Baldur Nil

Also AWK is made to be fast, right? I suppose doing something in CPython in a non efficient way might not be noticeable with a bit of text, but would show up with a large enough data stream.

This is the best I could find: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.en.html

Yeah, just a note, basically these Linux distros are the same at their “core”, but what differs among them is mostly about the software they have and the way they’re managed.

So you have distros that offer only open source software in their repository, some include proprietary drivers. Some distro families will have some differences in the path of certain folders, different families use different formats of their packages (which include the actual binary of the software together with the metadata about how to install them in the system), although a purely Linux binary should be executed in any Linux distro. Some offer more guidance during installation and setup, some offer a more “raw” experience that force you to chose every little detail, and so on.

Another difference is in their philosophy of how the packages and dependencies are made available. Distributions such Arch Linux and its derivatives always offer the latest versions of each package, reason why they’re called “rolling release”. Distributions such as Debian offer a specific version that’s “frozen” and tested thoroughly until a new version of Debian is released with more updated software.

Some say a rolling release distro is better for gamers because you always get the latest features and performance improvements, but they’re naturally less reliable than a stable distro.

So I’d say the important thing is to understand the trade-offs so that you can choose the best thing for you. And also there’s no downside of experimenting different distros in a virtual machine, for example.

Also has an interface that clicks easier with people used to Windows.

Here’s a nice pic that make you feel less “lost” about how some popular distributions relate to each other:

I think we’re naturally a bit suspicious of freeware as “misleading” because so many old software used to be just vectors to install malware (mostly spam) alongside it. At least for me, I only trust it either if it is open source or it has a sustainable business model.

If the distro is rolling release, it can always support the latest software in theory, you’d just need to have the correct package formula, which is exactly what AUR offers.

The problem with AUR is just that the author of the package is likely not the author of the software and not affiliated with the distro, so you should normally check what the script is doing.

I really understand how hard is maintaining something for every single package manager and distributions

But for apps distributed in your system’s package manager, it’s not the devs that are distributing them in every package manager. It’s the distribution itself that goes to each repository, checks and tests the dependencies they need and creates the package for the distribution, along with a compiled binary.

When they aren’t offered in the distro’s package manager (or the version is outdated because the distro isn’t rolling release) things become more complicated indeed, and sometimes you can’t even do it because the dependencies are older than the ones you require.

Also Windows has a button similar to “don’t update this week” or similar.

What you’re saying is right about the possibility, but when you’re assessing some software for yourself, you have to consider things in the bigger perspective.

Some protects are very complex and require multiple teams of developers to maintain. That’s different than a small project that one person can maintain and curate external contributions.

So something like Chromium or Flutter isn’t the type of software that a community will self organize and maintain, they need some sort of organization behind them. This organization will probably need some sort of funding, ex: donations. Otherwise the projects will either fall into chaos and die or they’ll look for other ways to support themselves (ex: Qt with their commercial license and paywalled features).

In practice everything needs resources and without these resources any project simply dies.

Brands want to push their own style on people, to make themselves recognizable, and to push their ideas about UX to their users

That’s not a universal behavior though. There’s so many utilities and simpler apps made by smaller indie developers or smaller companies that don’t care about this.

You’re right, but that’s not the point. The other poster said it’s a skill issue. Sure, if the person can’t run commands in a terminal or doesn’t know what’s an executable that’s a skill issue.

Getting stuck because the game is having weird glitches that show off once in a while and you need classes on computer graphics to debug isn’t skill issues imo. Otherwise are all gonna establish that Linux isn’t for non programmers then?

Another option is to have enough people in the company interested in using that to justify it.

In my company (a large bank) Linux is now being rolled out to selected people as test because there was enough interest from a lot of the backend crowd.

It’s a good concept, I just have to look it up and understand exactly what it is doing before I start using it.

That’s what I do, except I straight up create the python venv in a folder, activate it and then do pip install yt-dlp. No messing up with my system.

This is at the very least super interesting.

This is very good.

It seems that it is based on Qt, so there might be a easy way to fix this unless they’re creating their controls from scratch. I know QML can be used as a canvas to draw custom controls, so it depends on the code.

I’m not sure how that could even be done, maybe a way to control the GUI with commands that you’d then be able to script, like Selenium on browsers?

That would probably look terrible though.