Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 13th Dec 2007 23:20 UTC
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Member since:
2006-10-08
"To me this whatever-buntu stuff is pure silliness. Why have a different distro for every gui in existence, or even different applications (edubuntu)?"
It's because users want (or at least are expected to want) to have a certain set of applications, along with a preconfigured desktop as their default installation content. They don't want to have a base system that they put on what they want or what they need, no, they assume different stuff to be installed automatically.
Of course, this point of view differs from the opinion of most (usually professional) UNIX users who start with a pure UNIX or Linux base system and intentionally decide what is going to be installed - instead of having stuff installed they never use or the need to uninstall.
"I think there are already more Linux distros than Linux users."
Hehe, I'd like to see a proof for this. :-)
"And the community just wants to crank out more distros. It has really become a joke."
What community are you mentioning here? In my opinion, there are two communities, equipped with a subset relationship: The community of users (pure users who want everything done automatically) and the community of developers (developers who design distributions, create applications and distribute them).
"With debian, you download the network edition, then put whatever gui you want on it. Or, don't use any gui at all. It's all the same to debian. To me, that makes much more sense."
You're definitely expressing the philosophy I've mentioned above: You decide what's going to happen. But this behaviour of intended acting requires some knowledge (at least reading what's on the screen) and some time which most of the users community don't have or don't want to have. While you are willing to do this manually (interacting with the system in order to build it the way you need it), those users won't do this. They want it done, and that's what the developers community provides with the many distributions: Preconfigured sets of software to be installed.
So finally, you could say there's a need for different distributions. I won't discuss their number now, and I won't discuss their incompatibilites now. I just want to say: Use what is the best tool for your task, according to your own experiences and education. And for several users, YXCVBNMubuntu is the way to go.