Liam ProvenDec 22

The @distrowatch end-of-year roundup does not pull its punches, in an admirable way:

«
Some distributions, particularly the commercial projects, shifted focus this year, discarding useful tools and replacing them with AI buzzwords, less capable installers, and broken core packages. We saw Red Hat/Fedora discard an old, functional installer for a limited, broken replacement while introducing a barely functional AI chatbot into Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Ubuntu swapped out its tried and true GNU core utilities for less functional Rust alternatives while also breaking Flatpak packages. Meanwhile, openSUSE threw away its famous YaST system administration tools and brought in a system installer which barely works.

It's been a bleak year if you're a user of commercially-backed Linux distributions. Programs licensed as free software are being replaced by more liberally licensed alternatives, AI slop is being hyped as a main selling point, and powerful administrative tools are being replaced by watered down web-based alternatives.
»

https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20251222

Show threadDon Fredl's Circus
@lproven someone still takes @distrowatch serious?
Dec 22 at 12:15pmWeb
Show threadLiam ProvenDec 22
@fredldotme @distrowatch

It remains an important observer of the industry and Jesse Smith a valuable commentator.
Show threadDistroWatchDec 22
@lproven @fredldotme Thank you.
Show threadDistroWatchDec 22
@fredldotme @lproven Some people do. Some people maybe take us too seriously. Others are dismissive without rational. There's a whole spectrum in the world.
Show threadd@nny disc@ mc²Dec 22
@fredldotme @lproven @distrowatch followed them not because of OP but because of this comment. ubuntu wasted four months of my goddamn time on a rust toolchain position. now working on rewriting the rustc build system. shuttleworth makes only himself look bad when he acts like the foundational effort that gave the language its name is something you can do with PR alone and not hiring people who have invested more time into making rust work for users than shuttleworth has ever thought about any user in his entire miserable life. if he wants to coast, he will be left behind
Show threadd@nny disc@ mc²Dec 22
@fredldotme @lproven @distrowatch i especially appreciated how driver support for my annoying nvidia card (the one reason i still allowed ubuntu on my system), which had been flawless and tested, suddenly became useless once it became cool to tell investors lies about why you specifically have a unique differentiator in your handling of LLMs. ubuntu is only ever used in the cloud because so many people learned to trust it as a brand from their first steps into linux. that's such an incredibly powerful pull that it would cost absolutely fucking nothing to maintain. shuttleworth should be replaced with someone who knows a damn thing about how customers work
Show threadd@nny disc@ mc²Dec 22
@fredldotme @lproven @distrowatch i'm still looking for a job but maybe shuttleworth prefers sycophants to employees
Show threadDan BallardDec 23
@fredldotme @lproven @distrowatch I do, it's an incredible resource the amount of just raw info it tracks and collates and the folks behind it are still dead in the center of trying everything. Them and @osnews are two amazing resources I'm thankful for