Quoting: TheSHEEEPThere is a Pathea Games developer and light bulb joke somewhere in here...

Quoting: TheSHEEEPThere is a Pathea Games developer and light bulb joke somewhere in here...

Quoting: ageres

Quoting: slaapliedjeThe main reason for Arch over OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is probably that Tumbleweed is more of the bleeding edge, rolling release version of OpenSUSE, whereas it's just what Arch does.

So stability wise, Arch is more likely to be stable than Tumbleweed is.

So, Arch is better than Ubuntu/Fedora because it has newer software, and is better than Tumbleweed because its software is older? I wouldn't say that one distro is better than another just because of packages versions. Some people want to have everything as new as possible, some people don't.

Quoting: slaapliedjeI've tried out Tumbleweed in the past, and while stability wasn't really an issue, I just can't use Yast. It's funny, those that started out Linux with that distribution probably love Yast, anyone who started out with other distributions despise it. I kind of fall into that latter group.

Yast seems like Ubuntu's Synaptic. Anyway, I thought Linux users prefer CLI package managers.

Quoting: slaapliedjeAnyhow, Arch may have a lack of what most people would say is a real installer, but it doesn't matter because once you have it installed, it just works.

It probably does, but sometimes an OS needs reinstalling. I got a bigger SSD this winter, so I had to install it. I recently bought another one, even bigger, haven't got it yet, but already annoyed by an idea of another installation.
I also have about 20 computers with Ubuntu-based Linux at my work, and I would have gone crazy if I had to spend so much time on installing and tweaking systems on every of them. But with Ubuntu all I need is to:
1. boot from an USB drive;
2. add IP of my "server" with APT cache, so I could get updates via LAN with 100/1000 Mbps speed (one minute of time);
3. click "next, next, install", type a couple on line (one more minute);
4. boot into the installed OS, enable APT cache again (one minute);
5. run a bash script that installs software I need and removes that I don't (two seconds);
6. tweak some UI settings (one or two minutes).

That's few minutes of my time I must spend on a computer. The rest of time I can rest, everything is automatized. So, quick and easy installation is a must-have feature for me since I have to manage many computers.

Quoting: slaapliedjeThough with Arch, you should have a phone or some other device to read wikis while installing :)

I actually installed Arch yesterday, couldn't get graphics working though. I had to read wikis, look into config files on my system and on VMs as well to check what should I have done. I installed xorg, lightdm, lightdm-gtk-greeter, xfce4, wrote many configs, but for some reason I don't see a GUI greeter, and after i type my username and password all I get is a blank dark screen. I think I didn't configure xorg right.

Installing Arch the hard way sure hepls to understand how Linux works, but does it make it a better distro than others?
I made less effort to install FreeBSD once (and I thought THAT was hard), and at least I succeeded.

Quoting: ageres

Quoting: razing32If you really don't like the setup of Arch , try Manjaro or one of the helper scripts.

The problem with distributions derivatives is that their support can be dropped, like Antergos.
If, say, Xubuntu ends someday, I can always use Ubuntu mini CLI installer and simply choose xfce as DE. But I have problems with installing Arch. I tried several times, and succeeded only once, and I'm not sure what was different that time. It's something with a bootloader. I chose its every option in the installer, but the system did not start after installing. So, I don't want to use Arch-based distros if I cannot even install Arch.

Also, I don't see any reason to use Arch. Having a rolling release distro, so I wouldn't ever have to upgrade or reinstall? OpenSUSE is one too. Many software distribute as deb or rpm files only, which can be converted to each other with "alien", but Arch supports neither. More nuisances, no benefit.

Quoting: ageresI installed openSUSE Tumbleweed with xfce recently in VirtualBox, and it seems to be a very good Ubuntu replacement. It's a rolling-release distribution, like Arch, but very easy to install and use, unlike Arch. Steam and other software can be installed by the same way as in Ubuntu, just replace "apt" with "zypper". But beware of the Linux kernel bug [External Link] which prevent Steam from connecting. It was fixed in kernel 5.1.14, but openSUSE has 5.1.10 so far.

If I ever have to leave Ubuntu-based distros, I'll probably switch to openSUSE Tumbleweed.

Quoting: einherjar

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: einherjarThanks Canonical :><:

Now we will have lots of game devs and publishers saying:
"See, there is no reliable Distro in the Linux world. It doesn't make sense to ship software for Linux"

No doubt we will. But they will be fools to do so. Look, Microsoft and Apple make stupid decisions all the time. When they do, just exactly what can you do about it? Can you switch to a different Windows or Mac OS distro?
This is a time to celebrate the fact that Linux distros are not monopolies.

Like it or not, but with that small userbase it is also a disadvantage.
Developers and Companys like Adobe will be held away from bringing their software to Linux.
They want one reliable OS --> MS gives it to them.

We need a big popular and reliable Distro, to have enough marketshare and live the "diversity". With 1% marketshare distributed across more then 10 Distros, we will remain irrelevant (on Desktop) for most of the companies.

Quoting: ElectricPrismThere needs to be a Ubuntu Devs meme where they are sitting around a round table and are like What Terrible Idea Can We Come Up With This Year?

It's not that 64-bit shouldn't overtake 32-bit in the app / game space, but in the library space it's not a sane solution.

As these problems come up and with developments in ARM, POWER9, RISC I am beginning to think that binary distros are not the way.

What I'm afraid of is what it will cost to switch to a source package manager distro -- I am under the impression that even Gentoo has some ideology and thinking in implementation form that is stuck in 2008.

It's a shame Ubuntu couldn't learn a lesson from Gobo Linux where they organize packages /Programs/X-Library/V.XX/[files] -- if Linux took a page from their book we would have never needed Snaps or Flatpaks because multiple dependency versions could co-exist, and on servers where security matters they could simply require the latest version or have a secure channel of approved versions completely mitigating the necessity of LTS and having the best of Rolling Release and Point Release stability and freshness all while eliminating the necessity to over-engineer solutions that never should have needed to exist to begin with.