So I chose to install Ubuntu and Ubuntu studio on top (which as I understand is just adding a bunch of apps and maybe doing some configuring). I am a musician and visual creative. I’d like to know why I made the wrong choice in distro. Hit me with it!
Why is your distro of choice better than the one I picked at random for myself?
What bottleneck am I to expect due to my non archyness?
Snaps
Agreed. I’d say Ubuntu is generally fine except for defaulting to installing snaps (which are terrible, the worst package management).
Yeah :3… I use pop which is ubuntu based, but they replace all snaps with flatpaks, and over the 4ish years I’ve been using it it’s been the most stable experience on the desktop I had. If not for snaps ubuntu/kubuntu would probably be one of my default distro recommendations for beginners
Ubuntu (and also Debian that it derives from) are always behind on the software release cycles and contain “stale” packages. This is desirable if you’re running a server, but if you’re wanting a modem day desktop experience a non-rolling release distro is just leaving performance/usability of your hardware on the table.
Think of Ubuntu/Debian and all their derivatives as the Jitterbug of the phone industry. They work perfectly fine, but if you want a real phone you’re probably going to be happier with an iPhone or Android phone just because they make use of newer technology and get updates constantly.
Oh very interesting. I wasn’t aware. Thank you.
Take the comment you replied to with a grain of salt. IOS and Android are not rolling release unless you use their beta versions, so the analogy is not correct. Ubuntu and its derivatives have slower release cycles in order to ensure they’re stable. But it doesn’t mean packages are “stale”. A rolling release distro will give you bleeding edge updates at the risk of something breaking once in a while. If you work on stuff like music production, you absolutely will be better off with a more stable distro.
Canonical
A wild thing for me was installing reaper(a music DAW) from the website and not seeing it in my app list. then finding out it needs to be installed in a opt folder and then I gotta make a .Desktop file so it’ll show up in my ‘start menu’ like damn, is this how it really is out in Linux?
Depends on how you install it
You basically chose one of the more complicated ways to do it, short of compiling the source code lol
I did the see it in any package managers sudo apt install bla bla bla. I literally just downloaded it clicked a link in the .Tar or .Zip and it appeared. I would have installed it the same way on windows. Guess it’s part of the learning curve.
Yeah it’s not in apt afaik, I think it is on flathub tho :3 im not sure if there are any issues using it in a sandboxed environment, as I never used it. And you can also use it as an appimage I think… that’s all the kind of stuff you’ll learn along the way tho, I mean… I remember the first time I had to install something not in my distro’s repos, and hitting my head on my keyboard for like a day, before I realized that im doing it the hard way haha
Get your head out of installing apps via their websites like Windows. While it’s often possible, it’s preferable to use your distros package manager. If it’s not in the repo, try flathub. Finally, if they have an Appimage, use that, many distros will integrate Appimages automagically. All that stuff gets taken care of for you.
Last resort is what you ended up doing and having to install/update manually. I mean, it depends on the package but if you’re using a common distro like Ubuntu/Fedora/Arch, there should be a package ready to go for nearly anything that supports Linux.
Ah ok cool. Thnx. Still learning
Linux doesnt install things like windows does. A tar file is just an archive. What you did is basically the equivalent of copying a program’s Program Files. Itll still work if you just run the exe from the folder, but there’s no registry entry, no start menu shortcut, no desktop shortcut until its created by you or the installer on Windows.