Sick Of Windows But Can’t Afford A Mac? Consult Our Cynic’s Guide To Desktop Linux

Typically snarky and tongue-in-cheek overview of Linux distros <https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/31/the_cynics_guide_to_linux/>. On ChromeOS Flex: The year of Linux on the desktop came and went, and nobody noticed – maybe because it doesn't say "Linux" on it. ChromeOS only runs on ChromeBooks and ChromeBoxes, but they outsold Macs for a while before the pandemic. ... You _can_ run Debian containers: if you know what that means, go run Debian. If you don't know what that means, trust us, you don't want to. Ubuntu: Ubuntu used to be the obvious choice, but it took its eye off the "for human beings" ball ... to grab at servers – which, to be fair, is where the money is – and it shows. When it gave up on all its in-house stuff, it kept Snap, its universal app-packaging format that no other distro uses. They work, but they gobble disk space and make bootup slower. Debian: It's sort of like Ubuntu, but more out of date, harder to install, and with fewer drivers. If that sounds just your sort of thing, go for it. Fedora: Probably not worth the effort unless your day job is trying to stop RHEL boxes falling over, or trying to build code that runs on RHEL boxes without falling over. openSUSE: ... uses Btrfs and snapshots to make it easy to roll back updates – but the package manager doesn't know about snapshots, or Btrfs's famed inability to tell you how much free disk space you have, so it occasionally fills up your file system and corrupts it. Frustrated boredom or cringing terror, it's your choice: have a lot of fun! RHEL spinoffs: Or there are Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux, which are RHEL with the serial numbers filed off. Also: only 270 entries on Distrowatch? I can remember when there were more like 350 ...
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro