Mike

You just need to tailor your message better, is all. Nobody resonates with doomsayers, even if they may be right.

[edit: love the no actual objection downvotes, you cowards are standing up for… something…

You just come across as abrasive.

Even though i agree with you, I still think you’re a bit of an ass.

The EU is still an infinitely better place to live than the US, lol.

Sadly when the EU regulates, it’s the same for everyone across the board.

It’s a mess. They require that small, one-man operations or simple corner stores treat personal data with the same diligence that banks do, under the GDPR.The concept of scale is something that is foreign to the EU.

I have a few friends that work for the government in their countries and they say GDPR requirements is destroying their local municipalities.

The only regulation from the EU that I’ve seen makes a distinction at scale, is the Digital Markets Act.

Well, the first thing that comes to mind would be some sort of “security features” that the regulatory body might believe linux should have in order to be a mass consumer product, that the linux community might not agree with/have the structure to keep up with.

Another would be, if the EU goes ahead the introducing backdoors in encrypted communications (hopefully not), what implications could that have for the current spyware-free linux distros we use?

Overall, my concern is that more eyeballs on Linux might mean increased regulation even when it’s unwarranted because some bureaucrat needs to justify his salary. I’d rather avoid that.

I’m qute happy with where Linux is ATM. 4-5% market share means there’s enough of a market that things can develop, but not so much that regulation is used to force Linux to be a particular thing.

We can argue that Cannonical and Red Hat do force Linux in a certain direction of course, but that’s another matter entirely.

Possibly controversial point, but I don’t want Linux to go mainstream.

I like that there are very few viruses developed for Linux. I like that most countries don’t regulate Linux in the way that MacOS or Windows are regulated (I live in the EU, so I know a thing or two about regulations). This could potentially make some linux distros unsupported in some regions due to being none-compliant.

And most of all, I like that Linux apps are mostly Free as in free beer, and a labour of love for all involved.

All these things would go away if linux were to reach 10-15%+ market share. Is it really worth it to invite all this scrutiny for a chance of having hardware companies make hardware run better on linux?

I first tried Linux Mint when I was 12, eventually changed to Ubuntu when I was 13 or 14 because I saw the Windows 11 copilot button, installed

Can totally relate, lol. Except I first tried Ubuntu at around 12 (at the time it was considered the best for beginners), then nearly 20 years passed until I saw the same copilot button pop up, uninvited, in my task bar. That was the last straw for me.

Now I run OpenSUSE as a daily driver.

That’s fine. Again, I don’t understand the use case.

I certainly don’t install or uninstall programs so often that I need to systematize it, and I only have 2 computers so its probably easier to just manually install them on each machine than to use some obscure coding language to achieve the same.

But to each their own. Linux is awesome also because of the options it offers to everybody.

It’s not my opinion. The distribution architect at SUSE said so in reference to RPMs.

I imagine it isn’t much different for other non-containerized file types.

Source

I keep saying this.

If you’re a sysadmin in charge of a bunch of computers, by all means use NixOS.

But for personal use? Its easier to install everything by hand every time you reset your laptop (which should be maybe once per year at most) than it is to set up a config file on NixOS.

In traditional distros, apps dependencies are mixed with system files. In atomic distros you use flatpaks which are containerized and don’t see system files.

This is what I mean. I understand you can also install Flatpaks in traditional distros, but most people don’t install only flatpaks.

I followed the path Mint>Fedora>openSUSE.

Wanna know my experience? I had issues daily with screen tearing on mint, even though I had the NVIDIA drivers they were probably too old on Mint for my graphics card. The desktop wouldn’t load, I had errors on starting and on shutting down Mint. I spent more time troubleshooting Mint than working.

I said fuck it and decided to give fedora (actually Universal Blue’s Aurora, which is atomic and fedora-based).

It was pure bliss.

Everything just worked out of the box to the point that I was confused as to why everything was working so well. The only thing I had to “learn” was how to use distrobox through BoxBuddy, which took a whopping 30 minutes of research or so.

Now I moved to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and it feels like going back in time. I know my OS is not as secure due to not being atomic, I have to run the command line daily for updates, and the initial setting up would have been intimidating for a beginner. But at least it also hasn’t given me problems yet, unlike what happened with Mint.

So IMO Mint should not be recommended to beginners, unless their device is very old. The architecture of atomic distros is very familiar to anyone who has a smartphone today, which is practically everyone. You can go to the software store and download Flatpaks as seamlessly as you do on the Google Play or Apple Store, and you can even change the apps permitions using Flatseal. Best of all, you get an OS that is secure, possibly self-updating and self-healing, which is what you want if you want your device to just work without troubleshooting.

I haven’t done it yet, but when my wife wants to change her laptop, I’ll 100% install a self-maintaining atomic distro for her.

Fair. I think for as long as there is a will to maintain traditional distros (which there is), there will be options.

Hell, people are still keeping Thinkpads T480 alive and relatively secure by making custom libre bootloaders! The F(L)OSS community is awesome.

I think it comes down to priorities.

Whenever someone mentions Arch the pro arguments are always something in the lines of “I get to tinker”, “I learn so much reading the documentation”, “We are first in line to receive packages”, “We have packages that no other distro has”.

As someone who uses a laptop for work, all of those things sound like a nightmare. If I were a student with spare time on my hands, maybe I’d value such a distro more.

But as it stands, stability without compromising modern technology (I wouldn’t use a Debian-based x11 distro) and minimal options to tinker with, is my sweet spot. Because I need my laptop to have it’s security updates on time, and just work.

Flatpaks are better for security though. Containerization is a necessity for any serious device connecting to the internet.

Linux users got way too confortable giving any obscure package they found on AUR root access to their entire device, lol.

No they don’t. OpenSUSE, especially tumbleweed, is way more security-focused than other distros.

It’s a very low-trust default install, and it takes some work to get things through the firewall. Compare that to Fedora where every port above 2025 is open by default.

Fair enough, I just wanted to point that out because i see a lot of people falling for the “it has nothing proprietary” mindset.

But there’s nothing wrong with that device that I can point to, other than it being older hardware with all the limitations that might entail.

I guess because I never even came across people talking about European websites on a general community page such as this one.

I’m positively shocked, is all.

I’d be very careful with setups that promise libre everything.

I don’t know this particular brand, but it is quite common for projects like this to not include security and stability updates with the sole justification that “it’s proprietary”.

Your laptop’s motherboard came with a fatal security issue, or is a time bomb waiting to implode on itself? Too bad, can’t receive updates from HP, Lenovo, Dell or whatever because they are proprietary…

Just something to keep in mind.

If you buy a tuxedo you’ll have local European support, which is a massive plus. Tuxedo OS is totally optional and you can just install whatever you want on their laptops.

Personally, I find thinkpads way too expensive for what they offer. Nearly half the speccs for the same price as a tuxedo with 2 SSDs and 64GB RAM. For me its an easy choice.

Added bonus, Tuxedo makes their laptops to be Linux compatible, while Lenovo’s primary goal is Windows compatibility.