Re: Distros specifically designed for children

On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Tue, 27 May 2025 11:49:36 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
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On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

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On Mon, 26 May 2025 11:14:02 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
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We would have 1,000 distros without this mentality.

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Is that a good or a bad thing?

 
Do'h!, I meant we would NOT have 1,000 distros!  The fragementations
into different distros, different methods of packaging, different ways
of storing and configuring is overall, a hindrance.  Its a fake
"choice", because for the vast majority of people, who cares?

>
That’s the kind of attitude the Communists had. There were these stories
of defectors from the USSR, back in Cold War days, being completely
bewildered by their first visit to a Western-style supermarket. Why do you
need a dozen brands of bath soap, or a dozen kinds of toothpaste, they
would ask? Soap is soap, and toothpaste is toothpaste, isn’t it?
>
Moral: those who are brought up under a regime that doesn’t give them a
choice, often find it difficult to adapt to having freedom of choice.

I don't think this story is apropos.  Choice is indeed good, like choice
in soap.  Pointless choice can be a net cost.  There are inconvienences
at all, but being able to choose a different bar of soap.

At the moment, all cars that take unleaded petrol take the same size
fuel nozzle at the petrol station.  You do not have a choice when you
buy a car, what size nozzle you can accomodate.  You do not have a
choice, when you go to a petrol station, to use a larger nozzle which
could deliver fuel faster.  The tyranny!

Now imagine that some doofus at a car company really thinks that the
nozzle should be 1" wider, so they build two variants of cars, one
slightly more expensive, and it only works at the pumps with the wider
nozzles.  This person has a bee up their ass about how things could be
better and how the 1.5" nozzle or whatever is just wrong.  Cars that can
take regular nozzles can't use the larger ones, the cars with larger
ones kind of can take the smaller ones, but the fuel pump tends to cut
off thinking the tanks full.

Now you have choice!  Freedom!  Sure, its now a pain the the ass when
you fuel up, but choice is good!  Do you want to force everyone to use
the one size?  What kind of Commie would suggest we all just have one
size fuel nozzle!  Some petrol stations just support the one type,
because its easer, now some other doofus invents "snap" pumps to solve
this problem.  Square nozzles!

To me, a lot of these distro differences are like that fuel nozzle
example.  Stupid differences that no one gives a crap about, but create
problems.  Differences like putting config files in different places.
Things that if there were no choice in the first place, almost no one
would care.  The RPM vs DEB thing too.  Really, its barely significant
to anyone that actually uses a computer to do things, rather than obsess
about the OS, as some Linux users seem to do.  They seem to forget that
people actually use computers to run software they need to run.

Sure, I like being able to use FVWM instead of GNOME 3.  Thats
meaningful choice, and most people get a real difference in experience
from this choice that actually matters.  But many differences just don't
mean anything to most people, but still cause problems.