For example, I’m using Debian, and I think we could learn a thing or two from Mint about how to make it “friendlier” for new users. I often see Mint recommended to new users, but rarely Debian, which has a goal to be “the universal operating system”.
I also think we could learn website design from… looks at notes …everyone else.
I’d really like it if Fedora didn’t discourage packaging static libs, but still discouraged building packages with static libs. It’d be nice to have them for development purposes.
I also wish they made “third party” software a bit easier to access in their installer and distro as a whole. The option to enable Nvidia drivers is buried, and even though flathub is now unrestricted when toggled in the installer, it’s not the first priority when prompted for software to install in gnome software.
A longer support cycle with less releases would also be nice, but would defeat the purpose of the distro. I guess it’d make more sense if CentOS Stream released more frequently and with more packages available in EPEL, similar to Ubuntu.
The option to enable Nvidia drivers is buried
You just type Nvidia into Software. They’ll never promote it unfortunately.
I totally agree with your assessment about Mint and Debian.
I like Debian’s minimal approach, but I think minimal can also be user-friendly.
I still has a nice installer, though.
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I do not recall other distros failing to update due to GPG key issues but it has happened to me on Arch distros many times. It is the biggest pain when converting from something like Manjaro to something like EndeavourOS as well.
I really do not understand why this cannot be fixed.
Every distro could learn from Arch Wiki
Even Arch Linux could learn from the Arch Wiki.
Who made the Arch Wiki? Was it done by the community? Genuine question.
Yup.
The Debian Wiki would actually like a word.
There is stuff in there that’s not found anywhere else. For example while researching driverless printing recently I found a huge page on the Debian Wiki but the Arch wiki only has a paragraph saying supporting printers should be detected automatically.
Can you send that one? I’m actually researching driverless printing right now
The Debian wiki is awsome. But it’s less noob friendly than Arch wiki.
The web UI looks like an old forum from 2000. Don’t get me wrong, a well written manpage style webpage is way better than an eye candy bloated scripted webpage (IMO) and I really like how detailed the Debian wiki is. But in today’s “mental standards”, the Debian wiki is not attractive enough for most new comer.
Also, It seems the Debian wiki is not as indexed as Arch wiki on the web.
Finally… I can’t access their wiki with my VPN ! :/.
But I do agree, The Debian wiki is a gold mine !!!
Not my current distro but I love ChimeraLinux, they manage to put musl and BSD userland into a working wonderful distro. I wish more distros adopted musl.
What I am really hoping catches on from Chimera is Turnstile: https://github.com/chimera-linux/turnstile
While I love that Chimera is Wayland only from the start ( no Xorg ), I do hope we get more DE options than just GNOME at some point.
Early days still for Chimera. I expect big things.
Linux Mint could learn from Arch and document…anything. 3/5 of the Mint manual is bitching about Ubuntu and the other 2/5 are about printers.
the other 2/5 are about printers
Relatable, everyone hates printers
Probably the start menu back to what it should be. Back with distro windows xp.
Wait no nvm wrong community.
Debian-variants on cmake. When I install cmake, it installs all libraries’ cmake files without the library binaries themselves. You read it right. The correct way to do this is to install only the base CMake files. CMake configuration files for libraries should be packaged with the library (not CMake).
Whenever I use CMake, these distros can’t show me the supposed error message. They just pretend configuration progressed and stop at random moments because some binaries are missing.
endeavourOs from arch by being less opinionated and giving away the awful colour theme
Luckily you can deselect the eos specific packages during install.
Fedora’s installer is abysmal. There’s a number of installers it could learn from. They’re working on one at the moment, so I hope it’s good.
Enabling access to proprietary software should also install audio/video codecs. Or at least have a separate checkbox for it, like (I believe) Ubuntu has.
Fedora’s installer is abysmal.
I thought so too. It doesn’t have enough options for power users and too many for newcomers. It caters to a middleground that barely exists.
Enabling access to proprietary software should also install audio/video codecs.
The codecs are also the #1 thing that annoy me in Fedora. Because of shitty US patent laws the rest of the world has to suffer.
Why won’t they just use Calamares?
Fortunately many flatpak browser now comes with codecs, like ungoogled chromium and librewolf.
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The one thing I wish every distro would incorporate is the way Gentoo handles config file updates. If there are any changes you get the option of using a very simple side by side merge where you go through all the differences of the old and new configuration where you can decide which one to use going forward.
Pacman just dumps you a .pacnew or .pacsave, leaving the comparison to you (y’know, KISS). Your change isn’t touched.
While you will get somewhat the same from apt, I like the Debian way of providing base config support in packages and have local config loaded by include statements.
As you don’t edit the default config and automatic updates can happen w/o user input and your config will stay safe
That’s the way it should be. But it depends on the software.
What really sucks about the Debian way is how it tries to start daemons in the post-install scripts and if that fails (say because the default config tries to use a port already taken) the entire package system shits itself and is unusable until you fix it.
the entire package system shits itself
Usually just the one package fails, unless you have other packages that have a dependency on it. I agree that it’s annoying though.
Well, it stays in that half installed state and interferes with any other use of the package manager.
I might be a special case as I Mostly use Linux for servers. But I have maybe experienced one such case on the last three years on our 50-odd servers
Pacdiff does this on arch-based distros
OpenSuSe - snapper for taking btrfs snapshots and rolling back. It’s basically a bulletproof way to do updates and recovery. Get a bad update or change a config in correctly you can roll back. Updates it automagically does this for you
Possible in Debian. The SpiralLinux guy (who also made Gecko Linux) has it set up on install.
I think more distros should have an easy way to set up disk level encryption in the installation
And know how to use an existing btrfs partition. And always [at least have an option to] show exactly what the automatic installer is going to do before I run anything. There’s gotta be a middle ground between “we’ll just surprise you” and “here, do everything yourself”.
OpenSUSE has a guided setup if ypu dont want a surprise or don’t know manual setups requires. then prior to starting givea you a summary of what qill be done.
Great, there we go, sounds like all distros should learn from OpenSUSE.
Each one has good parts, but I think openSUSE did a lot to make things easier for new users to linux
- Install, you see software summary, you can click and alter what patterns or packages you want included.
- auto snapshots when you enter package manager or admin tools, easy rollback with snapper or boot list
- a GTK front for all of YAST2-GUI components. All system, network, firewall, service, packages, boot and kernel config are available as GUI dialogs (as well as many others)
