5 ms·

I never understand why people spend ages trying out fifty different distros if they could get just what they want if they spent half that time actually installi

I never understand why people spend ages trying out fifty different distros if they could get just what they want if they spent half that time actually installing/adapting one distribution with a reasonably broad package base. Or, put differently: Given the relatively high dimension of preference space (desktop environment, window manager, file manager, icon set, web browser, editor…), it appears strange to me to assume that more than just a few users will be satisfied with the default DE, WM, file manager etc. installed by a distro. Just five different DEs, five different WMs and five different file browsers already give 125 possible choices. How, then, is it sensible to judge a distribution by its default programmes, especially since these can often be easily swapped out against others. Surely, the main points in considering which distribution to choose should be the low-level ingredients (package manager, for example) and update policies rather than the default icon theme.

sn0v 14y ago
While that ought to be the case, a lot of novice-intermediate level users often fail to take these points into consideration simply because they are unaware of the fact that the default DE+WM etc can be easily swapped out. Often, many people tend to give more weightage to higher visibility points like the DE+WM etc, rather than package manager and release schedules.
- ShawnBird 14y ago
  I ran Ubuntu with cinnamon for a little over a year but finally moved over to Mint. There is just a lot more support and stability for using the default DE+WM and a lot of programs can have problems outside of the expected.
mirkules 14y ago
"I never understand why people spend ages trying out fifty different distros if they could get just what they want if they spent half that time actually installing/adapting one distribution with a reasonably broad package base." Because if you have to do it more than once, or, say onto 100 desktops in a work environment, the time spent searching for a distro will pay off. Besides that, some people want stuff to work the first time - and every subsequent time - without having to worry "oh I need to install this on another computer, but I can't remember all the steps I took" in order to get to real actual work.
- claudius 14y ago
  If you just want the same programs on your laptop and desktop, use something like dpkg --get-selections and dpkg --set-selections (for APT, I’m sure RPMland has an analogue). If you also want the same configuration, copy over your homedir or the dotfiles therein and be happy. Futhermore, testing n distros is not really my definition of ‘work the first time’, nor can you expect that what worked a year ago still works two releases later. Your point about 100 desktops in a work environment also strikes me as slightly odd, given that I would consider using Puppet, Chef or possibly NFS mounts (depending on the exact setup) rather than configuring/installing 100 desktops individually.
  - mirkules 14y ago
    Point taken about Puppet/Chef. As far as same programs, I would still have to load them the first time and know what to look for. So in addition to stuff I need for work (e.g. LAMP stack), I would have to Google around (more than once) for stuff that I know comes with other distros (example of slight annoyance: vim vs. vim-tiny: thanks, Ubuntu). It's just a little bit less work. But the beauty of Linux is that we can make these choices willfully :)
- nsmartt 14y ago
  This is the kind of thing that should be automated anyway. Write a script to do everything you're doing in the process of setting up your system, and you won't ever have to do it by hand again.
- BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
  Certainly anyone managing 100 corporate desktops will be deploying a customized image to those machines, rather than using a distro's default installer on each one. In which case, it still doesn't matter what the OS defaults are.
gcb0 14y ago
well, you just described why there are even distros to begin with. otherwise everyone would spend 'half the time' reading the LSF guide and having the perfect distro.
- claudius 14y ago
  Distros, at least in my opinion, are not about choosing default settings, but about making all the different components (Kernel, whatever else you like) work together nicely and distributing them together (hence the name Distribution). It therefore makes sense to classify a distribution by its mean of distribution (duh!), i.e. the package manager and by the set of things it distributes (the packages). You may also note that I did not say that everyone is capable of collecting software from ~50 different upstreams and then compiling said software in half the time it takes to install five distributions – but installing the packages of one’s choice from the archive of the distribution is probably roughly as easy as installing the distribution in the first place. It might well be that I misunderstood something you said, so please feel free to correct me.
  - gcb0 14y ago
    you got it wrong and right at the same time. Right when you say the distro must centralize the work of making the several pieces work. Wrong when you think those pieces are only "kernel, whatever else you like" and think that "whatever else i'd like" does not include the desktop. The fact is that linux on the desktop barely works without some work still, and that's by using the defaults! without using the defaults it's even harder. heck i spent hours trying to get sound to work on a eeepc with ubuntu 12.10 just because the distro decided to put pulse audio on top of alsa and when i connected the headset it muted the speakers, but when i disconnected it it never moved the sound to the speakers again (turned out a gnome component was doing that, and i didn't have that running) i could point you to several of the pages i've create on http://www.linlap.com/ http://www.linlap.com/ most mention more than one solution based on the desktop environment, same distro.
    - claudius 14y ago
regularfry 14y ago
Defaults matter because they're sat in a juicy little feedback loop: more people have them installed, so they get more eyeballs and bug-effort, so they get better and have better support, so more people use them. At least, in theory.
- dmix 14y ago
  Indeed, there's a delicate balance between customization and fragmentation that can't be ignored.
- claudius 14y ago
  In practice, developers are usually ‘power users’ that adapt the system to their liking, i.e. don’t use the defaults?
  - regularfry 14y ago
    Everyone might customise something. Very few people customise everything.
bluedino 14y ago
A lot of my Linux use is similar to sitting in a garage and taking apart an old car. It's fun to install different distributions and play around with them, and then blow it away and start all over. With a fast internet connection and a handful of USB drives you can try all the major distributions in one afternoon.
- purplelobster 14y ago
  I wish I could find it fun to install linux distro's, then I'd find pretty much anything in life entertaining!
  - claudius 14y ago
    It’s fun the first few times (or if the alternative is revising for ‘Symmetries, Fields and Particles’ exams…).
stiff 14y ago
I think people basically carry over their Windows habits, treat each distro as a completely separate OS offering a certain look & feel and app selection.
aethertap 14y ago
I like that someone else spent the time trying to figure it out so that I could read about his experiences, then spend only 10 minutes figuring it out. I don't know if that was the purpose at the outset (probably not) but I still find it highly worthwhile. I am a Linux user that likes to stick with distro defaults for everything that isn't part of my core tool set because it seems like my system is less prone to breaking when updates happen, and because I get more updates that way. It's nice to see others' reviews of those distros so that I can make a better decision without doing all of the legwork, so I say kudos to this guy for doing it. I might try Fuduntu now based on his review, and I wouldn't have bothered otherwise.
- pekk 14y ago
  It seems like my system is more prone to breaking when I use obscure distros. I might think a distro's choices were totally awesome but if not many other people are using it and/or the development is not that active, and I expect it to 'just work,' then I'm going to have a bad time.
  - aethertap 14y ago
    Yeah, that's a good point as well. These days, I tend to stick with stuff that's based on apt on the theory that it hopefully requires less effort on the part of the maintainers to keep it up to date because they can piggyback on the larger community. Not foolproof, but good enough for me. I got tired of the unfriendly (to me) UI changes in straight Ubuntu, so I switched to Lubuntu. So far it's been decent enough. I've been thinking about giving slackware another round though, as I haven't used them for about 10 years and have mostly positive memories of the experience. Maybe on an experimental box.
rpgmaker 14y ago
Point taken: you're a 1337 user, but seriously? If you can't see why people want a distro to be _usable_ out of the box then maybe you haven't given much thought to the whole thing.
- claudius 14y ago
  Y34h, t0t4lly 1337 – I can see why people want a distro to be usable out of the box. I could even see why people want a distro to have their exact preferences as defaults, had you made that point. I cannot see why people prefer opening fifty boxes over properly unpacking one.

sn0v 14y ago

While that ought to be the case, a lot of novice-intermediate level users often fail to take these points into consideration simply because they are unaware of the fact that the default DE+WM etc can be easily swapped out. Often, many people tend to give more weightage to higher visibility points like the DE+WM etc, rather than package manager and release schedules.

ShawnBird 14y ago
I ran Ubuntu with cinnamon for a little over a year but finally moved over to Mint. There is just a lot more support and stability for using the default DE+WM and a lot of programs can have problems outside of the expected.

mirkules 14y ago

"I never understand why people spend ages trying out fifty different distros if they could get just what they want if they spent half that time actually installing/adapting one distribution with a reasonably broad package base." Because if you have to do it more than once, or, say onto 100 desktops in a work environment, the time spent searching for a distro will pay off. Besides that, some people want stuff to work the first time - and every subsequent time - without having to worry "oh I need to install this on another computer, but I can't remember all the steps I took" in order to get to real actual work.

claudius 14y ago
If you just want the same programs on your laptop and desktop, use something like dpkg --get-selections and dpkg --set-selections (for APT, I’m sure RPMland has an analogue). If you also want the same configuration, copy over your homedir or the dotfiles therein and be happy. Futhermore, testing n distros is not really my definition of ‘work the first time’, nor can you expect that what worked a year ago still works two releases later. Your point about 100 desktops in a work environment also strikes me as slightly odd, given that I would consider using Puppet, Chef or possibly NFS mounts (depending on the exact setup) rather than configuring/installing 100 desktops individually.
- mirkules 14y ago
  Point taken about Puppet/Chef. As far as same programs, I would still have to load them the first time and know what to look for. So in addition to stuff I need for work (e.g. LAMP stack), I would have to Google around (more than once) for stuff that I know comes with other distros (example of slight annoyance: vim vs. vim-tiny: thanks, Ubuntu). It's just a little bit less work. But the beauty of Linux is that we can make these choices willfully :)
nsmartt 14y ago
This is the kind of thing that should be automated anyway. Write a script to do everything you're doing in the process of setting up your system, and you won't ever have to do it by hand again.
BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
Certainly anyone managing 100 corporate desktops will be deploying a customized image to those machines, rather than using a distro's default installer on each one. In which case, it still doesn't matter what the OS defaults are.

gcb0 14y ago

well, you just described why there are even distros to begin with. otherwise everyone would spend 'half the time' reading the LSF guide and having the perfect distro.

claudius 14y ago
Distros, at least in my opinion, are not about choosing default settings, but about making all the different components (Kernel, whatever else you like) work together nicely and distributing them together (hence the name Distribution). It therefore makes sense to classify a distribution by its mean of distribution (duh!), i.e. the package manager and by the set of things it distributes (the packages). You may also note that I did not say that everyone is capable of collecting software from ~50 different upstreams and then compiling said software in half the time it takes to install five distributions – but installing the packages of one’s choice from the archive of the distribution is probably roughly as easy as installing the distribution in the first place. It might well be that I misunderstood something you said, so please feel free to correct me.
- gcb0 14y ago
  you got it wrong and right at the same time. Right when you say the distro must centralize the work of making the several pieces work. Wrong when you think those pieces are only "kernel, whatever else you like" and think that "whatever else i'd like" does not include the desktop. The fact is that linux on the desktop barely works without some work still, and that's by using the defaults! without using the defaults it's even harder. heck i spent hours trying to get sound to work on a eeepc with ubuntu 12.10 just because the distro decided to put pulse audio on top of alsa and when i connected the headset it muted the speakers, but when i disconnected it it never moved the sound to the speakers again (turned out a gnome component was doing that, and i didn't have that running) i could point you to several of the pages i've create on http://www.linlap.com/ http://www.linlap.com/ most mention more than one solution based on the desktop environment, same distro.
  - claudius 14y ago

regularfry 14y ago

Defaults matter because they're sat in a juicy little feedback loop: more people have them installed, so they get more eyeballs and bug-effort, so they get better and have better support, so more people use them. At least, in theory.

dmix 14y ago
Indeed, there's a delicate balance between customization and fragmentation that can't be ignored.
claudius 14y ago
In practice, developers are usually ‘power users’ that adapt the system to their liking, i.e. don’t use the defaults?
- regularfry 14y ago
  Everyone might customise something. Very few people customise everything.

bluedino 14y ago

A lot of my Linux use is similar to sitting in a garage and taking apart an old car. It's fun to install different distributions and play around with them, and then blow it away and start all over. With a fast internet connection and a handful of USB drives you can try all the major distributions in one afternoon.

purplelobster 14y ago
I wish I could find it fun to install linux distro's, then I'd find pretty much anything in life entertaining!
- claudius 14y ago
  It’s fun the first few times (or if the alternative is revising for ‘Symmetries, Fields and Particles’ exams…).

stiff 14y ago

I think people basically carry over their Windows habits, treat each distro as a completely separate OS offering a certain look & feel and app selection.

aethertap 14y ago

I like that someone else spent the time trying to figure it out so that I could read about his experiences, then spend only 10 minutes figuring it out. I don't know if that was the purpose at the outset (probably not) but I still find it highly worthwhile. I am a Linux user that likes to stick with distro defaults for everything that isn't part of my core tool set because it seems like my system is less prone to breaking when updates happen, and because I get more updates that way. It's nice to see others' reviews of those distros so that I can make a better decision without doing all of the legwork, so I say kudos to this guy for doing it. I might try Fuduntu now based on his review, and I wouldn't have bothered otherwise.

pekk 14y ago
It seems like my system is more prone to breaking when I use obscure distros. I might think a distro's choices were totally awesome but if not many other people are using it and/or the development is not that active, and I expect it to 'just work,' then I'm going to have a bad time.
- aethertap 14y ago
  Yeah, that's a good point as well. These days, I tend to stick with stuff that's based on apt on the theory that it hopefully requires less effort on the part of the maintainers to keep it up to date because they can piggyback on the larger community. Not foolproof, but good enough for me. I got tired of the unfriendly (to me) UI changes in straight Ubuntu, so I switched to Lubuntu. So far it's been decent enough. I've been thinking about giving slackware another round though, as I haven't used them for about 10 years and have mostly positive memories of the experience. Maybe on an experimental box.

rpgmaker 14y ago

Point taken: you're a 1337 user, but seriously? If you can't see why people want a distro to be _usable_ out of the box then maybe you haven't given much thought to the whole thing.

claudius 14y ago
Y34h, t0t4lly 1337 – I can see why people want a distro to be usable out of the box. I could even see why people want a distro to have their exact preferences as defaults, had you made that point. I cannot see why people prefer opening fifty boxes over properly unpacking one.