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What could your distro learn from another distro? (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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For example, I'm using Debian, and I think we could learn a thing or two from Mint about how to make it "friendlier" for new users. I often see Mint recommended to new users, but rarely Debian, which has a goal to be "the universal operating system".
I also think we could learn website design from.. looks at notes ..everyone else.

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[–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

The Debian web site needs a good UX overhaul. This is not a good UX. This is a demographic filter. You can argue that’s appropriate for a technically-oriented OS. 9front explicitly makes itself unapproachable to dissuade casual users, but I think Debian can and should be more appealing to mainstream, casual newcomers.

Your opinion, fine. So why do you want Debian to have more mainstream users ?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Why not? It's a great general-purpose distro.

    My point is that 9front's user-unfriendliness is a feature (explicitly intended), whereas I think Debian's is a bug (not intended or desired). I'm not psychic, though, so I could be wrong about the Debian team's goals.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Why not? It’s a great general-purpose distro.

    My point is that 9front’s user-unfriendliness is a feature (explicitly intended), whereas I think Debian’s is a bug (not intended or desired). I’m not psychic, though, so I could be wrong about the Debian team’s goals.

    As far as I am concerned Ubuntu has since around 2004 already helped a great deal with getting more mainstream Linux users on board. With the new Debian stable release of Bookworm for the very first time non-free firmware came with the installation media and that could be useful for lots of people, but still I will not recommend Debian for people interested in Linux. I will tell usually them to go for Linux Mint or Ubuntu.

    Here an example of what I think could do better website design (Not Linux but zsh) : https://www.zsh.org/ And this is also not too appealing to get more mainstream Linux users on board : http://www.slackware.com/ (One of the first Linux distributions. No SSL, but the site seems pretty functional).

    Here an example of what I think can appeal to a lot of mainstream : https://bazzite.gg/ That may attract quite some people (though I personally do not like such site design at all) to use Linux.

    Then again, people are different. I find the Arch wiki a fantastic resource. Today in a comment on Lemmy someone wrote that it is horrible.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I mostly agree. I usually recommend Mint to new users, largely because their web site and defaults are very beginner-friendly. Mint is the modern version of what Ubuntu used to be 10-15 years ago. At this point I don't think Ubuntu has tangible advantages over Debian for new users.

    I really like Slackware's site. It's not sexy, but it's functional, organized, and easy to navigate. The Zsh site is counterintuitive to me with that sidebar-that's-not-really-a-sidebar, and hyperlinks whose text requires the context of a header that is not aligned with them.

    I just checked out Ubuntu's web site for comparison, and...uh...now I feel like I owe Debian's web site an apology. I guess the consumer desktop Ubuntu distro doesn't actually have its own web site anymore? I mean, you can get to it from there, but it's hidden under menus, and seems almost like an afterthought. Ubuntu's main web site is bizarre right now, with a prominent green "Download Now" button that does not lead the user anywhere close to downloading Ubuntu, but rather directs them to one of a rotating selection of signup forms to download various technical whitepapers like "A CTO’s guide to real-time Linux". That's a radically different target audience than the last time I went to their web site (and also a weird design anyway).

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    I just checked out Ubuntu’s web site for comparison, and…uh…now I feel like I owe Debian’s web site an apology. I guess the consumer desktop Ubuntu distro doesn’t actually have its own web site anymore? I mean, you can get to it from there, but it’s hidden under menus, and seems almost like an afterthought. Ubuntu’s main web site is bizarre right now, with a prominent green “Download Now” button that does not lead the user anywhere close to downloading Ubuntu, but rather directs them to one of a rotating selection of signup forms to download various technical whitepapers like “A CTO’s guide to real-time Linux”. That’s a radically different target audience than the last time I went to their web site (and also a weird design anyway).

    I guess this has to do with the fact that BDFL Mark Shuttleworth after putting so much money into Ubuntu finally wanted to see some profit (I think I read that Ubuntu was not profitable for a long time) and went in the same direction like RedHat Enterprise and Novell SUSE had been going. If you look at Canonical Juju https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juju_(software) launched 12 years ago, and things like Landscape https://ubuntu.com/landscape which has been there perhaps more than 10 years as well, and now with Ubuntu Pro it seems clear to me that Ubuntu was not just meant to be a desktop Linux distribution. In fact, nowadays when I try to find an iso file for an Ubuntu installation I need to be careful not to end up at a download page for the Ubuntu server iso.

    Anyway, maybe I should instead try out and be recommending Pop! OS to new Linux users soon. It seems very popular https://pop.system76.com/ ;-)

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