Are "Mainstream" Linux Distros Better?

one of the really unfortunate things about having a youtube channel with a rather large following is that i get a ton of messages i get a ton of emails a ton of messages on mastodon and reddit and other social platforms and i just can't respond to any of them because there's just so many of them i don't have time to respond to each individual email and direct message and things like that i read them all i i definitely read everything you guys send but i just i don't have time to respond to them because if i did if i had to respond to everything i would never have time to actually make video content or i'd never have a personal life you know it would eat up into some of that time so i do read all of your messages and i appreciate you guys that do message me but i typically don't respond to anything but the other day i got a lengthy email from a viewer and he asked a couple of really important questions and i really wanted to take the time to respond to him and it was such an important question that he was asking i really wanted to do a proper video response to it because i don't want to answer this question just to him i want to share it with many of you guys because i think it's a question a lot of linux users have so this gentleman let's read a little bit of his email he wrote to me hi dt it's been a while but i'm still following and watching your videos if you have time to read and reply to this message i would be grateful knowing how busy you are and then he goes on to say recently i went back to the video on moving from noob to power user that you made last summer so i made a video about a year ago where i took linux mint cinnamon and i went from noob to power user using linux mint cinnamon i showed you guys how you can start setting key bindings to open and close all of your programs using key bindings using run launchers like d menu i showed you how you could theme your terminal theme your text editor your gui text editor even things like zed or g edit and things like that and it's a really good video especially if you're brand new to linux go check out from noob to power user i'll link to that video in the show description he goes on to say after the many years that i've been using linux i want to still get away from working as a noob too much gooey and point and click and i would say that's a good idea it's really a good idea to get away from using the point and click method of you know doing everything with the mouse because honestly it's hard on your wrist the more you use that mouse there's some health benefits actually to getting your hand off the mouse and putting your hands on a keyboard and doing as much as you can on a keyboard the mouse it can really start causing some carpal tunnel issues so that's a good idea not just as it's not to look cool you know a lot of people think it's an elitist kind of attitude hey don't use the mouse just use the keyboard for everything no there's real reasons why a lot of people try not to use a mouse or they get away from using standard mice and go to things like a upright mouse or a trackball mouse things like that so he's on the right track here yeah definitely try to get away from point and click reading further he goes on to say quote i've tried to learn more about the command line and after re-watching your video a few times i have really jumped into my keyboard shortcuts and made some changes and additions like super w for libreoffice writer super i for libreoffice impress plus many of the suggestions from the videos and and that's a great thing what he's doing and that really starts getting you in the mindset that it really doesn't matter what distribution you're on or what desktop environment you're on because if you're doing everything through key bindings you're kind of bypassing the desktop environment all together right because it doesn't mat it doesn't matter what the desktop environment is it doesn't matter if you have the gnome panel or the kde plasma panel or what menu system you have there because you're bypassing all of that you're just doing a hotkey to open a program and a hotkey to close the program right so you don't need any of that stuff so that's already just using key bindings you're kind of making the desktop environment kind of obsolete right it doesn't even need to be there he goes on to write quote what really struck me and it had a lot of truth to it was your comment about once you make a lot of these power leading changes the desktop environment doesn't really matter which is what i was getting at he goes on to say and that is so true i followed the video on what you did to mint cinnamon and replicated much of that on mx linux the xfce edition that i'm currently using the question that moves me to ask this is if the desktop environment doesn't really matter what would be the best desktop environment and distro to be on to have and then put away so what he's saying is hey if the desktop environment doesn't really matter what desktop environment should i use and if the distro doesn't really matter then what distro should i use and obviously if they don't matter it doesn't really matter i think that's the point of if the desktop environment doesn't really matter then you really don't need a desktop environment that's really the way to look at it for example if i go over to my desktop here let me switch to my desktop of course this is the exmo.net window manager but you can think of it as a desktop environment it's just a desktop environment i built a desktop environment is a window manager plus a bunch of other stuff that's all a desktop environment is so in my case my desktop environment i chose the xmo.net window manager you know there's exmonad the window manager how it controls windows it's a tiling window manager as far as the desktop environment around it you know that's all the extra stuff that typically things like gnome plasma xfce bundled together you know a compositor i use compton or pycom now as the compositor for a panel i chose the xmo bar panel but i could have chose a dozen different things if i wanted different panels i have a system tray over here this is trayer that has the icons here that's the system tray icons now if i didn't want a system tray i don't have to install one or if i wanted a differences tray other than trayer there's a few other standalone system tray applications i could have used i'm setting wallpaper with nitrogen but i could set wallpaper with feh or i could set wallpaper with x wallpaper i could do all kinds of things i've got several daemons running in the background i've got the emacs server daemon running in the background so i can pull up emacs quickly i've got several of those kinds of programs running in the background my session is lx session that's the poll kip program the authentication program that's always running so this is my desktop environment right it's essentially my custom desktop environment that i put together it's not a desktop environment that somebody that maintains a distribution told me hey this is your desktop environment here's all the programs built into this desktop environment that we've decided or your desktop environment you don't get to choose you know your network manager your clipboard manager your system tray application your panel your menu your run launcher right because all of that's already decided when you get served up a full desktop environment so once you start becoming the power user the power user is really not it's not like all of a sudden you went from being you know not knowing much about linux to all of a sudden you know everything about linux that's not when we say power user it's more about customization when you when you become one of these people that want to have ultimate control over your desktop where you want to pick and choose each and every application and customize each and every application to your specific needs that's what we're talking about with power users and when you get to that point desktop environments don't matter and typically you're not going to get one of the big desktop environments because they're not going to serve your needs because you're going to want to pick and choose different parts of your desktop environment you know different clipboard managers network managers and volume managers things like that that they get in your way if you're using a big desktop environment like gnome or plasma or cinnamon or xfce you're better actually just building your own desktop environment and what i would suggest is if you like floating window manager so if you're used to floating windows like in gnome and cinnamon and plasma then what i would do is give open box a try the open box window manager and it's very customizable i've done a lot of videos on open box and most of them you know in the early days of the channel about three four years ago right but they're still relevant today and open box is fantastic for a floating window manager of course the more you're doing with keyboard shortcuts and key bindings i would strongly suggest maybe taking a look at a tiling window manager at some point if you want a good tiling window manager that's easier to get into than most i3 is pretty new user friendly the awesome window manager is new user friendly and qtile honestly is pretty new user friendly too and if you want some custom tiling window manager distros that already have the tiling window manager customized a little bit for you so you don't have to start from a complete blank slate arco linux has tiling window manager additions for practically every tiling window manager and on demand getting back into the the email here he goes on to write if i understand correctly the base for something like mint is the same for each desktop version and it's the specific features of cinnamon monte or xfce that decorate the distro so yes so your underlying base distribution you know the kernel and the init system and the gnu core utils and all of that yes that's the base system and then you know what you typically see the gui you see on the screen your login manager and then your desktop environment yeah that's just the the very top layer right once you scrape all of that away yes your underlying base distribution you know immense the same no matter if it's mint cinnamon mint xfce mate still the same package manager underneath and all those mint utilities and then he goes on to write my other question deals with my everyday distro i began my journey back in the early 2000s with ubuntu and gnome 2 which was my journey as well i started around 2008 on desktop linux i actually was using linux on the server back in the 90s but my first full time living in linux on the desktop was ubuntu with the old gnome 2 desktop environment he goes on to write and then he went to genome 3 and he spent a little time with the zubuntu with xfce until i had some concerns about the direction ubuntu was going and moved for a number of years to mint mate since it was taking me back to the days of old ubuntu and what he's talking about here is of course gnome 2 eventually reached end of life genome transition from gnome 2 to gnome 3. so genome 2 was dead so using gnome 2 on ubuntu was no longer an option because they either had to move to gnome 3 or what they ended up doing is they created their own desktop environment a fork of gnome 3 called unity which i liked unity it was ok not in the early days it was kind of buggy but it was better than gnome 3 especially in the early days because the first few versions of gnome 3 were very buggy so i can understand you know especially in that time period people looking for other options and if you really liked gnome 2 mate was a fork of gnome too so it made sense yeah go to a mate distribution so he went to mint mate fine choice and then he goes on to say a few years ago he discovered mx and he's been using it and he's had a few problems with some programs that are written for debian based distributions not exactly working correctly with mx i've had to have the actual linux developer if i drive work with me to modify a scripts to get it to work along with that i hear feedback that mx isn't a mainstream distro and maybe i should switch back to a distro that is more mainstream like ubuntu or mint well my comment on that is well i mean what's a mainstream distribution who decides what that is obviously some distributions are bigger than others you know obviously ubuntu is you know the the big elephant in the room right of buntu's king uh and it has a corporation behind it of course that matters but what does it really matter you know i mean i run arco linux arco linux is i don't know how many users arco linux is i'm it's gaining popularity but very small team behind barco linux it's it's not i wouldn't call it a big distribution most people i'm assuming wouldn't call it a mainstream distribution but what does it matter right it's it's a linux distribution and if the distro doesn't matter it doesn't matter use what you want to use it's not like you're married to your distribution either it's not like you pick a distribution and that's the only one you ever use in your email obviously you've hopped a few times me i've hopped dozens of times right again you're not married to these things use it use it if it's working for you keep using it when things aren't working for you hey move to something else it goes on to write however what you hear a lot of the time is that mint with cinnamon is the best distro for beginners i am not a beginner but not an expert but you're helping teach towards that direction but more of an experienced user so i'm feeling that as an experienced user i shouldn't be using a beginner distro am i wrong feeling that and would i be best to leave mx and go with either mint or ubuntu thanks as always for your wise guidance and i didn't include his name here because i didn't contact the guy and let him know i was gonna share his email here publicly but i do appreciate his message and what he's asking here is okay mint with cinnamon people often say it's one of the better distributions for beginners i've made that comment as well i think i think mint is great for the new to linux user coming from windows especially because cinnamon kinda has that old school windows paradigm the point and click let's get to the bottom panel and open up the start menu and search for a program and then click on it yeah that's most people are going to be comfortable with that workflow i think most of the flavors of ubuntu are very similar and they're pretty good for beginners so yeah ubuntu is great mint's great if you wanted to use one of those yeah go for it mx i actually like mx i've actually put mx on some family member machines so they've broken broken their laptops their windows installations they bring me their laptops hey can you fix this and i'll throw you know various linux distributions on them but i've run mx on those friends and family computers y'all put them on mx and most people have had nothing but good things to say about that so mx is fine too really the distribution you use the main thing especially once you get away from the desktop environment you start using window managers standalone window managers so you're you're not taking the distribution as it comes to you you typically you'll wipe out whatever desktop environment that came installed on it and and you'll create your own desktop environment so now that stuff really matters what really matters is the underlying base system that we talked about on something like mint or ubuntu or mx it's uh what package manager does it use uh how are the repositories can you find all of your software in those repositories and the thing with ubuntu and most ubuntu based distributions like mint is the repositories are really good right you're going to find most of the software you're looking for in those repositories mx i believe mx is basing off of debian uh i'm not i think debian stable and you're going to find a ton of stuff in the debian repositories as well so the repositories are good the thing with mx i think it's based on debian stable so the packages may be a little older now as you become more of an experienced user as you say you may not want to be on a really stable distribution like debian stable or distributions based on debian stable because those packages can be old right you're not going to have the absolute latest version of anything on debian so you may want to go to something a little more bleeding edge obviously ubuntu if you stay on the interim releases and update every six months you get fresher packages uh mint typically is a little older ubuntu lts is going to be quite a bit older it's more along the lines of something like debian stable have you ever tried an arch based distribution because many of them are quite user friendly i think you would be impressed with the repositories if you're kind of new to arch you've never really given it a shot i would strongly recommend especially since you mentioned you're an xfce user have you ever tried manjaro xfce manjaro is really gaining popularity in the last few years i would say manjaro is actually a mainstream distribution if you're looking for one because they've really made arch popular like they've really brought arch to the masses and the flagship edition of manjaro is actually their xfce edition and it's good like it's really good and the great thing with manjaro is the arch repositories are the best in the business arch because you have the aur available you will find every program you could possibly want to install either in the arch repositories or in the aur the arts user repositories you will actually have better software availability in arch than you ever had in debian or ubuntu also you're going to get the the latest packages because manjaro which is based on arch arch is a rolling released distribution it's uh constantly rolling so you're always on the absolute latest version of your software and finally i would say what you're talking about where people are telling you that this distro is a mainstream distro but this other distro is not a mainstream distro or the distro that you're on is for noobs and this distribution that i'm on is for lead hackers ignore all of that anytime somebody tries to tell you what distribution to run especially if they're trying to tell you what distribution or desktop environment to run and you didn't even ask them about it ignore those people because those people are typically trolls and they have extreme bias as far as distributions many people unfortunately many people have this kind of team mentality where i'm on you know team mint or team fedora or team gen 2 or whatever you know distribution and i want everybody to run that distribution because i'm on it and you know you got to be like me just ignore people like that they don't matter so there's no such thing as a noob distribution as far as there's no distribution that's only for noobs i i i could run mint i could run linux mint happily for the rest of my life and be just fine i could do anything i want to do on linux mint just as i can do on arch or gen 2 or slackware or whatever you know elite hacker distribution that's the same thing with with those distributions they're not for elite hackers anybody could install arch right anybody that can read can go to the archwiki and read the installation page and get through an arch install it is not hard it is not hard at all now uh is it harder than installing mint it takes a little longer and you know where arch you have to enter a few things at the command line but just a very few things like it's really a quick installation for arch so it's not like there's a clear dividing line like this is for noobs this is for power users no no that's not really the way it works and i would i would ignore anybody that tries to tell you that that's the case anybody that tries to tell you what linux distribution you have to run or what desktop environment you have to run just ignore them they don't know what the hell they're talking about anyway i don't know if i answered your question the fella that wrote this i'm not going to share his name uh you know we want to protect the innocent here i didn't ask him for permission to share this so that's why i didn't include his name here but i do appreciate the lengthy email and i do think uh there was some good stuff in here and i think a lot of people actually have these questions as far as a distribution and desktop environment especially once you become more experienced you know like many of us have been running linux for years now you know linux especially really exploded in popularity back in 2006 to 2008 because of the rise of ubuntu so you've got a lot of people that maybe don't consider themselves power users but they've been using linux for you know 10 12 15 years now and you know they they're really comfortable using linux they're experienced they've been using it forever and they're wondering hey is there anything else out there you know am i am i really am i still running the distribution that i should be running am i still running the desktop environment i should be running hey feel free to look around and it's another thing uh check out virtual machines virtualbox you know install all the distributions you want to test out in virtualbox it doesn't hurt anything try them out in a virtual machine see what you like see what you don't like and then don't be afraid to hop again you're not married to these distributions uh you know there was a time period a few years back where i could be on a different distribution you know on my main machine like every month and that was okay it was fun uh now before i go i need to thank a few special people i need to thank the producers of this episode absie dallas gay blue mitchell alan nakami archbishop 30 chuck david the other david dilling gregory lewis paul polytech scott stephen smith wes and willie these guys they're the producers of this episode without these guys this lengthy ramp wouldn't have been possible the show is also brought to you by each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen as well all these names are seeing on the screen right now these are all my supporters over on patreon because the distrotube channel is sponsored by you guys the community if you'd like to help me out look for distrotube over on patreon alright guys peace compared to windows there is no mainstream linux distribution

Channel: DistroTube

Views: 21,315

Rating: 4.8982816 out of 5

Keywords: linux distro, operating system, linux help, switched to linux, linux distros comparison, linux distros 2021, linux distros explained, distrotube, ubuntu, linux mint, mx linux, arch linux, debian, arco linux, window managers, linux window managers, desktop environments, linux desktop enviroments, gnome, kde plasma, xfce, cinnamon, tiling window managers, best linux distro, new user linux distro

Id: RyG7XzOa2xQ

Length: 22min 6sec (1326 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021