It hurts me really - and more importantly, I think it hurts the community - seeing there and there post from people using tech saavy distro or one dude band distro and complaining about issue A and B.
Distro doesn’t really matter, kernel + drivers do.
I rather prefer that Framework focus on Ubuntu LTS or Fedora (because of foundation/company supported and big dev pool contributing to GNU/Linux) than trying to accommodate everyone. I’m not even a user of these but I could backport the bits I’d need. I would never ask a company to support my or that motherbasement/garage’s distro.
Let’s be pragmatic. Use Ubuntu LTS, Fedora if it doesn’t work OOB, report and if you want your distro and it does not work, ask the respective community.
Everyone is of course allowed to use whatever they like and I think FW has pretty openly stated that they will continue to officially support Fedora and Ubuntu. Everything else is community support based.
I am not really seeing too much a push to support distro X and Y. The community is open and discussion about other distros is allowed and also preferred too.
Well, Framework themselves are pushing for a total of two distros (Ubuntu and Fedora) because that’s what they have support personnel for. I don’t care about which distro is used, as long as it’s not windows
Every distro has it’s advantages and disadvantages, be it kernel version, packaging system, general update frequency, choice of desktop environment, you name it. But that’s the beauty with linux: You can use what you want, even several different distributions concurrently. Even commercial distros where you pay for support instead of relying on the community.
Don’t start flame wars, but let everybody use the distro that’s got the feature set they need. If you don’t like the direction a distro is going, try to participate and change it, or go away and take another one. But don’t rant about it being bad.
If somebody asks for a distro that fulfills a specific set of requirements, they may well expect to get a suitable recommendation. And this might very well be something other than either of the officially supported ones.
No flamewars, did I push for something? I don’t even use the two candidates but fully support the decision.
So yeah, use whatever, be whatever. This is just not the place to report issues, you could showcase tho.
If a company with limited resources and accountabilities tells that they could only support 2 combination while being open (specs, source code or better, upstreamed code, etc…), we should just respect that and be happy with it.
I dont totally agree to this. I think its fine to ask questions in the community. Official support is done through email with fw support.
Yes the linux support guys might roam here and give some support but the official way is through email.
There are lot of Linux users here and lot of super experienced ones that even do development on the kernel etc.
Agree and i think as long as the expectation is that you might not get full support or solutions, its fine.
But I think the issues are pretty same across the distros (with the same version of packages) so even if you run something different you can atleast get hints what could be the issue and solution (like you need a newer kernel/gpu firmware package etc)
Re-reading the original post: Asking for advice here on the forums for any distro is legit. You might not get answers because nobody knows, but asking is okay.
If you’re asking support, they will want you to reproduce the problem with one of the officially supported distros. There is such a thing as community-supported distros in the list on Framework | Fix Consumer Electronics
I mean, we have a community support category and community supported distros. if people want to seek help from other community members, they are more than welcome to do so. We have distro specific tags in the Linux sub categories for this.
I feel like I’m missing something important here. Are you asking people to seek help in other platforms (distro forums for example) if they need help for the distro other choice, instead of here? why?
I’d just like to voice my request that Framework start supporting Arch Linux. It really is the best because you know I use it, by the way.
Also, stop gatekeeping. Let people post what they want. We should all be adults here and able to help out [non-supported distro] when we have the knowledge to.
Sitting back as a Windows user this does make me chuckle.
Say what you like about Windows, too old to care at this stage.
But yes I always see three things when Linux crops up -
New excited user states he has just got distro (whatever) installed and is super happy.
He then get 13 further commnets not saying “Well done, welcome to the club!” but “You picked the wrong distro dude, should have gone with (whatever)!”
As a new user you post up a question on how to do something. The reason being as a Windows user most tutotrials or how to’s will start literally at “Click the Start button and”
Linux instructions seem to miss out the first 5 steps “cos you’ve been using it for 20 years and not a noob so we don’t have to tell you that!” So then when you ask you get “well you need to go and learn noob cos we all had to!” Ahhh thanks for that agressive and quite frankly rude response, You know what I’ll just reinstall Windows!
When you mention that 2 happened several times when trying to move to Linux, you get the response “No you didnt noob! You must just be an idiot or something!” Which they fail to see the irony of their response and prove my point.
It’s exhausting which is why I have vowed never to bother with Linux on a laptop or PC ever again. You really need to housetrain a lot of your userbase and write better tutorials. That and get the distros down to say 4 or so and settle on a desktop(?). Fragmentation aint helping but it’s amusing watching the tug of war and in fighting occasionally when I see it pop up.
Just my thoughts as an outsider and sometimes dabbler.
I agree with you, users of “small” distros can sometimes feel like they are part of an elite and so answer in a harsh/condescending way to new users, same way some new users feel entitled to have answers to their questions (immediately and at zero cost).
More tolerance from both sides wouldn’t hurt anybody .
What I got from my journey (Windows → Ubuntu → Debian → Void Linux), is that Ubuntu is one of the most popular distros for a reason: It’s easy to use and well supported by Canonical and its community.
However by using a more confidential distro, people have to accept that if they face a problem, they’ll need a certain amount time to resolve it and be willing to learn some new competencies along the way.
If they want something that works out of the box and to not spend hours searching for a solution for a (seemingly) stupid problem, they should not choose a lesser known distro (i.e. not jump right in by installing Arch Linux for example, they’ll shoot themselves in the foot).
I think what they are trying to convey is that the distro not working on a Framework computer is not directly Framework’s problem or responsibility to fix.
I think this is a valid point, but I would also say that this community is also not Framework’s direct support outlet, but rather the community’s. With the tags that @Destroya mentioned it is possible to filter out things pertaining to distros not officially supported by Framework.
While I would not advocate for people to not report their issues here, I would absolutely agree with the OP on going to that distro’s team with the issue as well. They are the ones that can directly fix it.
I still hold out hope that Debian will become an official Framework supported distro.
An exemple of burn-out (pun not intented). Sure, Lightburn is a proprietary tool but was still one of the best laser cutter software for Linux. While I don’t support their decision (pretty radical) , i understand it could be draining to support zillion variant out there or see posts/questions for your I use arch btw.
I’m a linux user for 20+ years and I do find our “communities” being very taxing.
Anyway, most of you got the point, thanks.
There are better solutions to their issue than just screwing over all Linux users. Most proprietary software just support one or two (usually RHEL and Ubuntu). The rest is up to others to add support to other distros. For example, arch users can create an AUR package that takes the rpm and extracts it to install on arch. They are just being lazy. Another reason open source software is best.
Another option that works well is providing a container which should work irrespective of the underlying OS.
I do agree they don’t have to support any. Its just weird to me they choose the most bloated linux distros. Arch Linux, Linux Mint, Fedora, Ubuntu are all very bloated. All of them use and require systemd. I just find that very strange.
But that aside, which posts have you seen that are contentious? I am very curious now. Feel free to whisper me.
Been running Artix on mine since I got it. I’d say most of the Arch advice tends to work just fine. I remember members of our community even managing to get BSD to happen. I’d love to see a full survey of who uses what, tbh.
On the contrary, they use the distros that are most supported, and I would think the reasons for that would be obvious. A lot of Linux users like digging and fixing things, but most people just want their computer to work. Chances for this are best with the most professionally supported distros.
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