this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Since i see so much linux talk on lemmy i got curious and watched a video about the common distros. How true is the information in this video? The person hardly describes why debian and arch are just better than every other distro. At least i'm definitely now curious about Mint or something for gaming.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)
  • when this was originally posted, it got a lot of flack because Linux users were unhappy Chris Titus dares to use both Linux AND Windows
  • as @bbbhitz pointed out, “Pointless” was probably a poor choice of words, but Chris’ definition for that tier was basically “distros that install a couple stock packages and give it a new name”
  • as for the Devil tier
    • RedHat for closing their source
    • CentOS Stream because it’s not CentOS
    • Fedora guilt by association (they are actually a separate entity from their founder RedHat)
    • Ubuntu because snaps
  • for Debian and Arch, not only are they good distros on their own, but they’ve each also become parents (and grandparents) to a huge number of offshoots
  • for gaming
    • for beginners, Linux Mint is a really popular place to start just in general
    • for the more experienced, options like Nobara or customizing SteamOS
[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Fedora is a separate entity with RedHat employment as a prerequisite for some of the key leadership roles. It's ran and designed to feed into RedHat.

I love Fedora, heck I like RHEL too, but they have gone from my top recommendation for enterprise solutions to me having to research whether their offering is even FOSS and constant concern that a EULA will put us in legal jeopardy for treating our FOSS product choices like FOSS.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Red Hat created Fedora specifically to be the “community” distro. There used to just be Red Hat which tried to be both free and paid. Now they have Fedora and RHEL.

Red Hat releases all their own software as GPL. They are one of the few players releasing new and important GPL software. As you state, they employ and pay people to spend most of their time building an emphatically free and community based distro. I cannot think of a company that does more for Open Source.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

as a noob, why are snaps so bad? Thanks for the bullet points btw, it cleared a bunch of stuff up :)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)
  • Linux Experiment released a whole video this morning comparing packaging formats
  • the main issue with snaps is (generally) not the snaps themselves or the snap daemon, it’s that the Snap Store itself is closed source
    • a combination of rampant enshittification of online platforms, losing faith in Canonical’s direction, and lack of transparency into ranking/promotion/filtering of apps in the Snap Store (there’s already been a few claims that they’ve replaced an already installed native app with a snap package 🤷 )
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

comparing packaging formats

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

In time, I've come to realise that people that complain about snaps are not worth listening to.

99% of the complainers of snaps don't understand their full use case, they are an invaluable resource for servers and embedded systems, snaps support features that flatpak never will do.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

The thing is Snaps are pushed on the desktop, and the server world already uses containers like Docker, so there isn't much Snap does that's truly unique and useful.