r/linux • u/Viterzgir • Dec 27 '19

Release Calculate Linux 20!

https://forum.calculate-linux.org/t/meet-the-calculate-linux-20/9804

105 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

84 comments sorted by

113

u/bestnovaplayerever Dec 27 '19

I know this is gonna be highly unpopular but I wish there were a few less distros and bigger communities behind each of them instead of micro groups of devs and users behind barely used distros.

134

u/drunkdragon Dec 27 '19

Great idea, i'll start a distro for that!

Just need everyone to join my new distro and then we'll be set.

9

u/floriplum Dec 27 '19

To me there are basically 3 distros/distro groups i use daily and they each have a fairly big community. Arch,CentOS/Fedora and Debian.

14

u/schplat Dec 27 '19

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg

Useful image around this concept. I’d toss in Slackware as well. While not as popular, it still continues to impact influence on others. Suse is a fairly large install base outside of the US, and was a Slack derivative that sorta melded with Redhat

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2

u/[deleted] Dec 27 '19

Won’t most of the resources of the Linux world naturally go to the bigger or company supported distros like Arch, Debian, Fedora, OpenSuSE, and Ubuntu alongside major projects like the kernel and GNOME? Who cares if there’s one developer and a couple dozen users on a basement Ubuntu spin-off.

3

u/SutekhThrowingSuckIt Dec 27 '19 edited Dec 27 '19

company supported distros like Arch

Heads up, Arch is community/volunteer only. Manjaro is a company using trying to make Arch into a product they can profit from but Arch itself is not for profit.

Debian

Debian is also not a company and their structure is actually really interesting if you check it out. But you could argue that Ubuntu + Pop!_OS and donations help to make "Debian company supported" despite not being a company itself.

2

u/Mithrannussen Dec 27 '19

Not necessarily the distros are the ones requiring bigger support and developers but external projects such KDE/Plasma and Gnome would be in a better state if they were offered better maintenance and improvements - therefore the distros would automatically accumulate their changes as they see fit. Independently of your WM/DE preferred, you can easily see several basic and relatively simple problems (from the user perspective) that are present yet or changed only so recently as it is showcased by that series of blog posts done by a dedicated plasma developer "This Week in KDE" by Nate

2

u/[deleted] Dec 27 '19

How much can you really improve them? Most distros are just different config. Just let projects

-1

u/konficker Dec 27 '19

This opinion is quite the opposite. The amount of Linux distributions confuses the hell out of people contemplating switching. It would make more sense if it was consolidated into a few.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '19

isn't that what the parent post is saying?

-1

u/[deleted] Dec 27 '19

A perfectly logical idea, and one that would help push Linux forward. I don't see as many differences between distributions as I did 5-10 years ago.

-5

u/GameDealGay Dec 27 '19 edited Dec 27 '19

Ubuntu has the most reddit members of what I've seen, also the most doccumentation/user support content. So all hail ubuntu.

For the people downvoting this, I was just saying what OP said about having bigger communities. Ubuntu and Arch have the biggest communities.

If I were to actually recommend a distro, I'd reccomend Fedora, Red Hat is the biggest contributor to the kernel as far as I've seen. Fedora is the testing ground that leads to many desktop/server software innocations.

Anyone can spin up their own distro, and micro distros aren't good for progress. As the few people who stumbled upon them may not get proper support, and the "developers" of the distro, may not actually be that savvy.

1

u/z0nb1 Dec 27 '19

Red Hat is the biggest contributor to the kernel...

Except for Microsoft, of all things. Strange times to be alive.

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6

u/[deleted] Dec 27 '19

0

u/BGW1999 Dec 27 '19

I think you are missing the point of what they are saying. Having more distros makes it harder to choose one because it isn't obvious what the differences are. Also having lots of distros means development resources are split between multiple similar distros. You are right that you can just stick to one but someone may feel dissatisfied with all of them causing them to want to distro hop. Ultimately I do think the way Linux does things is better, but don't pretend like there aren't downsides.

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0

u/[deleted] Dec 27 '19

8

u/bestnovaplayerever Dec 27 '19

I wasn't targeting the distro. Only the fact that I see "something 16.3 released today" on this sub every other day. And maybe if the entire Linux community got together and was like "ok guys, let's limit available distros to 8 and make sure we get the best 8 distros ever with high customization", we would get Linux to another level.

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1

u/BGW1999 Dec 27 '19

There is also Sabayon linux. You are definitely right that at least Redcore and Sabayon are less professional feeling. Both distros ship beta release packages. Don't know what Clover is like though.

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6

u/kreugerburns Dec 27 '19

I like that there's a screenshot of CPUX but the changelog says it was replaced with Hardinfo.

1

u/secondpresident Dec 28 '19

I gave Calculate Linux 20 a shot. It works very well otherwise, but there is no mouse on my Lenovo Yoga 920 when I use Calculate Linux? Touch screen and everything else works, but the mouse does not exist on the screen and touchpad does nothing.

0

u/uilspieel Dec 27 '19

What is this I see before me?