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1/25 suitable after only 3 questions. I think the selection might be flawed. Anyway, any reasoning that divides distros between easy to use and hard to use is

by Paul_S 10y ago

1/25 suitable after only 3 questions. I think the selection might be flawed. Anyway, any reasoning that divides distros between easy to use and hard to use is nonsense. Just because I'm used to Linux doesn't mean Ubuntu isn't the right distro for me. The questionnaire logic goes: well, you're capable of running this distro so you should run this distro. Reality is if you're a developer you either use RHEL because that's what corporate chose or you use Ubuntu because that is the platform chosen by library devs and unless you use it as well you will waste time sorting out issues. If you're a user then it doesn't matter what distro you use, they're all fine. If you want to play games then your best bet is Ubuntu.

rubber_duck 10y ago
>Reality is if you're a developer you either use RHEL because that's what corporate chose or you use Ubuntu because that is the platform chosen by library devs and unless you use it as well you will waste time sorting out issues. My experience is completely opposite, I like to prototype and test stuff and both distros are shipping heavily outdated libraries and tools, even if I need to compile on some old compiler to deploy why would I miss out on compiler perf/usability improvements, run outdated debugger, etc.? The CI can let me know if I broke anything in the target environment, but I prefer to have my tools up-to-date, and updating on Ubuntu/RHEL is a PITA
- Paul_S 10y ago
  I'm sorry to say you're in a minority. At least for the past 5 years commercial libraries assume you are running RHEL (usually one major release behind) or Ubuntu (LTS). It used to be Debian before that. If you're not you are going to have a bad time. Of course if you're determined with a lot of work you can recreate the environment by compiling the exact versions of tools and libraries required (if you're lucky the library will specify that, otherwise you'll have to divine it through magic). But when you're doing this for a living you probably have better things to do. It's a lot easier to use the distro that already has the correct deps and just get a newer version of a tool that you want to use if you really think that the one in the distro repo is too stable for you. So much less work.
  - krisdol 10y ago
    > If you're not you are going to have a bad time That's quite a jump from your previous sentences and I don't find that true at all. I've had no worse of a time on Debian, arch, or Manjaro for developing when compared to Ubuntu (and its various flavors and derivatives). I never used distro deps because of how horribly out of date, misconfigured, or incompatible they are
    - Paul_S 10y ago
      Say you buy a some platform to develop on. This will normally come with a toolchain and some libraries. The library was developed on LTS. Now you try and compile that and it doesn't compile. Woe is you. You can't just ask the seller because he just told you to use LTS so good luck figuring out why it doesn't work. OK, so you've spent some time and figured out the problem - it needs this particular version of this obscure tool. OK. No problem, I'll just compile it myself. So after tracking down the source you download it and try to compile it yourself. That tool has it's own dependencies. OK. 10 recursions later (I hope you're keeping all this crap in a local dir and not just blindly overwriting your distro version!) and you compiled the tool. make Another library that needs compiling from source - see above. Repeat for each one and its dependencies. make Nope! Your python is too new! OK, fix the script to you use the correct (older) python. make Nope, GCC defaults have changed! You fix the makefiles. make Success! You've wasted a week of your time you could've spent working on your product.
      - rickycook 10y ago
        containers are pretty cool
      - absorber 10y ago
        Guix / Nix might be a solution to this problem.
  - rubber_duck 10y ago
    I guess it's true that I use mostly OSS stuff when I dev on Linux, I switch to Windows if I need to work with proprietary software, it's usually much less hassle. I disagree about it being easier to upgrade tools, it's exactly what you described for backporting, you need to upgrade entire dependency chain because the repo versions are ancient.
woodandsteel 10y ago
If you're a user then it doesn't matter what distro you use, they're all fine. Not at all true. Lots of people prefer Mint, for instance. I'm one, and one reason is for me the Ubuntu gui is just awful. Or what if you need really high security? One of the main things that scares people off of Linux is the hundreds of distributions. Telling them it doesn't matter which one they pick isn't going to help with this.
- RaleyField 10y ago
  > Lots of people prefer Mint They shouldn't, their security story is atrocious. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-the-linux-mint-hack-is-an-indicator-of-a-larger-problem/ http://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-the-linux-mint-hack-...
  - jszymborski 10y ago
    God damnit... Gonna have to switch back to Debian again -_-. And I was so liking Linux Mint MATE
- slgeorge 10y ago
  I agree that the variety of distributions can be a challenge for new users. One of the beauties of FOSS is that it's all open and consequently easy for moderately technical end-users to 'remix' and create new. One of the challenges is that many of the distributions have minimal differences between them, in my opinion it's better to get to know one of the underlying system families and stay with that family just adding/changing components as you need them. Changing between distributions because of the GUI feels like overkill to me when you can easily install a different desktop environment or window manager. Lots of existing users prefer Mint because they transitioned when a roughly equivalent looking GUI existed on the proprietary OS they were coming from. Everyone prefers familiarity - and that's fair enough. Ubuntu uses a GUI that's aimed to target new users [0] - the Ubuntu GUI is far easier to use for contemporary general computer users [1] - if you're an advanced user then the freedom of choice of Linux is still there in the X thousand packages in the archive! To install a different desktop to the default is pretty simple: install the desktop package and edit the session file, or do it the old-fashioned way and edit a .xinitrc. Any advanced user should be able to do this, in fact it's part of the joy of investigating the options! For example, I use i3. If you care about high-security then by definition you have to use one of the distributions which has a full-time security team. Looking at CVE dates and when updates are published would be revealing. [0] Source, I used to work for Canonical. [1] You may find this surprising (I did) but the vast majority of end-users really don't do much with 'right click' and find virtual desktops utterly and totally confusing, they often don't even know about alt-tab.
windowsquestion 10y ago
I think you're right. By answering the 'Operating System knowledge' question 'I've used Mac OS and Windows.' my 13/25 dropped to just these two: * OpenSuse * Slackware So I just unchecked that question and moved on.
wtbob 10y ago
I'd argue strenuously against Ubuntu: it's basically Debian without the good parts. The choice is to follow RHEL because that's what the mothership forces you into, Ubuntu because that's what the cool kids are into, or Debian because you want to get work done. I want to get work done.
- veddox 10y ago
  > I'd argue strenuously against Ubuntu: it's basically Debian without the good parts. Oh, please don't start that flame war! You can get work done any distro, if you are going to start distro-bashing, at least bring some proper arguments.
- slgeorge 10y ago
  Oh total pish! I'm not going to start that war, but please at least reason from a factual basis. It's a silly war, Ubuntu reaches parts of the Linux (and other OS) that Debian doesn't target. If you think Debian is better you should value Ubuntu for being an on-ramp. Honestly, dividing FOSS (or Linux) users is a bad play - we're all part of the same family, there's more that joins us than divides us.
Eridrus 10y ago
What's with corporate's fascination with RHEL/CentOS? It seems like it always makes users' lives harder since so much software is targeted at Ubuntu first.
- Paul_S 10y ago
  Dunno about normal companies but for corporations it's very simple: they can pay for RHEL. And don't give me that story about paid support. Corporations will not use any external support - they have their own IT dept and they will not let anyone else touch it. That doesn't really bother me, the money is going to a good cause: Redhat. Compared to other insane spending decisions this is actually sensible. It's amazing how many millions of dollars can be bled away by clever companies from those behemoths.

by Paul_S 10y ago

rubber_duck 10y ago

>Reality is if you're a developer you either use RHEL because that's what corporate chose or you use Ubuntu because that is the platform chosen by library devs and unless you use it as well you will waste time sorting out issues. My experience is completely opposite, I like to prototype and test stuff and both distros are shipping heavily outdated libraries and tools, even if I need to compile on some old compiler to deploy why would I miss out on compiler perf/usability improvements, run outdated debugger, etc.? The CI can let me know if I broke anything in the target environment, but I prefer to have my tools up-to-date, and updating on Ubuntu/RHEL is a PITA

Paul_S 10y ago
I'm sorry to say you're in a minority. At least for the past 5 years commercial libraries assume you are running RHEL (usually one major release behind) or Ubuntu (LTS). It used to be Debian before that. If you're not you are going to have a bad time. Of course if you're determined with a lot of work you can recreate the environment by compiling the exact versions of tools and libraries required (if you're lucky the library will specify that, otherwise you'll have to divine it through magic). But when you're doing this for a living you probably have better things to do. It's a lot easier to use the distro that already has the correct deps and just get a newer version of a tool that you want to use if you really think that the one in the distro repo is too stable for you. So much less work.
- krisdol 10y ago
  > If you're not you are going to have a bad time That's quite a jump from your previous sentences and I don't find that true at all. I've had no worse of a time on Debian, arch, or Manjaro for developing when compared to Ubuntu (and its various flavors and derivatives). I never used distro deps because of how horribly out of date, misconfigured, or incompatible they are
  - Paul_S 10y ago
    Say you buy a some platform to develop on. This will normally come with a toolchain and some libraries. The library was developed on LTS. Now you try and compile that and it doesn't compile. Woe is you. You can't just ask the seller because he just told you to use LTS so good luck figuring out why it doesn't work. OK, so you've spent some time and figured out the problem - it needs this particular version of this obscure tool. OK. No problem, I'll just compile it myself. So after tracking down the source you download it and try to compile it yourself. That tool has it's own dependencies. OK. 10 recursions later (I hope you're keeping all this crap in a local dir and not just blindly overwriting your distro version!) and you compiled the tool. make Another library that needs compiling from source - see above. Repeat for each one and its dependencies. make Nope! Your python is too new! OK, fix the script to you use the correct (older) python. make Nope, GCC defaults have changed! You fix the makefiles. make Success! You've wasted a week of your time you could've spent working on your product.
    - rickycook 10y ago
      containers are pretty cool
    - absorber 10y ago
      Guix / Nix might be a solution to this problem.
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  I guess it's true that I use mostly OSS stuff when I dev on Linux, I switch to Windows if I need to work with proprietary software, it's usually much less hassle. I disagree about it being easier to upgrade tools, it's exactly what you described for backporting, you need to upgrade entire dependency chain because the repo versions are ancient.

woodandsteel 10y ago

If you're a user then it doesn't matter what distro you use, they're all fine. Not at all true. Lots of people prefer Mint, for instance. I'm one, and one reason is for me the Ubuntu gui is just awful. Or what if you need really high security? One of the main things that scares people off of Linux is the hundreds of distributions. Telling them it doesn't matter which one they pick isn't going to help with this.

RaleyField 10y ago
> Lots of people prefer Mint They shouldn't, their security story is atrocious. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-the-linux-mint-hack-is-an-indicator-of-a-larger-problem/ http://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-the-linux-mint-hack-...
- jszymborski 10y ago
  God damnit... Gonna have to switch back to Debian again -_-. And I was so liking Linux Mint MATE
slgeorge 10y ago
I agree that the variety of distributions can be a challenge for new users. One of the beauties of FOSS is that it's all open and consequently easy for moderately technical end-users to 'remix' and create new. One of the challenges is that many of the distributions have minimal differences between them, in my opinion it's better to get to know one of the underlying system families and stay with that family just adding/changing components as you need them. Changing between distributions because of the GUI feels like overkill to me when you can easily install a different desktop environment or window manager. Lots of existing users prefer Mint because they transitioned when a roughly equivalent looking GUI existed on the proprietary OS they were coming from. Everyone prefers familiarity - and that's fair enough. Ubuntu uses a GUI that's aimed to target new users [0] - the Ubuntu GUI is far easier to use for contemporary general computer users [1] - if you're an advanced user then the freedom of choice of Linux is still there in the X thousand packages in the archive! To install a different desktop to the default is pretty simple: install the desktop package and edit the session file, or do it the old-fashioned way and edit a .xinitrc. Any advanced user should be able to do this, in fact it's part of the joy of investigating the options! For example, I use i3. If you care about high-security then by definition you have to use one of the distributions which has a full-time security team. Looking at CVE dates and when updates are published would be revealing. [0] Source, I used to work for Canonical. [1] You may find this surprising (I did) but the vast majority of end-users really don't do much with 'right click' and find virtual desktops utterly and totally confusing, they often don't even know about alt-tab.

windowsquestion 10y ago

I think you're right. By answering the 'Operating System knowledge' question 'I've used Mac OS and Windows.' my 13/25 dropped to just these two: * OpenSuse * Slackware So I just unchecked that question and moved on.

wtbob 10y ago

I'd argue strenuously against Ubuntu: it's basically Debian without the good parts. The choice is to follow RHEL because that's what the mothership forces you into, Ubuntu because that's what the cool kids are into, or Debian because you want to get work done. I want to get work done.

veddox 10y ago
> I'd argue strenuously against Ubuntu: it's basically Debian without the good parts. Oh, please don't start that flame war! You can get work done any distro, if you are going to start distro-bashing, at least bring some proper arguments.
slgeorge 10y ago
Oh total pish! I'm not going to start that war, but please at least reason from a factual basis. It's a silly war, Ubuntu reaches parts of the Linux (and other OS) that Debian doesn't target. If you think Debian is better you should value Ubuntu for being an on-ramp. Honestly, dividing FOSS (or Linux) users is a bad play - we're all part of the same family, there's more that joins us than divides us.

Eridrus 10y ago

What's with corporate's fascination with RHEL/CentOS? It seems like it always makes users' lives harder since so much software is targeted at Ubuntu first.

Paul_S 10y ago
Dunno about normal companies but for corporations it's very simple: they can pay for RHEL. And don't give me that story about paid support. Corporations will not use any external support - they have their own IT dept and they will not let anyone else touch it. That doesn't really bother me, the money is going to a good cause: Redhat. Compared to other insane spending decisions this is actually sensible. It's amazing how many millions of dollars can be bled away by clever companies from those behemoths.