Zorin OS 17 Has Arrived
Zorin OS 17 Has Arrived
Since the release of our last major version in August 2021, Zorin OS 16 has garnered over 6.2 million downloads. Ever since, we’ve been …
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We need fewer distros and more focus on things that matter.
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Damn, those silly volunteers are doing the wrong things in their free time!
You're right. I will start a new distro that focuses on the the things that matter.
Man, I laughed so hard at this one
I think a unified package manager/app store model that is vetted by all contributing distros would go a long way. SteamOS/Steam deck is bringing gamers to linux and that's great. But it would be easier to bring on a lot more desktop users if there was an app store that every distro could visit. Flatpak is close, snaps however I think are too polarizing.
You're 100% right that this is a danger of attempting to consolidate
I use fedora silverblue. I'd like to switch to suse microos but the difference is so small that it's probably not worth it to switch. (Just a guesstimate, silverblue has some goodies afterall with the whole image centric os)
Probably, it's almost the same for vanillaos. Because everything is within distrobox and flatpak, I do not work with the native package manager anymore (almost, there are exceptions because of the DE).
If I would switch to microos, I, as an enduser, wouldn't notice too much a real difference.
People should stop making new distros for what should be a post install script. But, things are fucking complicated and that's why we need the forks and new distros.
MicroOS or Aeon is different, it uses btrfs file system for rollbacks, it is not same, as Silverblue. It is less unmutable, but more flexible, if you compare. And it do not proposes Flatpaks usage, as any package installed could be rolled back, you can rollback not to 2 previous states, but many states, days and weeks back, even restart is not required for simple package rollback. I also use Silverblue and I am not interested in Aeon at all, I like to keep things simple.
Thx for the elaboration. That's what I roughly meant with "image centric os".
Opensuse aeon encourages you to use flatpak. The first thing it does right after installation is to install apps from flathub, including firefox (unlike silverblue).
An example from the doc
For this reason, All Applications, Browsers, Codecs needed for specific apps, etc are provided by FlatPaks from FlatHub.
Especially the following
To reiterate: EVERYTHING should be done via Flatpaks or be installed in a Distrobox if a package is not available as a flatpak. Using transactional-update is strictly what you need for your host operating system to work (exotic drivers, specialized vpn services).
Usually, you do not rollback, you do not go back to an older system. On both systems, you use distrobox and flatpak. I don't see much of a difference as an end user.
Sorry than, you are correct. I just quickly looked and by default you install only 1 package and reboot, or use continue, or better avoid such practice at all and keep system minimal. I guess for novice end user it is mostly same, but still less user-friendly for advanced user? That is why I decided to go with Silverblue after Workstation, but not completely new way with Aeon, huh..
Fedora has images which you can create yourself as an enduser which means a corporation with thousands of computers can create their own image. They don't have to create a new distro. That's not possible with suse but I don't know if that's so important since I do not administer such things. I as an enduser do not care about the underlying system, I don't tinker with it, I rarely touch it. That's the case for both distros. I may install a vpn or so.
If you want to tinker with your system, neither fedora nor suse are good for that, using arch is the way to go.
Why is fedora better for advanced users?
Not better, but more simple.
And why?
I did not used Aeon, but description how procedural updates work while still does not seems complicated, but layering in fedora seems way easier? Or not? Aeon does not work with snapper (btrfs rollback tool), which is kinda complicated thing, which I used in Fedora Workstation. Maybe actually it is easy, so IDK Why you ask, maybe it would be better to try Aeon and see it yourself?
I just asked because you stated that it's better for advanced users and I wondered why because I don't see it yet
despite my xkdc smartassedness I would love to see something that made an easy to do thing like this for linux https://portableapps.com/ there are some close things but not quite so easy.
I disagree. Each distro is a user of a thousand different open source systems. When a distro developer integrates gnome, systemd, bluez, or whatever other system they're finding, reporting, and possibly fixing bugs that end users might miss. Other than arch users, who else is compiling these things from scratch and really digging into the documentation?
Us weird debian testing users.
Gentoo users? Void users?
They’d still be doing that.
That kinda is his point. A distro maintainer patching and distributing a thousand packages is duplicitous. Especially when the only real difference to the user is the DE. Putting those efforts upstream is a better use of resources. I develop software, and I’m not going to test a million different distros especially when the difference between Ubuntu and Zorin is a DE and some additional packages. It makes Linux users very mad, but the reality is that they are too fractured to support every distro they use equally.
The primary thing that makes FOSS popular is that you can fork it. You're saying that people need to not do the main thing it's designed to be able to do!