What’s the point though? If you don’t want to use it, why bother? Why do you care what “Linux users seem to be so obsessed” with?
The world would be a lot better without this kind of hate/phobic trash. Doesn’t matter if it’s desktops or dick, nobody should care about what another person likes if it’s not hurting anyone else.
The post’s main points are 1. not knowing why people use lightweight linux distros, 2. imagining that the only reason is performance, and then 3. dismissing that argument based on the author’s own laptop. It sounds like the author didn’t read about the distros, talk to the users, or otherwise extend the slightest bit of charity that thousands of people who have organized dozens of projects over the last 20 years to build and use these distros maybe have their own experiences and do things for reasons, even if he can’t guess at them and wouldn’t be motivated by them. It’s frustrating because when I realize I’m ignorant of a group that’s made totally different decisions about a familiar topic, I see an opportunity to get a deeper appreciation by incorporating a new perspective. It’s not just that this article fails an ideological turing test, it’s that it seems oblivious to the possibility of learning from others.
(And: what does the author think the word “laborious” means? Nothing in the article touches on anything like toil, industriousness, or painstaking care.)
On top of it, the author points out his hardware is below average. Several of us had a Core Duo 2 with 4GB of RAM as our best machine. Those 1GB apps certainly add up on that. When it broke, the backup I had available was a Celeron I bartered for. The web apps tax the crap out of that. I don’t even try playing good games on it. The money that could’ve gone to a good PC had to go to savings for car repair or replacement. I’m not sure what percentage of us are using older systems due to financial hardship. There’s quite a few of us out there, though.
There’s also people that try to hold onto old systems long as possible to maximize ROI and reduce waste. I’m in that category, too. It’s why I had my Core Duo 2 for long time. Ran great unless app or OS truly wasted resources. “Lightweight” apps ran even better. We try to repurpose or donate these machines when they don’t meet our needs. Maybe a student would appreciate building up some skills on a lightweight Linux than not having a PC at all. Some school with little money might also find it useful at least some of the time.
i’ve had recent experience:
ubuntu 1804 feels sluggish in some parts vs. a slackware install, with more or less the same functionality:
xscreensaver unlocking: for some reason it takes half a second after i hit the return key until i see the desktop again on the ubuntu install.
there are weird lags everywhere (and no chance of debugging it with all the magick moving parts aka. “*kit”).
booting is slower, the initrd takes seconds until i can type in the passphrase to unlock the full disk encryption.
maybe all the shiny new tools aren’t so great after all. if one looks at the default install size of slackware, it isn’t even lightweight with around ~8G. it just doesn’t have all the stuff handed down to us by redhat, running in the background doing things.
I don’t think ‘lightweight Linux’ is only about low resource use. Another reason people use ‘lightweight’ systems such as Slackware, Arch, or the BSDs because such systems follow a KISS approach where it is possible to understand and know the whole system (to some extend). Also, in general, such systems are easier to debug than more complex distributions.
At any rate, I don’t see why the author cares. It is nice that there are open UNIX systems that cater to different audiences.
He argued that “lightweight” isn’t the same as “minimal/simple”. Some distros might be both, but the two concepts are distinct (at least in his usage), and his claim was that people focus too much on a distro being lightweight—perhaps at the expense of focusing on how minimal it might be.
I don’t agree that this is common usage (as I said in the previous thread), but it does cast the article in a different light—the author wasn’t arguing against systems like Slackware or Arch that might be easier to debug; he was just arguing about focusing on resource usage as a key criterion for evaluating distros (as distinct from simplicity, which he would agree is an important factor).
Remember, this is an opinion piece and we’re all entitled to our opinion. I’m not trying to tell people what to think; this article was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. Please take it as it was intended.
Has the author used Linux on their primary computer?
If you choose a fully fledged, GUI friendly distro, SO MUCH can go wrong. I have spent a long time battling with bloated distributions when stuff breaks. I realise that in the end, I don’t care about most of the system I am using, just a few core apps. If I can fit everything on my system in my head (I admit I don’t know most of what goes on in the kernel), I will be able to fix anything that goes wrong and keep it running smoothly.
Pick a minimal distro with a decent package manager (arch, gentoo, even ubuntu mini). The software used is usually something like:
Has the author used Linux on their primary computer?
I’m not sure if this was intended as a genuine question or as a disguised insult. Treating it as a genuine question, yes, I can assure you that the author has many years of experience running Linux as his daily driver.
Pick a minimal distro with a decent package manager (arch, gentoo, even ubuntu mini). The software used is usually something like:
xorg (maybe wayland soon?), i3, rxvt-unicode, vi, openssh, nvidia, git, mpd, darktable, firefox, networkmanager
I agee with this (though I go with dwm and simple-terminal instead of i3 and rxvt-unicode).
That said, other people have different styles that work for them—and, despite how much l love living in the terminal—I’m not going to assume that anyone who prefers a different workflow doesn’t know how to use the terminal. And I’m especially not going to make that assumption when they’ve been using Linux far longer than I have.
What’s the point though? If you don’t want to use it, why bother? Why do you care what “Linux users seem to be so obsessed” with?
The world would be a lot better without this kind of hate/phobic trash. Doesn’t matter if it’s desktops or dick, nobody should care about what another person likes if it’s not hurting anyone else.
The post’s main points are 1. not knowing why people use lightweight linux distros, 2. imagining that the only reason is performance, and then 3. dismissing that argument based on the author’s own laptop. It sounds like the author didn’t read about the distros, talk to the users, or otherwise extend the slightest bit of charity that thousands of people who have organized dozens of projects over the last 20 years to build and use these distros maybe have their own experiences and do things for reasons, even if he can’t guess at them and wouldn’t be motivated by them. It’s frustrating because when I realize I’m ignorant of a group that’s made totally different decisions about a familiar topic, I see an opportunity to get a deeper appreciation by incorporating a new perspective. It’s not just that this article fails an ideological turing test, it’s that it seems oblivious to the possibility of learning from others.
(And: what does the author think the word “laborious” means? Nothing in the article touches on anything like toil, industriousness, or painstaking care.)
On top of it, the author points out his hardware is below average. Several of us had a Core Duo 2 with 4GB of RAM as our best machine. Those 1GB apps certainly add up on that. When it broke, the backup I had available was a Celeron I bartered for. The web apps tax the crap out of that. I don’t even try playing good games on it. The money that could’ve gone to a good PC had to go to savings for car repair or replacement. I’m not sure what percentage of us are using older systems due to financial hardship. There’s quite a few of us out there, though.
There’s also people that try to hold onto old systems long as possible to maximize ROI and reduce waste. I’m in that category, too. It’s why I had my Core Duo 2 for long time. Ran great unless app or OS truly wasted resources. “Lightweight” apps ran even better. We try to repurpose or donate these machines when they don’t meet our needs. Maybe a student would appreciate building up some skills on a lightweight Linux than not having a PC at all. Some school with little money might also find it useful at least some of the time.
i’ve had recent experience: ubuntu 1804 feels sluggish in some parts vs. a slackware install, with more or less the same functionality:
xscreensaver unlocking: for some reason it takes half a second after i hit the return key until i see the desktop again on the ubuntu install.
there are weird lags everywhere (and no chance of debugging it with all the magick moving parts aka. “*kit”).
booting is slower, the initrd takes seconds until i can type in the passphrase to unlock the full disk encryption.
maybe all the shiny new tools aren’t so great after all. if one looks at the default install size of slackware, it isn’t even lightweight with around ~8G. it just doesn’t have all the stuff handed down to us by redhat, running in the background doing things.
I would kill for Michael Larabel @ Phoronix to figure out some reliable user responsiveness tests for Linux distros.
the laboriousness of writing an article when my opinion could be captured in a sentence, just so i can use the term “ipso facto”
And to misuse a semicolon at the same time!
why i never
Well, it won’t run a heavy DE for sure. Never underestimate how much A53 cores suck. (And the RAM on the RPi specifically.)
But yeah, OS distributions optimized for tiny disk and RAM footprint are not very relevant.
Suggested tag: opinion
Haha. That would apply to about everything here without a demo, though. (Pause.) Maybe your real goal is a product or demo with every comment. Hmmm.
suggested tag: wrong
I don’t think ‘lightweight Linux’ is only about low resource use. Another reason people use ‘lightweight’ systems such as Slackware, Arch, or the BSDs because such systems follow a KISS approach where it is possible to understand and know the whole system (to some extend). Also, in general, such systems are easier to debug than more complex distributions.
At any rate, I don’t see why the author cares. It is nice that there are open UNIX systems that cater to different audiences.
I actually made a similar point to the author in a previous discussion (https://fosstodon.org/@kev/100425413313343410) and he had a fairly nuanced reply.
He argued that “lightweight” isn’t the same as “minimal/simple”. Some distros might be both, but the two concepts are distinct (at least in his usage), and his claim was that people focus too much on a distro being lightweight—perhaps at the expense of focusing on how minimal it might be.
I don’t agree that this is common usage (as I said in the previous thread), but it does cast the article in a different light—the author wasn’t arguing against systems like Slackware or Arch that might be easier to debug; he was just arguing about focusing on resource usage as a key criterion for evaluating distros (as distinct from simplicity, which he would agree is an important factor).
From the end of the article:
Ahh yes, the old “I was only joking!” defense!
Has the author used Linux on their primary computer?
If you choose a fully fledged, GUI friendly distro, SO MUCH can go wrong. I have spent a long time battling with bloated distributions when stuff breaks. I realise that in the end, I don’t care about most of the system I am using, just a few core apps. If I can fit everything on my system in my head (I admit I don’t know most of what goes on in the kernel), I will be able to fix anything that goes wrong and keep it running smoothly.
Pick a minimal distro with a decent package manager (arch, gentoo, even ubuntu mini). The software used is usually something like:
xorg (maybe wayland soon?), i3, rxvt-unicode, vi, openssh, nvidia, git, mpd, darktable, firefox, networkmanager
A few config files and I’m good to go. So much bloat can be removed when you learn how to use your terminal emulator and a tiling window manager.
I’m not sure if this was intended as a genuine question or as a disguised insult. Treating it as a genuine question, yes, I can assure you that the author has many years of experience running Linux as his daily driver.
I agee with this (though I go with dwm and simple-terminal instead of i3 and rxvt-unicode).
That said, other people have different styles that work for them—and, despite how much l love living in the terminal—I’m not going to assume that anyone who prefers a different workflow doesn’t know how to use the terminal. And I’m especially not going to make that assumption when they’ve been using Linux far longer than I have.
I noticed a typo in there. the keybase link should be https://keybase.io/kevq not https://keybase/io/kevq. For a moment I thought they turned in a TLD.
I don’t think there’s anyone or anything stopping people from using “heavyweight” setups. This post reeks of “stop liking what I don’t like”.