Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

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Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Yes. Hundreds of Distros, each with multiple DE's, and some flooded app categories is too overwhelming for the general public.
54
40%
No. The insane amount of choice Linux offers is not limiting its popularity.
82
60%
 
Total votes: 136

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MALsPa
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Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by MALsPa »

linuxviolin wrote:
MALsPa wrote:But "less choice" is not no choice.
I can agree with that as well.

I understand the points that are being made, that it would be good if people could work together more often instead of always splintering off into different directions. That would be ideal. It just doesn't work that way in reality, so we end up with lots of different distros, I guess.
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Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by linuxviolin »

In my precedent post I forgot to say one thing about choice. The choice should be rather between choosing what OS we wish using rather between million flavors of one OS. Linux/BSD is an alternative to Windows like other. Btw, it's a pity BeOS is disappeared... :roll:
MALsPa wrote:it would be good if people could work together more often instead of always splintering off into different directions.
Thank you very much. Finally someone with a little good sense... :D :mrgreen:
MALsPa wrote:It just doesn't work that way in reality, so we end up with lots of different distros, I guess.
Unfortunately...
K.I.S.S. ===> "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." (Albert Einstein)
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Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by MALsPa »

linuxviolin wrote:Finally someone with a little good sense...
Very little, in my case! :lol:
vincent

Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by vincent »

The latest edition of Distrowatch Weekly's Q&A section is tied in with this thread, and is definitely worth a read.

http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue ... mode=68#qa
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MALsPa
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Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by MALsPa »

vincent wrote:The latest edition of Distrowatch Weekly's Q&A section is tied in with this thread, and is definitely worth a read.

http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue ... mode=68#qa
Jesse Smith makes some very good points there. Definitely worth a read, as you said!
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Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by linuxviolin »

MALsPa wrote:
vincent wrote:The latest edition of Distrowatch Weekly's Q&A section is tied in with this thread, and is definitely worth a read.

http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue ... mode=68#qa
Jesse Smith makes some very good points there. Definitely worth a read, as you said!
For me, "the points" are not really valid, sorry. E.g. when he says:
Time is often a factor; it's hard to share fixes and new features with other projects when you're buried under a pile of emails, bug reports and patches.
I'm sorry but with all people trying to develop the many distros, if there was cooperation you would have time and people to make that.

Or:
Another factor is that competing projects often have different goals and philosophies, making it difficult to share code. (...) Also it's important to keep in mind that the target audiences of various projects are often different.
Some people would ask: why do we need these "various (competing) projects" with "different goals and philosophies"? Just some of them that make almost everything could be better. But maybe Linux can't/don't know to do this... :roll:

Or again:
these things also protect us.
This section is hilarious. I'll not comment about this.

Like someone said: In Linux you have no leadership, you have just a mess...
K.I.S.S. ===> "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." (Albert Einstein)
odo5435

Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by odo5435 »

linuxviolin wrote:Some people would ask: why do we need these "various (competing) projects" with "different goals and philosophies"? Just some of them that make almost everything could be better.
Wouldn't that be heading towards Windows? You'd end up with a few over-bloated distros each trying to be everything to everyone (and each probably not succeeding at it). One of the attractions of the current versions is that most people can generally find something that suits their exact needs or otherwise takes their fancy, even if, for some, it can be a lengthy search.

But I tend to agree with those saying there are too many flavours out there. Imho, a little more co-operation between OS's would go a long way.
swiftlinuxcreator

Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by swiftlinuxcreator »

I can't believe that anyone still thinks there are too many distros given the firestorm of controversy over Ubuntu's new Unity desktop environment. The Ubuntu users who hate Unity are free to switch to other distros, such as Mint, Fedora, MEPIS, antiX, Swift, and others. If Ubuntu were the only distro, the Unity haters would be out of luck. In other words, a one-distro Linux community would be just like Windows.

Complaining that there are too many distros is like complaining there are too many styles of clothing or too many automobiles on the market. In this respect, Linux offers you the choices of a capitalist economy while Windows is Communism.
randomizer

Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by randomizer »

swiftlinuxcreator wrote:I can't believe that anyone still thinks there are too many distros given the firestorm of controversy over Ubuntu's new Unity desktop environment. The Ubuntu users who hate Unity are free to switch to other distros, such as Mint, Fedora, MEPIS, antiX, Swift, and others. If Ubuntu were the only distro, the Unity haters would be out of luck. In other words, a one-distro Linux community would be just like Windows.

Complaining that there are too many distros is like complaining there are too many styles of clothing or too many automobiles on the market. In this respect, Linux offers you the choices of a capitalist economy while Windows is Communism.
The posters who support less choice are not promoting a single distro world, just less distros.
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Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by MALsPa »

randomizer wrote:The posters who support less choice are not promoting a single distro world, just less distros.
I wonder if we'll ever see the day when there are less distros...

And, how many is too many? 100? 50? 25? 7?
gogogadget

Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by gogogadget »

MALsPa wrote:And, how many is too many? 100? 50? 25? 7?
I'd say you can easily dismiss most Linux distros, except about 8 which are mostly listed in the top ten of distrowatch. I don't say that solely by looking at the listing, but also because I tried lots and lots of them and many fail on even simple tasks and provide unbearable unstability or illnesses that should've already be eliminated long ago. This "richness" in various Linux flavours is no choice at all, if you look at the actual quality.
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Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by MALsPa »

gogogadget wrote:I'd say you can easily dismiss most Linux distros, except about 8 which are mostly listed in the top ten of distrowatch. I don't say that solely by looking at the listing, but also because I tried lots and lots of them and many fail on even simple tasks and provide unbearable unstability or illnesses that should've already be eliminated long ago. This "richness" in various Linux flavours is no choice at all, if you look at the actual quality.
:lol:

Goodbye, Mandriva (currently #10 on the 30-day list at DistroWatch)!

Goodbye, CentOS (#11), Mepis (#13), Puppy (#14), Sabayon (#18), Scientific (#19), antiX (21), Gentoo (#24), CrunchBang (#28), Red Hat (#35), Knoppix (#38), Parted Magic (#43), SalineOS (#50), and Pardus (#57)!!! I mean, "look at the actual quality!"
gogogadget

Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by gogogadget »

It is a selection of Distros, not necessarily the TOP TEN. Sorry, I didn't express myself correctly.

And please put off your pink glasses, you can dismiss all of the ones you listed, except one of them. Good luck in guessing.
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Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by MALsPa »

gogogadget wrote:And please put off your pink glasses, you can dismiss all of the ones you listed, except one of them. Good luck in guessing.
I'm glad we don't have to dismiss ANY of them -- pretty good distros on that list! Can't begin to guess which one you'd keep.

Pink glasses: :lol:
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Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by exploder »

I keep seeing this thread and am going to put in my 2 cents. I do not think that less choice would make Linux any more popular. I also do not think that people starting out with Windows or MacOS has that much effect on peoples choices either. What makes Linux less popular is bugs and regressions, that's not saying that there are not bugs in Widows or the MacOS. Linux distros keep pushing out new technology before it is mature enough for the masses. Imagine if Microsoft or Apple posted a list of known issues with each new release of their operating system. Microsoft and Apple both manage for the most part to keep hardware compatibility and show stopper bugs under control. Again, software is not perfect and you can find flaws in just about anything if you look hard enough.

I am by no means defending Microsoft or Apple, I can not say I care for their business practices. I have to use Ubuntu as an example simply because they are currently the most popular Linux distribution. Ubuntu releases on a 6 month cycle, the release goes out weather it is ready or not. Plymouth does not work out of the box with proprietary drivers in Ubuntu, it never has, so the first thing you see is a black screen or one that is not set for the right resolution as soon as you install the drivers you need for opengl support. Using Plymouth makes a bad impression right from the start and they do not fix it. Graphics drivers are horrible in Ubuntu and no it is not the hardware manufacturers fault at all. Ubuntu always has to use the latest xserver and if I were a hardware manufacturer I would not want to completely re-write my drivers every 6 months either, it's ridiculous.

Multimedia playback in Ubuntu is hit and miss and the major reason is the immature graphics stack. I think choice is the only thing that keeps Linux popular at all because there are a couple of distros that manage to maintain good hardware support and put basic functionality before bells and whistles. The company I work for was considering going to Linux, they looked at Ubuntu 8.04 because it was an LTS release. They decided to stay with Windows. I asked the IT manager why they did not go with Ubuntu, he said; "Ubuntu looked more like an alpha release than a final product". I think this is how most people view Linux in general. Sure, we can fix and work around a lot of the bugs and we do but why are so many bugs present in the first place?

Choice is the thing that keeps Linux alive because different distributions do things different ways. Ubuntu does not provide updates to the popular applications that people want and use everyday, they say it could make the system unstable. Now, how is providing the latest version of your web browser or office suite going to trash your system? Imagine if Microsoft or Apple said you could not run anything higher than Firefox 3x in their operating system, it would be ridiculous of course, yet that is what Ubuntu does. Ubuntu's claim just reinforces to the user that the system is not very stable in the first place, at least that is how I read into that.

How many people end up trying distro after distro until they find what works on their hardware? Without choice many of us would not be able to run Linux. Linux is said to be for geeks and people that like spending their time fixing things, very few distributions can prove this wrong. I do not mean to single Ubuntu out in this post, they are not the only distribution that makes Linux look bad. Ubuntu has done a few things right, they just need to learn what a finished product is and what people actually want.

There needs to be choice in Linux.

Edit: I tend to get like this after I find that the latest Ubuntu release that I hoped would solve my issues doesn't, again.... :mrgreen:
kvv

Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by kvv »

exploder wrote:What makes Linux less popular is bugs and regressions, that's not saying that there are not bugs in Widows or the MacOS. Linux distros keep pushing out new technology before it is mature enough for the masses.

Ubuntu releases on a 6 month cycle, the release goes out weather it is ready or not.

Plymouth

Graphics drivers are horrible in Ubuntu and no it is not the hardware manufacturers fault at all. Ubuntu always has to use the latest xserver and if I were a hardware manufacturer I would not want to completely re-write my drivers every 6 months either, it's ridiculous.

Multimedia playback in Ubuntu is hit and miss and the major reason is the immature graphics stack.
Summary of why Linux is not popular among users and commercial developers. :D
Imagine if Microsoft or Apple said you could not run anything higher than Firefox 3x in their operating system, it would be ridiculous of course, yet that is what Ubuntu does. Ubuntu's claim just reinforces to the user that the system is not very stable in the first place, at least that is how I read into that.
[/quote]
Yeah.. I am sure that this process is complicated, but if Google is doing automatic upgrades with Chrome, why can't Mozilla do it too?? :?
Isn't it too much to expect from Canonical (or any other distro for that matter) to keep a track of every piece of software and ensure that there are no broken dependencies?
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Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by exploder »

Isn't it too much to expect from Canonical (or any other distro for that matter) to keep a track of every piece of software and ensure that there are no broken dependencies?
I don't think every piece of software needs to be updated, just the most popular applications between releases. PCLinuxOS manages to do this and they are a small group of volunteers. We know from the use of ppa repos and backports that this is even possible with Ubuntu and it's derivatives.
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Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by linuxviolin »

exploder wrote: I think choice is the only thing that keeps Linux popular at all because there are a couple of distros that manage to maintain good hardware support and put basic functionality before bells and whistles.
And we could say it's this "couple of distros" that should stay and other should/could disappear... :roll:

Btw, what you say in your whole post exploder, is just why there is need for less distro and more cooperation... Thank you for expressing exactly what we said, although you wanted to say the contrary... :lol:

P.S.= I agree with gogogadget. As I already said the big majority of distros is just sh**, not quality... Even if the quality of distros is also due to the quality of its components and here also, unfortunately, there are many cr**. But at the contrary what swiftlinuxcreator said, she/he seems not understand, nobody never said you must have just one distro...
K.I.S.S. ===> "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." (Albert Einstein)
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Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by exploder »

And we could say it's this "couple of distros" that should stay and other should/could disappear... :roll:
No, because ideas would die if that were to happen. The bleeding edge distros with all the bugs still serve as a testing ground for new technology. My whole point is how can anything be popular and gain ground if it doesn't work worth a darn in the first place. People are free to build and use what they like but to gain popularity Linux needs to be seen as more than a hobbyist system.
Btw, what you say in your whole post exploder, is just why there is need for less distro and more cooperation... Thank you for expressing exactly what we said, although you wanted to say the contrary... :lol:


Cooperation between distributions exists already in the form of source code. Every distribution has to make their source code available to comply with the GPL. Texstar manages to compile packages that work, there is no reason why Canonical couldn't do the same.
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Re: Would Linux be more popular with LESS choice?

Post by linuxviolin »

exploder wrote:
And we could say it's this "couple of distros" that should stay and other should/could disappear... :roll:
No, because ideas would die if that were to happen.
So you think if people cooperate more, work together instead disperse, this should making to die the ideas? :shock: Hmm...
K.I.S.S. ===> "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." (Albert Einstein)
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