re: Linux distro chooser

[Arthur Torrey]

I was rather underwhelmed - nice idea but the end was a HUGE list of distros, 
with very little info that would separate them.  For instance, I said yes to 
user is visually impaired, and that got the same list w/ the addition of 
"Software for visually impaired people are installable (e. g. 'Orca')" to each 
entry except for Knoppix, which has extra stuff for this built in, and might be 
a best choice, but it was in the MIDDLE of the list...

I gave feedback that they need to reduce the number of suggestions and make it 
a ranked list not just the list of most distros in the same order w/ +/-'s for 
each, as that really doesn't tell me much...

I also would point out that I AVOID the "all free" distros because I pick up my 
hardware used / salvaged and it is FAR more important to me that it WORKS than 
that I avoid binary blobs and other non-free stuff of that sort (I do try to 
minimize it, but I do what it takes to make my hardware work)  

IMHO given that a user starting on the Freedom Ladder probably has hardware 
that was purchased for a non-free OS, pointing them at an all-free distro is 
setting them up for a bad experience...  OTOH a distro like Debian that starts 
by installing only free (albeit w/ blobs in the kernel) software, but gives an 
error and points out the non-free drivers needed to make a functional system if 
needed is FAR more helpful, especially to those that aren't into the esoteric 
challenges of finding hardware that runs on free software (something not listed 
on most boxes...)

ART
--- Start Quote ---
Message: 1
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2021 18:26:48 +0100
From: Paul Sutton 
To: libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org
Subject: Linux distro chooser
Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"

Hi All

I just found this on Mastodon, a really useful tool to help people find 
a good linux distribution based on their needs.

https://distrochooser.de/

Paul
 End Quote --

--
Arthur Torrey - 
---

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Re: Linux distro chooser

[Jean Louis]

* Paul Sutton via libreplanet-discuss  
[2021-10-24 20:28]:
> Hi All
> 
> I just found this on Mastodon, a really useful tool to help people find a
> good linux distribution based on their needs.
> 
> https://distrochooser.de/

I don't agree it is even relevant for Libreplanet Discuss mailing list
due to reason that it offers proprietary software.

Quote:

,
| The (license) ideology of a distribution is a contentious
| debate. There are distributions using mostly "free-licenses", others
| also use "non-free" software.
| 
| - [ ] I want to use free licenses as much as I can
| 
| - [ ] I'm fine with non-free licenses as long as my system works
`


Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/


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Re: Linux distro chooser

[Dennis Payne]

I find that distribution mostly doesn't matter. Sure something like
gentoo is going to be hard but the choice of general distribution is of
limited importance. Most things people want to do are supported by
every general distribution.

The exception ironically is fsf endorsed distributions because they
miss firmware for common hardware.

On Sun, 2021-10-24 at 18:26 +0100, Paul Sutton via libreplanet-discuss
wrote:
> Hi All
> 
> I just found this on Mastodon, a really useful tool to help people
> find 
> a good linux distribution based on their needs.
> 
> https://distrochooser.de/
> 
> Paul
> 
> ___
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On Free Software, Education in China and the COVID-19 Pandemic

[Andrew Yu via libreplanet-discuss]

I am a secondary school student from Shanghai, China.  This email
discusses the problems I discovered in the Chinese educational system,
in terms of students' right to freedom in computing and options to
control the COVID-19 pandemic from the standpoint of a person living in
China.

When COVID-19 broke out in 2020, students were required to watch lecture
videos produced by the city's education department for twenty minutes,
then join the Tencent Meetings room to discuss in their own class for
10--15 minutes.

Watching the videos wasn't an issue for me.  Our apartment has cable TV,
where the videos are broadcast; there was also a website that played the
livestream without JavaScript.  However, Tencent Meetings presented a
problem to me.

At the time, I run Arch Linux. (Currently, I run Hyperbola
GNU/Linux-libre, a Free Software-only distribution, which would have
made this even harder.) Tencnet Meetings, claiming to support "all
operating systems and platforms", only supports Windows and macOS. (I
wonder how they passed the resolution to display that statement, I
believe that they have many programmers who use GNU/Linux.) (As of
October 2021, a classmate noted that there is a "Linux versuon".) School
required Tencent Meetings, therefore I went through a hard proccess to
setup QEMU running a Windows 7 virtural machine---I believed that 7
would be slightly better than 10 in terms of privacy, though as always
with nonfree software, I can't really know for sure.  It was slightly
unstable, which is an annoyance, for example the connection from the
Windows audio server to pulseaudio would stop working from time to time,
but it was acceptable.  Though my setup was okay (in the perspective of
my school), it left me in a psycological crisis about education and
freedom. More on that later.

Offline classes resumed in May 2020, as most of China has minimal cases
of COVID-19.  This freed me from using a proprietary
non-privacy-respecting bloated piece of software in a virtual machine,
but it did not free me from teachers' requirement to use WeChat (think
of it as the equiv of WhatsApp in China), Xiaoheiban (A proprietary
classroom information distribution system), or other pieces of nonfree
software.

Similar to the beliefs stated in the GNU Education project, I believe
that schools and educaion are a means of sharing information and
knowledge.  I understand that meeting software and lesson management
software are used as means of distributing knowledge, rather than the
knowledge being distributed themselves.  However, I believe this doesn't
lead to the argument that the mandate of proprietary software usage is
just, for three reasons as below.

1. There are always going to be curious students who wonder how the
trchnology works.  Proprietary software denies them this right.

2. The usage of proprietary software when young may implant dependence
on it in the future.

3. Education is a right and a responsility.  Mandating nonfree software
in education adds unjust responsibilities on students.

Point 1 and 2 are explained well in the Education section of the GNU
website, therefore I am not going to focus on them.  Focusing on the
third point:

Under laws of almost all countries, citizens have the right to an
education.  Traditionally, this involves going to school, meeting
teachers and classmates, listening to classes, taking notes, passing
exams (I have strong opinions that exam systems ought to change to
better represent individual talents, but this is out of scope of this
memo.) and finishing homework.  Students loose a slight bit of their
time and freedom of movement (as in, it's not easy to move to a house
100 miles away from school), in exchange for being educated.

However, with schools requiring the use of nonfree software, in effect
students are required to give up their privacy, and digital freedom,
both crucial rights in modern society, as the effect of needing to use
nonfree software.  The right to education has effectively turned into an
exchange for other basic rights.  This is not acceptable.

Furthermore, in countries like China, 9 years of education is mandatory
for children.  I understand this law as a means to the goal of creating
a knowledgeble and educated society, which is good.  However, when
mandatory edication mandates nonfree software, it deduces to "children
are required to use nonfree software".  So, being a child here is pretty
unlucky, because there goes your right to privacy, your independence,
and your freedom, because of a law that's supposed to help society.

We need to stop using nonfree software in education.

In th beginning of this email, I mentioned COVID-19.  You might be
wondering how China fully put the pandemic under control in just 5
months, which is seemingly impossible if all you know is how the US
dealt with this situation.

The answer is that China is implementing strict contact tracing.  This
is extremely easy because of the prevaliance of survillance.  Many would
argue 

Re: Linux distro chooser

[Greg Farough]

On Mon, Oct 25 2021, Paul Sutton via libreplanet-discuss 
 wrote:

> On 25/10/2021 05:03, Jean Louis wrote:
>> * Paul Sutton via libreplanet-discuss
>>  [2021-10-24 20:28]:
>>> Hi All
>>>
>>> I just found this on Mastodon, a really useful tool to help people find a
>>> good linux distribution based on their needs.
>>>
>>> https://distrochooser.de/
>> I don't agree it is even relevant for Libreplanet Discuss mailing
>> list
>> due to reason that it offers proprietary software.

It's definitely relevant and worth sharing, if only as inspiration for
creating a similar tool. 

>> Quote:
>> ,
>> | The (license) ideology of a distribution is a contentious
>> | debate. There are distributions using mostly "free-licenses", others
>> | also use "non-free" software.
>> |
>> | - [ ] I want to use free licenses as much as I can
>> |
>> | - [ ] I'm fine with non-free licenses as long as my system works

But yes, due to the language there and some other problems we couldn't
promote this site or use it in our campaign materials as-is.

> Hi
>
> I do see the point being made here, however wasn't the idea behind
> freedom ladder to perhaps take people on a journey that will end with
> them using free software.  So to begin with people will perhaps need
> to use non-free to get something working, but the eventual aim is to
> eliminate the need for non-free anything.
>
> With freedom ladder, if you start off with Windows and MS office then
> a first step could be to start to use say Libreoffice so when you do
> switch to Linux then you are familiar with the tools available,
> perhaps switch to nextcloud for storage etc.
>
> We need to encourage people on that transitional journey, but take in
> to account their usage needs.  Rather than stopping them right at the
> start by making that journey more of an abrupt change.
>
>
> Could the fsf not perhaps adapt the tool to work alongside freedom
> ladder?

I think that's a good idea, as the current FSDG distro page doesn't do
the best job of steering people toward a distro appropriate for them.
We could adapt a site like this for our own purposes, one which gives
the FSDG distros priority and wraps a similar questionnaire around
them.

Having distros that provide nonfree software on it would be okay *if*
the distro chooser offers them a clear progression. For example:

"You seem to be a user looking for an easy-to-run desktop OS. We
recommend Trisquel. If you're unable to use Trisquel for whatever
reason, we recommend using Ubuntu until you're ready to move to
Trisquel."

That way, it will never just say "run Ubuntu." That's not at all
ideal. In situations where it would recommend Ubuntu, it's only as a
stepping stone to Trisquel. We would need to be careful about the
phrasing and presentation, but I think something like that could work.

-g

-- 
Greg Farough // Campaigns Manager
Free Software Foundation

Join the FSF and help us defend software freedom: https://my.fsf.org


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Re: Linux distro chooser

[Robert]

Hey Paul,

thanks for sharing the Distrochooser. Looks nice, works great. Gladly, I 
chose the right distro, depending on the chooser :).


Am 24.10.21 um 19:26 schrieb Paul Sutton via libreplanet-discuss:

Hi All

I just found this on Mastodon, a really useful tool to help people find 
a good linux distribution based on their needs.


https://distrochooser.de/

Paul


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Robert

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Re: Linux distro chooser

[Jean Louis]

* Paul Sutton  [2021-10-25 11:09]:
> I do see the point being made here, however wasn't the idea behind freedom
> ladder to perhaps take people on a journey that will end with them using
> free software.

I think it is exactly what it does, it drives people to non-free
software and to get into doubts, in order to have their system run
properly. 

> So to begin with people will perhaps need to use non-free to get
> something working, but the eventual aim is to eliminate the need for
> non-free anything.

It's not true. For years I don't use proprietary software apart from
BIOS in some computers. Fully free FSF approved operating system
distributions are listed here:

https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html

Of course not every driver for every device will work, that is why I
choose hardware that will work with software that is free. Not the
other way around.

> With freedom ladder, if you start off with Windows and MS office then a
> first step could be to start to use say Libreoffice so when you do switch to
> Linux then you are familiar with the tools available,  perhaps switch to
> nextcloud for storage etc.

Nextcloud is anyway remote, majority of users don't know if it is free
software or not.

Back in 1999, I have been using proprietary system and I was surprised
that I had 3 questions of support, the fourth one had a cost of 800
German marks at the time. There were secret codes that I had to obtain
to run software on my computer PS/2. Otherwise it would not run. Those
secret codes spent already my 3 questions of support. OS was
constantly blocking my business, and I have spent so much Internet in
few days that the bill left unpaid until today. Company forgot about
me. I had to re-start the program over and over again and each time
after 10-15 hours it froze the computer.

When I changed to GNU/Linux I have written list of applications and
found replacements in free software, learned it and deleted the
abusive and useless non-multitasking Windoze.

At that time point I have stopped using Warez, and found Perl and CPAN
and other software and programming languages. Suddenly I could do so
much more than what I could do with Windoze, at least so was the
feeling. 

Out of disgruntled situation I have played the game xBill
extensively. These days it is xBill and xLenart.

Summary is that it is quite easy to switch to fully free operating
system.

I have converted many people's computers with little or no complaints.

For employees I don't even tell them it is GNU/Linux, I just say, open
up GNU Emacs, start TUTORIAL, and other few things like email, and
they are doing well. Employees are also good to operate Mutt email
client. 

> We need to encourage people on that transitional journey, but take in to
> account their usage needs.

When I am about to swim, I jump straight in the water. And I don't
feel any transitional temperature adjustments that way. It is straight
and easy. 

> Could the fsf not perhaps adapt the tool to work alongside freedom
> ladder?

FSF does have such projects, like https://www.fsf.org/windows/


-- 
Jean

Take action in Free Software Foundation campaigns:
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns

In support of Richard M. Stallman
https://stallmansupport.org/

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Re: Linux distro chooser

[Paul Sutton via libreplanet-discuss]

On 25/10/2021 05:03, Jean Louis wrote:

* Paul Sutton via libreplanet-discuss  
[2021-10-24 20:28]:

Hi All

I just found this on Mastodon, a really useful tool to help people find a
good linux distribution based on their needs.

https://distrochooser.de/


I don't agree it is even relevant for Libreplanet Discuss mailing list
due to reason that it offers proprietary software.

Quote:

,
| The (license) ideology of a distribution is a contentious
| debate. There are distributions using mostly "free-licenses", others
| also use "non-free" software.
|
| - [ ] I want to use free licenses as much as I can
|
| - [ ] I'm fine with non-free licenses as long as my system works
`


Hi

I do see the point being made here, however wasn't the idea behind 
freedom ladder to perhaps take people on a journey that will end with 
them using free software.  So to begin with people will perhaps need to 
use non-free to get something working, but the eventual aim is to 
eliminate the need for non-free anything.


With freedom ladder, if you start off with Windows and MS office then a 
first step could be to start to use say Libreoffice so when you do 
switch to Linux then you are familiar with the tools available,  perhaps 
switch to nextcloud for storage etc.


We need to encourage people on that transitional journey, but take in to 
account their usage needs.  Rather than stopping them right at the start 
by making that journey more of an abrupt change.


Could the fsf not perhaps adapt the tool to work alongside freedom ladder?


Regards

Paul



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