XPost: alt.comp.os.windows-11, comp.os.linux.advocacy, comp.sys.mac.advocacy   
   From: nospam@needed.invalid   
      
   On Fri, 11/21/2025 10:39 AM, Brock McNuggets wrote:   
      
   > I get what you're trying to say with the "chained curation," but that doesn't   
   > really address the point I made.   
   >   
   > Sure, there's an upstream structure. Debian feeds Ubuntu, Ubuntu feeds Mint,   
   > etc. That's packaging lineage, not user-facing curation. The existence of a   
   > family tree doesn't help an average user figure out which distro they should   
   > pick, what tradeoffs they're signing up for, or whether the maintainers of a   
   > given project are making choices that will affect them a year down the road.   
   >   
   > Most of the differences aren't obvious from the outside. You have things   
   like:   
   >   
   > - Ubuntu leaning hard on SNAPs   
   > - Mint avoiding them   
   > - upstreams with conflicting philosophies   
   > - different release cadences, different patching approaches, different   
   tooling stacks   
   >   
   > None of that is clear until you're already using the system, and it's not   
   > explained in any unified, beginner-friendly way. That's the "paradox of   
   > choice" part: plenty of options, very little guidance unless you already know   
   > the ecosystem well.   
   >   
   > So yeah, the distro family tree is there, but it doesn't fix the actual   
   > user-experience problem. A car lot still gives you a salesperson, brochures,   
   > trim levels, test drives, and a guided funnel toward a decision. Linux   
   distros   
   > mostly give you a giant chart and tell you good luck.   
   >   
   > That's the gap I was pointing to.   
   >   
   > To be clear, this does not mean I am against Linux. I have used it myself,   
   > have set up labs in schools, have set it up for users, and helped them set it   
   > up. I mostly used Mint. No list of distros for them. No options. Just   
   > installed Mint or gave them media with it for them to do so. Before that I   
   was   
   > doing the same with Ubuntu. I "curated" the choices for them.   
      
   I'm not sure that we can expect a single human to do those tradeoffs   
   in an intelligible way.   
      
   Imagine if this diagram had a third dimension, with some properties listed.   
   That would be totally unmanageable.   
      
      https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Dis   
   ribution_Timeline.svg   
      
   I doubt even an LLM AI analysis would yield a result, as the LLM AI would   
   succumb to the marketing text and not concentrate on the numbers or whatever.   
   For example, when Zak Wallen writes an article, the article is   
   the fluffy kind and not substantive. That would be an advocacy or marketing   
   type article (where we compare the pastel shades of the background picture,   
   as an important aspect of distro choice).   
      
      Paul   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)