this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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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.

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

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What if we put together a table like https://github.com/basings/selfhosted-music-overview or https://github.com/meichthys/foss_photo_libraries ?

If one starts, I bet we can create an awesome table.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's the biggest problem.

  1. Determine which festures are relevant to a user
  2. Actualy differences between distributions

A difference could be ufw and firewalld but is that important?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's why distrochooser is a questionnaire 🤷

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But the questions aren't good enough as you can see from the responses here

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"systemd question shouldn't be there"

skip it

"NVIDIA GPU question is missing"

contribute https://github.com/distrochooser/distrochooser

"too many options"

I want to say "read it", but IMO this is presentation, because pros and cons are clearly listed, but maybe it looks like a lot of text. Maybe people need some kind of visual like a podium and a drum roll. 🥁 "aaaand your top suggestions arreeee"...

Also, people aren't suggesting alternatives except: "make a bot that randomly picks a popular distro". Is that really how we want to treat new users? "Please hold, in the meantime, here's an automated response." Do you follow advice given in automated responses when you're holding on a line?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The random choice isn't really a joke. It doesn't matter too much which distro you pick. Any distro of the big ones will suit your needs.

There will be cases where one or the other will not fulfill your needs out of the box

The systemd question keeps the mantra alive that there is something wrong with systemd which isn't. This has to die sooner rather than later.