this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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Pop!_OS (Linux)

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Pop!_OS is an operating system developed by System76 for STEM and creative professionals who use their computer as a tool to discover and create. Unleash your potential on secure, reliable open source software. Based on your exceptional curiosity, we sense you have a lot of it.

Unleash your potential

Whether this is your first experience with Linux, or your latest adventure, all are welcome to discuss and ask questions about Pop!_OS and COSMIC. Keep the discussions friendly though, and remember to assume good intentions whenever you reply. We're all here because we have a shared love for Linux and open source software.

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Support us by buying System76 hardware for you or your company! Or by donating on the Pop!_OS website through the "Support Pop" button. Pop!_OS and COSMIC are fully funded by System76 hardware sales. All systems are assembled in the USA. With your support, we'll work to push the Linux desktop forward with COSMIC.

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Community Rules

Follow the Code of Conduct

All posts on pop_os must adhere to the Pop!_OS community Code of Conduct. https://github.com/pop-os/code-of-conduct

Be helpful

Posts to pop_os must be helpful. When responding to a user asking for help, do not provide tongue-in-cheek responses like "RTM" or links to LMGTFY. Linking to direct sources that answer the asker's question is fine, but it's advised to provide some explanation as to how you got to that source.

Critique should be constructive

We within the Pop!_OS community welcome helpful criticism or ideas on ways to improve. However, basic "It's bad" or other simple negative comments don't help anyone fix anything. When voicing a complaint about something, try to point out ways the complaint could be improved or worked around, so that we can make a better product for it.

This rule applies to both Pop!_OS and its projects as well as other products available from third-parties.

Don't post malicious "advice"

It can be funny to joke about malicious commands, however this is not the venue for it. Do not advise users to run commands which will lock up their systems, steal their data, or erase their drive. Examples of this include (but are not limited to) fork bombs, rm, etc.

Posts violating this rule will be removed, even if the post is clearly in jest. Repeated offences may lead to a ban. You may understand that the command isn't serious, but a new user might not.

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Posts making a personal attack on any user will not be tolerated.

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Hate speech of any kind will not be tolerated. Any violations will be removed, and are grounds for a ban.

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Software Latest Fedora Version Pop! Version
---- 44.0 44.1 42.0
Gnucash 5.3 5.2 4.8
GIMP 2.10.34 2.10.34 2.10.30
------ 1.3.1 dnf 1.3.1 1.3.0
Firewall Gufw 22.04 N/A 22.04.0
~~Timeshift~~ Master.mint21 (Mint) dnf 22.11.2 21.09.1
22.06.6 (TeeJee)
KeepassXC 2.7.6 2.7.6 2.6.6
affected by CVE-2023-35866 (upto 2.7.5)
Libreoffice 7.6.0 (fast adopter) 7.5.5.2 7.3.7.2
7.5.5 (LTS)
Popsicle 1.3.1 (github) AppImage 1.3.1 1.3.2
PDF Arranger 1.10.0 1.10.0 1.8.2
Virt Manager 4.1.0 4.1.0 4.0.0
Videos (totem) 44.0 43.0 42.0
Nautilus 44.0 44.2.1 42.6

I am "not" using Flatpak on Pop!

Most of the cases, those software are from Ubuntu repositories.. would Pop!_OS consider building their own, or as some other people mentioned, rebase on something else?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The current version of Pop is based on the 22.04 long term support version of Ubuntu. Its aim is stability, not bleeding edge.

Also - ubuntu back-ports security fixes to older packages. So that keepassxc is likely not vulnerable. The package version will be something like "2.6.6-ubuntu3" to indicate that.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

You are "not" using a flatpak, but you should and it would solve all your problems. It's the way of the future even if you read some FUD about it online.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Why won't you use Flatpak? That's exactly what it's for.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Flatpak is not Snap. Snap is the evil one.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

AFAIK pop! is not aimed to be a more cutting-edge distro like fedora. It is meant to provide a stable base with the up-to-date version of the software installed by a packaging format, like flatpak, appimagr, or snap.

If you dont want to use these packages, then you will need to face the tradeoff between the stablity of the base system vs using not up-to-date apps.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Why does it matter? What are you missing? Numbers on a screen? It's not that old. Everything works perfectly fine. Use Flatpak if you want the latest version of a desktop application.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i mostly worried about keepass for vulnerabibity and virt-manger not getting the latest qemu/libvirt update... but i agree to you, these package aren;t that old.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

22.04 LTS will receive security updates until 2031. That's what the L in LTS means. Ubuntu backports security patches, and occasionally bug fixes, for their core, server, and enterprise customers. You can't compare Ubuntu versions of software because most of them contain patches.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's no problems, everything is completely fine! Let's assume OP has no legitimate reasoning.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I can easily assume you have no idea what LTS means. Nor apparently do you realize that we frequently update the core system software in Pop. Our kernel, firmware, and drivers are newer than what most Linux distributions have. Same goes for Pipewire, Lutris, Virtualbox, etc.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I do know what LTS means and I also am aware of how frequently Pop updates these things, I just prefer not assuming that OP has zero reason for asking and find solutions and explanations more productive.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Posts like these demanding that we rebase are not constructive, and will not be well received.

I'm tired of seeing these accusations lately that we don't update Pop!_OS even though we are constantly updating packages and release new ISO's every week or two. In addition to the constant steam of security updates from Ubuntu, which will continue to support 22.04 until 2031.

We make ~30 ISO releases every year to enable hardware support for the latest hardware. Every new System76 product ships day one with a new Pop!_OS ISO on the website containing all of the latest updates we made to backport the latest kernel, firmware, drivers, mesa, zfs, etc.

There's a person here making weekly package update posts. Follow those, or the pop-os/repo-release GitHub repository directly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for all the work you and the team put into updates for Pop!_OS. While I am on older hardware I still appreciate that we are getting updates to continually improve the distro regularly. Things like the pop scheduler are not visible but make big differences in the day to day experience.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

@bitwise @mmstick Pop!_OS is awesome, it's my daily driver, and I've tested quite a lot of distros, but never stuck. I always come home to Pop!_OS.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You always have the freedom of clone the src and compile the latest version yourself. Or if you want the package manager do the job, use distrobox and make an Arch container

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They're spending all of their time and effort on cosmic. This is why I don't recommend Pop_os to anyone anymore, not until cosmic is complete and released to the public.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

That is simply not true.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

See the code of conduct on the side. Criticism must be constructive. This is not only false, but ridiculous. Half of my hours are spent on Pop!_OS packaging and community.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fair enough, but why is pop_os almost two full OS releases behind Ubuntu?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Do you not know what LTS is?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

is pop going to base on Lts moving forward, like mint, or its too early to say?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Mint is based on LTS and they release two versions a year and update their package base. I respect what the pop_os guys are doing, which I guess includes you, we need more modern DE's besides gnome and KDE. I know what LTS is, it's just odd that you guys haven't updated pop_os for over a year, and the last time I used an OS that did the same thing, Solus, the whole project went to shit. I'm on endeavourOS now, but I've been keeping an eye on the progress of cosmic hoping to see an updated version of pop because I genuinely love the style and look of the OS. If you're updating packages and keeping up to date on as many packages as possible then I definitely retract my original post.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Pop is semi-rolling distro, they don't need to release "point updates", they're not behind Ubuntu at all.

It is not the same 22.04 build from two years ago. It's using the same Ubuntu 22.04 LTS baseline and updates whatever they can with their own repos overwriting Ubuntu, such as mesa, kernel, and drivers. Every updates released to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS repos is made available to Pop users as well.

I just got an update on Pop for kernel 6.4.6 yesterday. Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS is the most recent update and it only uses 5.19 kernel.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

What are you talking about? We update Pop!_OS constantly. You're effectively saying all the work I and the QA team do each week is non-existent and pointless. There's a person regularly creating posts with package updates from our pop-os/repo-release repo. There are updates from last week that will be released this week.

Our ISOs are rebuilt every week or so to include all of the changes. Therefore we release ~30 "versions" of Pop!_OS each year. Which is required to ship new System76 products, as they contain the latest hardware on the market at time of release.

So once again, LTS means Long Term Support, which means it actively gets updates for a long time. In this case, until 2031. Security updates from Ubuntu, and various system updates from us that's similar to a rolling release.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's great, then I stand corrected. I don't use pop on a regular basis so please don't think I'm trying to insult your work, simply stating the perception from the outside. Clearly that's not the case and I'm in the wrong. I also didn't know you rebuild the ISOs every week as again, I don't use pop regularly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think most people only look at the gnome version when talking about updates. Then if their distribution ships a year old kernel version they don't even notice. System 76 is taking care of the user experience from the hardware to the software, a bit like Apple does, but in an ethical way, using free software and even open sourcing hardware. I've been running pop since I discovered it (in 2018 i think) and at this point I'm probably biased, but i think its quality is unrivaled. I really hope the release of cosmic will help you conquer all kinds of users, since, as we said, people only look at the desktop environment. About the rebase, ubuntu started stinking and some people won't consider ubuntu derivatives, it's just a perception thing. I see a rebase as a marketing move more than anything, but the return on the investment is probably not there.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago

This is one of the reasons why I don't use or recommend Ubuntu or any of its downstream distros.

For major and well supported applications, older versions based off of LTS is perfectly fine.

But tons of stuff on Linux is just better to have latest stable or sometimes even bleeding edge. It would be really dumb for some brand new linux user to have to build from source because the feature or bugfix they want won't be added for another year.

And no, Flatpak is not an end all solution either (although pretty decent at countering this issue).

Probably the number one thing this applies to is gaming. Kernel modules, Proton, wine, their subsequent forks, Emulators, etc. Most of this stuff is already unstable so there's really no benefit to only having access to an older version.