> I actually think it's nice to have both

Options that are equivalent enough for most end users just cause confusion. There are also too many distros, and the Gnome vs. KDE competition set desktop Linux back another 10 years. That's three dimensions of big, important choices with not much downside if you pick the happy path and a whole lot of downside if you don't.

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whynotmaybe 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't know what's the difference between x11, wayland, gnome, kde and all the others.

The fact that people always debate over which one is best is one of the reason why I don't switch to Linux desktop.

Theres always the sane debate of Macos VS Windows VS Linux. That's a good one for me because there are many pros and cons for each of them.

But then, when you try to really look into Linux, it's an unstoppable flow of "systemd=bad", "snap is bad", “only the distro xyz is the real one because it respects principle abc".

Even the emacs VS vim debate seems saner than this.

I know the underlying spirit of Linux is the liberty to choose whatever you want, but this perpetual debate over which is the best only tricks me into believing that whichever distro I'd choose, it will be the wrong one.

Even for my old media server, there are 3 differents Linux mint : Cinnamon, Xfce and MATE.

What am I supposed to do? Spend a few hours to try each one and find the best for my 13 years old i5 with a Nvidia gt440 that's used 3 hours per month?

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xeyownt 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, uniformity of opinions is way better. Or not.

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boomboomsubban 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>What am I supposed to do? Spend a few hours to try each one and find the best for my 13 years old i5 with a Nvidia gt440 that's used 3 hours per month?

The performance difference will be minimal. It's an aesthetic choice, pick the one you like the look of or give a few of them a try.

It's like cars. Some people have extreme opinions on matters, some would be fine picking almost any car, and most test drive a few before picking their favorite.

	▲	reverius42 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, I think the answer if you aren't sure which car to get is "any of the popular ones are probably fine for you" and that's probably true for Linux distributions and software choices too.

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teo_zero 40 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> this perpetual debate over which is the best only tricks me into believing that whichever distro I'd choose, it will be the wrong one.

What a bizarre conclusion to draw! Why don't you believe that whichever distro you choose, it will be way better than what you have now?

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nilamo 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you have a spare usb stick, the cost to trying them is only the download time. Each is capable of the same things, the differences are purely aesthetic. So try them out and see which you like best. Or install all three and switch each time you login.

	▲	dehrmann 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You actually don't know the true cost until you learn the quirks of the UI, how it handles proprietary drivers, upgrades, the packaging system, how up-to-date and complete its packages are, etc.

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anonzzzies 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Spend a few hours having fun and then not think about it for years.

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hedgehog 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you just want something to use: install one of the most mainstream distros like Ubuntu or Fedora, accept the defaults, and move on with your life. There are compromises in all of the options, even my Mac has a handful of irritating problems.