12 Mar
2023
12 Mar
'23
8:03 p.m.
On Sunday 12 March 2023 12:23:02 dep via tde-users wrote:
said deloptes via tde-users:
As to the hive mind -- that must be why Debian is by
far the leading Linux
distribution, right?
| For me most important is the stability and security and Debian is
| excellent providing it - TDE on top and again - stability. This makes
| the combination excellent for me.
I have no doubt. Getting there is the problem. Which is why I need to keep
looking.
--
dep
I have tried out a gazillion different distros over the years, and I am
probably not done yet. There might still be another one just over the
horizon, the Linux distro that will change my life for the better.
For the past almost-twenty years, I've run Linux, went through PC Linux (with
the KDE3 desktop) to get to Kubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04, and after that never
really wanted to change; but as you have said, Canonical changed, and
the 'Buntus got ruined in the process. I was done with them already years and
years ago, especially when I found out all their call-home stuff, and when it
finally became obvious that I was not going to win this fight against the
corporations by temporary fixes, or hacking this program or that, to try to
get my computer to do what I want.
Trisquel is somewhat better, but I remember it being at least as much of a
pain to get started as Debian; at that time, moreover, the networking was
especially hard to configure.
Once I finally got into Debian, I never looked back, and never thought
seriously about going over to another distro; except, I admit, that I have
switched to Devuan, but only because Devuan is more Debian now than the
original Debian. As you say, they tend to be rather political, but I don't
really spend a lot of time hanging out with them.
If you really want to get a system that is stable, that pretty much stays the
same over the years, across different systems, different machines, different
devices ... then I think you want Debian or Devuan. There are others worth
trying out, but it seems to me that Debian set the standard for the rest.
Even if Debian may or may not have violated its own principles with systemd
(I don't know, whatever ...), it is still the one that stands out. And if
not, there is always Devuan, and there will probably always be some fork of
it that will remain true to that ideal.
Now, I am a pretty non-technical person (compared to the rest of this mailing
list, I mean). To me, if you can read and pretty much follow the discussions
on this mailing list, then you should have no problems get Debian/Devuan, or
some fork of these, properly installed on your machine. (I seem to recall
that Leslie was giving Debian or Devuan a try, but then I didn't hear any
more about it, so I hope he hasn't given up.)
In any case, there are people here who have been running Debian for 20+ years,
so I believe that you will have more than enough help to guide you through
the process.
As for the non-free and contrib repos, I myself don't use them, don't use
anything except GNU/Linux free/libre software; not for some ideologically
pure reason, but only because my system doesn't seem to need them, and runs
just fine. But then, your needs may differ from mine.
Likewise, I don't use any of the guided partitioning or automated stuff. I use
the expert mode, and configure everything one line at a time; but after I've
reinstalled hundreds or thousands of times, I can do this in my sleep. And
this way, I get what I want, rather than something that is not quite right.
All the 'buntus, Trisquel, etc., etc., are based on Debian. Apple itself is
based on Unix, so even its architecture somewhat resembles Debian. And for
all of these "Debian-based" distros, I have to ask, What did they improve by
forking from Debian, and creating the 'buntus, etc.? What answer would you
get? I believe, for most of them, that the only advantages go rather to the
corporations behind them, maybe to the developers; certainly not to the users
of those systems.
Take a poll, and I would guess that well over half the readers or contributors
to this mailing list run either Debian or Devuan. It is probably a much
higher portion than that. The reason is not because of "hive mind", but
rather because the older one gets, one tends to dislike change. One
especially dislikes being a slave to a machine.
If you don't want to be a slave to your machines, that is a good reason to
learn to run Debian/Devuan. At least here, running my own machine, I can feel
like I have some control over my life. Beyond that, not so much ...
Bill