this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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I know I know, another "help me choose a distro" thread (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by KISSmyOS@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I'm wondering if a distro like the one I'm looking for even exists:

  • simple as in KISS and vanilla. This excludes Debian where the package manager is too complex and packages deviate from upstream too much, as well as OpenSUSE, where systems administration relies on GUI tools too much and the package manager is even more complex.
  • fixed release (excludes everything Arch-based)

So from the major distros, only Fedora is left as an option, where I really don't know enough about it. Is it possible to do a minimal install of it? Is it built around a GUI app store? Does it rely on Flatpak like Ubuntu does with Snap?

Or are there other distros out there that I'm not aware of? Basically everything from the past 5 years I have no experience with. I've heard good things about NixOS, but it sounds weird as a daily driver.

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[–] cybersandwich@lemmy.world 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

What on God's green flat earth are these requirements??

What about apt do you find too complex? I guess what are you defining as 'complex"?

I'm terms of package management you'll be hard pressed to find anything that requires less work that apt, yum, zypper or their various GUIs.

Debian is the most vanilla distro you can get and you are excluding it out of the gate because of apt. So it would be helpful for all of us to understand your complexity issues with apt (and zypper).

It was my first distro and I miss it a lot. Simplicity and stability are main selling points

[–] wgs@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Talking for myself and not OP: What's complex about apt and yum is the package format per se. The cli is very straightforward and "just works", but whenever you want something that's not packaged and need to package it yourself, you gotta fasten your seatbelt and prepare for the complex task of creating an RPM or a DEB package.

I know there are tools to help with that, but I've created packages for many distros (Debian, CentOS, Alpine, Arch, Void and Crux), and rpm/deb are just way more complex to create than the alternatives.

[–] KISSmyOS@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This guy gets it.

[–] cybersandwich@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How often does that happen--where you need to package your own deb or it leaving orphan meta-packages that it doesn't remove? Or is this more of a 'curiosity' than hard requirement because I think ultimately the short answer to your question is: I dont think it exists as you've described it.

Fedora Silverblue seems like it might get close. It's immutable OS with flatpaks that sit on top. At least that's my understanding of it since I haven't used it myself. I have NixOS in a VM so I could learn it and NixOS is similar in that its immutable, but its definitely complex. Its also hard to use--which is a distinction you are making in this thread as well. So I am not sure its 'better' than any of those others in the grand scheme of things. In my limited experience with it as a pretty advanced linux user, it would probably be a solid daily driver after you spent 2 years tuning your config to your liking. But simple things will have your tripping over yourself.

It has the learning curve of vim and the expression language is a bit annoying since its a special unique thing you have to learn. Its not exactly hard but its not intuitive either and the documentation isn't super approachable even if everyone says its great.

One of those immutable OS's with flatpak on top would probably be the closet I think you can get to what you are asking.

[–] wgs@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) 
% pm -i | wc -l
55

That's how many software I packaged myself. They are installed to /usr/local using an alternative package manager because I couldn't be bothered with making an appropriate .deb.

And as to explain how this alternate workflow is less complex, here's how I go about installing a program:

% git clone git://git.z3bra.org/human ~/code/human
Cloning into '/home/z3bra/code/human'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 53, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (53/53), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (53/53), done.
remote: Total 53 (delta 28), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
Receiving objects: 100% (53/53), 9.35 KiB | 195.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (28/28), done.
% cd $_
% pack
CC human.c
LD human
install -D -m 0755 human /tmp/tmp.rfnbLyIQOz/usr/local/bin/human
install -D -m 0644 human.1 /tmp/tmp.rfnbLyIQOz/usr/local/man/man1/human.1

        > /tmp/human@0.3.tbz

installed human (0.3)
% pm -i human
usr/
usr/local/
usr/local/bin/
usr/local/bin/human
usr/local/man/
usr/local/man/man1/
usr/local/man/man1/human.1
[–] KISSmyOS@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

What about apt do you find too complex? I guess what’s re you defining as 'complex"?

The fact that it has recommended and suggested dependencies, meta-packages and virtual packages, that installing a package ad then removing it again often leaves your system in a different state than before, that it has 7 different default front-ends for different tasks, ...

Debian is the most vanilla distro you can get

Debian packages often deviate significantly from upstream.