Was this a general conservative outlook/take on change?
Or are you hinting at something? If so, would you be so kind to elaborate?
Didn’t know Flatpak was a distro though
Author's disclaimer:
"Flatpak is NOT a distro, but that’s what Steam reports when it’s running on Flatpak, and Flatpak being distro independent we report it as a separate environment, if that makes sense. Feel free to ignore it if you wish."
Regarding what you said about Red Hat, I'm sure that -at least historically- RPM-based distros were simply a pita to work with when compared to the alternatives. I'm a relative new Linux user (only about 3 years so far), so I've only seen its better days :P .
I think you can't, because it requires each voter to rank their preferences, which requires a specific form of voting mechanism. I didn't participate in the poll, but if it was run as ranked choice, and if we had access to the raw, per-voter results, and if the sample size was sufficiently large; then yeah - we could run a full Condorcet count and get some interesting answers!
I'm not particularly well-versed on some of these terms. However, isn't it possible to retroactively make the gradings work as ranked choice? So, say a user gave:
Wouldn't this imply that they rank EndeavourOS higher than Arch, and both of them higher than Manjaro? Sure, we won't always have strict orderings. But I'm pretty sure this doesn't necessarily constitute a problem.
Regarding 'distro-buckets', I think that defining a distro different from another whenever (an attempt at) applying the inverse of the changes doesn't produce a functional system is cool. I hadn't considered that before. But, as you've noted yourself, this is a gargantuan effort and (probably) not worth it. Like, e.g. let's look at Deepin, it's mostly Ubuntu with the Deepin desktop environment. However, their respective auras are very different. I think we'd lose a lot of nuance by placing them in the same bucket. Just my 2 cents*.
I’m surprised to see Fedora ranked so highly.
I actually think it's to be expected.
If it was done last year, then -with the whole "Red Hat gOiNg ClOsEd SoUrCe" fiasco- it might have dropped. But most peeps seem to have forgotten about that, or just stopped caring (most prominent example for me personally would be Chris Titus; who went from an outright hater that wouldn't even touch Fedora derivatives (like the many uBlue projects) to outright praising Bazzite).
In case one's out of the loop, these two articles by Jeff Geerling should give a complete yet nuanced take on the matter. TL;DR: Red Hat made it harder for projects like Oracle Linux to cannibalize their work, but this came at the price of closing off public access to RHEL's complete source code, and using a EULA Subscription Agreement to try to stop customers from sharing the source code. Which, actually is allowed under the GPL licence; even if some would argue goes against the spirit.
Btw, why are you actually even surprised by it? While Fedora has historically made drastic changes that might have alienated its user base (read: being the first that went all-in on the likes of systemd, Wayland etc.), they've demonstrated to show some restraint in the last couple of years; acknowledging even that such radical changes aren't desirable. In turn, the community rewarded such efforts, making it go from "Red Hat's testbed distro" to a very respected mainstream distro. In the more recent ProtonDB reports, one can see how significantly it has managed to close the gap in usage between its ecosystem and the other big shots (read: Arch and Debian/Ubuntu).
Did they provide raw scores?
Yup! Here: https://nextcloud.thelinuxexp.com/index.php/s/PQPoRZo7n8dSkjw
one is which could be determined from vote counts
Ah, would this comment help?
I’m more interested in a ranked-choice version of this poll.
Me too. I suppose you could retro-actively use the raw scores for this. I'm curious of your findings!
You may find (most of it) in the description; I'll paste that below together with the ones he left out so that we have a complete list:
My all-time personal favorite is probably MarkText. I'm actually surprised no one else has mentioned it; knowing it has garnered almost 50k stars on GitHub.
I really like it for its realtime preview and support for mathematical expressions. Though, it's wonderfully feature-rich; so please check out its README for the full list.
Unfortunately, it (currently) doesn't enjoy as much development as it previouslu did. Which has ultimately led me to pivot to ghostwriter more recently.
Lots of good answers already, but a hidden gem has yet to be mentioned: Endless OS. TL;DR: it's an immutable distro based on Debian. As for the home directory, please consider one of the many solutions provided by others in this thread. Good luck!
Thanks for the nice chitchat! Have a nice day!
Since you seem to know a lot about it let me ask you a couple of things:
😅. I'll try my best 😜.
Bazzite is immutable, right? I’m sure I saw that somewhere and Fedora Atomic is also immutable IIRC
It is correct that the contents of / is immutable at runtime aside from /var and /etc. However, note that a lot of folders like /home and /opt are actually found in /var in response. This is later 'fixed' with symlinks and whatnot. In effect, only the contents of /usr (aside from /usr/share) is off-limits (or 'actual'^[1]^ immutable).
How does the config changes not get overwritten?
I believe my previous paragraph already answers this. But, to be even more elaborate, Fedora Atomic makes use of libostree (read: git for your OS). With this, only the pristine images are 'swapped' in-between updates (or rebases^[2]^). Your changes to the system are found in /var, /etc and in so-called 'layers' only and are not swapped out. Some of these changes are kept track of^[3]^, but most of them reside in /var and will not be touched by libostree.
The whole point of an immutable distro is to prevent changes to files to ensure things keep working
Kinda. The important part is that changes are prevented for the sake of a functioning system. But the entire system doesn't have to be locked down in order to achieve this. This does mean that it's actually not that hard to break your system. Just rm -rf /etc and your system will probably fail to boot into the very next deployment. But, as Fedora Atomic keeps at least two deployments, you will still be able to access the previous deployment in which you tried to delete /etc. So you're protected from accidental mishaps as long as you've got at least one working deployment. Thankfully, you can even pin working deployments with the ostree admin pin command. And..., just like that, the distro has basically become dummy-proof. I'm sure it's still possible to break the system, but you'd actually have to try 😉.
So, in short, Fedora Atomic definitely intends to be a more robust system and succeeds. But, it does so while giving the user agency (and some responsibility).
How are packages installed?
I think everything of importance is mentioned in the docs. What is it exactly you want to know?
The docs you sent recommend flatpak, which while very good in theory still has a small fleet of apps available.
But that's just the first of seven "package formats" listed in the docs 😜. The other six will assure that your remaining needs are fulfilled.
Also they suggest using distrobox among other things, that’s definitely not beginner friendly, although an interesting concept for an advanced user to have your main machine be an immutable host to any system you want.
This is obviously anecdotal, but Fedora Silverblue was the first distro that I used. I was a complete Linux newb. My coding background was also just a Python-course on Uni. But, somehow, in the very newbie-hostile environment back then (read: April 2022), I managed with Toolbx. So..., yeah..., I can't relate. Sorry*. You might be absolutely correct. But, as I said, I don't recognize this from my own experience. I wish I had a video-tutorial back then, though. Honestly, with the amount of hand-holding Bazzite and its docs provide, I believe a newbie should be absolutely fine.
It is even possible to overwrite this. Both in containerfile (requires creating own image) and on device (very hacky, not recommended).
Rebasing is the process by which a different image is selected to boot and run your system from. For example, with this, one can switch from Silverblue (GNOME) to Kinoite (KDE) without reinstallation. This can even be used to switch from a Fedora image to a Aurora/Bazzite/Bluefin/secureblue image.
These include the software you've installed through rpm-ostree (or soon dnf). We call these layered packages, based on the analogy that the packages aren't part of the image but are magically tacked on without you noticing anything finicky. It's quite magical. Besides that, any and all changes made to /etc are also kept track of. The former you can see by invoking rpm-ostree status, the latter by invoking ostree admin config-diff.
Isn’t Bazzite an immutable OS with very limited package availability outside of gaming?
Nope. It's basically Fedora Atomic with a lot of special sauce to make onboarding as pleasant as possible. Especially if you want to use it for gaming; be it as a HTPC/console or on desktop. Thus, like Fedora Atomic, you've got access to many different package managers to get your needs covered. Heck, Bazzite and its uBlue siblings actually improve upon Fedora Atomic in this regard (at least by default). Refer to this entry in its documentation for the finer details.
but I’m not sure it would be a good experience for someone just getting into Linux, since most of the help he will get online
We've all been faulty of this (read: searching on the internet), but we should instead consolidate Bazzite's documentation first. Only after it isn't found there, should one consider going to their discussion platforms; be it their own forums or their Discord server. Searching on the internet is IMO a no-go, especially if one isn't well-versed yet.
will direct him to edit config files which would get overwritten on update.
This doesn't apply to Fedora Atomic. Perhaps you're conflating this with SteamOS.
I'll keep it relatively brief for fearing unwieldiness.
I’m really not a fan of the “we can’t do anything so let’s sit and wait until everything gets worse” philosophy.
I agree. I hope you're not implying I'm stating otherwise.
but it was accepted because it was the best thing available at the time for the purpose
More like Red Hat pushed it as the new standard and the rest followed suit. Distro maintainers are pragmatic and reasonable people. They'll more often than not go for the path of least resistance.
A clear cut example of this would be how most distros don't opt for btrfs in combination with time shift or snapper for snapshot functionality. So clearly, they are not really trying to offer the best solution. Instead they just try to push a system that's as easy as they come for them to maintain and act accordingly.
the community needed a standard
And we already had one: SysVinit. Don't try to rewrite history.
I initially started writing a reply on the remaining text but noticed that my writings were continued to be misunderstood. Therefore, I decided to retract any further reply and will choose to stop engaging in this conversation. Thank you for the engagement. However, I would like to offer a small piece of advice as a fellow Lemmy user:
In future conversations, whether they are debates or discussions, please try to understand what the other person is saying. Avoid creating a straw man argument. If needed, ask for clarifications to ensure you fully grasp their point. If you continue to have difficulty understanding, consider alternative approaches to gain a better understanding.
I don't know how this conversation deteriorated, but I'll let it be. Thank you once more. For the record, I don't think this conversation will be productive moving forward. You seem to be focused on your own points without trying to understand the other side, which is fine. You don't have to try to understand me; I may not be important. However, the ideas I try to convey might be, and it's more important to consider and understand those.
Anyhow, I wish you the best.
Fair enough. Thanks for the clarification!