73

Quite a few posts about selecting a distro to use. Maybe it's time to make that link a little more prominent?

all 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] simple@lemm.ee 74 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Oh boy here we go again

Distrochooser is not a good resource for newbies IMO. There are too many questions, many of which are misleading or hard to understand (NOBODY taking this knows what systemd is)

Many answers are misleasing: "I want a distro that is supported by game publishers" for example implies each distro has its own game compatibility, this is NOT the case.

And when you're finally done it recommends too many distros, many of which are irrelevant, niche, or flat out not recommended anymore (PCLinuxOS?!?!)

When someone asks for a distro, please just run a random number generator to choose between ZorinOS, PopOS, or Linux Mint. If someone is only gaming, maybe include Nobara too.

[-] lily33@lemm.ee 7 points 10 months ago

Exactly! Many of the criteria included aren't all that good for new users, and neither are the suggestions. It's not really a good resource for experienced users either.

[-] agent_flounder@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

One of us could probably put that together pretty quickly lol

But if we did want to build a new distro recommender... Maybe there are like 5 or so questions that would be relevant.

Just off the top of my head some possibilities:

If you're a beginner, Mint is a good choice. One could argue Ubuntu (noobs don't gaf about snap if they even know what it is). I think noobs would want good GUI tools and a very popular, very polished distro. So issues are infrequent but finding answers is easy.

Into gaming? There's a few distros that come up like Nobara. (I've seen Manjaro mentioned but idk).

If you want something that looks kinda like macos there's Endeavor. Does anyone recommend that one these days? I don't usually see it mentioned.

Idk.

You're probably right, an rng that chooses between a few distros might be better lol

[-] WeLoveCastingSpellz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 months ago

You mixed up Endeavor with Elementary OS, Endeavpr is an arch based distro that you can choose several DE's or WM's witj

[-] agent_flounder@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago
[-] WeLoveCastingSpellz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago

mistakes happen :)

[-] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Exactly. If you have to ask this sort of question, the answer is those three. Everything else is just confusing.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] throwawayish@lemmy.ml 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

While I get why distrochooser.de is romanticized, in its current iteration it's simply not very good and anyone that is somewhat well-versed in how different distros operate and how Distrochooser works, will tell you the same. At best, it provides some orientation into what some of the more common distros are. But it fails to answer some fundamental questions in the process; like:

  • What is the relation between a distro and its derivative and (more importantly) how does that matter to a user?
  • How exactly does a distribution's chosen release model affect software and updates? And while we're into that, what's even the difference between the "stable" used when talking about point release distros that opt to freeze packages over longer periods of time vs the "stable" that's brought up in conversations regarding update concerns and how they might break software (I'm honestly not even sure if the one(s) responsible for writing the parts of Distrochooser even know(s) themselves)^[1]^.

There are a lot of other fundamental questions that are involved in the decision for picking a distro that would have made a lot more sense than the ones found on Distrochooser. E.g. Do you use an Nvidia GPU and want this to cause no issues in the process of installation and is this your biggest concern? If yes: then just use Pop!_OS. Otherwise, move on to the other questions etc. I think the fact that a flowchart isn't used for some uses and that ultimately priorities aren't brought up to finalize the decision are the two biggest issues that Distrochooser has in its current iteration.

And we haven't even gone over the many distros that despite having little to no user base are still included in the results, while (more recent) 'staples' like Garuda and Nobara are clearly left out for reasons most likely related to the maintainers not being able to keep up with the Linux landscape. Which, to be fair, is quite hard; so I don't blame them. I, in fact, applaud them for their continued contributions and hope that some day it will become something that we can proudly present to others for their first orientation.

Allow me to end this with a question to OP:

  • Do you feel the same way about excellent websites like DistroWatch.com and DistroSea?^[2]^
    • If yes; Why didn't you make a similar post for either of the two instead?
    • If no; Why not?

  1. Sure, there is some overlap in what they mean and how they're used, but it's a very important distinction; otherwise openSUSE's stable rolling release designation for their Tumbleweed wouldn't make any sense.
  2. If anything, I think these two actually make more sense to be included.
load more comments (9 replies)
[-] moreeni@lemm.ee 10 points 10 months ago

In addition, to what everyone has already said, Distrochooser is just bad. It will often pull the stupid card, like this one:

Screenshot of distrochooser website, saying that being fine with telemetry contradicts your preference for running applications containerised

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Let's not. It's not a good tool.

[-] onlinepersona@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago
[-] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago

At first I was with this but the first set of questions is so stupid that I can't see that being a good idea.

Somebody just code up a bot that picks a random mainstream distro everytime somebody asks "what distro should I use?"

[-] NotATurtle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 10 months ago

It recommends obviously wrong choices like Tails

[-] ursakhiin@beehaw.org 5 points 10 months ago

I just took it favoring a daily driver for gaming and every distro it gave had either didn't work, isn't optimized for, or requires additional config for gaming.

[-] onlinepersona@programming.dev 2 points 10 months ago

wat? got a screenshot or a link to the result?

[-] Lucien@hexbear.net 3 points 10 months ago

I like distro chooser, but the analysis seems off. It always recommends some mainstream distro that I end up hating after extended use. I've finally found one I like, but it was through brute force, not from some list somewhere or from asking in forums.

[-] WeLoveCastingSpellz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 months ago

Distro chooser is bad, so nah

[-] Secret300@sh.itjust.works 0 points 10 months ago

Nah, I think just recommending the most popular distro is usually best because when new users do run into issues there are years of forums that has probably answered their question before and is just one search away

load more comments (3 replies)
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
73 points (80.2% liked)

Linux

48182 readers
1665 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS