3mo ago

Which stage are you at?

Alt text: A line plot with 2 axis (confidence vs competence) referencing the Dunning-Kruger effect with various distro logos placed at different points on the line. Starts with mint/ubuntu near (0,0) and progressing through multiple distros to end up with opensuse/fedora at what it calls “the plateau of sustainability”

446 comments

I assume Hannah Montana Linux is off the chart to the right
- Hannah Montana Linux, or HM/Linux as I've taken to calling it, is the sign of true civilization.
- Users often achieve enlightenment and can simultaneously interact with many planes of existence - that just can't be shown on a 2D chart for us plebs.

why is manjaro there twice? it's a horrible experience no one in their right mind would return to
- “Maybe I was the problem?”
  
  they managed to make arch less stable, never update their ssl cert, and every installation slowly falls apart until it's unusable... sure, I'm the problem
  
  "I donated money to them so I am going to use it."
  Although not much, just 20 EUR. Not sure how much the bundled Windows license costs, but surely Microsoft has other ways to earn from spyware.
  
  Nope. The developers are notorious. Look it up bud.
- I love my Manjaro. I always come back to it… but I may not be in my right mind.
  
  To be fair, it's OK. Just you might want to check out EndeavourOS when you need to format your PC again.
- Fedora is also there twice.
  
  This is perfectly normal.
  It also works with a Gaussian: (Noob) haha Fedora go brrr -> (angry advanced) nooo you must use Arch/Nix/Gentoo/Slackware -> (Linus Torvalds) haha Fedora go brrr
  
  Except Fedora is actually fine as an option. Though I had my share of troubles setting it up, and their decision to ditch X11 forced my hand to OpenSUSE when I went for it the second time. Had no regrets so far.
- Look, don't judge me, but manjaro has been the only distro to just work. I haven't been fucked by nvidia drivers that I know of, I haven't had any glaring issues... I'm not saying I disagree with the criticisms, but as a 'just use the fucking computer' distro, it's great.
  
  Manjaro's fine. Most of their problems were years ago. If it works for you, don't listen to the mob.
  
  As someone who ran Manjaro as my first Linux for 1,5 years, it's a breeze to set up and everything just works...until it doesn't.
  What screws it is that eventually, over time, something goes wrong. Something breaks here and there, new bugs appear, and without Arch proficiency that is not really expected of a Manjaro user, it's next to impossible to track it down. So, eventually one has to reinstall.
  I've been a strong Manjaro proponent back in the day, but now I see its flaws, unfortunately. I wish it could be a great option, though.
  
  Manjaro is awesome. The hate is not deserved and as you said, everything just works perfectly.
- Manjaro is a tempting option when you want Arch without being competent enough to confidently operate Arch.
  Been there before. Had it for over a year for the first time, but quickly noped out on the second try.

Starting fights today are we?
- Gotta dig in early before the pesky Americans wake up
  
  Brother you posted this at the Americans' lunch time (or second breakfast for the pacific coasters) ?? They were already arguing and here you come with petrol and a lit match

Mint, and I'll stay with mint. Perhaps I'm not a good Linux user material, but I just want something that works and doesn't get into the way. You know: a reliable, unobtrusive operating system.
- And there’s no shame in that! Use whatever works for you and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
  
  There is SO MUCH shame in that, the pitiful noob wont even learn to RTFM, and then I'll have no way to feel superior to them as I dip my beard into my off brand morning cereal #frostedfakes
- Mint is just perfectly fine, don't listen to the naysayers.
  As the old observation goes, novices use something like Mint because it's there, and it works; intermediate users use something like Arch because they want the control to tweak things in the greatest depths; experts use something like Mint because it's there, and it works.
- Same here. I started with mint 10 years ago, fucked around and came back to it.
  Not a Dev, but I work in tech, so it does most of the things I want and can tinker with nascent projects without blowing my foot off.
- Using mint doesn't mean you're bad at Linux using arch doesn't mean you're good at it.
  Mint is the start and the end for a lot of people for good reason.
- I like it because when I have an issue, the ones for Ubuntu and Debian also work.
- Same here, played around, but mint keeps pulling me back in. 10+ years going strong
- Mint is fine. If you love it, there’s no reason to leave. Personally, I’m a fan of KDE and I strongly dislike the retro-Windows feel of Cinnamon so I settled on Fedora after Mint dumped its KDE edition.
- Which is exactly what OpenSUSE/Fedora have to offer. It just works and doesn't get in the way. The only real difference between them and Mint in terms of user experience is that they require some more proficiency with the terminal and experience with Linux overall and do not assume user to be a complete newbie.
  So, you're on the right track with Mint. It holds to nearly the same philosophy, and offers you the tools you may find useful as a less proficient user. Keep it up!

Meh, I'm relatively experienced and just use Ubuntu
- That's because you use your computer and it's not part of your personality. I'm reasonably well versed in Linux and I've used Pop for years.
  
  Is pop maintained? When are they upgrading to the latest Ubuntu and supporting HDR?
  
  "Not a part of your personality" then "PopOS, btw"
- I've been using Linux since you created a boot floppy by using dd on the kernel. I use Ubuntu because I just want something that works, is stable in the LTS sense of the word, and I don't have to futz with. I've heard enough about Mint now that I'll probably switch over to it when I build my next machine in several years.
  
  I’ve been using Linux since you created a boot floppy by using dd on the kernel
  Wait, is that not how you do it anymore? I swear, I just went through trialing a few more distros, and I dded like crazy.
  
  Same here, except I switched to Mint a couple years ago. You won't be disappointed. And if you're sanguine about waiting until you get a new machine, just go with LMDE.
- Been maining Linux mint for 3 years now. I did distrohop once to nobara to see if the grass was greener on the other side, but had to revert due to Nvidia.
  ... The grass wasn't green, but tasted exactly the same. Apart from Nvidia (which isn't a distro issue but more shitty company that can't make things right), the only noticeable changes is going from cinnamon to KDE.
  There's no "stupid distro" nor "smart distros". Everything is valid. (Although I'd argue that Linux mint is the best beginner distro, to let people get into Linux gently before eventually trying something else)
- Debian servers in the streets, Kubuntu desktop in the sheets.
  
  I use Ubuntu on the server too :3
- I was going to say - what’s wrong with Mint?
  
  I don't feel the need to switch. Ubuntu serves me well. And I prefer GNOME
  How's the Wayland support in Linux mint?

I want to see a graph where X ranges from "ambitious" to "I'm so tired", and Mint is at the end. That's where I'm at.
- Same. Mint was at the start too, though.
  
  tried a few distros before mint because i thought it was less cool or whatever, but then it was the only one i could get working. every few months i try something else and come crying back...
- Linux experts vastly overestimate the amount of annoyance average people will put up with. Most people just want it to work, and want to learn almost nothing. I don't blame them, Linux is a means to an end.

Ragebait

i'm on NixOS
...and I've been on NixOS for mount stupid, valley of despair and, perhaps, the plateau of sustainability
- Agreed, NixOS is all states in once all along. Don't look inside the box to maintain incertitude.
- Truely don't understand how this one became popular. But I'm sure it will fade like Crunchbang or a dozen others before it.
  
  It's the most unique distro to date, and has all the strengths the others. Because it's not a tool for building distros, and NixOS is just the posterboy.
  
  NixOS is very good. It's not easy, but it is powerful.
  
  NixOS came out in 2003, crunchbang came out in 2008. As someone who swapped to NixOS after reaching the "plateau of stability" and realizing I needed more power, while the distro is a clusterfuck that shouldn't be as popular as it is. It has some very clear and defined use cases, so I don't see it dying any time soon.

This is funnier if you have mint or Ubuntu on both extreme ends.
- That's kinda the case here with Debian being on the extreme opposite of Ubuntu. I don't see any benefit of putting up with the stability issues and complexity of other distros when Debian "just works". And once you debloat Ubuntu you just get Debian.
- That's basically me
  Starter on xubuntu, used arch for a couple years, got fed up by the system babysitting, now back again on (x|k)ubuntu

Servers = Debian
Desktop/Laptop = Arch
- Why Arch?
  Genuine question, I have been on pop os for some time now, recently changed laptop and am thinking of changing os as well.
  
  I'm not RanzigFettreduziert, and I don't know much about PopOS, but...
  Rolling release is awesome.
  Amazing documentation.
  Helpful user base. (The forums are great.)
  Does pretty much nothing that you don't specifically tell it to. (Like, very little is installed without your express say-so, for instance.)
  Customizeable as fuck.
  Doesn't making things harder by trying to hide the "hard parts" from you.
  Doesn't take days to install Libreoffice like Gentoo.
  AUR is great for software that isn't available in the official repos. (Always review the pkgbuild, but practically everything is there.)
  Very up-to-date (even cutting-edge) on everything.
  And surprisingly stable given how cutting edge it is. (That said, I've never run a keyword-unmasked system.)
  Definitely will teach you a lot.
  Very actively developed.
  Downsides:
  Learning curve. (Definitely not as bad as, say, Gentoo, though.)
  You'd definitely have to get really comfortable with the command line. (Arguably as much a good thing as it is a downside.)
  The biggest exception to the "customizeable as fuck" bit is that you're stuck with SystemD, which is practically a whole OS. (And Artix (Arch but with a choice of init systems) is... kinda janky last I tried it.)
  Support for non-x86 (like ARM, for instance) is abysmal.
  It's kindof the second-most hardcore OS out there after Gentoo. (Nobody actually uses LFS as a daily driver, so I'm not counting that for this.) It's the sort of OS that will teach you a lot and let you get down in the guts. But also avoids a lot of the downsides of Gentoo by remaining a binary OS.
  
  I came because of all the memes.
  I stayed to say 'I use Arch by the way'.
  Thats all and i like the idea of a rolling distribution.
  
  What Toot said.
  Things I would emphasize are:
  The community “critical mass” is amazing with the wiki, online posts and such. You get a lot of support that isn’t ancient, jank and ad hoc like Ubuntu.
  Arch emphasizes paying attention. It’s not a hands free OS: you have know what graphics drivers you run, and what your desktop environment is. When you update, you have to watch the log for emergency messages and such, including official notifications from the arch repos themself. It’s not a “hands off” OS where you can operate without knowing anything about it, but the reward is that shit gets fixed quick, officially, without having to stray from defaults and break your system, or accumulating a bunch of hacks you have to maintain yourself.
  Much of Arch’s bad reputation comes from AUR. Don’t use anything from the AUR (instead of an official repo package) unless you absolutely have to. This is when stuff starts breaking. Installing standalone apps that aren’t on the repo via AUR is fine, but to be clear, avoid things that integrate with the system if you can.
  It doesn’t have to be hardcore barebones like Gentoo, there are all sorts of Preconfigurations like Garuda and Endeavor. I recommend CachyOS (which I have kept for two years now, and will into the future).

My guess before reading the comments:
"Everyone hated that."

FIFY

Oh fuck of with this bullshit. This is why linux is not on more PCs, this distro elitism.

The Fedora propaganda is getting annoying.

This probably outs me as an old fart, but my first computer experiences were with assembly and BASIC intepreters, then things like COBOL, Fortran, and Pascal.
I remember when Bill Gates got his panties in a wad over people sharing MS BASIC and always tried to steer clear of M$ products from then on, although I did have the common misfortune of having to use Windows in several work environments throughout my career. Luckily, the last I ever had to touch as an admin/user was Windows 7.
My personal desktop OS history is as follows:
Solaris -> OpenBSD -> Slackware -> Debian -> SuSE -> Mandrake -> Gentoo -> Redhat -> Fedora -> Sidux -> Arch -> OpenSUSE -> Mint.
I stick with Mint because I don't want to spend my time tinkering on the OS, and it makes helping all the noobs/non-techies I have convinced to switch to Linux over the years that much easier. This is well over a hundred at this point, and you know who most of them come to when they have a problem. With Mint, they seldom have any issues.
The years I spent tinkering taught me a lot, especially on the rolling OSes, but these days I appreciate having a system that just works reliably, so I can spend my time tinkering on my own projects instead. I have VMs for other OSes as needed anyways.
Now you damn kids get off my lawn!
- Gentoo is pretty low maintence now days if you aren't modifying the system. <3 for secure servers I want stripped to the bone.
- I use mint on my PC and love it! However I'm now the ipad kid of Linux. It never breaks, I never have to learn anything. Just getting it up and running is the zenith of my knowledge and ability.
  
  Same here.
- As someone who just installed Mint two months ago (after using Windows for 30 years), this makes me happy inside.
- I can't imagine daily driving open BSD for daily desktop use, and I use freebsd for my servers

I don't really care about others but please avoid Manjaro they had some shady finances and apparently don't manage their certs correctly

I am so sick of seeing this ridiculous diagram being labeled the "Dunning-Kruger effect". Go read the actual 1999 paper they wrote. The key takeaway is that the lowest quartile of people tend to overestimate their own performance, and the top quartile underestimate theirs. It doesn't posit anything like this graph, and this is just an ironic example of ignorance.
And second, I am so sick of seeing these ridiculous distro comparisons. Stop with this elitism, even if done humorously. People of all experience levels can be found using different distros, and they all have unique advantages, disadvantages, and communities built around them. Don't shame the great effort that people put into maintaining and developing distros, repositories, and packages. A noob can use Arch, and a master can use Ubuntu. Use what appeals to you, and be happy in knowing you can experiment or stick to anything. This is the beauty of FOSS and the Linux ecosystem; it's a great place for both tinkerers as well as those who want familiarity. There is no one true way.

Debian is love. Debian is life.

Ubuntu and Mint need to be repeated on the far right (the actual Sesame Street definition of "right", not Nazis)

Full circle, back to Mint

Not a graph of the Dunning-Kruget Effect. It's actually a reverse of the uncanny valley chart. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect chart:
- I think it's the gartner hype cycle, which usually uses the same labels as the meme

I use opensuse tumbleweed
- There are several of us!!
  
  Yeah!! I use KDE plasma :3
  
  I use it within a distrobox. I love it
- It's the one i'll go for once I have energy to switch from Debian.
  Not that I have many things against Debian, but the install it once is the thing attracting me. Yeah... changing a word in my sources.list is hard!
  
  Start using it in a distrobox and once you switch nothing much will change except the underlying base os that you don't touch anyway.
- I chose Tumbleweed for my first desktop Linux install a couple of months ago. Only had some minor issues so far (like missing codecs).
  Although I recently tried to build a Kwin plugin, and even though I figured out the build dependencies, it didn't show up as expected, not sure what's going on there.
  
  Tumbleweed might be a bit of a hard start, since it assumes you already know a bunch of nuances. But I'm happy that you were ready to learn and grasped it from the get-go!
  Hope you'll have your software figured out

I'm gonna put this out there: If you can do Endeavour or Manjaro, you can do Arch, and Arch is in no way less stable than Tumbleweed. All you need to do is to pick btrfs and enable snapshots and then never use them.

Why in the world is Fedora peak enlightenment. Any well run, simple, community run distro is peak enlightenment.

I’ve started with Debian and I’ve settled with Debian, have had no need or ambition to distro hop.
- Exactly. I never understand why switch from the most reliable distro. And therefore didn't.
  
  You switch when something is not working and you grow tired of that thing not working. If you never encounter that, you are good.

I just spent 2 hrs last night in my Kali vm, trying to find an exploit on a web server. It was running Laravel 11.30 and vulnerable to a URL query to change the env to dev. So yeah peak of mt stupid is accurate
- The key is you installed Kali in a VM. The true peak is installing it on bare metal and then using it as a normal computer.
  
  Kali purple on trunk laptop comes in handy but I can't say it's used often.

Fedora on laptop, NixOS everywhere else, don’t really feel enlightened
- Same. I run Fedora on my desktop and laptop and Nix on my servers (except one that’s still using Ubuntu and I keep putting off migrating it but it’ll happen eventually)
  
  What is nix and why is that your server choice? I am running parrotos but I just want to use it as a media server and maybe game rarely

I know nothing, and I'm keeping it that way
My system of choice is Mint, btw

Mint is my sustainable pleateau. I've used Kali, Zorin, Haiku, Plan 9, and ReactOS. I'm mostly satisfied with what Mint gives me, and what it doesn't. I know people don't always approve of this, but I genuinely used to like Windows. And Mint, generally, works like Windows back when it was good.
- Yeah it's pretty obvious in this sub who is a hobbyist and who actually deploys or develops on Linux. Yeah I've distrohopped and built from scratch and all that great stuff, but at the end of the day it's hard to beat "noob" distros for initial deployability. Then you can obviously customize whatever you want from there.
  
  Eh, as much as there's obviously folks who use certain distros for the fun of it, the vast majority of distros get created to cover a specific use-case. If you have that use-case, then deploying the respective distro brings you so much closer to your target setup than the easy installation of a noob distro could save you time.
  I also have to say, many stereotypical noob distros make extremely conservative choices, which makes them harder or scarier to use in various ways, like for example not having filesystem rollback. I cannot imagine going back to that, specifically because I have shit to do.
- why don't you just run plan9 it's more user friendly than mint /s
  
  If you have an account from the old Holmdel server, it can be friendly since you can basically download your UI & configs. But most of us don't have that anymore.

Started with Ubuntu, happy where I'm at 🖕🏻

I've been working with Linux for the better part of 20 years at this point. Ubuntu is perfectly fine my time is too valuable to spend numerous hours fucking around getting shit to work properly. If that makes me an idiot then I'm happily an idiot.
I get that many people have issues with snap, SystemD or whatever else they want to throw out. I don't give a shit. You're whinging into the wind over nothing burgers.

started at debian still at debian
- I started with Debian as well for my first server while I still had Windows as my desktop. Once I finally got around to ditching Windows, I was comfortable enough with a headless Debian server so figured I'd just stick with it for my desktop.
  Definitely had some learning curves there. There's a lot more tinkering to do to get things working

Twelve years in, cloud engineer, have Mint on all my home machines cos i dont have to think about it. I like your chart but its dumb.

Swap Debian with Fedora and we're solid. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

I'm running Kinonite and Fedora Cinnamon spin on my two machines. So I must be at 'enlightenment'.
Honestly, I'm tired Boss-- so tired. After years and years of fooling around with various Distros, I no longer want to work hard to make my computer work. I like the auto-update feature of Kinonite. Life is short and I ain't got that much of it left to waste on Arch.......

Uses Fedora
S M U G

Started at mount stupid, went to know nothing and am now stuck on valley of dispair. Also actually bricked my MB.

& then people return to PopOS, ubuntu, LinuxMint & Debian.

Yes, I fall everywhere on the knowledge spectrum. It just depends on which niche area I'm fixating on that day.

Arch had been rock solid for me since 2012...
- Arch broke for me quite fast any time I tried to run it. I have no idea how to manage Arch properly without being a red-eyed nerd constantly checking forums for broken updates and other notes.

Debian. Anything to the right is lies.

Nice corporate ad...
I would rather "despair" with a community based distro than using capitalistware were that graph true, however my Arch machine works perfectly fine and have no need to do so. On the other hand corporate distros...

So apparently I go from "knowing nothing" to "guru" and back daily.

For me it was Mandrake -> Debian -> Mint -> MX -> Debian
So nothing like that graph.
- Hello fellow late 90's/early 00's Mandrake enjoyer!
  
  Another Mandrake user off and on user back then. Was my first Linux, mainly because the install was very easy to do. Since it was based on Red Hat, I guess I started at the right end of the curve and worked my way back to Ubuntu.
- I still miss Mandrake

I went from Debian to Mint
- NixOS is fun but requires tinkering for a desktop/laptop. You can use the nix package manager on any other distro though. At work I use Fedora and still use the nix package manager a ton when I want to, but I'm not locked into it when something needs to just work quickly. I have NixOS on my personal laptop and I kinda wish I didn't. I have it on my home server and I'm very happy I did that.

Mint on my desktop and Pop on my laptop...so that part seems accurate for me.

I still use Kubuntu, btw.

I started out with Slackware 3.0. It broke all the time. Tried Debian. Was happy ever since. Tried Ubuntu on laptops but later decided it's just Debian with extra steps so I went with Debian after all.

Once you know Debian you know the Truth. All other distros are heresy and must be punished.
Praise be to Debian.
Our distro, who art in RAM. Debian be thy name. Thy processes come. Thy will be done, on local as it is in the cloud. Give us this day our daily resources, and forgive us our distro hopping, as we forgive those who distro hop against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from software patents and copyrights. For thine is the processes of power and glory, for ever and ever, Amen.

Where does sadistic curiosity about Slackware fit on this graph after daily driving OpenSuSE Tumbleweed?
- Its kinda like Schroedinger's cat, except it's your sanity in the box alternating between valley of despair and plateau of sustainability

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