Re: Distros specifically designed for children

On 2025-05-28, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Wed, 28 May 2025 12:34:28 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man wrote:
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On 2025-05-27, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

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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.

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Like the Communists, you lack a grounding in the basic laws of economics.
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Pointless choice can be a net cost.

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If the gain offsets the cost, then the result is profit.
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The Free Software world is a shining example of free-market economics in
action, in a way that proprietary software is not: the barriers to entry
are low. That’s why you have so few choices among proprietary software,
and so many among Free software. The situation of having 300-odd Linux
distros has been like that for something like 15 years, if I remember
rightly.
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Basically, it’s gone well past the point where anybody could claim that
this situation is somehow unsustainable.
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Profit for who though?

Fragmentation in Linux becomes a barrier to entry.  Software authors and
vendors have complained about this for 15 years at least too.  This
situation is a bit better now.

At the moment, all cars that take unleaded petrol take the same size
fuel nozzle at the petrol station.

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And don’t forget, all the roads and road signs are standardized, as are
all the controls in those cars. That gives you the freedom to own whatever
car you want, and drive it on whatever roads you want, to go wherever you
want. And then get rid of that car and buy another one, whenever you want.
You have standardization with variety and interoperability, and minimal
fragmentation.
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The correspondence in the Free Software world is that all those Linux
distros are built on the same Linux kernel, mostly include the same common
GNU userland core, and offer most of the same core apps. This gives you
the freedom to run whichever distro you want, use it to do whatever you
want. And then replace it with another distro, without having to throw
away all the work you’ve done.
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Yes, I have switched from Fedora to Debian (the difference is minimal).
I've also packaged software for Fedora, and Debian so I can see the
problems that software vendors face.  You can forgo the package, just
distribute binaries, but that is harder for people to install.

Likewise with configuration.  Having set up Linux systems for others,
and servers, subtle differences become blockers when Distro X modifies
the base software and the instructions, for a different distro don't
quite work.  These are not insurmountable, but pain points which
increase cost.

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.

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Nobody would buy their product ... unless they had a really huge
advertising budget to tell everyone how wonderful it was, and why those
who don’t switch over from the common, perfectly-good standard are missing
out on something wonderful.
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Sound like anyone you know?

Most people came into Linux when the distro landscape was already
fragmented.  No one would by the alternative nozzle NOW, but if cars
were produced, almost from the beginning with different nozzles, with no
"standard", then yes, I think people would be buying whatever variant
appears to suit them because there is no canonical standard.

Linux could have gone this way, if there the first distro was the sole
distro for several years and gained mindshare as THE Linux.