
Wasted Creativity in the GNU/Linux Distribution Diversity - gnuarch
https://write.as/text/wasted-creativity-in-the-gnu-linux-distribution-diversity
======
jlarocco
Not this self-centered, ignorant complaint again.

Even if this time really is 100% wasted, it's not _your_ wasted time, so it's
none of your business anyway. Open source devs don't owe your their time, and
you're not entitled to tell them what to work on.

But the time isn't wasted, in any case. If existing solutions met people's
needs the alternatives wouldn't have been created. A huge project like a
desktop manager or a Linux distribution doesn't get spun up on a whim because
somebody doesn't like a desktop background, and it's telling that that's the
only difference the author notices.

~~~
ken
Note that this position is mutually exclusive with "It's open source so you
can just fix it yourself when it breaks". I _can_ go fix it myself, sure, but
then it _is_ my wasted time, that there are 8 or 10 major distros. We
shouldn't have to fix the same bug so many times.

I don't want 8 or 10 distros. I only want one. I don't even care which one it
is. I haven't contributed to that OS in 10 years _because_ so much of my time
ended up being wasted.

Or, if you take the position that "Developers don't owe you anything", then
that's fair on its own, but it means that it's not an OS that I can depend on
for anything. It's true there's no literal debt to be repaid but project
maintainers are supposed to be good stewards. They can be replaced, but it's a
slow and rare process. I can count on my fingers how many successful open
source forks I've seen. Most projects will die before they'll change
maintainers.

> If existing solutions met people's needs the alternatives wouldn't have been
> created.

That doesn't follow at all. There are plenty of reasons for starting an
alternative software project which have nothing to do with meeting any user
need. "Ego" is a common one -- it serves only one person's interest.

~~~
jlarocco
> Note that this position is mutually exclusive with "It's open source so you
> can just fix it yourself when it breaks". I can go fix it myself, sure, but
> then it is my wasted time, that there are 8 or 10 major distros. We
> shouldn't have to fix the same bug so many times.

They seem to be complimentary ideas. I might refuse to fix your bug or add the
feature you want, but you're free to take my code and do it yourself. It's no
more a waste of your time than it would be of the other dev's.

I also don't see what you're saying about fixing the same bug 10 times. That's
not how it works. Each distro is responsible for itself. If you submit a fix
to zsh, for example, it's up to each distro to go upstream and get that fix
themselves. Same goes for bugs fixed by distro maintainers - it's awesome if
they submit the fix to the upstream, but they're not obligated.

> Or, if you take the position that "Developers don't owe you anything", then
> that's fair on its own, but it means that it's not an OS that I can depend
> on for anything.

And maybe you shouldn't. "Buyer beware" should apply double when you're
getting something for free.

Paid Linux distros exist for a reason. If you're depending on it for something
important it's worth paying for Ubuntu or RHEL.

> That doesn't follow at all. There are plenty of reasons for starting an
> alternative software project which have nothing to do with meeting any user
> need. "Ego" is a common one -- it serves only one person's interest.

Exactly, there are plenty of reasons. Just because _you_ think they're bad
reasons doesn't mean they are, or that anybody has to listen to you.

------
theonemind
Well, perhaps so, but Linus, regarding Linux (although I think he meant mostly
the kernel), said,

"I'm deadly serious: we humans have never been able to replicate something
more complicated than what we ourselves are, yet natural selection did it
without even thinking. Don't underestimate the power of survival of the
fittest. And don't ever make the mistake that you can design something better
than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a
feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence much too much credit."

In that light, this strikes me like complaining that we have too many kinds of
beetles. Linux distributions just work this way.

~~~
ken
That is indeed a powerful mechanism -- but it still sucks to be a beetle,
especially if you're not on a dominant branch of your family tree.

Imagine you had the job of recruiting beetles. You'll die soon, and your
offspring (if you have any) probably will, too! What's the upside? Your
species will be stronger for your death! That's a pretty tough sell. You're
going to get the young and ambitious, and they're going to fight each other as
much as they possibly can.

That's not the only way to win, or even the best. Pine trees are genetically
successful, too, and they don't go out and murder each other.

I wouldn't complain that there are too many kinds of beetles, but I would
complain that there are very few trees. It would be sad if beetles were the
highest form of life on the planet.

------
markstos
Bah. Diversity is good for the ecosystem.

Do you complain about the plants and animals with only minor differences as
being redundant, a waste of evolutionary effort?

Just a generation ago there was understanding that we had let too much power
accumulate into too few large, multi-national corporations.

Then we got a chance to start over with the internet and new digital
companies. How quickly we repeated the same mistakes. Now we have trillion
dollar tech companies and wonder if they've gotten too big, too centralized.

What cognitive dissonance to bemoan the consolidated power of just a few FAANG
companies while also complaining that the diversity in open source software
isn't the kind of diversity you'd like to see.

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brendangregg
I worked on Sun Solaris (it's now dead, I know), and now on Linux. This was
like switching from a Universe with one Linux distro, to the current one with
many.

The speed and priority of bug fixes and feature development was higher with
one distro. Everyone was working on the one thing. Any bug ever found could go
straight to _the_ best engineer to fix it, who could replicate it
_immediately_ since they were running that distro as well, and they could make
it a priority to fix as it affected _all_ customers.

Now consider many Linux distros. A user says "this doesn't compile on
NiftyLinux". A) The developer hasn't even heard of NiftyLinux, and doesn't
have immediate access to reproduce the bug. B) It's a low priority to fix,
since most of the developer's users are on Ubuntu or CentOS.

I've felt this firsthand with the performance tools I've developed for Solaris
and Linux. With Solaris I could provide better support. With Linux, there's
bugs that are open for months or years for odd Linux distros that I don't have
time to explore.

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dansman805
On one hand, time and effort is wasted doing the same thing 100 times with
slight differences rather than just working on the same thing. But on the
other hand, in my opinion these differences are very important. For example,
you listed that only a few desktop environments are necessary. While that may
be true for the vast majority of Linux users, the more fringe desktop
environments/window managers are great. For example, I use i3wm daily and it's
a pleasure to use. While some of the DEs listed in the article may have some
tiling, the WMs designed specifically for tiling do it better (in my opinion).
That's the glorious thing about there being many tools that do ostensibly the
same thing, you can almost always find a tool that fits your niche use case.

~~~
gnuarch
Good point, at least i3 or sway don't do their own distributions – afaik.

~~~
dansman805
There is manjaro i3 edition, and if I recall correctly another more minor
distro that does i3 by default, but for the most part it is user installed,
yes.

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noja
A very top-down utilitarian way of thinking about it. So what if there _is_
wasted effort, people want to do that, so they do.

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eterps
And the most creative distribution IMO: NixOS isn't even mentioned.

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kgwxd
There is 0 substance to that link. How did this hit the front page?

~~~
gnuarch
There's the rub. Many distributions hardly add any substance, yet the topic is
so popular.

~~~
agumonkey
Because people wants to express themselves. Tweaking and repackaging feels
like something for the young nerd or the tech saavy layman. It feels like
making an OS and OSes are semi god for the computer crowd.

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dsego
I agree, it's ridiculous. Hundreds of distros but all include the same 5-10
usable apps. Great, I can run GIMP on Ubuntu, Fedora, Solus, Mint, Elementary,
etc. It's still GIMP.

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b0rsuk
I think many people contribute to Linux _because_ there are all these extra
distros. People have different needs, and gather around a different itch to
scratch. If there wasn't a distro focusing on Rasberry Pi, performance or
security, they wouldn't be there.

It's like saying there should only be 10 programming languages. Vast majority
of programming languages never takes off, and many are very niche. But you
never know which are going to take off and when.

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mimixco
I don't think the problem is too many options. This is one of the great
benefits of the free market.

The biggest problem with Linux distros, IMHO, is that nobody has really
created a packaged install that's simple for users to get running. Ubuntu is
ahead of the pack but there are still many issues... creating a USB boot
stick, using Ubuntu under Windows, accessing your network with a VPN -- those
a just a few I've experienced.

Until a Linux distro gets to the level of packaged, simple installation like
users enjoy with Windows and Macs, the operating system won't take off on the
desktop. And that's a real shame. We need open source software more than ever.

Perhaps there's room in the market for _just one more_ distro that can solve
this!

~~~
jcastro
> simple for users to get running.

This doesn't matter. Most users don't install operating systems, they just use
what comes with their computer.

The real issue for most people is "Why would I use this"?

~~~
mimixco
That's a very good point.

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giomasce
It seems that the author is only aware of the existence of general-purpose
distributions. They did not list any distribution with, say, different
approach to packaging, or for use in HPC, security, NAS, embedded, you name
it. Also, for some reason they cannot avoid listing more or less all well
established general-purpose distributions, while that is really the list
between which you are supposed to choose one or two if you care about not
trying many similar things. It seems that the only criterion to be on this
list is to be well known. Same for the DEs.

------
spacesuitman2
It's not wasted at all - people are learning and configuring, tweaking and
optimizing their use of a computer. I for one really like the fact that
Manjaro is an easy Arch for me. Is it wasted creativity now that I can focus
on non-distro work since I found my distro?

Besides, who is the author to tell people to not waste creativity. It's
remarkable to have this audacity. Even the notion of "wasted" creativity is
just not nuanced.

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a3n
Why not just Slackware?

The author's list got to be the list in mutual cooperation and competition
with the list and others.

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haolez
Not sure why, but this remembered me of Tiny Core Linux:
[https://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/](https://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/)

It's a very different and clever way of deploying Linux.

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darkr
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ People are free to do whatever the fuck they want with their time
and creative energy.

Here’s to anyone who ever scratched an itch, created something and then gave
away the fruits of their labour for free.

A thousand more distributions and desktop environments!

------
jotm
One can dream... Linux would've replaced Windows by now if that happened.

~~~
a3n
What sales force would have caused Linux to be the default on mainstream
hardware?

~~~
markstos
Google. Shipping Chrome OS.

~~~
yarosv
Chrome OS is not Linux, or I should say GNU/Linux (although this name lost its
meaning too). Just like Android is not Linux either.

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seba_dos1
This makes me want to spend some time creating a new distribution with its own
desktop environment.

