R.L. Dane :Debian: :OpenBSD: 🍵 :MiraLovesYou:<p><span class="h-card"><a href="https://fosstodon.org/@spyro" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>spyro</span></a></span></p><p>I love Debian. But it gets painfully long in the tooth towards the end of the stable release cycle. I used to just jump to <code>testing</code> after stable was out for the year, but the whole xz thing last year scared me off of that.</p><p>I have software I can't update because I'd have to compile the <em>compiler</em> in order to get it to compile, because it's so old. I can't remember what exactly, but I think it's written in Nim.</p><p>Don't get me wrong, I do <em>not like</em> the software treadmill. It makes no sense, and it doesn't make for a stable infrastructure. But I don't think there's any changing it, and a two-year update cycle for <em>desktop</em> use is becoming untenable.</p><p>The other reason why I'm looking outside of Debian is that I want a linux distro that's as easy to use and seamless as possible. I don't have any serious complaints about Debian in that regard, it's actually a <em>lot</em> easier to use in that regard than people give it credit for. But something that's just a little more windows like, I dunno. For example, graphical boot screens and LUKS password screens. Some distros give you a graphical boot from the very beginning, even when asking for the LUKS password. Some distros also show you a boot screen with the manufacturer's logo taken from EFI.</p><p>Really stupid little things like that that don't mean a hill of beans to nerds like us, but they have small, measurable psychological effects on new switchers from windows.</p><p>And of course, I'll have my coworker running KDE, because what the heck even is Gnome anymore? Some kind of unusably minimalistic Steve Jobs fever dream, that's what. <a href="https://polymaths.social/tags/hottake" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>HotTake</span></a></p><p>(To be fair, Gnome is real purty. And there's something to be said for minimalism. Just not <em>that</em> much minimalism.)</p>