Unfortunately boring distributions don’t get recommended because users of boring distributions don’t bother commenting on distribution discussions.

And it’s really unfortunate that obscure distributions have more vocal fans, because boring distributions are much better for beginners.

Don’t try zsh, because you won’t be able to go back to bash after that 😉

Nothing in particular, for the past few years I didn’t like the direction Ubuntu was taking but I stayed because I was too lazy to switch and it didn’t feel that bad.

So I’m not sure exactly what was the last straw, maybe part of it was me getting a Steam Deck, discovering flatpak and understanding how bad snap was compared to it.

It just works, just like Ubuntu before they started pushing snap down everyone’s throat (which is what made me switch eventually.)

I had a bad image of RedHat/Fedora’s package management from the time deb was much superior, but no they caught up and are on the same level (I know, it’s probably been a while).

I also like how they mostly package upstream without too many changes. When Ubuntu started upstream was a bit lacking so making changes was necessary to get something that looks like a consistent OS rather than a patchwork of packages, but now it’s no longer needed. Ubuntu is no longer the only distribution with that level of polish.

• In the 90’s: Slackware, then RedHat, then Debian, then Progeny (Debian based), then shortly Mandrake (RedHat based)

• Early 2000’s: RedHat Japanese edition, TurboLinux (because I was in Japan and Japanese IME was almost impossible to get working on non-Japanese distributions)

• Then I had fun with Gentoo looking at my terminal compiling stuff everyday and fixing broken package because I followed advices to activate crazy compilation flags

• 2004: Ubuntu, that I used for nearly 20 years

• Last year: switched to Fedora

For a desktop yes. You can dock it and forget that it’s not a regular Linux desktop. Especially if it means Python and JS, you don’t need much power for that.

For a laptop not so much, because you’ll need to bring screen+keyboard+mouse and everything to plug them so the portability aspect seriously suffers.

I’m not sure what “the Linux community” really means but I would bet that pure open source Android based on AOSP are more popular than the non-Android Linux mobile OS combined.

It’s still a lot of work, for what value compared to an OS based on AOSP?

That’s because in the 80’s you had to know computers to use them, and most people never touched them. Only geeks like you and me.

Now everyone uses a computer (at least the screen-only computer in their pocket) without knowing anything about it.

It doesn’t mean there are less people who really know how computers work. Just that now even clueless people use them.

You don’t need man, just type the command with no arguments and you’ll get the help message.

I agree that GUI are better at discoverability.

However once you’re up to speed with CLI, it becomes much simpler and faster. While a GUI will still be more steps even after you become expert at using that GUI.

Simple example: installing stuff. Much faster and simpler to type “install foo” in cli than open a gui, searching for it, finding the right one, clicking install.

Same for updating: it takes me 2s to type the command to update all packages, that’s less than the time I need to move my mouse to the icon of the package manager.

Yes, autocorrect messed it up

Oh it’s the continuation of XMMS, I have found memory of using that!

I know it would be great if we could install Linux on any hardware, but unfortunately we’re not there yet.

So you can either buy a laptop with Linux preinstalled, from a manufacturer who will support it, or do some research before hand.

And Nvidia doesn’t have a monopoly on laptops, you can buy an AMD gaming laptop

I mean, by now everyone should know not to buy Nvidia hardware if you want to run Linux on it.

It’s been more than 10 years since Linus’ finger to Nvidia.

I don’t think it has anything to do with Arch being a rolling distro.

SteamOS isn’t a rolling distro, it’s by releases controlled by Valve.

Even on a Debian base they could have done the same, like Ubuntu releasing versions independently from Debian.

Because SteamOS is immutable, the simplest today would be to use a Fedora Atomic base.

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You can connect your Steam Deck to your PC with USB, but all it’s going to do is charge it.

He’s working for Microsoft now but it’s very recent, he developed systemd while working at RedHat.

I don’t even know of he’s still working on it. There are a lot of things to be said about systemd and Lennart but the link to Microsoft is irrelevant.