Pop!_OS vs. kubuntu

[Chopstick]

Hi Folks!

I recently got myself a new System76 laptop and now I am debating whether or not to keep the pre-installed Pop!_OS or to nuke it and install kubuntu.
Here is the Wikipedia page for Pop!_OS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop!_OS

Pop!_OS is the custom ubuntu distribution from System76 with a Gnome-derived UI and it seems it generally has good reviews. The main draw is out-of-the-box support for their GPUs (including CUDA), which certainly is nice! However, I think you can also get this in other ubuntu distros by adding their PPA. They do come with full disk encryption, but the file system is ext4, while I have btrfs for my kubuntu installation on my old laptop.

On a related note, does the (k)ubuntu installer at this point support installation with BTRFS and full disk encryption (LUKS)? I remember when I set up my system this was quite an ordeal...

So, does anyone here have experience with Pop!_OS and can weigh in on the trade-offs?

Thanks!

[Snowhog]

I might suggest that before you do anything to that laptop, you take some time (or a lot of time) to read through what DoYouKubuntu went through with her System76 laptops.

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/search...%7D&btnSubmit=

[Chopstick]

Thanks, Snowhog! That certainly made me a bit wary of nuking the Pop!_OS installation now... but I would like to get BTRFS...

[oshunluvr]

First of all, I wouldn't do ANY of this without a backup that you can recover from:

I recommend first booting to Kubuntu on a thumb drive. I'm sure your hardware will be supported but check to be sure. You did not describe your current partitioning scheme, but I'll assume you're using EFI to boot and EXT4 is the file system of your Pop!_OS root partition.

Assuming you do not already have an available partition, you should then be able to use Kubuntu to shrink your main partition and make a new partition to install Kubuntu to. When installing Kubuntu, select "Manual Partitioning" and you can choose BTRFS as the drive format when using the new partition to install to.

BTRFS does have a conversion tool to convert EXT4 to BTRFS - btrfs-convert - but it's no longer supported. I have tested it recently on a Virtual Machine and it worked fine. If you attempt this, be sure to edit /etc/fstab BEFORE rebooting the converted file system. The down-side to conversion is your files remain on the file system root path and not in a subvolume. Subvolumes are one of the primary benefits to BTRFS. Again - as a test - I have been able to move an installation from the root of the file system into a subvolume and get it to boot with some edits to grub.cfg and fstab. It's not a trivial task, but it can be done.

Frankly, you're probably better off keeping Pop!_OS on the system and dual booting to Kubuntu to preserve the "factory" installation if you need support in the future from System76. That would also mean you'll have a backup operating system in case you bork Kubuntu (it happens to the best of us, lol) or for verification of a hardware issue, etc.

EDIT: Note that installing Kubuntu along side Pop!_OS will overwrite grub and you'll be relying on the Kubuntu supplied grub to boot in the future. If you prefer to keep Pop!_OS as the main booting OS, you can avoid this by launching the Kubuntu install, ubiquity, like this: ubiquity -b or just select a partition as the location to install grub to, thus not effecting the factory grub installation.

I would also like to point out that DoYouKubuntu and those problems were attempting to install Kubuntu 19.10. It wasn't a great release in any case and I doubt anything from 5 years ago would apply now.

[Chopstick]

Thanks! After reading those threads I was also thinking that this may not really apply to 22.04. In fact, I seem to remember having lots of problems with an earlier release and since I installed 22.04 everything just worked (on my old laptop).

The main issue with BTRFS and the kubuntu installer was that, iirc, it did offer BTRFS, but not with LUKS and I do want full disk encryption - that's not optional imo. There are instructions for both, kubuntu and Pop!_OS for BTRFS in LUKS; I used the kubuntu ones for my current system and it worked like a charm. (and, yes, I have subvolumes for root and home).

The partitioning of the new S76 laptop is: an EFI partition, a recovery partition, which supposedly acts like an installer on a thumb drive, then there is an ext4 and a swap volume inside LUKS.

Also note that Pop!_OS uses Systemd-boot as bootload, not GRUB, so I am not quite sure how to deal with this for a dual boot...

[oshunluvr]

Seems to me - I haven't tried it - that one would be able to create the BTRFS+LUKS partition before installation then select it via "Manual Partitioning" and not ticking the "format" box.

Assuming the above works and you ran Ubiquity without installing the boot loader as I indicated above,you can manually add Kubuntu to systemd-boot https://askubuntu.com/questions/1225...n-ubuntu-20-04

It's also possible that systemd-bootloader would be able "find" the Kubuntu install and add it - again, not my area of knowledge but it's would be worth finding out.

[Chopstick]

Essentially, yes, but there are quite a few extra steps. I basically followed this guide: https://mutschler.dev/linux/ubuntu-btrfs-20-04/ - it worked fine for 22.04 as well.

[Chopstick]

That being said, I am not sure I want a dual-boot, though... I really don't want to have to switch between systems/home directories, because I would have to keep all my files sync'ed.

That's why I was thinking to maybe keep Pop!_OS and just install KDE - then I could switch, but share the home directory.

At the moment my thinking is that I may do that, having COSMIC and KDE as DEs, keeping the current ext4 file system; then I'll see how much I end up using COSMIC or if I gravitate back to KDE. When I am ready to make a decision or when April rolls around, I can wipe the system and install 24.04 with BTRFS, if I still feel like it.

The only downside of that is that I would have to rethink my backup strategy while I am on ext4...