Linux systems hasn't changed a lot in the last 4 years or os. We mostly run Ubuntu LTS at my work and the 18.04 -> 20.04 -> 22.04 deltas have been really low on the server side, and not that significant on the desktop side either
During this time frame we've also migrated our last FreeBSD servers to Ubuntu
We deferred to switching to the new installer until 22.04 and kept using the legacy net boot image for as long as possible. The switchover wasn't as bad as I was afraid it would and took only a few days to make new internal app to drive our installations. The worst part of the new installer is it requires a minimum of 2GiB of RAM to run, so all of our new VMs have to start with at least that much and be scaled down later
My goodness. How can you possibly say that Ubuntu hasn't changed much from 18 -> 22? There are whole how-tos that are completely useless from those changes. All sorts of things are different. That's ridiculous.
The other comment pointed out the installer, which I did forget about. But other then that what significant has changed?
Ubuntu's documentation, and lots of third party documentation targeting ubuntu, is like 10 years out of date for lots of things anyways, and even when it _works_ often gives bad advice that either was never true or hasn't been true for years.
Netplan happened on 20.04 AFAIR. Doesn't matter much for your cloud vps you never change networking on, but still.
From my perspective, it's not changed much too - I was using apt-get install nginx - I keep using it. Was using systemctl - keep using it. Cannot say I've adjusted my habits during that moves.
> Linux systems hasn't changed a lot in the last 4 years or os. We mostly run Ubuntu LTS at my work and the 18.04 -> 20.04 -> 22.04 deltas have been really low on the server side, and not that significant on the desktop side either
You know, I actually set this comment aside because I was curious about how HN would engage with it. So far, it seems like folks are pointing out that there indeed have been changes in certain aspects of the OS, as well as probably the introduction of the whole snap mechanism.
Regardless, to me Ubuntu LTS seems like one of the better OS distros out there, both for desktop and server use. It's not ideal, but it's good enough in most respects, to the point where it's hard to recommend anything else.
Previously I recall many looking in the direction of CentOS as something to install on servers and have it serve them for a long time with security updates and pretty good stability, but I guess now one would have to count on Rocky Linux and Alma Linux for that. Additionally, I have to admit that some of the choices that RPM distros make can be a bit odd and the software support isn't where I'd like it to be, things like Docker were admittedly broken (DNS resolution, firewall masquerades and other oddness with SELinux) for a while. It feels like they have their own enterprise-focused way of doing everything, OpenShift being an example of this.
On the other hand, there's Debian and Ubuntu. Personally, I might even like Debian better, but Ubuntu's LTS lifecycle is far more worry free. You might not get 10 years of support, but setting up something and running it for 5 years (with security and other updates) is pretty freeing, especially when you're primarily interested in just keeping things running in a stable manner and don't always need the latest packages. There are changes, of course, there are packages that change names, that break or are deprecated, sometimes you get other growing pains that all of the OSes out there need to deal with.
But Ubuntu LTS to me feels like it's good enough for both server use in both development/testing/prod, as well as personal use, as a daily driver.
And nowadays I'm considering migrating my Debian servers after the EOL to Ubuntu, my new ones already running it.
I will say that every distro has its place and in certain domains there are better options than Ubuntu, of course, and OSes like the *BSDs have consistency and engineering that Linux cannot quite match (due to the "engineered vs grown" approach to building them), but sometimes you just want something that is simple to run, has ample tutorials and resources, and won't make you chase down odd issues.
During this time frame we've also migrated our last FreeBSD servers to Ubuntu