[kwlug-disc] linux distro for nontech windows user

[Paul Nijjar]

On Thu, Oct 16, 2025 at 08:20:44PM -0400, Doug Moen wrote:
> In both cases, it's ultimately because Mint and Zorin are based on Debian.
> 

> If I hadn't installed a bunch of random packages on Mint, the
> upgrade might have worked. But running weird niche software is
> something I want to do. There is a fundamental conflict between my
> desire to customize my system and run weird, niche packages, vs my
> desire for a reliable system, and Debian-style package managers are
> part of the problem. 

Be careful. This could be scope creep. The original question was
looking for a distro that is suitable to new users. New users will not
necessarily want much weird niche software, IF they can accept that
some of their software will look and behave differently than they are
used to. 


> If you only install very popular and well tested packages, you may
> be okay, but there is a "long tail" of niche packages that are
> arbitrarily modified by packagers, breaking things that work
> upstream, and then inadequately tested, and there are interactions
> between packages that can break things on upgrade. It's impossible
> to test every interaction on upgrade between every debian package
> when a new release is cut, it's a combinatorial problem and there is
> no testing infrastructure to properly automate this in any case.
> This is a well known problem.

After playing with different package managers, my conclusion is that
there is a pretty good solution to this problem: Debian policy, which
is strongly enforced for packages in the mainstream Debian repos. This
kind of policy means that release cadences are slower and sometimes
packages you want get dropped for dumb reasons (hello, fontmatrix),
but it means that packages following policy are much more likely to
upgrade smoothly.

This is not to say that any particular Debian/Ubuntu upgrade has been
completely smooth for me. That has very much not been the case. But it
does mean arbitrary packages are not doing arbitrary things.

- Paul