14 ms·

The most frustrating part of Linux for me is all the damn mental CPU cycle I have to spend keeping up with the naming and positioning of the various distros. Of

• gameswithgo 6y ago
  yeah for people just wanting to do work and not have the os be the hobby it is trying at times.
• tobinfricke 6y ago
  Just use Ubuntu
  • nullsense 6y ago
    Then what about the snap drama?
    • monsieurgaufre 6y ago
      My snap folder only has chromium in it. Like probably most users who don't (and shouldn't) care about snaps. The snap drama is a ideological purity contest by people who should know better (aka use something else than Ubuntu if that pisses them off that much).
    • mceachen 6y ago
      Don't use snap.
    • xet7 6y ago
      Snap drama is just writing comments about it without action. It's not like OSS community would have rushed to provide alternative packages for Flatpak, AppImage, deb etc. Snap automatic updates are still the fastest way to update servers with latest security etc updates, keeping servers secure. That's the reason usage of Snap packages is increasing. With Docker, recent drama was Docker Hub rate limits, so I had to move Docker base images from Docker Hub to Quay.io, so that Docker images could be built successfully.
• hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  You seem to be massively overcomplicating things. If you don't want to worry about the "distro drama", then don't. Just use one of the major distros (e.g. Debian or Ubuntu) and move on.
  • rualca 6y ago
    > If you don't want to worry about the "distro drama", then don't. Just use one of the major distros (e.g. Debian or Ubuntu) and move on. +1 on Debian. It's as drama-free as it gets. I mean, the distro is criticized for being too boring and too stable and too rock-solid and too unsurprising. Those descriptions are also used to describe power lines and sewer lines, i.e., reliable infrastructure.
    • doublepg23 6y ago
      Did you miss the systemd drama? There was a new distro created out of it...
      • deadbunny 6y ago
        And I'm sure the 3 people using it really like it.
        • qz2 6y ago
          No point in being popular and unhappy :)
      • kbenson 6y ago
        Systemd in general makes me sad. It feels like the complete rewrite that happens only for the people doing to finally learn all the project needs at the end, and immediately need another rewrite, but nobody has the stomach for it now. Don't get me wrong, I think the authors are and we're probably the best authorities on what is and was needed in an init system, but the problem space was so poorly documented and understood because of all the crazy custom she'll init scripts people were using that they just kept having to tack on weird directives in piecemeal ways, until were left with what we have now. What the world needs is for the systemd authors to take all that knowledge an apply it to a new init system in a sane way, but nobody had the will to go through that again, most likely especially them.
• dleslie 6y ago
  fwiw I am a fellow Pinebook Pro user who likes Manjaro. I use it daily for Emacs and C programming. Ignore the drama and the dramatists. The software works well, and better than the alternatives on that hardware.
• acomjean 6y ago
  Ars technica has a guide on where to go after CentOS : https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/centos-linux-is-gone-but-its-refugees-have-alternatives/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/centos-linux-is-gone...
  • doublepg23 6y ago
    The author of this article is on an excellent podcast called 2.5 Admins [0], highly recommended. [0] https://2.5admins.com/ https://2.5admins.com/
• AntiImperialist 6y ago
  No, we don't always reach for Windows and macOS. Ubuntu LTS has served us well for decades. If you don't want drama, use software maintained by people who have a life and don't have time or energy for drama.
  • lagolinguini 6y ago
    I think the point was that CentOS was one of those distros maintained by people who had a life... Maybe Cannonical won't be around in the future either.
    • Spooky23 6y ago
      CentOS is just a red hat clone. There are a few iirc.
      • yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
        Fewer than there used to be, especially if you don't want to pay; ex. Scientific Linux folded into CentOS.
• croh 6y ago
  Copying my comment from other post - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25395187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25395187 > Recently I moved to Apple Macbook Pro 2019 (FYI before that I was using Linux Mint for years without any drama). But after using this very expensive MBP, I am not happy at all. Hardware is the best in class while keyboard is the worst in the class. But my biggest complain is keyboard layout. It is not ergonomic at all. In windows/linux, WINDOW key manages window manager while CTRL, ALT can be used to manage applications. On internet, many places it is mentinoed that, use apple COMMAND key as control key and OPTION key as alt key. Ok thats fine. But this behaviour is not consistent at all across apps. Many apps use CTRL key to control application additional to COMMAND key(e.g. in chrome/vscode, toggling tabs can be done using CTRL+TAB, not COMMAND+TAB). And this CTRL key is only one side of spacebar, very very unergonomic. Additionaly if you are a touch typer powered with mechanical keyboard, you can press CTRL key on windows layout using wrist. This is not possible on Mac as its first left key is FN. After using MBP for couple of weeks, my hand literally hurt like mentioned in video. I dont think I can operate MBP for hours without looking at keyboard. In Windows you can do everything with mouse only. In Linux you can do everything with keyboard only. In mac, you need both and your hand hurts.
  • Talanes 6y ago
    >Additionaly if you are a touch typer powered with mechanical keyboard, you can press CTRL key on windows layout using wrist You can do that? If I get my wrist anywhere near high enough to hit a key, my fingers are about two imaginary rows above the function keys.
    • croh 6y ago
      I can. I did little bit practice though initially. It saves pinky from strain greatly.
• iso1631 6y ago
  I've used Ubuntu for 12 years, Debian for 9 years before that. Debian is still going fine. What drama?
  • Spooky23 6y ago
    Distros are always full of drama. The stakes are low so the nonsense is high. It’s easy to get sucked in.
    • qz2 6y ago
      Never seen any drama in the freebsd camp. It’s utterly boring. Which is how I like it.
      • fortran77 6y ago
        Huh!? There was some amazing drama here, during the first ports of the early 90s. https://www.unixmen.com/freebsd-vs-openbsd/ https://www.unixmen.com/freebsd-vs-openbsd/ and then the lawsuits: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/explaining-bsd/why-is-bsd-not-better-known.html https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/explain... https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-part-2-bsdi-and-usl-lawsuits/ https://klarasystems.com/articles/history-of-freebsd-part-2-...
        • rnd0 6y ago
          Approximately 30 years ago. Mandatory must-care-about drama since then? No, not really.
          • mnd999 6y ago
            There’s always some drama. Maybe not of the must-care-about but there’s always something. The ASLR patch comes to mind, as does the KSE / libthr thing. Equally there have been some very grown up moments. The Matt Dillon / DragonflyBSD fork comes to mind.
      • 6y ago
• autocorr 6y ago
  That's an interesting perspective, I've found the opposite. I distro shopped a lot around ~2006, settled on Ubuntu then moved to Debian for project philosophy reasons. It's great because I haven't had to think about "how do I install this again?". Same web page, same link to netinstall image, same prompts to install. It's fun to try other things like NixOS and GuixSD, but also have the warm blanket of "just put Debian on it" to fall back to.
• Macha 6y ago
  I don't think Mac OS and Windows are freer from long term maintenence, whether it's Apple doing stuff like phasing out APIs for OpenGL, migrating to M1, Gatekeeper requirements and noose-tightening, or whatever they'll expect you to keep up with next year. Likewise on the Windows side, the SKUs vary from release to release, group policies come and go, and generally they've increased their push into seeing Windows as a way to promote their other services and don't really care what you want from it.
• Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  > Downvote away, but I really do want to love Linux. This would be the problem; you treat Linux as a platform that one is supposed to love or not love as a hole. Linux is not a platform; it s a component shared between a great many different platforms that are often quite far apart from one another. These platforms often also share other things, or not, and don't Windows and FreeBSD also share several components? I've noticed a common belief that completely unrelated, independently started and operated platforms have an obligation to coöperate because they share a single component, which most of them also heavily patch and modify.
• detaro 6y ago
  > and I don’t want to spend time planning a long term OS strategy. [...] > That’s why folks reach for Mac OS ... A conservative Linux distro choice is way more stable than Mac OS is in regards to "sudden" changes you need to deal with. And on the time scales we worry about CentOS or Debian, Windows has its pitfalls too. In all cases, if you need a long-term strategy, it's always going to involve some level of preparedness to handle a change. If you want to keep up with all the distros and their individual going-ons, that's your choice. You can use Linux just fine without doing so.
  • detaro 6y ago
    EDIT-that's-too-late-for-an-edit: To make the Windows example specific, there's a lot of companies that built their products on Windows 7 Embedded that would love to be on CentOS this week instead.
• symlinkk 6y ago
  Are you like this with cars too? “Gosh there’s just so many brands and models to choose from, I wish there was just one choice so I didn’t have to think or make a decision”
  • colejohnson66 6y ago
    With cars, they all do one thing good: drive. The other features are just that: features. With Windows vs macOS vs Linux, you’re dealing with software incompatibility and having to find replacements.
    • FlyMoreRockets 6y ago
      Oh, like parts incompatabilities between say Ford vs BMW vs Toyota when having to find replacements?
      • stan_rogers 6y ago
        No, more along the lines of street and highway incompatibilities. "Software equivalents" mostly aren't.
        • FlyMoreRockets 6y ago
          Okay, why is it like street and highway incompatabilities? Don't they all drive on the same internet superhighway?
• jancsika 6y ago
  > The first reply I got was something about the drama with some dude named Phil. At least for Windows, can't you just quickly compare the ethical universes? I'm assuming that Phil didn't embrace-extend-extinguish other distros, Phil didn't secretly change Skype to break the encryption for LE, and Phil didn't upgrade the distro to do constant, inescapable telemetry and update arbitrarily downloading Gigs of data such that it interrupted a user's live broadcast. In other words, if your decision is between Phil's distro and Windows, Phil's distro wins so it's the end of the story. And if the HN trolls you're responding to aren't claiming a 1:1 feature correspondence with "ethical" distro vs. Manjaro, who cares?
  • a1369209993 6y ago
    > In other words, if your decision is between Phil's distro and Windows, Phil's distro wins so it's the end of the story. As the saying goes, Linux is like democracy: it's the second worst (widely-used) system ever, because all of the others are tied for first.
• Yetanfou 6y ago
  > Downvote away, but I really do want to love Linux. I just don’t want it to be so hard to love. Folks don't go for proprietary systems like Windows and MacOS because of theatrics around distributions, they just choose one of those stolid long-time favourites like Debian, Ubuntu or Mint and ignore the squabbling. Those who want to get a more hands-on experience might go for Arch, Slackware or even LFS.
• indymike 6y ago
  I've been using Debian or a Debian derivative for over 15 years. At first, I wondered if it was a good choice because RedHat and SuSE were the "professional" distos. Debian was different and when Ubuntu came out, it was like Debian, but with some useful closed-source stuff. There's been drama, but it's not nearly so bad as some of the evolution that MacOS and Windows users have had to deal with. The security improvements on MacOS have really made doing simple things like a Zoom conference painful while Windows userspace is devolving to something that reminds me of Linux in 2005 or so where every window had it's own UI style and the userspace was a mess of competing ideas and ecosystems. Meanwhile over on Debian/Ubuntu/PopOS/Plasma, I can finally run the latest games (thank you Steam & Proton!), edit video with pro grade tools (thank you DaVinci) and I still have a great coding environment... Oh, and thanks to cloud based office software, that's no longer an issue.
  • irateswami 6y ago
    Ubuntu is seriously an amazing achievement and while I've used plenty of distros, nothing compares in terms of getting work done. I'm not an OS engineer and have no desire to get granular with my OS, I just want to be able to load it up and do stuff. The linux community, however, is loaded with OS-enthusiasts who don't understand the difference between using a tool and fetishizing it.
    • randomsearch 6y ago
      Recently I’ve been using Linux more, as I used to. Have to say Ubuntu remains the most polished and useful of the distro’s overall. Just works most of the time.
      • ohazi 6y ago
        Maybe, but Ubuntu does have drama like the Amazon search link thing and now uncontrollable auto-updating snap packages, which arguably seem like an absolutely terrible idea for any sort of server. For almost everything, Debian works just as well as Ubuntu, but it's more boring and has less drama.
• fartcannon 6y ago
  Your complaints would make a great infomercial setup. "Are you tired of your Linux distro being bought out and crushed by IBM exactly one time in history?" Cut to a big dopey confused person shrugging. "Well then try Apple!" Dopey person smiles. Star wipe.
  • Spivak 6y ago
    I mean the writing seems to be on the wall that someone is going to buy Canonical and crush Ubuntu at some point in the medium-term.
    • lightbulbjim 6y ago
      My bet is Microsoft. One day we will have Windows-native snaps. Hmm...
      • FlyMoreRockets 6y ago
        Wow. That sounds surprisingly probable, now that you bring it up. Ubuntu is wildly popular, but requires a lot of money. Microsoft has a lot of money and seems to be trending toward open source.
      • ThrowawayR2 6y ago
        Microsoft turned down an offer to bid on Red Hat, whose enterprise focus is a much better fit for them, before the sale to IBM so there's no reason to believe they would bid for Canonical. https://www.businessinsider.com/red-hat-deal-talks-with-amazon-microsoft-google-before-34-billion-ibm-acquisition-2018-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/red-hat-deal-talks-with-amaz...
        • pjmlp 6y ago
          Other than Ubuntu being the favoured WSL distro.
    • rangoon626 6y ago
      The great consolidations of linxuses of the 2020s. Back to BSDs?
• michaelmrose 6y ago
  You don't have to evaluate every possible option before picking one any more than you have to read about every make and model of car or laptop but you probably ought to read about the one that you pick and manjaro is run by skeevy unprofessional people.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• 29athrowaway 6y ago
  Minor distros fit specific use-cases better but are more likely to disappear, major distros are here to stay. That's the tradeoff. But in the the Microsoft world, you at some point had Windows Mobile and Windows phone, and developing apps for those is the true meaning of being alone.