We Don’t Need Any More Linux Distros! Or do we?
#Dont #Linux #Distros
“Brodie Robertson”
We have a lot of Linux distros, some might even argue too many Linux distros and I could see that but it’s not like they exist for absolutely no reason.
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Haven't seen the video – no, we don't, hyper focus on making some accessible to the normies so we can get some growth.
There are not "too many distros." Distros are created to fulfill a demand. Maybe for a few users, maybe thousands, maybe millions. Distros die off too, when there isn't enough demand, or when the devs have a reason to quit.
Good for us that we have variety. We have people feeding the niches. Good for Linux.
I mean I don't think the quantity is the primary problem but lack of cross-compatibility, if they designed linux distros so that packages are the same no matter which distro, and also without dependency hell, then I think linux would've succeeded a long time ago. The way I see it, Linux has been in Beta for 30 years and the community is doing everything to make sure it stays that way.
Why not just design stable arch distros that are fully package backwards-compatible with arch? You need everyone to use the same package formats.
For my personal tastes, we need at least one distribution that gets rids of useless bloatware such as systemd and wayland 😉
Void Linux.
Enough said.
How many different car models are there? Why they make another one every… week?
How many different songs are there? Why they compose another one every day?
How many videos on youtube are there? Why they upload another one every single second?
TBH, I just want Ubuntu exactly as it is but without apt being redirected into Snap and I'll be happy. Since that doesn't exist, Linux Mint is where I'm happily sitting for my main system.
I had to slightly giggle at this one. I techinally have my own distro, but I made it since I'm in a very large family with a lot of eldery parents, aunties, uncles, etc that I'm the IT support person for. It serves one purpose which is, to simplify the admin of updating their machines by releasing a rolling release when I've tested everything I know they all use and to ensure that I don't have to deel with trouble shouting the fact that some linux or windows update has resulted in them all contacting me about how the UI for something has changed, or how something no longer works after an update.
A result of this is they all have amazingly reliable laptops that generally don't break because of OS updates, which has led to a lot of people asking if I can install the OS on their machines – with even one person who attends the same church as one of them saying I should publicly release the distro to others. My go to responce is always: "No. I only maintain this while they're alive. In the event that due to age they've all passed away, it will cease to be. Not for public use!"
We have too many distributions because people are able to make it. We just shouldn't take most of the crappy, shovelware, copycats distros seriosly. They are like crapillion of "overwhelmingly negative" games on Steam – mostly harmless but they make searching for anything other than Arch/Debian/Ubuntu/Mint pain in the butt.
Problem is for the new users, they DO NOT have that KNOWLEDGE what distro is what and why.
For a new user, they only see a bunch of weird names, that don't make any sense,
specially if they come direct from the world's most active and paid virus, named Windows
To me there is only one Linux distro. Because after you find the one you like, it's only one. Or you choose one and never try out another. So there is only one. My one is MX, which is your one? MX is my one and only one. So there is only one Linux distro in my book.
cachyos seems to be a good distro to recommend. The installer provides a very sensibly extensive set of options.
I don't really have any problem with people messing about with hobby distros if they're having fun doing it, but if we're talking about what Linux needs, it's not distros that are for some ultraspecific niche, it's distros which focus on delivering the best possible out of box experience for everyone. We'd be in a much better place if it became the norm that a Linux distro will be usable without having to open a terminal or search through forums, not the exception.
It's not a big deal. The ones that people actually need and enjoy stick around, the ones that aren't are obscure and only discoverered through distrowatch
I personally see it like this
You need to chose a base (Arch, Debian, Fedora, whatever) then the actual distro… Is basically a starter pack. You chose fedora but you want a focus on gaming? Boom nebora. You chise arch and love a purple theme? Well welcome to Endeavour. You want debian and feel like you need some familiarity from windows? Go with mint. Is as easy as "do I care about the base? Maybe. Should I ho with something with a nice feel? Totally" the base is to be known to help you troubleshoot and the distro is the flavor you love
Situation: we have 5283 actively developed distros.
Certain people: This is horrible! We should make a new distro to make it compatible with as much software as possible!
New situation: we have 5412 actively developed distros.
What is this "Linux" you speak of? Do you mean "SystemD-OS?"
Just need more Nix love. I get so annoyed every time I remote into some ubuntu/debtrash box/container and have to decide to install packages for some one off command and either live with it or remember to uninstall. `nix-shell -p` is the way forward.
Aren't most "distros" just gui/package customizations of one of a few core distros? Always thought these were kinda a joke, but I started on freebsd 4 fixing X configs by hand. My preference is always to install whatever barebones version exists (like ubuntu server) and add what I want for there, The idea of having as little cruft I don't know I have installed as possible, though it still happens plenty lol.
it's sad you forgot about puppy linux since it's a nice option for ancient hardware
I like having many distros as I want to find the one right for me. I tried Debian but didn't like it. Arch was the same but with a more bleeding edge package manager. I then found opensuse and I loved it. I always preferred rpm based distros and it just works for my workflow
Imagine how good Linux could be if people stopped needlessly fragmenting.
Shoutout to gobo linux. Was a great idea but it looks like abandonware now
We're at a point where the Linux ecossystem as a whole is developed and matured enough that I really don't see a reason to have anything but the "base" distros – the ones that act as a foundation to the plethora of others that exist today, and by which I mean (off the top of my head) Debian, Fedora/openSuSE (I don't know the difference because it's all RHEL to me so either could be here), Arch, Gentoo, Slackware, LFS and maybe one or two "actually unique" ones just for kicks (e.g. Bedrock and NixOS since they actually do offer a unique spin on the "Linux workflow", I would probably include Tails as well).
All of the others could just be install scripts/overlays/etc. that you apply on top of the base, just like I've seen some people comment down here (IIRC Derek from DistroTube had a similar idea which I thought actually made sense tbh). Mint could've been just an installer that adds their repos and theming, same for Ubuntu and its several flavours, let the DE/WM be an option in the script just like on Debian's netinstall, just like Devuan could've been an option as well, same for Kali, same for Funtoo, Antergos/Endeavour could've filled the spot for Arch's archinstall, etc.. That way everyone can focus on the things that matter – derivatives can focus on polishing their "derivation", and bases can focus on being solid bases.
Linux is praised for being based on freedom, we suggest people tired of Microsoft's arbitrary rules to come to Linux, but Linux users want to stipulate how many distros there are out there. Go figure…
I think I had commented but I guess I didn't in the end. Been thinking about this since yesterday and I thought we had too many "useless/unwarranted" distros. However, I change it back. Hearing you say why some distros spin up… we can't tell people you can't make anymore.
However, I do think we would need some "guidelines" and better organization. For example, Arch is Arch (btw). You can make Arch be anything else. You could make it be EndeavourOS or CachyOS. But, if you don't know how or don't want to, you already have those two. One focuses on making Arch available and easier to use for the user, and the other one focuses on super fast speeds and performance.
Those 2 are clear examples of what they want to do or what they focus on. But for example, all Linux distros in general perform well (enough). So why instead of making a whole "distro" not make a package, script or something available for Arch users? A config file maybe idk.
Some other distros are in the same vague description. "We are [this], we based on [this upstream] and focus on [this, which has been mentioned before also]". And my gripe with it is not its existence, but the fact that there is a page and a whole "community spun up" for it.
I suppose what I'm getting at, is the "film exist" conundrum: If you make a film, but nobody watches it, does the film exist? You say it does, and you made it, but no one has seen it. So if I have a specific use case of a distro, and I make a new one, and make it available for download, is it a distro already even if it has 1 or 2 users? And this is the thing that keeps making the "distro tree" bigger, and the fact we do not have a good place to sort through a well put together list by categories of distros. Let's say you do want to do "hacker stuff", everyone knows about Kali Linux, but there's also ParrotOS and I assume others. It would be great if we had a place where these were laid out that way, so you go in there, search by "hackur" and get all those distros recommended. It would be much easier to sort through the endless sea of distros made, as you've mentioned yourself, by specific reasons or purposes.
And you know what, I will do this myself, eventually. Unless there is a place already. That is not distrowatch because while distrowatch is awesome… it's not that simple to navigate.
I’m currently putting together less of a distro, more of an mkarchiso project which builds a purely accessible Linux setup, just to streamline our development environment setups. I don’t want to make it a full distro yet, but you never know.
I mean – in a lot of cases the answer, why some projects exist, is simpler: it is egos and the unwillingness to compromise by developers. Either the developers of the project that is being forked, or the developers of the new fork. It results in the scattering of already limited developer resources that exist in Linux and open-source world and is not exactly the best thing for the entire ecosystem.
okay so, for my use cases, Zorin, Nobara, Endeavor, for Annoyingly Stable™, Fedora but good™, and Arch but easy™
curious about Vanilla, Bazzite, Pika, Nix, i have no clue what'll live and what will die, what is right for me and what isnt.
but i know Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Gentoo, OpenSUSE, all of the baseline projects aren't really right for me yet. i want them to, i want to just have the simple base, but i am ultimately still strongly swayed by strong userspace, quality of life, tweaked to work "out of the box" experiences. i still needed to change a lot about Zorin to make it right for me, same for Pop, but now that i have a better backup system maybe i can trust myself to build something from the floor up.
theres the ground (Arch, LFS), the floor (Debian, Fedora), and the desk (Zorin, Pop). i've put everything on the desk, its not a super great desk, i wish i built it myself, but it's where everything is for now.
(maybe i can forgive Pop eventually but i don't trust it now)
Debian/Arch/Fedora, those are the main ones, everything else is just a fork or a themed version, if you are a new linux user you can go for Mint, Ubuntu, Zorin (they already made some choices for you) or just Go Debian, or if you are a gamer (you can go for something like Nobora, they made the choices for you). at the end of day, either you use a stable base or rolling base. For me, to make it so simple, i just use Debian ( i don't need a rolling base)
We need get back Linux source code back to public domain what Red hat did what other company did was steal the code from other coders.
We need make sure that no company can Privatization of code it need to stay in public domain forever.
debian, arch, alpine, nixos, gentoo, slackware, freebsd, redhat… forget the rest. others are ether useless, non different/special or forks of the mentioned before.
We need more INDEPENDENT distros. Distros like Void or Nixos.
Knoppix. Made to give an OS with a screen reader to the developer's blind wife.
As outsider, i will never understand why you go and change an OS for your own use case instead of making specialised software 🤦♂🤷♂ Is everything happening on kernel level ? Are people that desperate ? I guess they are ….
Likely atleast 99% of distros are pointless. I decided to never stray from the mainline distros and that was the best decision I ever made on my Linux journey.
For any novices reading this, don't join Discord Linux on the Discord messaging platform. Just don't. You can take this as a challenge, but this video will be absolutely de-merited for bringing up a bunch of projects they dislike for various (and sometimes, seemingly non-sensical) reasons, and they'll be keen to shut down any discussion of distros not on their recommended list… of which, the first four beginner distros shown are Ubuntu-based.
It's a wild place to hang around in, and if you fail to follow my advice out of sheer curiosity I can guarantee you disappointment and ruin lies ahead.
no we dont , its a confusing mess to new comers
For the regular user there are only really two distributions to consider, and it just comes down to whether you are more into Justin Bieber or Hannah Montana.
Irritating statements in intro, intentionally provokative, abusing cunningham's law? Why are you telling me there's only a very small handful of distros I'd personally consider using… ? Why are you saying of all the use cases I could possibly have, there's only a very small number I would actually use? Is it unimaginative projecting?
There are thousands of distros I not only consider using, but use. And thank goodness for the choice.
"A smaller group actually doing something unique" (while also a bit of an insult to them, if true) is a screaming reason for MORE distro development. Frankly, even if we had more distros than people, I would still not be complaining there are too many. Why do you hate choice so much? Are IBM RedHat paying you off? XD I do not understand why people succumb to that meme of "too many distros". Independent or Respin. Even if a new respin that changes only one thing, good use of Freedom 3.
Carrying on being trolled, and responding as the vid continues, pausing to type irately… lol…. maybe you'll say things that make this madness okay, later in the vid, … I hope, by the "Or do we?" in the title… n_n
30 distros is too much? Too difficult to choose from? You know we have things like distrowatch and distrochooser and others, and lots of helpful knowledgeable community members to offer helpful suggestions guiding towards a better fitting distro.
My choice of words there, inspires an analogy…
Consider how many varieties of clothes there are. Do you complain we have too many? Should there only be 30 or fewer garment styles to choose from in the world? Or are we blessed with more variations of clothes (from subtle to outlandish), than there are people?
"Completely impossible task of 10,000 distros"… yeah, no. This max hyperbole is surely a strawman you yourself intend to fell in a moment…. Surely you're about to mention distrotube.
Speaking of mentions…. I've not yet mentioned bedrocklinux, distrobox, or containers or virtualisation or multibooot and so on… many ways where you do not have to choose just one, and can rather casually continue perusing other distros as you go about your day happily (or unhappily) using whatever arrangement of distros.
Why the rhetorical question of why make another one? Do you hate them practicing their skills? Do you hate them starting something that might take off to be something great? Do you hate them scratching their own itch? Why the rhetorical question of why make another one? … Why that judgemental presumption without actually considering the question in curiosity?
"You dont need to", no, but it is very nice and convenient. 🙂 DecibellLinux would be another good example of special use case, that you could do all it does on it's base distro, if you wanted to pointlessly duplicate all that effort. I've been making use of GentooStudio (now called DecibelLinux) since it came out around 2008, and the vast majority of that use, is just plucking parts and ideas from it, adding to my gentoo. Maybe only installed Decibell/GentooStudio 4 times. Even if had never used it by directly installing it, very glad it (and all others) are out there, to potentially pluck from.
Glory to the potential. Diversity of innovation.
It's hard to know what distro someone will like. I imagined my uncle would be happy on something like ubuntu, but from the distros I showed him and he explored himself, he chose puppy, and has been using puppy for over a decade. Seeing his use, I later imagined he might like scientific linux or calculatelinux… Nope, he likes puppy. It's good to let people explore and use what they find works for them.
Seriously
Why do you hate people making use of Freedom 3? Was that playing devil's advocate?
PS, on this computer I'm typing this from, when I do brl list -v | wc -l, it says 32. Already 2 more than your suggestion of 30. And still more I've yet to get around to add.
A distro that is based on a mainstream distro + packages and slight configurations aren't that bad. Although that "problem" could be solved without creating a new distro/iso.
Indeed I saw too many unesscessary distros keep poping up, we need good and stable distros, not more.
only distros that matter are Debian, Arch, and Alpine
The problem is not their existence, it's the effort wasted outside the necessary features.
For me it is now just NixOS and all the others. So just 2 now…