On Sunday 12 March 2023 12:23:02 dep via tde-users wrote: > said deloptes via tde-users: > As to the hive mind -- that must be why Debian is by far the leading Linux > distribution, right? > > | For me most important is the stability and security and Debian is > | excellent providing it - TDE on top and again - stability. This makes > | the combination excellent for me. > > I have no doubt. Getting there is the problem. Which is why I need to keep > looking. > -- > dep > I have tried out a gazillion different distros over the years, and I am probably not done yet. There might still be another one just over the horizon, the Linux distro that will change my life for the better. For the past almost-twenty years, I've run Linux, went through PC Linux (with the KDE3 desktop) to get to Kubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04, and after that never really wanted to change; but as you have said, Canonical changed, and the 'Buntus got ruined in the process. I was done with them already years and years ago, especially when I found out all their call-home stuff, and when it finally became obvious that I was not going to win this fight against the corporations by temporary fixes, or hacking this program or that, to try to get my computer to do what I want. Trisquel is somewhat better, but I remember it being at least as much of a pain to get started as Debian; at that time, moreover, the networking was especially hard to configure. Once I finally got into Debian, I never looked back, and never thought seriously about going over to another distro; except, I admit, that I have switched to Devuan, but only because Devuan is more Debian now than the original Debian. As you say, they tend to be rather political, but I don't really spend a lot of time hanging out with them. If you really want to get a system that is stable, that pretty much stays the same over the years, across different systems, different machines, different devices ... then I think you want Debian or Devuan. There are others worth trying out, but it seems to me that Debian set the standard for the rest. Even if Debian may or may not have violated its own principles with systemd (I don't know, whatever ...), it is still the one that stands out. And if not, there is always Devuan, and there will probably always be some fork of it that will remain true to that ideal. Now, I am a pretty non-technical person (compared to the rest of this mailing list, I mean). To me, if you can read and pretty much follow the discussions on this mailing list, then you should have no problems get Debian/Devuan, or some fork of these, properly installed on your machine. (I seem to recall that Leslie was giving Debian or Devuan a try, but then I didn't hear any more about it, so I hope he hasn't given up.) In any case, there are people here who have been running Debian for 20+ years, so I believe that you will have more than enough help to guide you through the process. As for the non-free and contrib repos, I myself don't use them, don't use anything except GNU/Linux free/libre software; not for some ideologically pure reason, but only because my system doesn't seem to need them, and runs just fine. But then, your needs may differ from mine. Likewise, I don't use any of the guided partitioning or automated stuff. I use the expert mode, and configure everything one line at a time; but after I've reinstalled hundreds or thousands of times, I can do this in my sleep. And this way, I get what I want, rather than something that is not quite right. All the 'buntus, Trisquel, etc., etc., are based on Debian. Apple itself is based on Unix, so even its architecture somewhat resembles Debian. And for all of these "Debian-based" distros, I have to ask, What did they improve by forking from Debian, and creating the 'buntus, etc.? What answer would you get? I believe, for most of them, that the only advantages go rather to the corporations behind them, maybe to the developers; certainly not to the users of those systems. Take a poll, and I would guess that well over half the readers or contributors to this mailing list run either Debian or Devuan. It is probably a much higher portion than that. The reason is not because of "hive mind", but rather because the older one gets, one tends to dislike change. One especially dislikes being a slave to a machine. If you don't want to be a slave to your machines, that is a good reason to learn to run Debian/Devuan. At least here, running my own machine, I can feel like I have some control over my life. Beyond that, not so much ... Bill ____________________________________________________ tde-users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Web mail archive available at https://mail.trinitydesktop.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
