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What could your distro learn from another distro? (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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For example, I'm using Debian, and I think we could learn a thing or two from Mint about how to make it "friendlier" for new users. I often see Mint recommended to new users, but rarely Debian, which has a goal to be "the universal operating system".
I also think we could learn website design from.. looks at notes ..everyone else.

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[–] 56 points 2 years ago (9 children)

The one thing I wish every distro would incorporate is the way Gentoo handles config file updates. If there are any changes you get the option of using a very simple side by side merge where you go through all the differences of the old and new configuration where you can decide which one to use going forward.

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    While you will get somewhat the same from apt, I like the Debian way of providing base config support in packages and have local config loaded by include statements.

    As you don’t edit the default config and automatic updates can happen w/o user input and your config will stay safe

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    What really sucks about the Debian way is how it tries to start daemons in the post-install scripts and if that fails (say because the default config tries to use a port already taken) the entire package system shits itself and is unusable until you fix it.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    the entire package system shits itself

    Usually just the one package fails, unless you have other packages that have a dependency on it. I agree that it's annoying though.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Well, it stays in that half installed state and interferes with any other use of the package manager.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I might be a special case as I Mostly use Linux for servers. But I have maybe experienced one such case on the last three years on our 50-odd servers

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I've ran into that with one shitty vendor (I won't/can't give any details beyond this) lately. They 'support' deb-based distributions, but specially their postinst-scripts don't have any kind of testing/verification on the environment they're running in and it seems to find new and exiting ways to break every now and then. I'm experienced (or old) enough with Linux/Debian that I can go around the loopholes they've left behind, but in our company there's not too many others who have sufficient knowledge on how deb-packages work.

    And they even either are dumb or play one when they claim that their packages work as advertised even after I sent them their postinst-scripts from the package, including explanations on why this and that breaks on a system which doesn't have graphical environment installed (among other things).

    But that's absolutely fault on the vendor side, not Debian/Linux itself. But it happens.

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