1. No snap packages!
2. Easy full disk encryption during install.
3. Optional tiling window manager right in gnome.
4. Nvidia drivers just work with no effort.
5. HiDpi displays just do the right thing with no effort.
I also use ZFS (non-root), which was just an 'apt install' away. This is also true on Ubuntu, but nice either way.
Only downside I've seen is that it's still X11. From what I read there were Wayland stability issues so they are giving that more time to bake.
Why is X11 bad? Our precious few F/OSS desktop apps are written for it (or OpenGl) so you can at best expect those to still work. Conversely, there's at least the problem of screen sharing not working with Wayland, and moreover possible trouble with drivers for both new and old graphics hardware, and with developers needing to retest and qa older apps for Wayland. X11 might be old, but there are no new apps coming with the exception of Electron apps or other abstraction layers such as OpenGl/Vulcan/DirectX or whatever Steam is using or cross-platform IDEs (IDEA/Java Swing-based, Eclipse/SWT-based, etc.)
If you have an AMD graphics card it’s fairly trivial to switch Pop_OS over.
I found it to be very obviously a clear improvement in app start time and general snappiness in the OS. To extent that meaningfully improved the experience.
Apparently there are gaming benefits too, steamdeck has adopted it for this reason.
X11 offers at least accessibility. The wayland team, to me, seems to be hyper-focused on reducing the duties of a GUI system to only providing basic interfaces. They didn't care about usability, accessibility and practicality, and they are currently (for the last few years) trying to pay this off.
Even more problematic is that X11 lacks user-noticeable deficiencies. Architecturally it has (partially severe) issues, but as an user, you don't notice. But if you're blind, need a screen reader, or want to use software enabling you to interact with the desktop environment outside of the classical, expected hardware (mouse, touchpad, screen), you're still out of luck. At least, screenshots mostly work now.
Wayland still doesn't provide reasonable accessibility, and X11 lacks real problems at least from an user perspective (see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35430864). I think it's quite a hard sell, wayland is architecturally better and more easy to developers, and to users, its more bug-prone, feature-lacking and less-supported than X11.
I ran Linux Mint with X11 and KDE for a few months and it was mostly pleasant. (There was an issue with brightness controls when using auto-switching hybrid graphics, but I don't know if that's an X11 vs Wayland issue.)
> Only downside I've seen is that it's still X11. From what I read there were Wayland stability issues so they are giving that more time to bake.
I believe their in house DE is going to be Wayland based. I'm personally very excited, it may finally be the DE to unify my Linux boxes away from i3/Sway/GNOME.
Yeah this is the big one for me. I'm pretty convinced Secure Boot with a bring-your-own-key setup is the way. I understand Pop_OS doesn't want to invest the resources for this relatively niche market, but I'd love to switch if it allowed me to.
Canonical has been substituting snap packages in for native packages on Ubuntu without letting end users know. If you know about it then you can disable snapd or only install through apt (as far as I know that still installs native packages), but it's still an opaque change to less technical users. You can still use snap packages on Pop_OS, but it's your choice to do so. On Ubuntu, it's a lot harder to "just not use it".
Not really. They run a root daemon, and browsers are moved there with no easy alternative. Makes them slower to start up. No way to keep the filesystem and mount table clean without surgery, multiple steps which will need to be repeated after every version upgrade.
If you can avoid all that by using Pop or Mint, why not?
A few years back I was tasked with building a deep learning workstation for my work (small startup). I put everything together, did a bit of research on which distributes to use, and put the PopOS image on a USB. This was done by 4pm so I told my manager “I’m going home; it’s going to take me all day to get everything setup and working so I’ll start tomorrow morning”.
The next morning I booted into the USB, and 15 minutes later was logged into the DE.
When pop came out, there was a lot of speculation that System76 would find that rolling their own distro was more of a challenge than expected, but they seem to have pulled it off. I have it running on my main personal laptop and have been really impressed. It feels more specifically polished for running as a desktop OS on a laptop than Ubuntu while still getting the whole ecosystem of software.
Seriously. I'm about as Linux-clueless as they come, and when Ubuntu ate itself during a dist-upgrade a few years back, I had no idea how to fix it so I switched to Pop. It's been nearly flawless; the bizarrely-slow antics of the Pop Shop being my only notable complaint.
I switched my partner over to Pop after she saw me using it as a daily driver on my boxes. She's now far more of a power user than I am. The measure of a good Linux, imo, is how much it inspires the user to customize it to their liking.
I do wish the Pop community would start up an initiative for building components for enterprise management. Much of it is already there because of SystemD but remote administration and management would be good. Something similar to Zorin Grid. The reason I'm a fan of this is so that I can use Pop at work.
PopOS is a really nice distro. It's all the convenience of ubuntu with a nifty tiling extension, a good set of preloaded drivers, and no annoying 'snap' packages (they use flatpak?). I'm glad it exists, and I look forward to their work on their wayland based cosmic de
I impulsively purchased an HP Dev One laptop a few months back, and expected I'd try Pop for a minute and end up with Ubuntu.
I've found Pop to be mostly similar but preferable (seems more Desktop oriented).
I've also had very few issues with (IME )typical Linux stuff (doesn't sleep, doesn't wake from sleep etc.) I can't say the same about my Ubuntu desktop, which struggles to maintain two weeks of uptime without one of these issues.
Pop shall remain for the foreseeable future.
This laptop does have issues with external displays, unfortunately, but has been used as a laptop 90% of the time so it's not a big issue. Fear that's the best one can expect with Desktop Linux.
Pop_OS was the first Linux OS I installed last year. It's true it just works once I'm inside. However, booting up was an issue for me. I always got a blank grey screen. It's been a while since I booted into it, but I think to get around it, I pressed some hotkeys to enter terminal and login through there. Then I'd be in the OS and everything was fine. I ended up using it that way for a bit before I guess the novelty wore off. I've been too busy to tinker with it since.
I have a 4 year old ThinkPad X1 extreme (1st gen) and I've been running Pop OS since almost day 1. I did run astray somewhere in the middle (Zorin, Manjaro, Windows) but found myself most comfortable with Pop.
Things just work: nvidia drivers, firmware updates, bluetooth, multiple screens, switching keyboards (bt to usb and vice versa), games (steam, heroic launcher), keyboard backlight (it's a pain on other distros for some reason), those little led indicators on fn buttons, the fn buttons!
The laptop overall is quieter (fans running slow), cooler, snappier - all with an amazing battery life.
This is compared to Windows - something that apparently Intel spent time testing this particular model of laptop with. (one of my relatives works there)
The tiling window manager is a productivity enhancer (feels better than i3wm to me, ymmv). I recently had the privilege of connecting to a 2K display using the thunderbolt port. This thing somehow felt faster (a couple 100ms, but it was noticeable). I have reached a point where Mac feels slow and Windows is just unusable. I'm having a great time with this OS.
Only 1 thing doesn't work: Intel WiFi display. But I guess that technology doesn't have enough market proliferation anyway. So. That.
Readit News
1. No snap packages! 2. Easy full disk encryption during install. 3. Optional tiling window manager right in gnome. 4. Nvidia drivers just work with no effort. 5. HiDpi displays just do the right thing with no effort.
I also use ZFS (non-root), which was just an 'apt install' away. This is also true on Ubuntu, but nice either way.
Only downside I've seen is that it's still X11. From what I read there were Wayland stability issues so they are giving that more time to bake.
[0] https://superuser.com/questions/1221333/screensharing-under-...
If you have an AMD graphics card it’s fairly trivial to switch Pop_OS over.
I found it to be very obviously a clear improvement in app start time and general snappiness in the OS. To extent that meaningfully improved the experience.
Apparently there are gaming benefits too, steamdeck has adopted it for this reason.
Even more problematic is that X11 lacks user-noticeable deficiencies. Architecturally it has (partially severe) issues, but as an user, you don't notice. But if you're blind, need a screen reader, or want to use software enabling you to interact with the desktop environment outside of the classical, expected hardware (mouse, touchpad, screen), you're still out of luck. At least, screenshots mostly work now.
Yeah I know, probably unpopular opinion.
¹ https://wiki.gnome.org/Accessibility/Wayland (2017) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25175894
I ran Linux Mint with X11 and KDE for a few months and it was mostly pleasant. (There was an issue with brightness controls when using auto-switching hybrid graphics, but I don't know if that's an X11 vs Wayland issue.)
I believe their in house DE is going to be Wayland based. I'm personally very excited, it may finally be the DE to unify my Linux boxes away from i3/Sway/GNOME.
If you can avoid all that by using Pop or Mint, why not?
The next morning I booted into the USB, and 15 minutes later was logged into the DE.
Everything. Worked.
Wifi? Sound? Worked.
Nvidia? Worked. I couldn’t believe it.
Latest version of Python? Already there.
Big fan of that sort of experience.
I do wish the Pop community would start up an initiative for building components for enterprise management. Much of it is already there because of SystemD but remote administration and management would be good. Something similar to Zorin Grid. The reason I'm a fan of this is so that I can use Pop at work.
I've found Pop to be mostly similar but preferable (seems more Desktop oriented).
I've also had very few issues with (IME )typical Linux stuff (doesn't sleep, doesn't wake from sleep etc.) I can't say the same about my Ubuntu desktop, which struggles to maintain two weeks of uptime without one of these issues.
Pop shall remain for the foreseeable future.
This laptop does have issues with external displays, unfortunately, but has been used as a laptop 90% of the time so it's not a big issue. Fear that's the best one can expect with Desktop Linux.
Things just work: nvidia drivers, firmware updates, bluetooth, multiple screens, switching keyboards (bt to usb and vice versa), games (steam, heroic launcher), keyboard backlight (it's a pain on other distros for some reason), those little led indicators on fn buttons, the fn buttons!
The laptop overall is quieter (fans running slow), cooler, snappier - all with an amazing battery life.
This is compared to Windows - something that apparently Intel spent time testing this particular model of laptop with. (one of my relatives works there)
The tiling window manager is a productivity enhancer (feels better than i3wm to me, ymmv). I recently had the privilege of connecting to a 2K display using the thunderbolt port. This thing somehow felt faster (a couple 100ms, but it was noticeable). I have reached a point where Mac feels slow and Windows is just unusable. I'm having a great time with this OS.
Only 1 thing doesn't work: Intel WiFi display. But I guess that technology doesn't have enough market proliferation anyway. So. That.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000...