Unpopular Opinions

Linux Discussion
21

That is why I think most people will just upgrade. Only a small minority will seek something else, a Mac or if we are lucky even some Linux distribution.

Sometimes I am tired of the mantra about Linux marketing, unpopular opinion again. Most of us use Linux because they decided consciously to use it.
‘Normal’ people just do not care about the operating system. They do not care about privacy, about tracking, about devices spying on them, they use Skype, Facebook and WhatsApp. I see that every day at work.
When I tell them that I do not use WhatsApp they are shaking their heads. There are people that actually try to convince me to use some of those platforms instead of listening to my concerns and alternatives.

@m-svo: If you are already running testing than I would suggest sid and also participating in bug reporting. That is what I do or better said did when I used sid for a long period of time. Sid gets fixes faster than testing and you won’t have to wait long for a package to be updated that got a nasty bug in testing.

2 Likes
22

Unpopular opinion: each distro should have one “flagship” desktop environment, and then provide up to one “desktop spin”, not more! Each distro should have one “heavyweight”/mid-weight - the “flagship” - desktop, and then one “lightweight” runner-up desktop choice (and label them as such: “heavyweight”/“lightweight”, simplifying the choice, for noobs). Please be more opinionated, and not so wishy-washy, with too many Desktop choices, per-distro.

I’m sick and tired of every distro having to have like 5 “respins” trying to cover every desktop environment under the sun, poorly. There is only enough developer/volunteer effort to ensure a smooth experience, covering all the manifold edge cases for like one opinionated, let’s-go-all-out desktop, maybe two at most. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th most popular desktop spin is sure to have so many frayed ends, for lack of sufficient volunteer effort (especially with testing and filing bugs), that it’s sure to annoy users after a few months use, at most. You just wasted those users’ time by even offering those spins, as they’ll just be distro-hopping again, soon enough. How many times has this been you? Come on, be honest.

It’s OK to offer two favorite desktops, for your distro, max. Leave the other desktop environments to the other major distros to cover with their more concentrated community efforts, thereby eliminating more papercut-esque bugs, making everyone more happy over the long term. Let them have a slightly larger slice of the pie - for some other desktop you stop shoddily covering - with users that at least stay in the Linux world longer. You don’t want to risk them giving up and returning to, say, Windows, after such a fail!

Don’t get me wrong: some distro hopping is a good thing, and even healthy, like say every 2ish years. But if people are distro-hopping every few months? Let’s get real: clearly there are way too many papercuts getting through all these bewildering distro choices, unfixed. We’re just embarrassing ourselves unnecessarily, as a collective Linux community!

1 Like
23

Would you say the same if it were using Debian Testing over Debian Stable. Asking since Testing is the basis for Ubuntu.

24

No, because I actually used Debian Testing for about a year and there are, rarely, critical bugs coming with updates.
AFAIK Ubuntu takes the base, freezes it and tests, then they will pull updates as needed.

That said, I stopped using Ubuntu when 20.04 came out broken (OpenMW specifically) and switched to Debian 11 on all my devices as I find this particular release almost perfect. The only bug I encountered was in LibreOffice, so I installed a newer version via Flatpak.

25

There is one distro that does that, lightweight and only one desktop, Salix with Xfce. Just recently they released version 15. In the past they offered KDE and even Mate but that was almost 10 years ago. It began with Xfce only and stayed with Xfce only.

Anyway for us purists Arch or Debian is just enough. Netinstall and then you go and grab what you want. And I do not mean selecting Debian desktop at install time. :smile:

26

One unified Desktop, Window Manager, Renderer, Distro of choice or package manager for Linux is a Myth, Linux will always be a splintered mess.

But the package infrastructure itself gives Linux a stability that Windows can only dream of. It is not the lack of choice that gives Linux its unity but the shared software libraries that are used / and tested, by every Distro on the planet.

No matter the package manager you use, the developer / ‘s of the code upstream is supported.

Choice is good.

But while this might not reflect the maturity that MacOS and Windows are seen to have, if you compare this to Linux 10 years ago, when getting a wifi connection could be a major headache. You could call Linux a mature operating system, If not the year of Linux on the Desktop.

Give it another 10 years and various desktop environments on Linux will have enough polish to make even Windows jealous.

27

I have the unpopular opinion, that a lack of opinionatedness is a recipe for craziness. Here is a highly simplified (yes, simplified) diagram, for you to contemplate:

PXL_20220922_041150106~2
PXL_20220922_041150106~21920×2148 401 KB

1 Like
29

Ubuntu, right or wrong, my distro!

  • Ubuntu 5.04 try-out on a spare Pentium II, I was impressed.
  • Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, dual boot on my new laptop with Windows Vista.
  • Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. end of dual booting, Windows XP Home in Virtualbox.
2 Likes
30

Crazy how meta Debian is, as it is the upstream for both Ubuntu and Mint.

31

Ubuntu and Mint are pretty much the same thing here. I know there are differences, but not enough to change the base.

Might as well add Pop OS to that list.

32

Linux podcasters tend to be incredibly inconsistent.

:slight_smile:

They do.