[kwlug-disc] linux distro for nontech windows user

[Doug Moen]

To be more specific, in Mint, the app store installs a lot of apps using Apt, which is flakey and can lead to flakey upgrades due to dependency hell. A new user could get in trouble just installing apps from the app store. By comparison, I expect that the app store in Kinoite is relatively bulletproof, as it will be based on Flathub.

I'll know more when I get around to installing Kinoite.

On Thu, Oct 16, 2025, at 10:47 PM, Doug Moen wrote:
> Well, my feeling is that Fedora Kinoite will be a good choice for 
> Windows users, because:
>  * KDE has a windows-like user interface. It has the windows task bar 
> at the bottom, with a start menu, icons for running apps, and a system 
> tray. Window management is the same. Users will install apps from the 
> app store, which looks easy to use.
>  * The underlying technology would appear to be quite reliable. KDE is 
> well integrated and supported in Fedora (it is one of the two flagship 
> desktop environments, as well as Gnome). The upgrade technology is more 
> reliable than Mint.
>
> The "scope creep" is the explanation of why I think Kinoite would also 
> be suitable for me. The extra features I would be using would not be 
> seen or used by non-tech users.
>
> Doug.
>
> On Fri, Oct 17, 2025, at 1:59 AM, Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc wrote:
>> 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
>>
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