about purer distros

[malspa]

Awesome, Artim. Glad you didn't take offense at what I wrote! I think that what has happened here, over time, having been running various Debian-based distros, it's turned out better for me to kinda get away from being too dependent on distro-specific tools and instead drop to the command line where I can (usually) run the same set of commands.

[DuckHook]

I have a problem with the phrase "pure". Its implied antonyms are "impure", "dirty" or "polluted", so it comes loaded with fraught emotional baggage. I suppose its opposites could be more along the lines of "augmented" or "heavily modified", but it's hard to rid the phrase of the taint that initially and inevitably surrounds it.

I've never found any one distro to be "purer" than another. They emphasize different computing goals, but they all have strengths and weaknesses depending on what one wants out of them. Tails is strong in privacy and security but weak in convenience and ease of use. Kali is strong in testing and hacking, but weak in community help and documentation. Slackware/Arch/Gentoo is strong in flexibility and power user control, but weak in simplicity and user friendliness. Every distro can be broken down into such pros and cons, which reveals the tradeoffs that the devs had to settle for in order to scratch their particular itch.

Some new users find the superficial resemblance of Zorin or PCLinuxOS to Windows to be comforting. Others find these same resemblances to be deceptive and misleading. In what way does distro "purity" factor into this? The biggest factor by far is the user him/herself: some have the sort of itch that is scratched by Zorin and PCLinuxOS; others find that their itch is frustratingly left wanting. The same is true of "pure" Debian, or "pure" Fedora.

Personally, I use Ubuntu both because it comes closest to scratching the itches that I currently have and, to be honest, due to sheer lazy inertia; but at some point in the future when my itches change, I may very well switch distros. The idea of "purity" won't factor into my decision at all.

[Skaperen]

does adding seasoning make something less "pure"? maybe i like my Linux a little spicy.

[espectro2]

Not wanting to put wood in the fire I liked everything that was said here
Nice talk.
What do you think about what Richard Matthew Stallman talks about not sending usage statistics to canonical red hat etc that would be bad for privacy what you think they agree?
And by and large with a debian-like base distro we would be farther away from being spied on via microsoft-style backdoor as already mentioned in many newspaper articles.
Just to make it clear use linux I love ubuntu I want to migrate from distro nor have more windows installed on any machine at home.
thanks for listening.

[Artim]

Oh, pffft. Nothing ever "sent back to Canonical" can be used to spy on any particular user. It's used without any personally identifiable info to help identify any issues with the software. Crash reports aren't spyware.

[espectro2]

In fact, I may have misunderstood what I understand that Richard Matthew Stallman says that when activated the reports I use canonical redhat and etc they end up knowing which programs we are running on the system hurting the four freedoms
so I doubt whether base distros would be further from this possibility.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.pt.brml

https://www.tecmundo.com.br/ubuntu/3...de-spyware.htm

[Frogs Hair]

canonical redhat and etc they end up knowing which programs we are running on the system

They certainly know what programs are included on the default ISO just as the developers of GNU Hurd do. There is good chance most users will open or use them. There are opt out options for sharing included with Ubuntu and this has been discussed too many times before along with the philosophy of Stallman. Use what gets your work or play done the best.

[QIII]

RMS is entitled to his opinion.

Let's not go down the RMS path. That road leads away from a friendly Chat and toward the Recurring Discussions sub-forum. Or worse: to flame wars.

[Dev'olution]

To give an idea my first foray into other OS's was a short-lived RedHat attempt, then a botched BeOS attempt, then some time with GNU/Linux before even trying "Lindows".

It wasn't until '05 that I began with Ubuntu and my linux understanding skyrocketed.

Those first few attempts definitely didn't hinder my migration accross, but perhaps the bit that I did learn from those distros aimed at advanced users (bar BeOS and Lindows), also did help my transition into full-time Ubuntu use.