For many people, the #Linux vs #Windows vs #Mac debate is a privilege — it assumes you can choose.
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@fasnix @Metamere @thegardendude is solus still around, I thought it fizzled out
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@codemonkeymike I agree with the sentiment, but have to say I find it somewhat dismaying that the open source OS landscape is a de facto monoculture. FreeBSD and OpenBSD exist, for example, and may work in places where Linux feels awkward (or vice versa).
One can't help but feel that the dominance of Linux has closed off interesting avenues of development. That's not Linux's fault, exactly, but it is a kind of unfortunate outcome.
@cross
As I have no experiences with any BSD at all, what places/scenarios would that be?
@codemonkeymike -
@codemonkeymike What’s a good Linux distro for someone new to Linux?
@thegardendude @codemonkeymike
Linux Mint (Debian Edition) installs smoothly, has run reliably, and has most of what I need day-to-day. -
For many people, the #Linux vs #Windows vs #Mac debate is a privilege — it assumes you can choose. But working with the Computer Upcycle Project, I've seen the real choice is often Linux vs no computer at all.
~95% of donated computers are "too old" for Windows 11 or macOS. Linux installs on them anyway, adding 10+ years of life to machines #Microsoft and #Apple called trash.
This isn't Linux vs Windows. It's Linux vs e-waste.
@codemonkeymike
I *so* agree with this. My work is forcing us to bin loads of 5-6 year old laptops because they're getting too old for Windows11. They still work fine with Linux (I've tried), but because the big MS says no, we have to bin them.I've begged and pleaded with them to allow us to sell or give them to charities, but I continuously get shot down because "too busy, no time, not worth it". Its heart wrenching to send these devices to landfill!
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@codemonkeymike
I *so* agree with this. My work is forcing us to bin loads of 5-6 year old laptops because they're getting too old for Windows11. They still work fine with Linux (I've tried), but because the big MS says no, we have to bin them.I've begged and pleaded with them to allow us to sell or give them to charities, but I continuously get shot down because "too busy, no time, not worth it". Its heart wrenching to send these devices to landfill!
@DodoTheDev that is heart breaking and so wasteful. I wonder if these people know you can literally get a tax write off for donating them! Management might care about that. And if all the NIST 800-80 wiping is happening on our end. You guys wouldn't have to do anything except get a donation receipt
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@codemonkeymike @thegardendude
I am an experienced Linux user and excited about nixOS. Doesn't it require some scripting though, compared to other distros?
This looks very good. I hope you put together some more sections on the webpage, like a FAQ, describing how you have made it easier.I'm planning to derive a distro from nixOS, and replace the nix language with an existing, popular, battle-tested scripting language like Ruby or Perl. ( Ruling out Python & Raku ). This could drive adoption.
@purrperl @thegardendude yes the website will have more details! But right now you can follow the link to the GitHub page and it's all there.
NixOS is like Linux legos. Build what you want. But nixbook is like a Lego set already built. You don't need to know anything about nix. However, you CAN dig in and mess with it if you want
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@thegardendude @codemonkeymike I work in research and a lot of new converts use either Ubuntu or Linux Mint. Personally, I use Fedora/Budgie, before that Fedora Gnome. As another has already mentioned, check and see if the distro has a “Live” version, meaning you can burn the ISO to portable storage and try the O.S. before committing.
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@thegardendude @codemonkeymike
*buntu, Mint, Zorin are all based on Debian.
Debian is nonprofit. Use the default version, Debian Stable Trixie to avoid new potentially buggy features@linuxuser42
As long as your computer has standard, out-of-the-box supported HW that will work.
But if you need special drivers for your HW I wouldn't recommend basic #debian for a beginner. I had trouble installing SW for a Wifi chipset but succeeded in the end.
@thegardendude @codemonkeymike -
@codemonkeymike Switching to #Ubuntu has given my laptop years of further service. My laptop wouldn't have been able to run Windows 11, and I wanted out of the Windows mess anyway.
@Sylkykat
And rumour has it that Windows 12 requires new HW with NPUs on the chip. @codemonkeymike -
@linuxuser42
As long as your computer has standard, out-of-the-box supported HW that will work.
But if you need special drivers for your HW I wouldn't recommend basic #debian for a beginner. I had trouble installing SW for a Wifi chipset but succeeded in the end.
@thegardendude @codemonkeymike@grauzone @thegardendude @codemonkeymike
Good point. Pick the fat 'dvd version' with all the non free drivers.
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@DodoTheDev that is heart breaking and so wasteful. I wonder if these people know you can literally get a tax write off for donating them! Management might care about that. And if all the NIST 800-80 wiping is happening on our end. You guys wouldn't have to do anything except get a donation receipt
@codemonkeymike
I don't think we have that here. I'm in the UK, and they don't give tax rightoffs for much (that I'm aware of).But yes, its heartbreaking. Its taken 3 years to get them to agree to give away monitors. So were getting there. In the meantime, I've thrown out hundreds of monitors (laptops, iPads, phones, desktops, servers) over the last 3 years as we just don't have the space to store it. I get it's about data safety, but were literally throwing money away.
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@codemonkeymike
I don't think we have that here. I'm in the UK, and they don't give tax rightoffs for much (that I'm aware of).But yes, its heartbreaking. Its taken 3 years to get them to agree to give away monitors. So were getting there. In the meantime, I've thrown out hundreds of monitors (laptops, iPads, phones, desktops, servers) over the last 3 years as we just don't have the space to store it. I get it's about data safety, but were literally throwing money away.
@DodoTheDev its so silly though because there are absolutely ways to properly sanitize those drives so they could be used again.. or if you're REALLY conconcerned, you can pull the drives.. still better than trashing the whole computer.
I'll never understand it!
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@DodoTheDev its so silly though because there are absolutely ways to properly sanitize those drives so they could be used again.. or if you're REALLY conconcerned, you can pull the drives.. still better than trashing the whole computer.
I'll never understand it!
@codemonkeymike
My dude, this is coming from an organisation who wanted use to stop reusing RAM sticks and shred them because "they could hold data between reboots"
Once they got the quote of £2500 to shred all the RAM we'd saved, they quickly changed their tune.
Seriously, why do senior IT managers know naff all about IT basics?!
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@codemonkeymike
My dude, this is coming from an organisation who wanted use to stop reusing RAM sticks and shred them because "they could hold data between reboots"Once they got the quote of £2500 to shred all the RAM we'd saved, they quickly changed their tune.
Seriously, why do senior IT managers know naff all about IT basics?!
@DodoTheDev omg that's horrible!!! What data could possibly even be THAT sensitive lol
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@DodoTheDev omg that's horrible!!! What data could possibly even be THAT sensitive lol
@codemonkeymike
Patient data (I work for an ambulance service), so I get it. But we overwrite SSD's numerous times. -
@codemonkeymike I agree with the sentiment, but have to say I find it somewhat dismaying that the open source OS landscape is a de facto monoculture. FreeBSD and OpenBSD exist, for example, and may work in places where Linux feels awkward (or vice versa).
One can't help but feel that the dominance of Linux has closed off interesting avenues of development. That's not Linux's fault, exactly, but it is a kind of unfortunate outcome.
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@grauzone @thegardendude @codemonkeymike Thanks for the reminder!! I think my old boss had this, as he carried out a USB key with several distros at his disposal.
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@cross but Linux is so diverse. It's hard for me to know what else one might want from an ecosystem.
I've still never played with bsd though
@codemonkeymike that sort of reinforces my thesis. The Linux ecosystem _is_ remarkably diverse, but that no one else is wondering what one might want beyond it shows that the questions aren't being asked: it's just not considered. What might one want? Perhaps a different development model (illumos is a good example here), or other community norms (the BSDs: the mailing lists have rather different norms across projects, but also than, say, the LKML).
Broadly speaking, operating systems have devolved into two main categories: Windows, and Unix-like (including Linux and macOS, the BSDs, and illumos).
Discounting purely research systems, some others exist, but they're so niche as to be negligible (Haiku, Plan 9/9front, a few retro-ish hobby things) or controlled by a single corporate entity (Fuchsia, OpenVMS) or tied to expensive, proprietary hardware (various mainframe systems, and a few minicomputer systems that are quietly hanging on). No one explores new models, though, because Linux has become more or less a commodity and is the default.
Vis older hardware, another poster mentioned NetBSD, which actively works to support older architectures and will often serve to keep machines from becoming e-waste in landfills. For upcycle types of machines, I imagine that many of them will also run FreeBSD (commodity 64-bit CPUs have been common for the last 15 or so years), or OpenBSD. Would Haiku run? Possibly! Perhaps even ReactOS?
Anyway, I don't mean to detract from your otherwise excellent point by ratholing on random technical goo, but I think that the point is that there _are_ alternatives to Linux that are neither macOS nor Windows, but as you said, the question often isn't even asked. I personally find that disappointing, because it really does mean that we're converging on a monoculture, and I don't think that's a good thing overall. We have open source alternatives, we should be encouraging their growth in addition to support Linux.
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@cross
As I have no experiences with any BSD at all, what places/scenarios would that be?
@codemonkeymikeIt's difficult to give a succinct answer, because it naturally depends on your use cases. For me, personally, I find BSD a lot more manageable than Linux on servers of various kinds; I find Linux more useful on workstation and development class machines.
With respect to the larger point, there's an interesting (to me) dichotomy here: because the BSDs have not been given nearly as much energy as Linux over the years, they're correspondingly less developed: a lot of Open Source software is "Linux First", for instance, with other systems being given token consideration, if any, and so they tend to lag behind the leader. So there's less incentive to use alternatives. But because there's less incentive, those alternatives don't get better at the same rate as Linux.
It is undeniable that there _are_ powerful network effects that one takes advantage of when one uses Linux that are not available on other systems, but again: that leads towards a monoculture, which as with biological systems, isn't super awesome for the overall health of the ecosystem.
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