I see often people say that the distro you are using doesn’t matter. One can turn any distro into another. And I do not agree with that. If that was true, why do we even have so many distributions? I always said, if distros don’t matter…

  • … why distro hop?
  • … why don’t you use Ubuntu then?
  • … why don’t you recommend Archlinux to a newcomer?
  • … why don’t you use Kali Linux as a server?
  • … why don’t you use Batocera or SteamOS as your daily driver?
  • … why do you trust a community distro more than a corporate distro? (or vice versa)

I don’t think that distros only matter to newcomers. Maybe it matters for experienced users even more.

  • sudoer777@lemmy.mlEnglish
    4·
    13 days ago

    choosing a distro with specialised security hardening (immutable systems, Nix, Qubes, Bazzite) does matter; most of these will make new users unhappy or even question their sanity.

    Out of curiosity, as someone who’s never used Bazzite/other uBlue/SilverBlue/etc, what makes it difficult for new users? I definitely agree with Nix and Qubes though (and SecureBlue to some extent).

    • IratePirate@feddit.org
      18·
      13 days ago

      Basically, anything that isn’t packaged as a flatpak needs to be installed from the CLI using distrobox containers, which will go over the heads of the majority of new users.

    • Taasz/Woof@piefed.socialEnglish
      3·
      12 days ago

      There’s a ton of added friction when doing things outside the basic ‘install Flatpak app’. Security generally comes at the price of being difficult to use.

      For new users it also means virtually every guide or there on fixing an issue or installing extra software won’t apply.

    • [object Object]@lemmy.ca
      2·
      12 days ago

      If you install home brew 90% of the issues go away.

      The problem is that most Linux software assumes it can do whatever it wants, and immutable distros do not let you write to the system files.

      This creates confusion, because you see a guide for Fedora and it said dnf install xyz, but dnf doesn’t work. The solution is to add it to your image tree (no) or to create a toolbox with that package (complicated, requires setup, gets complicated if your tool needs access to Wayland for clipboard or something)).

      Bazzite solves this by using brew, which is a package manager built for macOS which has had immutable systems for years. Brew solves most of the issues.

      For me by the time I went immutable it just made more sense to go full declarative with nix, but nix is also a steeper learning curve.