Ranking of Linux Distrubitions from Best to Evil

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DPI

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I've followed Chris Titus for years, I find him overall a level headed guy whose information and observations are useful because he seems more invested in love of tech than trying to farm youtube clicks - much like Buildzoid (ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking) in that regard.

And here he ranks Linux distributions from Best to "Devil".

 
The dumpster fire that Linux has become is continuing to deteriorate...

I tolerate Linux when and where I'm required to.
 
Stugots said:
The dumpster fire that Linux has become is continuing to deteriorate...

I tolerate Linux when and where I'm required to.
Click to expand...

Care to elabortate?

Outside of RedHat and their recent dumping on the entire eco-system and now trying to back track that they were only targetting enterpriseses not paying for what they use...

Some of their takes are interesting, but do make sense. Kali, it just makes it easy to have the tools there and done, but, if you are being legit about getting into what the tools can do, why not install them as you need and understand them..
 
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MrGuvernment said:
Care to elabortate?
Click to expand...

I'm guessing it's just a reference to the overall "there are too many linux distro's" sentiment. Which is why the video gave me some insight since I'm still somewhat of a linux noob (I run Mint and Ubuntu) - when you actually boil down the various distributions, filter out the useless ones and understand the hierarchy, there aren't actually that many.

What was eye opening to me was that there seems to be much more anti-Ubuntu sentiment than I realized. I had believed Ubuntu was generally accepted as the "most mainstream" distro, in big part since its what PC OEM's bundle and officially support as thee linux choice if you don't want Windows.
 
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DPI said:
What was eye opening to me was that there seems to be much more anti-Ubuntu sentiment than I realized. I had believed Ubuntu was generally accepted as the "most mainstream" distro, in big part since its what PC OEM's bundle and officially support as thee linux choice if you don't want Windows.
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Ubuntu is the default distro for Microsoft Windows Subsystem for Linux. MS also gives us a choice of many other distros.

For a guy like me, who uses Linux only when necessary, WSL/Ubuntu works just fine. This idea of rating all the various distros just doesn't speak to my needs or concerns. I was only too happy that MS has a recommended distro for WSL so I wouldn't have to waste time sorting that out for myself, and honestly I found Chris's ratings tedious and a time-waster to watch. Why couldn't he have published his ratings as a single graphic and leave it at that? But that's me.
 
There is Linux, Linux, Linux, and Linux.
What I mean is, go type
Code: 
cat /proc/sys/kernel/tainted
If you get anything other than 0, some of the bets are off and many comparison lists become non apples-to-apples. At least as far as the low-level stuff goes, drivers and such.
Is the current desktop Linux experience good? For me, it's pretty damn good, but God damn is some stuff just retarded.
It's also late, I might regret this post tomorrow mornin'
 
He really wrong in a lot ways. Most distros have a purpose and for some users it's what they want. For example someone may want an Arch like distro but not deal with Arch itself. That's where a distro like Manjaro comes along. It's a more curated version of Arch for people who don't want the 100% bleeding edge of pure Arch. Now I use Arch. I won't use Manjaro because I don't like my Arch experience to be like that, but that doesn't make it pointless for others.

I'm not one of the people on the hate Red Hat bandwagon. I understand what they're doing and why they're doing it. Most of the haters are just cheap MFers who want a Linux OS to be bug for bug with RHEL without having to give up an email address or a little bit of money. Those same haters also never bothered to investigate all the ways Red Hat gave users to keep RHEL going in their test environments and more when they killed CentOS.
Ubuntu? His complaint was the snap package for Firefox? The one that Mozilla backed and supports and agreed to do? If you're going to hate on Ubuntu for that then you better hate on Mozilla while you're at it for that. Now if you want to discuss the merits of Snaps in general...well that's a different topic.

Some of his other "pointless" distros he apparently completely missed the point. ElementaryOS is a perfect example. Yes, it's Ubuntu based but Pantheon (their DE) is quite nice for a new user. Let's not even talk about all the work they've done for flatpak and their app store which can actually pay developers for their work.

His take on Kali Linux is complete bullshit and on and on.

In all honesty I think this is a clickbait video which was done purposely to enrage people for the views.
 
Vermillion said:
In all honesty I think this is a clickbait video which was done purposely to enrage people for the views.
Click to expand...

That wasn't the sense I got, nor his typical MO, but maybe you're right. His take on the various distro's are congruent with past videos where he focuses a single video to deep dive one of them. His may be more a case of late-bandwagoning something and then believing to know everything, while others that have been running linux for decades understand things as more nuanced. Like if someone's entrypoint for Windows was Windows 10, and they then espoused to know everything about Microsoft, while those of us that have been running since MS-DOS are seeing things through the bigger lens of four decades.

But insightful points in your post, thanks. The Linux Overall still feels like somewhat of a fog in many ways.
 
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DPI said:
That wasn't the sense I got, nor his typical MO, but maybe you're right. His take on the various distro's are congruent with past videos where he focuses a single video to deep dive one of them. It may be more a case of late-bandwagoning something and then believing you have all the answers, while others that have been running linux for decades understand things to be more nuanced. Like if someone's entrypoint for Windows was Windows 10 and they believed they knew enough about Microsoft, while those of us that have been running since MS-DOS are seeing things through the lens of four decades.

But insightful points in your post, thanks. The Linux Overall still feels like somewhat of a fog in many ways.
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I'll fully acknowledge that some distros probably are borderline pointless. I mean how many Ubuntu LTS based distros do we really need? Most of them don't go above and beyond like Elementary does to actually bring real benefit to the rest of the community. But people still use them and enjoy them.

That same mentality needs to be applied to Red Hat right now as well. Alma and Rocky Linux do what for the community? Nothing. They contribute nothing back upstream. They are simply a RHEL clone that sells support services. Red Hat does all the heavy lifting and Rocky just reaps the benefits. Just a few weeks ago Rocky signed a deal with NASA. Why should Rocky make money off Red Hat's hard work?

Honestly you should go read about how Alma and Rocky are setup to see the shadiness.
 
Vermillion said:
I'll fully acknowledge that some distros probably are borderline pointless. I mean how many Ubuntu LTS based distros do we really need? Most of them don't go above and beyond like Elementary does to actually bring real benefit to the rest of the community. But people still use them and enjoy them.

That same mentality needs to be applied to Red Hat right now as well. Alma and Rocky Linux do what for the community? Nothing. They contribute nothing back upstream. They are simply a RHEL clone that sells support services. Red Hat does all the heavy lifting and Rocky just reaps the benefits. Just a few weeks ago Rocky signed a deal with NASA. Why should Rocky make money off Red Hat's hard work?

Honestly you should go read about how Alma and Rocky are setup to see the shadiness.
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This isn't quite right. While Rocky might not contribute to the packaging effort done at Red Hat, they do contribute directly to the software integrated, namely to the kernel. They have a very competent kernel team to fix bugs that bother their customers, and that goes back upstream.

Actually they cannot change anything about the packaging (the work done by Red Hat) since they need to be 100% compatible package-wise. Can't have different dependencies and the like.
 
I've pretty much use Linux Mint, but I have played around with Zorn a few times. I'll have to try Nobara next since I'm an old gamer. Could not get most games to work on Mint.
 
DPI said:
I'm guessing it's just a reference to the overall "there are too many linux distro's" sentiment. Which is why the video gave me some insight since I'm still somewhat of a linux noob (I run Mint and Ubuntu) - when you actually boil down the various distributions, filter out the useless ones and understand the hierarchy, there aren't actually that many.

What was eye opening to me was that there seems to be much more anti-Ubuntu sentiment than I realized. I had believed Ubuntu was generally accepted as the "most mainstream" distro, in big part since its what PC OEM's bundle and officially support as thee linux choice if you don't want Windows.
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That's why Linux neckbeards hate it so much. They don't want Linux to look like windows. But they also want it to be "the year of linux", which would require people to port to Linux vs windows. You would think a version that makes it relatively easy would be praised, but alas! The NB's hate it for that very reason.

Linux easy? Bad! Why won't people move to it?!
 
If you don't have the time to watch it, the answer is Nobara or if you're not a gamer, Debian.

I'm going away from Windows with my current desktop, so I'll give Nobara a spin. Although I'm familiar with Fedora and don't like the direction it's going.
 
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Axman said:
If you don't have the time to watch it, the answer is Nobara or if you're not a gamer, Debian.

I'm going away from Windows with my current desktop, so I'll give Nobara a spin. Although I'm familiar with Fedora and don't like the direction it's going.
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Nobara is the best for gaming? Never even heard of it.
 
auntjemima said:
Nobara is the best for gaming? Never even heard of it.
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It's GloriousEggroll's personal project. (He's the guy who makes Proton work and a bunch of other gaming on Linux stuff; even if you haven't heard of him, if you've tried gaming on Linux in the past few years you've crossed paths with his work.)

TBH I haven't paid that much attention to it, I thought it was still in a kind of beta state.
 
Axman said:
It's GloriousEggroll's personal project. (He's the guy who makes Proton work and a bunch of other gaming on Linux stuff; even if you haven't heard of him, if you've tried gaming on Linux in the past few years you've crossed paths with his work.)

TBH I haven't paid that much attention to it, I thought it was still in a kind of beta state.
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Interesting. I tried to install some games recently with proton. It wouldn't get passed "installing". No progress on any game. Oddly enough.

Used it in the past without issue.

Maybe I'll try his distro.
 
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auntjemima said:
I tried to install some games recently with proton. It wouldn't get passed "installing".
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I've had mostly good luck with https://heroicgameslauncher.com/

There's a couple of games I really want to play on my Deck but they don't work, like Lego Star Wars. Part of me wanting to get set up as a desktop is that even with a mouse and keyboard, doing tweaking on the Deck is a PITA, since you're constantly having to switch between desktop and gaming mode, I just want to know what works and carry it over.
 
Titus is okay, I've enjoyed some of his videos in the past. This is just his opinions. Funny that Fedora is the devil but Nobara is amazing for beginners since since Nobara is just Fedora plus some gaming tweaks. I tried Nobara after using Fedora for awhile. I ran into issues with Nobara during upgrades and switched back to vanilla Fedora which I've never yet had any upgrade issues. I've had no problems running my games out of the box on vanilla Fedora and if needed I could follow tweaks from GE as needed.
 
I never understood why there were so many distro spinoffs until I started playing with Debian. It seems to me that the root distros don't really concern themselves with usability and leave more necessary things up to the user to sort out. I'm still evaluating Debian and so far I've been able to overcome most problems with the help of you guys and others, but still, why does it have to be such a struggle?
I also use Mint, which is based on Debian (or Ubuntu, which is based on Debian) and it's far more polished and user friendly.
The unity desktop forever soured me towards Ubuntu, what a steaming pile of doo doo. Far worse than anything Microsoft ever foisted on the public.
There are some specialty distros that are pretty good, like he one made for Pi-hole (can't remember the name), It makes Pi-hole easy to install and use.

Glad we have choices. No matter you feel about Linux, you gotta agree.
 
Axman said:
I've had mostly good luck with https://heroicgameslauncher.com/

There's a couple of games I really want to play on my Deck but they don't work, like Lego Star Wars. Part of me wanting to get set up as a desktop is that even with a mouse and keyboard, doing tweaking on the Deck is a PITA, since you're constantly having to switch between desktop and gaming mode, I just want to know what works and carry it over.
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I've used it and it works surprisingly well.
 
techie81 said:
I've used it and it works surprisingly well.
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I hope I don't make any enemies here, but I regard Linux on desktop as a necessary evil at best. On servers, IoT, and such, it's a great solution since vendors can customize it without having to start from scratch or use QNX. https://blackberry.qnx.com/en.

But on the desktop? Ask software developers what they need? I'm sure that they will say a consistent GUI across many brands of PCs, laptops, etc and a consistent and stable API, to make development and installation as simple as possible. How do all the different distros with their various GUI desktops and "optimizations" help them here? It surely increases the test phase of software development. And it relegates desktop Linux to low single digits in market share, well behind even Apple and MacOS.

Linus Torvalds is clearly a rock star in the OS world, but what happens if he gets hit by a bus? Or what happens if "Big Linux" like Red Hat starts to dominate the market, and destroys the market share of other distros?

I've been using GUI systems for 40 years now, since I worked for Xerox Office Systems and used a Viewpoint 6085. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Daybreak. I've also used CLI systems including DOS, UnixSystem III, System 7. When I worked for Sun Microsystems in the late 90s, we had Solaris workstations with a full GUI. No way on this earth do I want to use a CLI again, except when I have to use Windows cmd or ps1.
 
techie81 said:
At least Linux provides the ability for choice. I would say that Windows is actually the dumpster fire.
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But too much choice is also not good and it does fragment the market. Think if half of these distro's stopped with the "we can do it better, lets release our own" versions and just worked together to make the ultimate "linux on the desktop year" edition, they might of already been there years ago...
 
As for me, I will never go back to Windows no matter what may come. All of you are free to sell your soul to Microsoft but I shall not.
 
FSCDiablo said:
Titus is okay, I've enjoyed some of his videos in the past. This is just his opinions. Funny that Fedora is the devil but Nobara is amazing for beginners since since Nobara is just Fedora plus some gaming tweaks. I tried Nobara after using Fedora for awhile. I ran into issues with Nobara during upgrades and switched back to vanilla Fedora which I've never yet had any upgrade issues. I've had no problems running my games out of the box on vanilla Fedora and if needed I could follow tweaks from GE as needed.
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I also quite enjoy Fedora, though i now use KDE. There are just so many things in KDE I like better than gnome/base Fedora. Having an AMD based system likely helps, but I have yet to have problems using Fedora, including some light gaming.
 
auntjemima said:
Hyperbole at best.
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No, I don't think it is. Windows isn't an operating system any more. It's become a telemetry system. I know Linux has it's problems and even Mac will track you and profits on how you use it and what you don't opt out of.

There's a reason you can still use Windows Vista codes to activate newer Windows versions.
 
Axman said:
No, I don't think it is. Windows isn't an operating system any more. It's become a telemetry system. I know Linux has it's problems and even Mac will track you and profits on how you use it and what you don't opt out of.

There's a reason you can still use Windows Vista codes to activate newer Windows versions.
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But windows is far from dead. You not liking it doesn't mean it's dead. Do... do you understand you aren't the centre of the universe?
 
Executioner said:
I've pretty much use Linux Mint, but I have played around with Zorn a few times. I'll have to try Nobara next since I'm an old gamer. Could not get most games to work on Mint.
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Same here except if you can't get games to run in Mint there is pretty much no better option. Linux want to get better at gaming incorporate Battlenet in their distros ffs.

I find that list insightful and pretty much correct. Combining engineer talents of some of the pointless distros would benefit desktop Linux more in the long run in my layman's opinion. Not a popular statement I know. Going to install Nobara myself and give it a try.
 
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Another great thing about Linux is you can try different distros to your heart's content without having to deal with licensing BS.
 
Deadjasper said:
Another great thing about Linux is you can try different distros to your heart's content without having to deal with licensing BS.
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Not to rain on your parade, but you can try windows OSes without licensing as well. You won't be able to install most updates, but as far as trying a version of Windows, you can.

But I agree as well, it's one of the benefits, being free.
 
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auntjemima said:
Not to rain on your parade, but you can try windows OSes without licensing as well. You won't be able to install most updates, but as far as trying a version of Windows, you can.

But I agree as well, it's one of the benefits, being free.
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Heck, do a Hackintosh and try out different releases of MacOS.
 
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I will say, after watching that video I am giving Debian a try again. Last time I messed with Debian was probably 10 years ago.

I too hate distro's based on other distro's based on other distro's, so I really like using one of the 'root' distro's like Debian.
 
Stugots said:
I will say, after watching that video I am giving Debian a try again. Last time I messed with Debian was probably 10 years ago.

I too hate distro's based on other distro's based on other distro's, so I really like using one of the 'root' distro's like Debian.
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Yes and no, I used Manjaro for a while and had no issues with it, where as plenty of people noted running Arch direct they were constantly having stability issues due to newer packages being pushed out. I do think there is a point of it getting excessive, when you get down past 1 or 2 levels... I run mint linux, I like it, how it runs and feels, but i just do not like ubuntu.....
 
digital_solitude said:
Stopped watching there
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MrGuvernment said:
Yes and no, I used Manjaro for a while and had no issues with it, where as plenty of people noted running Arch direct they were constantly having stability issues due to newer packages being pushed out. I do think there is a point of it getting excessive, when you get down past 1 or 2 levels... I run mint linux, I like it, how it runs and feels, but i just do not like ubuntu.....
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Isn't this all unnecessarily complicated? How about a "baseline" Linux with "distros" that just modify the baseline? That might make comparison of different distros easier. Speaking here as a Windows guy, where all I have to worry about is HOME vs. PRO. I don't qualify for an Enterprise version, and I don't run Active Directory. :ROFLMAO:
 
philb2 said:
Isn't this all unnecessarily complicated? How about a "baseline" Linux with "distros" that just modify the baseline? That might make comparison of different distros easier. Speaking here as a Windows guy, where all I have to worry about is HOME vs. PRO. I don't qualify for an Enterprise version, and I don't run Active Directory. :ROFLMAO:
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Kind of. Debian is precisely what you might call a "baseline", with many distros building over it.

There are some distros that do things completely different and do not really fit the baseline way of development, but a lot of other distros (AND I MEAN, A LOOOOT) don't really justify their existence imo. Of course there's some guy somewhere who will die defending such distros and is willing to fly across the country, come to my house and explain to me in detail why I'm wrong. Such is the nature of linux fans and it's part of the charm. If you ask me tho, we'd be fine with about 5 or 6 distros:
  1. Debian: Stable and a classic.
  2. Fedora/CentOS(R.I.P)/RedHat: The best one ;) . Ideal for enterprise settings.
  3. Arch: For sweaty tryhards (myself included)
  4. ParrotOS/Kali Linux: For security researchers and pentesters.
  5. Ubuntu/PopOS: Linux for dummies distros. Intended to ease users into the hellhole Linux is.
  6. Alpine/Puppy (etc): Lightweight distros, intended for containers/embedded systems

As you can see, even tho I said 6 there's like 10 distros there. So maybe this helps further exemplify why so many distros are needed.
 
digital_solitude said:
Kind of. Debian is precisely what you might call a "baseline", with many distros building over it.

There are some distros that do things completely different and do not really fit the baseline way of development, but a lot of other distros (AND I MEAN, A LOOOOT) don't really justify their existence imo. Of course there's some guy somewhere who will die defending such distros and is willing to fly across the country, come to my house and explain to me in detail why I'm wrong. Such is the nature of linux fans and it's part of the charm. If you ask me tho, we'd be fine with about 5 or 6 distros:
  1. Debian: Stable and a classic.
  2. Fedora/CentOS(R.I.P)/RedHat: The best one ;) . Ideal for enterprise settings.
  3. Arch: For sweaty tryhards (myself included)
  4. ParrotOS/Kali Linux: For security researchers and pentesters.
  5. Ubuntu/PopOS: Linux for dummies distros. Intended to ease users into the hellhole Linux is.
  6. Alpine/Puppy (etc): Lightweight distros, intended for containers/embedded systems

As you can see, even tho I said 6 there's like 10 distros there. So maybe this helps further exemplify why so many distros are needed.
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Thanks. I'm one of those "Linux for dummies" types. Hard to believe that I once worked for an early UNIX business workstation company (Fortune Systems) and then for Sun Microsystems (some desktop, Solaris underneath), because I find even Ubuntu a pain to use. Some of those nice utilities, just give me Windows ports and I'll be happy.

Is there any way to do a "diff" between say the Debian version or the RedHat version and any other distro, to expose the differences? I'm assuming that the kernet is always the same. (No?) And I'm assuming that Kali Linux has tons of security and related utilities built in, some a determined person using Debian could download and assemble those same tools. (No?)
 
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