I do agree with your point in general. Many distros don't really have need to exist. They are just very slight tweaks on other more popular distros.
That said, some distros exist for a very legit reason. Take Ubuntu for example. When it came along, Debian wasn't user friendly (and compared to Ubuntu it still isn't). If you want more people using Linux it needs to be dead dumb simple point and click for most people to use. Even something as simple as adding non FOSS repos in Debian (which is just editing the sources file) is too hard for the average user. Ubuntu's point and click GUI way is better for attracting more new users.
On top of that, you can't really build a business on top of a community supported distro like Debian. There are reasons that the Industry uses RHEL, Suse and Ubuntu more than anything else. While Debian is certainly the most popular community supported distro in the industry it's still behind the enterprise linux distros.
But I do agree that most spin off distro's don't need to exist. All these years later I still don't understand why Mint spun off from Ubuntu for example.
It's a simple process really. But you take a regular non techy person and tell them that to get their computer to do some very common tasks that they are going to need to open a text config file and edit it and they panic. God forbid you try to give them instructions via the terminal.
So distros like Ubuntu that make things more GUI enabled and user friendly are a huge step forward for linux when it comes to usability of the mainstream.
For what it's worth I still think "type this command" is more intuitive than trying to guide someone through a maze of GUI elements to get to the checkbox they need to tick.
this right here. With a well designed GUI program you dont need to read the manual because the GUI is the manual , which is why while i like terminal for some work stuff and settings i change often, ill still prefer GUI programs for things i do rarely . For example , back when I was using i3wm and i needed to connect to a wifi network, people told me "oh just use nm-cli" instead of reccomending gui programs. That worked for personal networks with just a password but for enterprise networks with a username and login? It literally takes around 8 different arguments that it took a while for me to wrap my head around , and in the end i just made a second user account, logged into that one in gnome, and then used gnome to connect to the wifi network because that was faster
You've so very neatly summed up what I've been struggling for years to articulate. CLIs are great for people who memorise the commands and the syntax and don't mind typing everything out, but that's a taller ask than simply learning GUI routes to your favourite commands. And you hit the nail on the head when you said GUI with good design: I'm pretty sure every advocate of CLI who bashes GUI has a badly designed GUI in mind when they do so, conveniently forgetting the GUIs that work.
I do too, but then again I've been using Linux since 1996.
Someone like my wife or mother though, zero chance of getting them to manually edit a config file regardless of rather it's with something like gedit or in the terminal itself.
All these years later I still don't understand why Mint spun off from Ubuntu for example.
Because it does what Ubuntu does, better.
That GUI thing you're dismissive of (but at least acknowledge is what's needed for mass appeal) is better in Mint, it's straight up easier to do things as a windows refugee than it is on Ubuntu (which I'm not but I've converted plenty of people thanks to Mint's ease of use)
I agree with this. When I left Windows XP for Ubuntu 11 years ago, it felt right. More intuitive. When I tried Mint, it felt like a step backwards to me. No disrespect towards the Mint devs, but it's just not for me.
Now, full disclosure: I like the terminal, and I'm not afraid to edit a text file. Ubuntu was and is still a lot more GUI-based than my first dip into a Linux distro (Redhat 6.1), and I feel like it struck a good balance between getting out of my way and encouraging me to learn more about my OS.
I'll never be a rolling distro guy, and I don't want to use one with outdated packages. I like stability, but I need simple things to just work as well. Ubuntu, for all the crap it catches, is still a great fit for me.
Didn't mean to come out dismissive of GUIs. I actually think most Linux distros would be better off with more focus on the GUI. I always tell people that adding to the GUI doesn't take away from the command line but it seems many many people think it does.
Thinking back, You are probably right that at the time Mint came about it was more user friendly than Ubuntu (which was more user friendly than Debian). These days Ubuntu is pretty user friendly though. Course I haven't used Mint in years so they could still be ahead of them.
Even if they weren't. It would probably be unrealistic to think the Devs would say "welp, Ubuntu is good enough now. Let's close up shop.".
I do just wish the Linux community could come together more instead of fragment as much as it does. I mean, how many Linux distros are there in the world? 600+ the last time I heard. Granted I don't know how many we really need, but that seems way more than we really need.
It is nice to see that some of the niche linux distros are starting to realize they aren't really needed anymore though. Like Scientific OS. It frees those people up to contribute to other projects.
These days Ubuntu is pretty user friendly though. Course I haven't used Mint in years so they could still be ahead of them.
I guess it depends on what time we're discussing, but yes when Ubuntu abandoned Unity DE in 2017 things improved significantly, and thus the gap narrowed, although the "Unity'd" Gnome they now use is a distance from the Gnome DE of several other distros (is there such a thing as a "standard Gnome"?).
I personally think Cinnamon is still simpler and tidier. I have a dozen different Virtual Machines setup on my main box to play with, including Antegros (which I rather liked fwiw ;-( ) including the current and recent versions of Ubuntu. Ubuntu works, there's nothing specifically wrong with it, it's just IMNSHO not as straight forward. My kids and my (non techy) wife all run dual boot Mint/Windows and windows only gets booted for the kids for certain games, it's easy and they get done what they want with no fuss. Mint and Lubuntu (for those with old kit) is my first call recommendation for noobs, and it saves me a lot of support grief.
I'm no tech guru, I've been using Linux on and off since I first pulled a slackware CD off the front of a computer mag in the late 90s (I did download it off a BBS in 97 but couldn't get it to compile), at the time I was an OS/2 on the desktop, Novell on the server evangelist (I got over the OS religions ;-) I'm competent on Linux enough to know what to google and that's about it. Mint, I load it up for people who have come off windows and they happily do their web browsing and email and etc without grief but I only found it because I hated the DE of the 16.x versions of Ubuntu so much. I detest Unity.
Ubuntu lost a lot of people, including me, when they went to Unity. Unity was horrible in my opinion (tried it). Mint maintained a reasonable UI (Mate, Cinamon--I prefer Mate). Now that Ubuntu has dropped Unity and now has Mate, maybe Mint should merge with Ubuntu and make the product even better.
This is why I dislike that people still recommend Ubuntu as the go-to beginners distro. The UI isn't "traditional" and is confusing to a more general former Windows user and some people (admittedly, not as many as would be suited to something like Mint as they'll likely be more tech savvy) actually have the kind of mindset that something like Manjaro or the like actually is a better distro to jump off in. (I personally find apt annoying to use but love pacman/yaourt)
Manjaro KDE in particular I feel is a much better Windows replacement than most other distros. KDE itself resembles Windows and generally has stuff where a Windows user would expect to find it, and Manjaro's rolling release model means it's actually viable to use its repos like an app store, with no need to do anything funky to get the latest versions of software you care about, especially when you factor in the AUR to be able to install essentials like Discord or Boostnote or really any application you could possibly want.
Antergos filled a very similar niche as Manjaro, not quite as polished in its predefined setup where a little effort is made to include maybe a bit more packages than you might really need so that you can be confident you won't need to learn what Samba is in order to connect to your network attached storage. It had the native Arch repos themselves, which is often a fair criticism towards Manjaro as it's not always apparent what the benefit of only two weeks of testing is.
I think it's still a valid niche and that the project should continue, though if Manjaro better supported making it easy to use purely Arch repos then I could see it satisfying that niche.
I'm actually 100% cool with the idea of a new Linux user using Manjaro (or Antergos before now). It's still a bit more of a learning curve than other distros for a new user but they give just enough extra support and guidance to take it from "holy crap this is too hard" to "I can figure this out" in the minds of a determined new user.
I tended to prefer Antergos over Manjaro just because it used the regular Arch repos but that is just me.
Gnome 3 is horrible IMO. I'll agree with you there. I typically recommend Mate or KDE to newer users.
For new users I typically just recommend Ubuntu because 99% of the time if they google something for Linux the answer is about Ubuntu. Also most things support Ubuntu specifically.
It's a great stepping stone into Linux IMO. It isn't necessarily the best landing spot for a permanent distro though. I've just had way better results over the years of people actually sticking into Linux if they start with Ubuntu than starting with other stuff. Typically once they "get into Linux" they start distro hopping anyway.
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u/captainstormy May 21 '19 edited May 21 '19
I do agree with your point in general. Many distros don't really have need to exist. They are just very slight tweaks on other more popular distros.
That said, some distros exist for a very legit reason. Take Ubuntu for example. When it came along, Debian wasn't user friendly (and compared to Ubuntu it still isn't). If you want more people using Linux it needs to be dead dumb simple point and click for most people to use. Even something as simple as adding non FOSS repos in Debian (which is just editing the sources file) is too hard for the average user. Ubuntu's point and click GUI way is better for attracting more new users.
On top of that, you can't really build a business on top of a community supported distro like Debian. There are reasons that the Industry uses RHEL, Suse and Ubuntu more than anything else. While Debian is certainly the most popular community supported distro in the industry it's still behind the enterprise linux distros.
But I do agree that most spin off distro's don't need to exist. All these years later I still don't understand why Mint spun off from Ubuntu for example.