When I read through the release announcements of most Linux distributions, the updates seem repetitive and uninspired—typically featuring little more than a newer kernel, a desktop environment upgrade, and the latest versions of popular applications (which have nothing to do with the distro itself). It feels like there’s a shortage of meaningful innovation, to the point that they tout updates to Firefox or LibreOffice as if they were significant contributions from the distribution itself.
It raises the question: are these distributions doing anything beyond repackaging the latest software? Are they adding any genuinely useful features or applications that differentiate them from one another? And more importantly, should they be?
When the initial rush of new Linux users arrived, experienced users had been trying to explain the same point for years: there are options like NixOS or CachyOS that offer unique experiences, optimizations, custom software or unique workflows, while other distros simply rebrand. But ultimately, most of them rely on the same underlying software, regardless of the distro. Having to explain this over and over in post after post became maddening. “What is the fastest distro” Posts on daily. With enough elbow grease my ancient Debian system can be willed into the latest NVIDIA drivers or other various bleeding edge packages. With a bit of suffering, I can compile a bunch of stuff months if not years before it shows up in the standard Debian repo. Point being, it’s all Linux.
As for updates being “boring”—there’s nothing wrong with a simple update. What massive advancements do people expect these “mostly” volunteers to deliver with every update?
(Chris Titus Tech getting blowback last year marking a whole group of distros as “Pointless” when they did nothing more than a reskin or pre-install a couple in-repo packages)
@ @mfat The reason I gave up on Nvidia is they never keep their drivers up to date with the latest kernel.
I honestly have no idea what you mean. I’ve been using NVIDIA cards on Linux for well over a decade. Recently the last 5 years on bleeding edge everything to get the latest benefits to gaming and the desktop. I’ve rarely run into issues with the driver. Lack of features, sure. Installing the driver, no. One of my systems has been updating year after year without a problem. Did you not use dkms? If you use dkms, it just rebuilds the driver everytime a new kernel is installed. You don’t have to do anything.
@ Download and compile the most recent kernel from kernel.org, sooner or later you’ll run into a situation where the nvidia drivers don’t support it.
Fair point. So having issues running latest mainline and RC kernels? I guess I stay away from those. The compatibility problems seem to never outweigh the benefits.