Alright, let’s first deal with unfinished business.

DistroWatch as useful as statista.com for suggesting your next travel destination. If you had to travel somewhere and had a list of criteria, but didn’t want to spend all day researching, would you go to a travel agent or open an encyclopedia?

I agree that DistroWatch is very useful as a more general resource rather than whatever you think Distrochooser is capable of. However, similar to DistroSea, it provides excellent information for anyone that is more interested in a specific distribution. Especially the reviews (by both the site maintainer(s) and visitors) are especially very valuable and the closest thing we have to an aggregated user reviews for distros. For good measure, I’m talking about the content of the reviews not the numerical representation.

but I disagree with a lot of things you said.

I’m so stoked to read these. I genuinely mean this btw*; every time someone informs me on why they disagree with me is an opportunity for me to learn new stuff.

I could quote everything I disagree with and write a paragraph

Please do. I mean it.

however it would be a meaningless endeavor as a moderator looking at the post would probably decide against adding distrochooser to the sidebar - regardless of my opinions.

This is very defeatist of you, though. And FWIW something which I didn’t expect from you. If you can even make (just) one person (in this case, perhaps me) learn something new, then that should be worth the effort. As you should be aware by now, I’m a lot more active on Lemmy than I should 😅, but this also means that having me (or anyone for that matter) be on your side might just be the thing you need to have this succeed eventually.

XY problem confirmed. Thank you OP!

There have been complaints in posts about people asking for advice on which disto to use, that there are too many such posts.

This is a legit concern.Thank you for trying to tackle this!

Provide users the tools to possibly answer the question themselves before creating a post.

Noble. And in its essence, it makes a lot of sense.

DistroChooser is a self-help tool for that purpose.

As a self-help tool it’s very bad. Sorry*. I actually hoped that you would mention how it might be used as a basic requirement for anyone that asks which distro to use. The enforcement could be done with a bot which simply scans if any link to distrochooser is present in a post that remotely resembles one that asks for advice on which distro to use. I would actually even argue against this, but I think we might be able to reach an agreement on which questions are actually worth keeping around for further use…

• keep answering posts --> more complaints, possibly silent quitting of community

Honestly, this is better than to limit newbies to strictly stick to Distrochooser for asking which distro they should use 🤣.

• write bot --> I ain’t got the time, maybe somebody has, dunno what the bot would do

I haven’t got any experience with building a bot, but I suppose it works by scanning for words in posts. In that case, simply ‘flagging’ everything that contains the words “which” or “what” in combination with “distro(s)” or “distribution(s)” and ask them to refer their questions to a dedicated Lemmy community in which they can ask would already solve a lot.

• find alternative website --> I ain’t got the time

You don’t have to find an alternative website. Nor write one yourself. As it stands, as far as I’m aware, there’s simply nothing that satisfies the basic needs for this.

So what do I propose? Relegating these questions to their own dedicated Lemmy community is probably a great and easy solution. If something like a test/algorithm/flowchart/quiz/whatever has to be created, then that one might need substantial effort to get off the ground. However, perhaps comments like these might be helpful as a blueprint.

Sorry, I think I might have confused OmniOS with QubesOS.

😅, but QubesOS isn’t a derivative of OpenBSD either. It might have inspired some of its parts, but fundamentally it’s a completely different beast.

ZFS is itself a security feature because of how well it guarantees the fidelity of your data.

Do you happen to know if this goes beyond what Btrfs(/Bcachefs) provides on the Linux side of things?

Honestly, I don’t know if that’s the case; I always got scared whenever I saw the prerequisites for Heads in combination with the strict list of supported hardware. FWIW, the NV41 that’s used for enabling Heads on NovaCustom’s device is included in the short list of supported hardware for Heads, while -unfortunately- the same doesn’t apply to the StarBook. I would love to be proven wrong though!

ADDENDUM:

3. Of course if the user even intends to use a distro that’s not ‘stable’ like how Debian Stable is ‘stable’.

I got bored 😅. So here is my second response. But please, before reading this one, consider reading my other reply first. It’s a lot shorter anyways 😅.

So fundamentally, I think we’re misunderstanding one another. In your defense, I can understand it; as I’m just one of the many responders and you might simply not have been able to take the time to understand what it is that I’m trying to convey and why. In my case, I think it might be related to the XY problem; i.e. you’re proposing a solution (adding Distrochooser to the sidebar) for which hope will resolve an issue that remains to be stated. For all we know, you actually try to solve something else and you perceive Distrochooser in being capable of playing a vital role in that without being aware of how else the actual problem should be tackled instead.

In this reply I will try to bridge the gap that might have made you misunderstand what I tried to say in my first comment under your original post.

IMO you’re thinking too much as an advanced user for a simple user.

I think you might be absolutely right. The thing is, though, that I have never been one of those users that post a question like “Which distro?” without providing anything beyond the most basic specifics.

The only point I agree on is the NVIDIA GPU.

I therefore assume you disagree not with the entire post (as you seem to be taking a liking to DistroSea), but instead refer to the parts in which I go over some more fundamental questions. I think you’ve missed what I tried to say with that and have also missed the hint^[1] to make more clear why I even said those things.

Alright, let’s dismiss for a moment that the Distrochooser’s questions themselves need a lot of work done and proceed right to a ‘results-screen’. This is probably how I would fill it in on an average day*. In the very first sentence, we’re confronted with the word stable without giving any useful information on what this means and why this is even mentioned here. Similarly, the word unstable is used without ensuring that the (potential) newbie actually has a proper understanding of what it stands for. According to your logic^[2] these things shouldn’t even matter! So why does Distrochooser even bother to spend a sentence on this for every one of their entries? And that’s why I actually agree with you! But if Distrochooser chooses to include it, then they at least have to be precise and elaborate on what they mean with this and why the new user should care. So, to be clear, my two bullet points weren’t meant as “Distrochooser should definitely somehow include these as they’re vital to their choice.”, but instead it was meant as “Alright, if this format for Distrochooser is chosen (with all of its faults), then the least Distrochooser should do is provide information on what the points (and used terms/words/phrases) in the ‘results-screen’ actually mean for the newbie user. And if it’s not addressed, then this automatically discredits Distrochooser as a reliable introduction/orientation to distros for new users.”. Because as it stands, a lot of the small niche distros that happen to be derivatives of Debian/Ubuntu are regarded as somehow “stable” while something like Fedora isn’t. And thus the newbie that just wants a stable system will be fooled/misled into using any of those fringe distros over Fedora. Which is just straight up BS.

I’ve never heard of nor used Garuda. As I said, feel free to contribute.

Don’t worry, others already took care of that. The fact that it hasn’t been implemented yet just shows that this is not a productive endeavor. On that note, I didn’t even notice how Garuda’s more popular sibling EndeavourOS is also absent in Distrochooser’s results…

Never heard of DistroSea. It seem like a good complement to DistroChooser anything that narrows down choice

Fixed that for you. Especially considering the fact that Distrochooser is (perhaps) more misleading than anything else. This point is a dead horse by now (at least under this post of yours), but I will be more elaborate at a later point.

DistroWatch as useful as statista.com for suggesting your next travel destination. If you had to travel somewhere and had a list of criteria, but didn’t want to spend all day researching, would you go to a travel agent or open an encyclopedia?

The response on this depends on the XY problem, therefore I will refrain from commenting on this for now.

I think many in the community, like yourself, have forgotten what it’s like to give just enough of a fuck to change something but not to want to be too invested. A beginner isn’t going to want to understand why a system is stable or not: they just want a stable system. You don’t have to explain to them “Yeah, so the configuration is a file, you see? Only you edit that file. Then you run this command that interprets the file and build a dependency tree, downloads everything necessary, to a partition that’s temporarily mounted as read-write, symlinks to…”. Nobody cares. The average user DGAF.

Imagine if you just wanted to get a vacuum cleaner at the store with 3 criteria. Imagine you don’t give a rat’s ass about vacuum cleaner. You just want to point the thing at the ground, let it succ all the bits, but as quietly as possible, and not break down in 2 years to force you back out here. But the sales person you get harps on about the genius of the person who invented some internal component you’ve never heard of, goes on to explain why, ideologically, getting a certain brand is the only way because blablablabla. Maybe you’d buy a vacuum cleaner just to shut them up or walk out of the store.

These two paragraphs are at best you misunderstanding/misinterpreting what I said and why I said those things and that’s where I’ll leave it (for now).

My optimal experience would be the sales person listening to me, lining up the best candidates, and explaining, in bullet points, why they are there. Then finally, ask me if I have a favorite and to give me a test environment. If I don’t understand something, I can ask more questions.

Generally-speaking, I agree with this. But I hope you’re not (even remotely) insinuating that this is even remotely close to the Distrochooser experience.

1. Hint: “I’m honestly not even sure if the one(s) responsible for writing the parts of Distrochooser even know(s) themselves” from my first reply.
2. “A beginner isn’t going to want to understand why a system is stable or not: they just want a stable system.” and “Nobody cares. The average user DGAF.”

Good question! However I think it’s wise to concentrate on a particular word/phrase before actually answering your query.

In an immutable setup on Fedora (trying to main Bazzite) is the correct way to use zsh and oh my zsh as my main shell

Currently, it’s not always clear if there even is a correct way of installing some of these (more) edge cases. Therefore, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d see ‘seasoned’ Fedora Atomic users that have all tackled these in very different ways while being satisfied with (not only) their own solutions (but also approve the respective solutions of their peers).

As for your query, I would say that starting to use Fedora Atomic and pointing out correctly some of the more common ways to install software while being aware of the ambiguity that exists with the chosen installation method for this specific piece of software is already very commendable. So I would like to congratulate you on that!

But, you shouldn’t be afraid to stick to what’s easy (aka don’t allow good to be the enemy of perfect). If the extra time required for changing your base system doesn’t bother you at all (which happens automatically in the background anyway), then layering it (thus installing with rpm-ostree) is probably the easiest method while protecting you from a lot of possible edge cases you might have to deal with otherwise. Traditionally, zsh (and other shells) were layered (thus installed with rpm-ostree) and uBlue itself included (perhaps still does) just commands to change root shell to zsh, fish etc. This might have changed in the last few weeks, but I think it should still be a safe bet. FWIW, I have never had any troubles pertaining to my zsh installation and any of its plugins (might as well link the managed zsh-config I rely on).

OpenBSD and its derivatives (like OmniOS)

First time hearing of OmniOS, thank you for mentioning it! EDIT: I just took a look at it and it doesn’t seem to be based on OpenBSD, at least the one I could find seems to be a derivative of Solaris instead. Though, I might simply not have found what you referred to*.

because it of its security-oriented features, especially things like ZFS

Does OpenBSD’s implementation of ZFS offer security features as well?

I would like to switch my daily driver, a Linux laptop, to OpenBSD so I can get used to using it as an administrator, but I worry about OpenBSD being able to support the laptop hardware, especially things like WiFi, BlueTooth, and managing the battery, screen dimming, laptop lid, and so on.

Do you think that using OpenBSD inside of a qube (from QubesOS) is perhaps something worth considering? Or don’t you think there’s any merit of doing this over the use of any virtualization software found on any other system?

I have another Linux computer with a Radeon graphics card which connects to my TV that my children use for video games, and watching streaming video, and I would like to switch this to OpenBSD as well but I worry that it will not be able to run Steam games very well.

From what I’ve read, running games on OpenBSD is a lot less mature compared to running games on Linux. Though, perhaps it’s worth noting that cloud gaming solutions (like Google Stadia in the past) are known to work great on OpenBSD. Not sure if you would want that, though.

(On a more general note) I definitely agree that OpenBSD works wonderfully on the server side of things. But I’ve gotten skeptical over time to its feasibility as a desktop OS. Note that I’m well aware that OpenBSD’s developers use it as their daily drivers, so I definitely recognize the possibility. However, when it’s lacking features like Secure Boot (or any form of Trusted and/or Measured Boot for that matter), I just find it hard to justify putting it on something like a laptop that I carry around all the time. I hope that you can prove to me that my logic/understanding is flawed and that I should reconsider the use of OpenBSD as a desktop OS.

It has been my pleasure 😊!

Aight. I’ve changed the comment a bit 😅 since. Perhaps it’s more useful for you now 😉.

It seems as if the uBlue images ship the required OpenRazer kmod by default. Therefore, I would suggest you to take a look at those. You still need to follow some additional steps though 😅. Which might not be very intuitive… Thus, I propose the following: if you’ll rebase to uBlue, you might as well rebase to Bazzite. After the rebase has been completed, the (post-)installation software should already give you the option (it’s just a simple toggle) to install OpenRazer. The toggle is clearly visible in this frame.

If you perceive Bazzite as too opinionated for your taste, then perhaps you might opt to the following instead:

install-openrazer:
    sudo wget https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/hardware:/razer/Fedora_$(rpm -E %fedora)/hardware:razer.repo -O /etc/yum.repos.d/hardware:razer.repo && \
    ublue-update --wait && \
    rpm-ostree install -y openrazer-meta razergenie && \
    if ! grep -q "plugdev" /etc/group; then \
      sudo bash -c 'grep "plugdev" /lib/group >> /etc/group' \
    ; fi && \
    sudo usermod -a -G plugdev $USER && \
    echo "Please reboot to apply needed changes."

Which should be the just-entry (and thus responsible) for whatever happens after the toggle is enabled*.

I will simply list a couple of the images^[1] I’ve used over time and provide some personal insights (in alphabetical order):

• Alpine; when I’m restricted in bandwidth and/or disk space. FWIW, apk is even faster than whatever is found on Arch.
• Arch; if I just need a certain package and can’t be bothered to look up if it’s available on any of the others. Yup, the AUR strikes yet again. Furthermore, if I’m troubleshooting and I find myself on the ArchWiki, then in order to prevent edge cases from happening and thus the provided solutions to not work on the non-Arch distrobox; I rely on the Arch distrobox. It doesn’t hurt that pacman (or any of the AUR helpers) are blazing fast. However, if I intend to rely on said AUR packages over longer periods of time, then I often do look for an alternative distrobox to grab the package from instead. While the AUR is excellent for the amount of packages it has, the security standards aren’t the best. Thus, if you’re security-conscious, then it’s better to rely on AUR packages sparingly, unless you’re willing to get into the nitty gritty and check how they’re built, how the package is maintained and if its maintainer(s) is reliable.
• Bazzite-Arch; my go-to for gaming.
• Fedora; as I’m already on Fedora Atomic, relying on Fedora distroboxes makes the most sense security-wise. Fedora is also known to take security very seriously themselves, so in general this is just very pleasant to rely on for security reasons. The only reason why one should not rely on Fedora for security reasons would be if they’re already on something from openSUSE (like Aeon/Kalpa/Tumbleweed etc). In that case, going for an openSUSE distrobox makes more sense for security. Furthermore, if the package I need is one that’s widely accessible, then I also rely on Fedora distroboxes. Lastly, currently, my development environments are all Fedora distroboxes. I might eventually change these to Wolfi distroboxes or simply rely on Nix, but that’s still WIP for me.
• Ubuntu; I’ve had to rely on these a couple of times to use software that’s known to target Ubuntu. Most recently it was with Matlab IIRC.
• Wolfi; For the security-conscious, this is probably the best choice. Unfortunately, I’ve only experimented with it so far without too much success. Thankfully, the Bluefin project has made some good use out of it. So I’ll try to emulate their ways in the near future.

Notable mention goes out to Davincibox. Unfortunately my laptop doesn’t have a dedicated GPU, so I can’t make use of it. But it’s something I’m keeping my eyes on.

NixOS is not a supported container distro, but I do have Nix installed through The Determinate Nix Installer. It’s somewhat underutilized currently, though 😅.

1. The images will be the toolbox ones if available.

Oh wow! This is excellent news! I hope they’ll also provide other privacy/security related features like Heads, the removal of the camera and/or microphone modules, pre-installed privacy screen, tamper-evident screws and packaging.

Thank you for your response. But our conversation seems so far somewhat inefficient. And I fear it might be due to reasons related to the XY problem. Therefore, before I reply to the points made in the above comment, I would like to ask you if you could state the following:

• Ultimately, what are you trying to achieve (and why); what is the problem even?
• What is your solution to this problem? And where does adding Distrochooser to the sidebar come into plan? Have you perhaps thought of other possible solutions and why they might be inferior to the suggested one?

Thank you in advance!

Fedora must’ve been during COVID, because I can’t remember the year.

That explains a lot of why you felt that way about Fedora. Thank you for enlightening us on that!

If things are better now, then maybe distrochooser has to be updated.

Can’t agree more.

It’s on github, so if you believe it’s become user-friendly, do contribute.

Honestly, I’ve tried to contribute in the past; but it didn’t feel as if they got implemented. Perhaps the maintainer has implemented them without making it noticeable to met, but in its current iteration it doesn’t feel as if that’s case. I’ve since given up on it.

Your experience

Just in case*, I’m just the middle-man that connects this specific article by Solène to the audience on Lemmy 😅. I’m sure you’re aware of this, but I just wanted to make sure.

I can’t believe you tried

Just in case*, I’m just the middle-man that connects this specific article by Solène to the audience on Lemmy 😅. I’m sure you’re aware of this, but I just wanted to make sure.

But yes, Solène has done an excellent work with her review! Which is precisely why I felt the need that it needed some more exposure 😜.

It is a little sad that OpenBSD can’t optimize by P/E cores, I have been wanting to switch to OpenBSD but obviously Linux supports the most hardware, so I stay with Linux.

Could you elaborate on your willingness to switch to OpenBSD?

It is nice that the makers NovaCustom seem to have done a good job creating a mostly open, standards compliance x86_64 computing platform.

Definitely! I feel as if they might be somewhat underappreciated currently, but I hope their efforts to open source will receive similar mainstream reach like what we’ve seem for System76 etc.

I agree that Fedora’s habit for pushing (sometimes breaking) changes is definitely something to keep an eye out. However, it has been so good over the last (almost) two years. I would even argue that Fedora has become more self-conscious of the consequences and (especially) how this might affect their more casual user base.

Btw, how long ago did you try out Fedora? FWIW, Fedora (Silverblue; to be more precise^[1]) was the first distro that I’ve tried and while I’ve had some experiences with other distros over time (mostly through dual boot), Fedora (Atomic) seems to have become the distro I call home.

1. It’s probably not as masochistic as you might think for a new user 😅. Though I’d have to say that it took some effort, control and discipline to not instantly go back to Windows (or any other Linux distro for that matter).

While I get why distrochooser.de is romanticized, in its current iteration it’s simply not very good and anyone that is somewhat well-versed in how different distros operate and how Distrochooser works, will tell you the same. At best, it provides some orientation into what some of the more common distros are. But it fails to answer some fundamental questions in the process; like:

• What is the relation between a distro and its derivative and (more importantly) how does that matter to a user?
• How exactly does a distribution’s chosen release model affect software and updates? And while we’re into that, what’s even the difference between the “stable” used when talking about point release distros that opt to freeze packages over longer periods of time vs the “stable” that’s brought up in conversations regarding update concerns and how they might break software (I’m honestly not even sure if the one(s) responsible for writing the parts of Distrochooser even know(s) themselves)^[1].

There are a lot of other fundamental questions that are involved in the decision for picking a distro that would have made a lot more sense than the ones found on Distrochooser. E.g. Do you use an Nvidia GPU and want this to cause no issues in the process of installation and is this your biggest concern? If yes: then just use Pop!_OS. Otherwise, move on to the other questions etc. I think the fact that a flowchart isn’t used for some uses and that ultimately priorities aren’t brought up to finalize the decision are the two biggest issues that Distrochooser has in its current iteration.

And we haven’t even gone over the many distros that despite having little to no user base are still included in the results, while (more recent) ‘staples’ like Garuda and Nobara are clearly left out for reasons most likely related to the maintainers not being able to keep up with the Linux landscape. Which, to be fair, is quite hard; so I don’t blame them. I, in fact, applaud them for their continued contributions and hope that some day it will become something that we can proudly present to others for their first orientation.

Allow me to end this with a question to OP:

• Do you feel the same way about excellent websites like DistroWatch.com and DistroSea?^[2]
  • If yes; Why didn’t you make a similar post for either of the two instead?
  • If no; Why not?

1. Sure, there is some overlap in what they mean and how they’re used, but it’s a very important distinction; otherwise openSUSE’s stable rolling release designation for their Tumbleweed wouldn’t make any sense.
2. If anything, I think these two actually make more sense to be included.

OP, my request/suggestion would be the following:

In order for us to better help you consider the following:

• Inform us on your hardware specs. You could even rely on the software found on linux-hardware.org for a (so-called) probe.
• Inform us on which distros you’ve tried. If possible, for each one of them list the following:
  • What exactly didn’t work?
  • Did you try any troubleshooting?

On a more general note, you shouldn’t feel the need to switch distros even if other distros might offer more convenient solutions.

Moral of the story would be that there are a lot of different ways that enable one to overcome challenges like these. And unless you feel the need to go with a system that’s (mostly) managed for you (à la uBlue)^[1], you will face issues every now and then. And the only way to deal with them would be to either setup^[2] (GRUB-)Btrfs+Timeshift/Snapper (or similar solutions) such that it automatically snapshots a working state that you might rollback to whenever something unfortunate befalls your system or to simply become ever so better equipped in troubleshooting them yourself.

1. But therefore demands from you to engage with the system in a specific (mostly unique) way.
2. Or rely on a distro that sets it up for you.