Why can Linux distros be a mess sometimes?
Why can Linux distros be a mess sometimes?
I'm a Linux enthusiast who appreciates kernel-based systems but avoids distros that are just modified versions of others. Forks often feel like disjointed collections, whereas well-maintained ones like OpenSUSE or Debian-based releases seem more cohesive. Ubuntu has its quirks with flatpacks but offers strong gaming support. Q4OS works well for older hardware and I wish more apps were available in its manager. The trinity desktop is nice, though Konqueror isn’t great as a browser. My ideal would be LMDE to include MATE and XFCE like Ubuntu-based Mint versions. What do you think about Linux distros that avoid the mess? If I could design one from scratch, I’d build it with the mainline kernel and minimize third-party needs.
I hadn't installed it from scratch for several years until recently, but I discovered a use for some old hardware. Setting it up is now faster and more straightforward than before. The porting process has improved, along with the available profiles, making it much easier to manage. Compared to when I first used it in 2004, it requires far less effort. Recently, a friend gave me a new laptop that booted into its own Gentoo OS within two hours—much more convenient than before.
I believe this whole scenario is part of what limits Linux on desktop use. The sheer number of choices overwhelms newcomers, making it hard to decide or leading them to switch distros simply because defaults aren’t ideal. Options like Gnome versus KDE seem trivial compared to the flexibility available. In reality, any desktop environment or window manager can be installed across most distributions. I think we should aim for fewer choices and encourage deeper customization. A configurable setup—like NixOS—would let users tailor the system to their preferences without feeling burdened by endless installations unless they discover a perfect match out of the box.
Why can Linux distros be a mess sometimes? Because, for a large part, they're put together as a labor of love by small (or small-ish) groups of underresourced volunteers, built from thousands of disparate "upstream" projects, each with their own ideas and history and, of course, small group of underresourced volunteers. It's not like we don't know how to make things more polished, or that we don't want to. It just takes a lot of work. This is both an amazingly fast process — the Linux distro space has done far more than even a gigantic, hugely-resourced company could accomplish in a decade — and an excruciatingly slow one, because there's no way to focus all that effort. People do what they're interested in, and make the decisions they see as best in the areas where they have control. There's no pope of Linux to decree "all you! stop working on Desktop Foo! we need to focus on Desktop Bar!", or "stop making all those distributions!" and have that even remotely followed. In fact, that's likely to cause another schism of some kind. Of course, people in open source spaces collaborate where we can, and do what we can to improve the whole, but there's still so much to do, and everything changes all the time.
I install Linux Mint. I use Linux Mint. That's it. The same for the near 100 installations I've done for users. Install Linux Mint and that's what they now use. They use it to get computing things done. Web browsing, emails, documents, spreadsheets, accounting. My partner, MS breaking her Windows every month until they finally deleted everything. I switched her to Linux Mint and that's what she uses since 2018. Emails, accounting, learning the violin, etc. etc. And the Terminal? I'm probably the only one of the users who knows it exists and I seldom use it. And only been using Linux every day for well over a decade. I sometimes have to sort out other users Windows. What a mess and it is getting worse. Nothing logical about it. Apple? A bit better but can be made better by installing Linux. So where is this Linux "mess" thing?
I also enjoy Linux Mint, offering a similar great experience overall. I was thinking about other distributions such as standard Ubuntu or specific sections of other distros I've experimented with. So far, Linux Mint and OpenSUSE have been the most effective for me.
Mint continuously added kernel updates to /boot, preventing removal and disrupting automatic updates. The issue wasn't in a standard setting, and it also missed waking up around 25% of the time.