I might be a bit contrarian on this.

I think the biggest obstacle in the Linux world is people knee jerk recommending Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/outdated linux.

If people rallied around the current SOTA, Fedora, we would've hit 5% a few years ago.

The variety of distros cause people to get confused, and go with the most heavily marketed distros, Ubuntu flavors. Just because Ubuntu gave away free CDs 20 years ago, doesnt make them good. It makes them good at marketing.

People confuse Fedora with Arch, which is terrible. People confuse Ubuntu with 'stable like a table', instead of 'outdated stable'.

We almost need a reduction in favored distros. Out with the complexity: Fedora for desktop. It has all the DEs too.

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Gormo a day ago | parent [-]

Fundamentally, Linux is Linux. Differences between distros are vastly overstated, and they mostly amount to different default selections and configurations of the same underlying components.

Ultimately, anything that will run on one Linux distro will run on any other, with the only significant differences being on distros that run on unusual architectures or have made major changes to the kernel.

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resource_waste a day ago | parent [-]

This is idealistic not realistic.

With enough effort, this is true... but out of the box, you are going to have significantly more bugs and conflicts using outdated distros.

I'd love to see a 'time in terminal' by distro. I imagine Fedora would be in the mere minutes per year, and Ubuntu in the hours per year.

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Gormo a day ago | parent [-]

What do you find "idealistic" about it? My intention was to explain reality as I see it.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "outdated distros". It should be implicit that I'm referring to the currently maintained versions of available distros, not deprecated versions.

And the "time in terminal" metric might not generally make sense, given the preference that many Linux users have for CLI/TUI tools over GUI ones, given the efficiency and consistency advantages of the former -- many people prefer to work in the terminal even where GUI tools for equivalent functionality are readily available.

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resource_waste 9 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm going to take a guess and say you don't use linux as your daily desktop.

As mentioned, you 'see' but you havent lived it. You hear about it, but you are viewing it at 10,000 ft, rather than in a home.

Just because there was a 2025 Ubuntu release, doesnt mean the Kernel is updated. Its literally years outdated.

And 'time in terminal' is a great metric. People want to be using their computer, they don't want to be installing things or making modifications. If you prefer you could do 'time in terminal + time fixing things with GUI' and the result would be the same. Fedora just works. Ubuntu and family require fixing.

	▲	Gormo an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> I'm going to take a guess and say you don't use linux as your daily desktop. I've only been using Linux as my personal daily-driver for 14 years, and in that time, have only used three different distros as my desktop OS. My overall experience with Linux is limited to the past 32 years, having used about 20 or so different distros for servers, embedded applications, VMs, and other specific purposes during that timeframe. So perhaps I don't have the breadth of experience you have, but what limited experience I have gained over that time does confirm the conclusions I expressed in my previous comment. > If you prefer you could do 'time in terminal + time fixing things with GUI' and the result would be the same. Fedora just works. Ubuntu and family require fixing. Time spent fixing usage-blocking issues for me has been minimal across all all distros I currently use in various capacities (Debian, Alpine, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Arch) for at least the past 7-8 years. The last major issue I encountered that required non-trivial effort to correct was the result of the Infinality font rendering package being deprecated and preventing the DE from launching. Since then, most issues have been minor inconveniences, mostly at an application or DE level, that are easily adjusted away. I'm also responsible for a large number of Windows desktops, and I can say their trajectories in terms of usability and supportability crossed over each other about 10 years ago -- since the launch of Windows 10, the administrative burden and overall issue rate has become much larger than that of equivalent Linux systems, whereas the Linux ecosystem as a whole, regardless of distro, has improved continuously, to the point that all of the distros I mentioned above do indeed 'just work' without incompatibilities or breakage in ordinary usage scenarios.
	▲	akho 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Fedora 42 and Ubuntu 25.04 both use 6.14 kernel. While I agree with your conclusions, I feel that your deduction may be faulty.