Fewer Choices Mean Fewer Worries?

karol · 2009-05-14 17:09:12

Anonymo wrote:

Take the blue pill

You mean V*agra? Oh, yeah, it's good sh*t ;-)

And not to be completely off-topic, you can always ask your neighborhood genius to do all the setting up/upgrading for you: "I want this to go here, find me a wallpaper that goes well w/ red skull & bones cursor (...) - and be sure it boots really fast!"

Anonymo · 2009-05-14 17:21:11

Purple pill?

scv5 · 2009-05-14 17:41:23

CuleX wrote:

Fewer choices means more work to fix the system up or a billion of split up distributions which are essentially the same with different defaults.
GNOMEArch, KDEArch, XFCEArch, Hacked-in-CDEArch, LXDEArch, MiniArch, FullArch, Arch Mint, MiniX11Arch, Arch/FreeBSD, IonArch, XMonadArch, StarOfficeArch, CommercialArch, ArchArch, DemocraticArch, NoWorkingPackageManagerYetArch, NoDependencyResolvingArch, Ubuntarch, NewbArch, SysadminArch, AlternateInitArch, ArchXP, Arch Studio, 3DArch, GamingArch, ZSHArch, FISHArch, DASHArch, BusyboxArch, MoreArchThanArchArch, AntiArch, Arch/OS X, Arch/Cygwin, Arch 8086, Arch for IBM mainframes and more.
Is this really what we want?

Who's to say all those working on the hypothetical forks, would contribute anything to Arch itself if the hypothetical forks didn't exist in this hypothetical reality. (Or we can just say Ubuntu to break away from this hypothetical reality).

And who's to say notable code changes in one can't make its way up stream to the distro its based off of?

I agree fewer choices at times are good (like.. we really need fewer choices in the sound server and audio layer arenas) but more choices are generally a decent thing. I wish I had more choices when it came to video servers, but alas, I'm stuck with X.

Think of it this way too, if linux distro didn't start forking, there's a lot of distro that simply wouldn't be around today in the least and each of these distro's help further linux's cause (for better or worse). And lastly, a lot of these "forks" lately are barely even forks. The code is exactly the same, they remain 100% binary compatible, hell some even share the parent distro's repositories. Xandros can use debian repo's, Mint can use Ubuntu (or does), Unbreakable Linux, CentOS, and RHEL are all exactly the same product give and take a package here or there. Ubuntu CE, ME, etc.. are pure ubuntu with addon applications, same for Studio Edition. Most of these "forks" require little to no coding, people are repackaging and rebranding.

http://tuxtraining.com/wp-content/uploa … xchart.png

http://tuxtraining.com/wp-content/uploa … 0/unix.png (huge image)

Last edited by scv5 (2009-05-14 17:43:04)

sonoran · 2009-05-15 00:42:28

shortlord wrote:

There is a point where too many options lead to paralysis. It is a phenomenon described by psychology and I wonder why it does not seem to apply in Arch Linux.

It does not apply to Arch Linux for the same reason children are not "paralyzed" if you dump a box of Legos on the floor in front of them - they begin to build something.

ArchArael · 2009-05-15 08:05:58

sonoran wrote:

shortlord wrote:
There is a point where too many options lead to paralysis. It is a phenomenon described by psychology and I wonder why it does not seem to apply in Arch Linux.
It does not apply to Arch Linux for the same reason children are not "paralyzed" if you dump a box of Legos on the floor in front of them - they begin to build something.

Right! And that's because children have not prejudice about anything. They have not concepts of better and worse. That's why they can experiment without being afraid or paralyzed by the choice.

Choice is never bad. It's our "adult and conditioned reaction" to it.

pnoom · 2009-05-23 11:08:54

It's all about expectations. I don't worry or get paralyzed because I don't really expect a "working out of the box" experience when installing Arch. I rather expect a creative "building blocks" experience where I can be architect and construction worker alike. Being able to fulfill those expectations makes me happy.

scottro · 2009-05-24 15:25:07

Pressures of work and life have kept me from playing with Arch for quite awhile. These days, I'm mostly RH centric, as that's my job, that is, to administer RH, Fedora and CentOS systems.

The other day, I stuck Arch on my EEE 1000HE.

What a breath of fresh air.
In Fedora, for example, no matter what, gnome's consolekit is installed, It's tied to sound. Use a something besides Gnome, KDE, or possibly, XFCE, and you have to edit /etc/security/console.perms.d files to get sound working.

A bunch of other Gnome packages are also installed by default. If one chooses to not install X, it installs some KDE things, because you unchecked Gnome, and it requires either Gnome or KDE for some obscure dependency in PolKit.

Each release gradually removes more and more choice from the user. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, as I guess it's aimed towards the person fleeing MS or Mac, but then they wonder why, on their forums, for example, there are fewer and fewer sysadmin types posting.

With Ubuntu, I installed fluxbox, changed my session and networking was gone. Tying things like networking and sound to a GUI reminds me of commercial operating systems--OK, RH itself is commercial, and unfortunately, its documentation leans more and more towards the GUI tools, but RH itself, and CentOS, make it a bit easier to install a server without X.

I'd forgotten how good it is to have a nice clean system, where the user isn't considered an idiot. I'd also forgotten about how easy it is to find answers on the Arch Wiki.

To me, it's what Linux should be.

Others of course, strongly disagree, and that's fine. I take my hat off to Ubuntu for having done so much to make Linux a household word and make it far more practical to the majority of people who use their computers as a means, not an end in itself, as well as their work in getting it on some commercial offerings, such as some Dell laptops.

The trouble is, that despite the greater ease of use OOTB in things like Fedora, Ubuntu and so many others, they all gradually remove the user's choice.
It's said you can't make anything idiot proof because nature will always build a better idiot, and the trouble with the "You're too stupid to be root," distros is that they attract more and more of the newcomer who just wants it to work.

HOWEVER

The good thing about these distros is that they attract more and more newcomers who just want it to work. The upside is giving it a bigger market share and making it more likely that hardware manufacturers will show some concern for their needs.

So, there's no good answer. We're here because we like Arch and its way of doing things. Others prefer the Ubuntu/Fedora/SuSE way of having it work, hopefully, OOTB.

It's not terribly complex, just because you have to manually install X.

Hey, I'm a poet and I didn't know it.

sfauzia · 2009-05-25 06:52:47

Choice is good. I didn't find that setting up my Arch system raised any moral dilemmas. Perhaps it would have if the Beginner's Guide wasn't available, but then again, what is ArchLinux without the ArchWiki?

sfauzia · 2009-05-25 07:00:23

Of course, you can always do a commandline install of Ubuntu; I did that just days before I installed Arch Linux. There, you get to choose as well. But the Ubuntu commandline install is so threadbare that the fact that Arch Linux gives you some options (input vga=XXX into the kernel line to give you 1024x768 resolution) and the text is already nicely colored (Ubuntu's CLI is black and white by default), really made me feel that Arch Linux was designed for commandline use.

Raffles10 · 2009-05-26 01:11:55

I think that most people know what they want before installing Arch, therefore most of the choices are already made.

I've been using Linux for nearly a year, and done a lot of distro' hopping so I had a good idea of what I wanted Arch to be, that was why I choose to try it, I thought it would actually be easier to configure the system that I wanted in Arch rather than in distro's like Ubuntu, Mandriva & Fedora etc, where so many of the decisions are predetermined.

I knew I wanted to use Xfce, but that I didn't like Xubuntu. I knew what applications I wanted and which I didn't, it's silly to install a complete system like the ones mentioned and then remove half the applications because you know that you're never going to use them. It's easier and quicker to build from the base up than to start with a complete system and dismantle it.

By the time people arrive at Arch they've already got a good idea of what they want, so there aren't really that many decisions to make.;)

celthias · 2009-05-26 02:02:35

Didn't read every post so just chucking my 2c in..although something similar has probably been said.

In everything not just computers, choice is a good thing. It allows for more efficient and precise solutions to problems. However, too much choice can cause paralysis. It's always important to not lose sight of what it is you're actually trying to achieve, otherwise you might end up caught in perpetual bikeshed mode.

Ranguvar · 2009-05-26 03:41:55

Choice is _very_ good.

The problem is, sometimes it happens that a ton of choice is thrown into an application, or anything else, and then left like that. Oh, you can set every fine detail, so that's that. As long as as much effort is put into making sane defaults and providing presets, "rough" configuration, etc. as would be done without support for fine-tuning! This cannot be over-emphasized.

The enemy is NOT choice. It is overloading users with nothing _but_ choice. In a perfect system, you can really tweak if you want to, in specific areas, but you can get sane defaults, presets, or quick, rough tuning ability in other areas. Like how Torvalds wants Fedora because he wants to hack on the kernel -- he doesn't want to deal with fine-tuning everything else.

Myself? I prefer having a full fine-tune system over a full-auto-config system, even versus a mostly-auto-tune system. That's why I use Arch -- until we get to that perfect system (which is impossible, but we can sure as hell get closer), give me control. I wanna be boss in the end.

Anybody agree?

karol · 2009-05-26 04:17:33

Ranguvar wrote:

Anybody agree?

Depends on the system. If we're talking about computers, I agree, but f.e. I have pedestrian taste wrt food, so when I'm in a restaurant I basically eat what they serve and I don't want to have too many choices. Maybe one day my knowledge will expand in that direction and I will learn to appreciate all those various ... things :-)

A note about fine-tuning. You choose what level of tuning is OK for you - let's say you don't write all the apps yourself but you like to configure them the way you like. Somebody may write the apps by using some tools that merge some "prefab" code (libs?). Other people like to construct their own computers using hw logic elements.
Some people may say say you have a lot to choose from, others will say "Well, it's basically Intel vs AMD".
How many different free / open toolchains do you use? Do you need more?

JohannesSM64 · 2009-10-16 17:07:38

If you don't want a lot of configuration, use Ubuntu/GNOME.

miromanyth · 2009-10-16 19:51:02

It's funny, and I think that all of us as linux users are guilty of this - we no longer think of computers as a normal average joe. Honestly, most people don't give 2 hoots about what an OS is or a philosophy behind software that is lets face it - for nerds. And thats the thing. Linux users are nerds. We care a great deal about something that most people have never heard of, will never hear of, and if learned about would stop listening.
People need facebook, youtube, a word processor, pretty pictures, a dvd player, and an extremely EXTREMELY simply way to make these things "go."
Most people don't seperate "Windows" from there computer or care what windows is. When it comes down to having "choices" for how there computer is, it's probably all going to be very aesthetic. They'd like Facebook to be a different color. They'd want things to "come up" faster (load faster).
If all we had in the world was linux, then Ubuntu would have been in Windows place a long time ago. It's only recently that "hanging out" on the computer isn't so nerdy anymore. You used to be a real nerd for spending time on the internet, now you're considered "anti-social" for not having a facebook.
Let's face it, fewer choices IS better for the majority of people because the majority of people don't give a crap about underlying technologies like "we" do.
That being said, in the linux community with our nerds showing, Arch is clearly a winner because we do want choice. We want to see exactly whats going on under the hood, or at least have the access to do so. We subscribe to certain philosophies and spend a great deal of time using the computer. It's like our workbench and we need it just a certain way. Arch blows many other distrobutions out of the water for that reason alone.
Why is Ubuntu so popular?
It's free. Fledgling computer nerds and computer science majors can be a part of a community. Ubuntu has a strong community. Community goes a long way in the open-source world.

Blah.

Edit: Choice is always good. More choices is better than no choices.

Last edited by miromanyth (2009-10-18 11:01:35)

foxmike · 2009-10-18 01:58:09

My 2c... choice _is_ good. The proof: people have choice even between distros! Some will choose Ubuntu/Fedora/watever, some will choose Arch, and some will choose both (as me...). Some choices will give people further choises, some will not, and at the end everybody wins. In a sense, the fact that there is all those distros hanging around is precisely the effect of the open source nature of free software. And this is good indeed. Having only the choice to have further choice is a limiting concept I think.

ngoonee · 2009-10-18 14:32:12

Necro-bump....

Acecero · 2009-10-18 16:11:53

ngoonee wrote:

Necro-bump....

Yeah, but unfortunately 5 months is cutting it close.

rafaelgp · 2009-10-19 21:36:10

I believe the aim of GNU/Linux is that every one can access to the source to improve it or to create something better. therefore having hundreds of distribution is logical consecuence.
I understand that choose between all the distros available can be very frustrating but this isn't Linux's fault. We are human beings, hence nonconformists. And also very competitive!

"Which distribution should I use? The number one in distrowatch? The one with most packages available? The one with the latest software? The one with the fastest boot?.

This is not a Linux thing. There are a similar behaviours all around. For example in the photographic world.

"Which camera should I buy? The most popular? The one with more mega pixels? The one with more lenses available? The one with the fastest start?"

Poor consumer. Too many distributions! Too many cameras!

After some time I've learnt that it is healthier to relax and enjoy what I have rather than compete to see which one has the best, biggest, fastest whatever...

Vamp898 · 2009-10-20 00:44:19

much configuration as needed

most applicatinos comes pre-configured

Arch Linux

#26 2009-05-14 17:09:12

Re: Fewer Choices Mean Fewer Worries?

#27 2009-05-14 17:21:11

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