4 ms·

What would be even better - just a single, unified distro. Imagine if all those man-hours where actually focused on delivering a single working and polished FOS

What would be even better - just a single, unified distro. Imagine if all those man-hours where actually focused on delivering a single working and polished FOSS OS. I know, FOSS is all about choice, yada yada.

tremon 1y ago
Then you get to handle all the same criticisms that are usually lobbed at MS Office: no single user ever needs more than 15% of the functionality, but still receives the additional baggage of the other 85% -- whether in terms of memory footprint, reduced performance or UI clutter. The ability of FOSS to be optimized for specific use cases is one of its biggest strengths, and that has nothing to do with "choice" itself, no matter how much you try to disparage it.
- wolvesechoes 1y ago
  And I thought that free software is about human freedom. Well, enjoy your optimized memory consumption instead.
  - tremon 1y ago
    I'm not sure I understand your position. You seem to be saying that allowing customization is bad for human freedom? Would you mind ELI5'ing that for me?
    - wolvesechoes 1y ago
      See my reply to sibling comment. What is customization, if all you can customize are countless half-baked distros for tinkerers, teared through constant drama, ambitions of snowflake devs trying to make 100 competing solutions obsolete by introducing 101st, and forking, and, as a typical non-dev computer user, you are more and more dependent on adversary Big Techs? If Cyberpunk dystopia ever comes, I am sure we still will be able to choose between GNOME and KDE, and there will be people saying that we are still good, for we have a choice.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    Human freedom includes the freedom to fork. What you're proposing is actually making the Linux kernel and userland closed source and controlled by a company like Microsoft. There is simply no other way to get "one distro"
    - wolvesechoes 1y ago
      > Human freedom includes the freedom to fork. It also includes the freedom to choose any product from the shelf in any store. But let's have a thought experiment - does the society that allows completely free consumption of material goods, but punishes any criticism against the government, economical policy etc. has more freedom than society that have some prohibition on consumption, yet allows free speech and political action? There is more than one facet of freedom, and personally I care more about collective freedom of the people and it would be served better by having few, but more polished FOSS options when it comes down to technology. > What you're proposing is actually making the Linux kernel and userland closed source and controlled by a company like Microsoft. I am not proposing anything. I am saying we would all be better if FOSS contributors focused and consolidated their effort. > There is simply no other way to get "one distro" You are probably right, this is why I am pessimist.
      - const_cast 1y ago
        > I am not proposing anything. I am saying we would all be better if FOSS contributors focused and consolidated their effort. Sure, and then maybe after that we can also solve world hunger and then all hold hands and sing Kumbaya. What you want is worthless, actually, if you don't have a plan on how to get there. We all want more polished software, less CO2 in the air, and more butter on movie theater popcorn. If you want people to not fork, then you're either going to have to invent mind control or force people not to fork. Well option 1 hasn't been invented yet. And option 2 is called closed source software.
- zahlman 1y ago
  Except that a lot of FOSS ends up pulling in huge dependencies to use tiny parts of them, doesn't tree-shake (granted not all languages make this easy), vendors a specific version of something you already have that would work fine, etc.
bitwize 1y ago
That's part of what systemd is supposed to do: make distros irrelevant by providing a uniform software base, after which redundant distros would wither and die, yielding a few main ones which are cross-compatible with one another in terms of how they are configured.
WD-42 1y ago
You realize people do this for fun right? It’s fun to create your own distro (you should try it some time) and it’s fun to play with different ones as well. Nobody wants Linux to be more like windows, and otherwise they’d just use windows.
- wolvesechoes 1y ago
  > You realize people do this for fun right? It’s fun to create your own distro (you should try it some time) and it’s fun to play with different ones as well. I do, and this is why FOSS cannot reach its political goals - it won't ensure user's freedom, for almost everyone involved today would rather chase their own satisfaction.
  - pessimizer 1y ago
    It already insures user freedom, and has for decades. The lecturing is a bad tone. You wouldn't even know this was possible if GNU, Debian, and Linux in general hadn't done it. They shaped your understanding of software.
    - wolvesechoes 1y ago
      I have no issue with GNU, Linux or Debian. The opposite, I am postulating that we would all be better if every one worked on those instead of creating yet another distro or grep clone, even if they provide their creators with satisfaction. As for ensuring - how it is, that in 2025 AD we have more FOSS projects than ever, yet your typical computer user has less freedom and privacy than, let's say, in 2000 AD?
      - cma 1y ago
        I'm glad ripgrep exists and also glad grep itself doesn't try to parse .gitingore
      - burntsushi 1y ago
        Bad take. If you can only ever improve what's there, there is no opportunity to try something new. For grep specifically, you can't much about its defaults, which makes "innovating" on its user experience very difficult.
_ea1k 1y ago
Yep, and who cares about the FOSS OS part? We could combine Macos and Windows too! Think of all the money and time that could be saved by having a single global unified OS team! I know, people have difference preferences, yada yada.
- wolvesechoes 1y ago
  > We could combine Macos and Windows too! It wouldn't produce a FOSS OS, as they are not FOSS. Try more.
pessimizer 1y ago
Some corporate entity will just take it over and Linux will just be another piece of software constantly trying to figure out ways to rob you. Fragmentation, though ugly and inconvenient, works as a defense. systemd, along with all of the other goofy all-encompassing subsystems that were inflicted on Linux over one hot decade from Red Hat, was obviously a ploy to do the above. The jury is still out as to whether it will be successful.
- wolvesechoes 1y ago
  But I believe there is a degree of fragmentation. If the fragmentation would look like this that we have, for example, just Debian, Arch and Fedora, we would still have a choice and escape hatches, and I wouldn't complain, even if it would be less effective than single distro.
account42 1y ago
That would be horrible.

tremon 1y ago

Then you get to handle all the same criticisms that are usually lobbed at MS Office: no single user ever needs more than 15% of the functionality, but still receives the additional baggage of the other 85% -- whether in terms of memory footprint, reduced performance or UI clutter. The ability of FOSS to be optimized for specific use cases is one of its biggest strengths, and that has nothing to do with "choice" itself, no matter how much you try to disparage it.

wolvesechoes 1y ago
And I thought that free software is about human freedom. Well, enjoy your optimized memory consumption instead.
- tremon 1y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your position. You seem to be saying that allowing customization is bad for human freedom? Would you mind ELI5'ing that for me?
  - wolvesechoes 1y ago
    See my reply to sibling comment. What is customization, if all you can customize are countless half-baked distros for tinkerers, teared through constant drama, ambitions of snowflake devs trying to make 100 competing solutions obsolete by introducing 101st, and forking, and, as a typical non-dev computer user, you are more and more dependent on adversary Big Techs? If Cyberpunk dystopia ever comes, I am sure we still will be able to choose between GNOME and KDE, and there will be people saying that we are still good, for we have a choice.
- const_cast 1y ago
  Human freedom includes the freedom to fork. What you're proposing is actually making the Linux kernel and userland closed source and controlled by a company like Microsoft. There is simply no other way to get "one distro"
  - wolvesechoes 1y ago
    > Human freedom includes the freedom to fork. It also includes the freedom to choose any product from the shelf in any store. But let's have a thought experiment - does the society that allows completely free consumption of material goods, but punishes any criticism against the government, economical policy etc. has more freedom than society that have some prohibition on consumption, yet allows free speech and political action? There is more than one facet of freedom, and personally I care more about collective freedom of the people and it would be served better by having few, but more polished FOSS options when it comes down to technology. > What you're proposing is actually making the Linux kernel and userland closed source and controlled by a company like Microsoft. I am not proposing anything. I am saying we would all be better if FOSS contributors focused and consolidated their effort. > There is simply no other way to get "one distro" You are probably right, this is why I am pessimist.
    - const_cast 1y ago
      > I am not proposing anything. I am saying we would all be better if FOSS contributors focused and consolidated their effort. Sure, and then maybe after that we can also solve world hunger and then all hold hands and sing Kumbaya. What you want is worthless, actually, if you don't have a plan on how to get there. We all want more polished software, less CO2 in the air, and more butter on movie theater popcorn. If you want people to not fork, then you're either going to have to invent mind control or force people not to fork. Well option 1 hasn't been invented yet. And option 2 is called closed source software.
zahlman 1y ago
Except that a lot of FOSS ends up pulling in huge dependencies to use tiny parts of them, doesn't tree-shake (granted not all languages make this easy), vendors a specific version of something you already have that would work fine, etc.

bitwize 1y ago

That's part of what systemd is supposed to do: make distros irrelevant by providing a uniform software base, after which redundant distros would wither and die, yielding a few main ones which are cross-compatible with one another in terms of how they are configured.

WD-42 1y ago

You realize people do this for fun right? It’s fun to create your own distro (you should try it some time) and it’s fun to play with different ones as well. Nobody wants Linux to be more like windows, and otherwise they’d just use windows.

wolvesechoes 1y ago
> You realize people do this for fun right? It’s fun to create your own distro (you should try it some time) and it’s fun to play with different ones as well. I do, and this is why FOSS cannot reach its political goals - it won't ensure user's freedom, for almost everyone involved today would rather chase their own satisfaction.
- pessimizer 1y ago
  It already insures user freedom, and has for decades. The lecturing is a bad tone. You wouldn't even know this was possible if GNU, Debian, and Linux in general hadn't done it. They shaped your understanding of software.
  - wolvesechoes 1y ago
    I have no issue with GNU, Linux or Debian. The opposite, I am postulating that we would all be better if every one worked on those instead of creating yet another distro or grep clone, even if they provide their creators with satisfaction. As for ensuring - how it is, that in 2025 AD we have more FOSS projects than ever, yet your typical computer user has less freedom and privacy than, let's say, in 2000 AD?
    - cma 1y ago
      I'm glad ripgrep exists and also glad grep itself doesn't try to parse .gitingore
    - burntsushi 1y ago
      Bad take. If you can only ever improve what's there, there is no opportunity to try something new. For grep specifically, you can't much about its defaults, which makes "innovating" on its user experience very difficult.

_ea1k 1y ago

Yep, and who cares about the FOSS OS part? We could combine Macos and Windows too! Think of all the money and time that could be saved by having a single global unified OS team! I know, people have difference preferences, yada yada.

wolvesechoes 1y ago
> We could combine Macos and Windows too! It wouldn't produce a FOSS OS, as they are not FOSS. Try more.

pessimizer 1y ago

Some corporate entity will just take it over and Linux will just be another piece of software constantly trying to figure out ways to rob you. Fragmentation, though ugly and inconvenient, works as a defense. systemd, along with all of the other goofy all-encompassing subsystems that were inflicted on Linux over one hot decade from Red Hat, was obviously a ploy to do the above. The jury is still out as to whether it will be successful.

wolvesechoes 1y ago
But I believe there is a degree of fragmentation. If the fragmentation would look like this that we have, for example, just Debian, Arch and Fedora, we would still have a choice and escape hatches, and I wouldn't complain, even if it would be less effective than single distro.

account42 1y ago

That would be horrible.