Ubuntu is great but uses snaps and adds other canonical bits. Linux Mint is essentially perfect but does not come with gnome desktop. Is there a ubuntu based distro that is essentially like linux mint but offers gnome as a desktop?

    • duncesplayed@lemmy.oneEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      Seriously, I don’t get distro hoppers. “I want my desktop wallpaper to be green. Can you tell me how to install an entirely new operating system with a green background?”

  • s20@lemmy.ml
    25·
    9 months ago

    I have three possible solutions for you:

    1. Switch to Fedora Workstation
    2. Install Gnome on Mint
    3. Use Pop! OS

    Option 1 is probably the best one. Fedora is as easy to use as Ubuntu but without Snaps or the rest of Canonical stuff. The downside is that it’s RPM based instead of DEB, but that’s not as big an issue as you might think, since Flatpaks cover a lot of ground, and between the Fedora and RPM Fusion repositories, most software is still available.

    Option 2 is another way to go. It gives you exactly what you’re looking for in a way. Unfortunately, you’re going to end up with some Cinnamon remnants in your Gnome set up. That’s not too big of a deal, though, just some extra cleanup work removing the Cinnamon desktop stuff.

    Option 3 is my least favorite. Pop! OS is great, and almost what you’re after once you disable some extensions. The only issue I have here is that Pop! will probably be shifting to their in house desktop environment COSMIC soon. Well, fairly soon anyway. I’m sure they’ll keep the Gnome version going, but it’s very clearly not going to be their focus. Still, Pop! OS might be exactly what you’re looking for!

    • notTheCat@lemmy.fmhy.net
      11·
      9 months ago

      It doesn’t always go well, especially with beginners, I’ve tried Plasma on Ubuntu and decided to go back to gnome, spent whole lot of time trying to purge all the Plasma bloat but couldn’t

      • LeFantome@programming.dev
        3·
        9 months ago

        That is a reasonable comment. There is so much overlap between cinnamon and GNOME though that I doubt it is an issue.

      • NaN@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        If you use the nala apt frontend, it comes with a history command like Fedora. Really useful for undoing specific changes.

    • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
      3·
      9 months ago

      There’s usually some kind of integration between the DE and the underlying system that isn’t replicated by installing the DE without a bunch of configuration. But yeah, the line is definitely blurred nowadays.

  • dallen@programming.devEnglish
    7·
    9 months ago

    So, I finally decided to ditch Ubuntu for desktop and servers last month and went distro shopping.

    In the end, I settled on Debian. My rational was I had already been using Debian under the hood for nearly 20 years and it has treated me well. I’ve really come to appreciate that there is always an abundance of help and documentation compared to some other distros.

    In addition to apt, I use flatpaks now.

    Installing NVIDIA drivers manually kinda sucks but vanilla Gnome shell is so much nicer than Ubuntu’s Gnome.

    • niisyth@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      I’ve landed in the same boat. Debian is quite usable as is. And fairly familiar when you’ve been using Ubuntu/Mint for a bit.

  • qaz@lemmy.world
    6·
    9 months ago

    You could use Debian, the distro on which Ubuntu is based or Fedora. Debian is more similar to Ubuntu but it’s packages are quite old. Fedora is a rolling release distro and thus gives you access to the newest packages.

    • Kes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      2·
      9 months ago

      I was going to use Fedora, but there’s no way I can ever look someone in the eye and say “yeah I use an operating system called Fedora” so I went with Debian instead. It’s pretty great

  • mvirts@lemmy.world
    3·
    9 months ago

    I mean if buy like Linux mint you mean it’s awesome in every way you could give nixos a try :D

    • Alex@feddit.roEnglish
      9·
      9 months ago

      I love NixOS, but OP is probably a new user (or doesn’t care about managing/customising their system), since they want a distro like mint (which is mostly a distro for new users/ a “just works” distro). So NixOS would probably suck for them

      • mvirts@lemmy.world
        1·
        9 months ago

        Idk… it sort just works for me. I’m not great at nix itself but putting gnome in the config and a few apps in my environment was easy. If you want to avoid command line nixos will be tough but I think for a beginner who is going to learn how normal distros work anyway, might as well learn nixos if you’re interested in it.

    • LeFantome@programming.dev
      1·
      9 months ago

      What middle-man are you skipping? Manjaro is based on Arch.

      Perhaps you meant Ubuntu as Ubuntu is based on Debian and Mint is based on Ubuntu. I agree that I would prefer plain Debian these days over Ubuntu but Debian does not have everything out of the box a Mint or Ubuntu user may like.

      Regardless, do not use Manjaro. If you cannot install Arch but like it, use EndeavourOS.

      If they like Mint, they should just install GNOME on it.