Vanilla OS 2.0 Shifting From Ubuntu Base To Debian Sid

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Vanilla OS 2.0 Shifting From Ubuntu Base To Debian Sid

One of the newer Linux distributions that has been making waves is Vanilla OS as an immutable and atomic version of Ubuntu Linux that aims to provide a pleasant Linux desktop experience, close to upstream, and is augmented by the growing selection of Flatpak packages. Now though the project has decided to move from Ubuntu Linux as its base over to Debian Sid...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Vanilla-OS-2.0-Debian

[user1]

Very wise decision. Using Debian as a base (which is not tied to any corporation), also means they'll be free from any shenanigans of distros tied to corporations like Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSuse. And I'm saying this as someone who currently uses OpenSuse MicroOS.

However, it seems they'll have more burden testing the updates themselves because 1, afaiu they intend to ship the updates from Debian Unstable in a more stable manner, and 2, it seems they don't have something like OpenSuse's OpenQA for automated testing.

[Danny3]

Good!
Debian is much better than Ubuntu.
Glad to see more distros moving from Ubuntu towards Debian!

[V1tol]

More people drop Ubuntu - better Linux ecosystem will be.

[mirmirmir]

Reading first paragraph, I thought it was fedora silverblue.

Well, I guess both are sharing similar goal...

[user1]

More people drop Ubuntu - better Linux ecosystem will be.

Yeah, I think Mint should really consider dropping Ubuntu base in favor of their own Debian Edition. I mean they update their kernel once every 2 years since the last few versions anyway, so at this point I don't see what advantage does Ubuntu base give them over Debian.

[schmidtbag]

Good!
Debian is much better than Ubuntu.
Glad to see more distros moving from Ubuntu towards Debian!

I'm hesitant to say "much better". For desktop use, both are honestly pretty bad.
For enterprise servers, I actually like Ubuntu [LTS]. It's more widely supported by larger corporations and the release cycle is predictable. I hardly ever encounter any noteworthy problems.
For home servers, I'd rather go with Debian stable.

[user1]

For desktop use, both are honestly pretty bad.

Even if Debian itself has some disadvantages, I don't think this really matters in case of Vanilla OS, because just like Fedora Silverblue and OpenSuse MicroOS, it's an immutable distro with a minimal package base, so Flatpak is used for most regular software. In case something is not available as Flatpak, users are expected to use Distrobox. So the real question is how well are they going to handle updates because they intend to use Debian Unstable as their base and ship the updates in a more stable manner, kinda what Manjaro does (I hope they're going to be wayy better at this than Manjaro).

[xAlt7x]

Yeah, I think Mint should really consider dropping Ubuntu base in favor of their own Debian Edition. I mean they update their kernel once every 2 years since the last few versions anyway, so at this point I don't see what advantage does Ubuntu base give them over Debian.

Well ,Mint users still could install Ubuntu HWE kernels. Debian Stable on the other hand got "rolling" kernel backports (MX Linux team uses them for their “Advanced Hardware Support” edition).

[user1]

Well ,Mint users still could install Ubuntu HWE kernels. Debian Stable on the other hand got "rolling" kernel backports (MX Linux team uses them for their “Advanced Hardware Support” edition).

During the last 2 years Mint has sometimes shipped edge iso's with newer kernels, so I guess they could do the same with Debian edition.