plans to Ditch Its 'Minimal' Install Option
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Ubuntu Plans to Ditch Its 'Minimal' Install Option
Author : mariuz
Score : 35 points
Date : 2023-07-06 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.omgubuntu.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.omgubuntu.co.uk)
| e8gy3 wrote:
| Hi all I'm Tim the Director of Engineering for the Ubuntu
| Desktop. I think the headline here may have embellished my
| original post, so if you're interested, you can find it here [1].
|
| Ubuntu is (almost) 20 years young! As I am sure you can
| appreciate that means a long history of technical changes. We're
| looking to modernise the desktop. We started with 23.04 when we
| moved from Ubiquity to Subiquity, the Ubuntu Server installer,
| unifying our tech stack to create a more coherent installation
| experience across Ubuntu Server and Desktop. We also moved the
| installer UI from GTK to Flutter to make iterating the interface
| much easier (Flutter tooling is excellent).
|
| Still, we need to be bolder. In fact we shouldn't be talking
| about the installer nearly so much; it's a tool not the
| destination. I want to improve the installation through the first
| boot experience so we can move onto more interesting things.
| We're exploring a range of changes to get this part right: from
| declarative configs to answering the question "what does security
| by default" mean in 2023? In the context of this headline, and to
| make our intentions clear, we are looking to minimise the default
| installation. So the plan is to have one lean installation
| option.
|
| It's late in the UK so I'm going to sign off and be back at this
| in the morning. We'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions
| on what an awesome out-of-box-experience could look like (either
| here or in the original discourse post).
|
| Best, Tim
|
| [1] https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/rethinking-ubuntu-desktop-
| a-m...
| Ckirby wrote:
| Glad you're here, so I finally go say something I've been
| wanting to say for years
|
| What in the actual goddamn fuck is wrong with you?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| what does _whose_ security look like by default?
|
| unattended fleet VMs with common AUTH linked to billing, none
| of which is run by me, does not look like the same security as
| _my computer, my choice_ , Sir
| teleforce wrote:
| Please check DietPi where you can install lean and minimal
| Debian, headless or desktop, for SBC (Arm, x86, RISC-V):
|
| https://dietpi.com/
|
| https://dietpi.com/docs/software/desktop/
|
| "DietPi is an extremely lightweight Debian OS, highly optimised
| for minimal CPU and RAM resource usage, ensuring your SBC always
| runs at its maximum potential".
| zzzbra wrote:
| quick, somebody fork Ubuntu before they remove it!
| johnea wrote:
| Just another reason to not use ubuntu...
| jrm4 wrote:
| Ubuntu, the distro for desktops and laptops, is DEAD and has been
| for sometime, Ubuntu is now Microsoft's lapdog. (For better or
| worse, I don't think it's super evil, but let's just all be
| honest here)
|
| Linux Mint or MX Linux are the way to go here. Time to move on.
| [deleted]
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > Linux Mint or MX Linux are the way to go here
|
| So, Ubuntu, but with a slightly reskinned UI?
| pjerem wrote:
| idk about MX Linux but Linux Mint is Ubuntu without any Snap,
| with additional official apt repos, Flatpack support out of
| the box and, last but not least, its own house made desktop
| environment.
|
| To me it's as far from Ubuntu as Ubuntu is far from Debian.
| brian_herman wrote:
| I started on Debian and I will die using Debian. I have used
| Ubuntu before, and I admit it is a good way for Debian to get
| new features like an upstream or something.
| tensor wrote:
| I'll try debian again when they move to a yearly release.
| Using nearly two year old software in the worst case really
| sucks for some use cases.
| jimrob4 wrote:
| Ditto. Toyed with RH and Mandrake back in the day, but
| quickly moved to Debian and have been there since. Played
| with Ubuntu and a couple smaller niche distros, but always
| came back to good ol' Deborah.
| timbit42 wrote:
| ...and Ian.
| NoRelToEmber wrote:
| > Ubuntu is now Microsoft's lapdog.
|
| Could you elaborate?
| doublerabbit wrote:
| What Microsoft does, Canonical will follow in the Linux
| realm? This does read like something Microsoft would do.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| on AWS in go-go years, Ubuntu with easy defaults and
| permissive licenses became the number one installed VM .. by
| a very large margin. The numbers were not even close.. like
| 15x more daily volume of VMs on AWS than the next closest
| three or whatever.. look for yourself. That in turn begat the
| very hot breath of MSFT upon Ubuntu-Canonical, which shows in
| the boot signing keys for Ubuntu, the MSFT-private partition
| type in the disk installer, and the WSL. MSFT influences can
| be seen in the push for always-on snap with libc and
| unattended-upgrades phone home and the like.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| So it's now default minimal?
| ryaneager wrote:
| That is how i understood it. Then during install you're
| promoted if you want to install additional software with
| probably a list that's is the equivalent of today's full
| install, easily selectable.
| Levitating wrote:
| It's default by default
| jbs55 wrote:
| [flagged]
| activiation wrote:
| Just go with Arch if you want minimal
| pengaru wrote:
| Arch's package management tooling is a bit of an unconsolidated
| inconsistent mess.
|
| As someone who used Debian for decades before experimenting
| with Arch on my laptop for a few years now, Debian is _far_
| more polished and ergonomic in the package tooling.
| activiation wrote:
| Not sure why you are saying that... What is the issue
| exactly?
| pengaru wrote:
| The ability to install a source package for what's
| installed isn't even included in the distro's package
| tooling out of the box.
|
| Coming from Debian you'd expect `pacman` to support doing
| this, let alone at least say _something_ about it in its
| man page.
|
| I'm not even sure how the hell you'd figure out `asp`
| exists and is something you need to explicitly install if
| all you knew is `pacman`, without using internet searches
| as an escape hatch.
|
| There was a time long ago when most distros were a hodge
| podge of work-in-progress discrete tools you had to
| discover the names of and install separately. Using Arch
| feels like going back decades in this regard, not in a good
| way. It's unclear to me why they haven't worked on
| consolidating these components into a cohesive entrypoint
| making everything discoverable and more uniform in their
| UX.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Never tried arch, but that should be a good option too.
|
| I would like to toss out OpenBSD and NetBSD to the minimal
| list. I doubt nothing is a minimal as these :)
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Debian mini.iso, with the option to not install additional
| packages is also pretty minimal, and text-only. You can install
| your desktop later via apt.
|
| Ubuntu used to have a mini.iso too, and it was almost
| indistinguishable from its Debian counterpart. Both distros
| relied on apt, and since these minimal installs essentially
| just contained whatever was needed to have a working system
| running apt, they were essentially the same, with slightly
| different default settings. The biggest difference was the
| release cycle and the attitude towards proprietary software.
| robotnikman wrote:
| From my experience, Arch is great for messing around with, but
| not as a daily driver. It is also not the most beginner
| friendly distro for people looking for one.
| smeagull wrote:
| Yeah, no thanks. I don't want all my packages to break when
| something fundamental like libpng updates. Again. Or for an
| update to break just because I didn't update for a month, and
| then I have to read multiple forum threads to figure out how to
| unfuck things.
| ragnese wrote:
| It's not nearly as bad as you're making it out to be. I only
| vaguely remember a big libpng breakage thing from ~10 years
| ago--is that what you're referring to?
|
| Also, I often go 6+ months without updating this machine. The
| only friction I've gotten in years is pacman-keyring updates
| sometimes need to be done first, before updating the rest of
| the system because of key expiration from going so long
| between updates. Recently, they merged the community repo
| into the extra repo and left community empty for the time
| being, so the only maintenance I did was to remove
| [community] from my pacman.conf _after_ running a system
| update a few weeks ago (again, after _months_ of not
| updating)--and even _that_ I didn 't technically need to do
| yet, since the community repo still exists for now.
|
| Everyone's use case is different, and I surely don't have the
| same configuration or packages as you or anyone else, but
| this kind of comment _sounds_ like bullshit to me.
|
| EDIT: Not that I'm agreeing with the recommendation to use
| Arch if you used to use Ubuntu's minimal install. Arch is a
| drastic change compared to just doing a full Ubuntu install
| and removing a bunch of crap...
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >for an update to break just because I didn't update for a
| month,
|
| I don't understand why people thing infrequent updates will
| break things. This idea seems to have started spreading a few
| years ago, but nobody I ask can tell me why Arch would break
| if you didn't update frequently enough.
| stevebro wrote:
| Agreed
| skrause wrote:
| Or just Debian if you don't want to learn a new package
| manager.
|
| debfoster (https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/debfoster) is
| my favorite tool to keep my Debian installations as small as
| possible.
| weberer wrote:
| Arch is a bit too minimal for the people who were previously
| using Ubuntu's minimal install. You don't even have a desktop
| environment out of the box.
| MountainMan1312 wrote:
| Ubuntu Minimal didn't have a desktop environment out of the
| box either, did it ?
| damnesian wrote:
| I was hardcore Ubuntu devotee for many years and at one point
| just got tired of having to undo all of the terrible choices
| being made for users. Minimal install saved the time of having to
| undo before doing things the way I wanted.
|
| It's this kind of messing around with package and desktop
| managers that finally sent me to other distros.
| throwaway914 wrote:
| Fedora has an existing look of being... too
| easy/friendly/noobish? It's not necessarily the trendy "at your
| own risk" distro others choose. However, I completely feel
| Fedora is going to be the strongest distros in the mix in the
| next decade. ostree, docker-image-based, read-only images are
| going to be The Thing (tm). I'm hoping they take CoreOS and
| continue it as a server-oriented minimal distro, and use it as
| a base layer for the desktop-oriented ones like Silverblue.
|
| I wish I could articulate this better, but this is how 1 person
| is creating their own customized version of Fedora Silverblue -
| with Github workflows:
|
| https://github.com/pkulak/filverblue/blob/main/.github/workf...
|
| I can just rebase off of that image and try it out like a git
| remote branch.
|
| Add in eventual plans for dm-verity and such, and Fedora's
| distros (kinoite, silverblue, (sigacea?)) are going to be
| leaders. Much more dependable and predictable.
| caycep wrote:
| The one thing I would want to know before switching from
| fedora to ubuntu - there's a ton of software support given
| ubuntu's prior popularity, so it always seems like the path
| of least resistance getting set up for basic things like a
| samba server or for a pytorch/CUDA development setup - how
| far along is this with Fedora? Similarly, there's a ton of
| user generated tutorials/technical and configuration answers
| online for ubuntu - I am hoping Fedora has this sort of
| material floating around?
|
| Similarly, it seems the Fedora community exists by the good
| graces...of IBM - how much independence would it have in the
| future?
| scoodah wrote:
| In my experience I've not had any issues finding resources
| and materials for most anything I want to do with Fedora.
|
| That said I also migrated from Arch to Fedora when I needed
| to pick between Ubuntu and Fedora for work, so I was used
| to being a bit more hands on to begin with.
| StoneTable wrote:
| Universal Blue (https://universal-blue.org/) takes the OCI-
| based Silverblue and extends it even further, including
| bluefin (https://universal-blue.org/images/bluefin/) which
| aims to provide an Ubuntu-like desktop experience for those
| of us who've given up on Ubuntu/Canonical.
| Levitating wrote:
| Have you tried Mint? What's your opinion on that?
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| It's a reskinned version of Ubuntu, that has some slightly
| questionable packaging choices.
| letitbeirie wrote:
| They have a version (LMDE) based directly off Debian. It's
| slower to get updates (because Debian) but it's pretty much
| the same apart from that.
| leptons wrote:
| I switched to mint linux for a few VMs that used to be
| ubuntu. So far it's working well where ubuntu just kind of
| stopped working for reasons I don't really have time for.
| Ubuntu changed some stuff and it's not really viable for me
| anymore.
| suprjami wrote:
| Same here. Debian 12 running wonderfully. No need to do the
| pages of workaround crap with every Ubuntu install.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Yeah. It's hard to figure out who Canonical thinks its
| customers are now. I'm not a super-libre-pedant and am usually
| happy to run closed source driver blobs. But stock debian seems
| to be getting better with driver support and I probably
| _should_ be more careful about the provenance of proprietary
| drivers. Seems like every week there 's a reminder that I'm not
| Ubuntu's target market.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I'm guessing Canonical's Ubuntu Desktop customers are
| businesses that are using Ubuntu as a cheap Windows
| replacement. The IT departments who set up their OS probably
| just do the default install, so the minimal install option is
| just more code to maintain.
| jldugger wrote:
| AFAICT, Canonical's customers are cloud vendors and people
| who buy cloud services. The Linux desktop is, in that sense,
| just a hearts and minds investment for people who run linux
| workstations to manage their much larger linux server fleet.
| From that perspective, the investments in charm and snap on
| the desktop feel a bit like a sales pitch for their new cloud
| features. Which.... would be more effective if they didn't
| also make the user experience for FF emphatically worse.
|
| And originally, Ubuntu was a high visibility demo piece for
| Launchpad. If it can manage the full build cycle for Debian,
| it can certainly handle your niche app.
| scoodah wrote:
| Not only making the default FF experience emphatically
| worse but downright broken for some use cases.
|
| I work in an environment where I have to auth to web
| services with a smart card. This is just not possible with
| Snap FF.
| stevebro wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| I actually gave up Ubuntu when they moved to snaps as the
| primary installation mechanism.
|
| Arch treats me just fine, especially with Gnome on Wayland.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Even now snaps are pretty avoidable for almost everything but
| we'll see how that lasts.
|
| Firefox is the only major thing where I've just abandoned the
| package manager, and it's probably a better experience this
| way than the .deb was in the first place.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| The way I read it, it's now default minimal.
|
| Am I reading it wrong?
| donmcronald wrote:
| Yeah, but more likely is that they want a single install
| option so they can ensure you install whatever bloatware they
| want to add.
| JohnFen wrote:
| This is a very strange decision. I wonder what's behind it?
|
| It seems like it's more work for Ubuntu and it makes the
| installation process more intimidating and potentially
| confusing.
|
| I'd think it's part of their weird inclination to force
| everyone to use snaps, but that can't be it either -- they can
| force that regardless.
|
| So, I'm utterly baffled.
| Animats wrote:
| Oh, crap. What do I install on the little laptops I use for
| single-purpose stuff. Is there still going to be XUbuntu? Can I
| get something that never "phones home"?
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| If you have the time and know-how, you can build your own
| system off of Ubuntu Base[0]. It's as barebones you can get
| with Ubuntu - doesn't have snap or any other crap the "minimal"
| ISO does. You'd need to chroot into it to install the kernel,
| and you'd probably want to generate an initrd image. I have an
| example of how to do this on GitHub that you can steal from[1].
|
| [0] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Base
|
| [1] https://github.com/cedws/concrete-ubuntu
| Animats wrote:
| I don't want to be a career system administrator. I did that
| once.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| You're welcome. If you're going to be picky you'll probably
| find nothing meets all of your requirements.
| smeagull wrote:
| Powered by the snap store? That's the kind of bullshit that you
| purge in your "Fix Ubuntu" script.
| cocodill wrote:
| fun fact: "minimal install" was a full install with a bunch of
| "apt purge" afterwards.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Source? That sounds very backwards but also like something that
| ubuntu would do...
| cocodill wrote:
| On the installer image is a directory casper, there is
| another image filesystem.squashfs, I suspect that it is
| simply unpacked to the hard disk during installation. System
| deployment is really fast this way. Also in casper directory
| are two more interesting files: filesystem.manifest-minimal-
| remove and filesystem.manifest-remove with a bunch of
| packages names. And of course you should have a look at the
| log during the installation process, all the "apt purge"
| things show up there.
| srvmshr wrote:
| Just follow the installer log. It does the Ubuntu standard
| installation followed by removal of non-essential packages
| (office utilities, AV utilities etc.)
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