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What Linux distro surprised you the most?
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this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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This is ancient history and will probably make me sound older than dirt but when Ubuntu first came out, it felt so easy to install and use. I don’t know that any of the innovations were wholly theirs as other distros were trying the same stuff. But it was the first distro I used that really tried to make it all easy and it felt like a complete OS.
Fedora Core was doing the same stuff and now, we have tons of tools but whether you like it today or not, the early Ubuntu releases were like, “Holy shit. I can partition from the Live CD? What is this witchcraft?” Debian obviously was the core project but little niceties were rare on Linux back then. I did want to install multimedia codecs when I was a teen. I did need guidance and documentation.
Not defending Snaps or whatever here but early Ubuntu was user-friendly and made it easy to transition off Windows ME or whatever was dominant and shitty back then.
A separate shoutout to Chrunchbang for customization and minimalism. That was probably the distro that got me hardcore hooked on Linux. I had enough experience at that point to not need hand holding but it was cool out of the box.
Ubuntu was very good, changed a lot of people's perception of Linux, and made the user experience much nicer. It still is very good, but many have caught up, or are surpassing Ubuntu in user experience. The issue with Ubuntu is the progressive enshittification.
Mint is, so far, the un-enshittified Ubuntu alternative. Plus it's main DEs. Cinnamon and MATE provide a fairly Windows like experience for those landing from the Windows world.
I remember mint being billed as essentially just that like a full ten years ago. I'm actually surprised to hear mint hasn't been enshittified itself at this point, I just assumed that would have happened by now.
The only problem I have with Mint is that they are super conservative, which translates to stability, which in turn makes it less up todate in certain applications. While based on Ubuntu it un-shittifies by using flats instead of snaps, for example. I have not noticed any shennanigans like Ubuntus
Knoppix got Ubuntu halfway there.