[tlug] The various distro support places

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull.stephen.fw@example.com>]

grb writes:

 > For a distro like this, support can be all over (e.g. may well be
 > on GitHub in some cases) and may be a factor for me if I chose to
 > use it as a daily driver somewhere.

Both Solus and Budgie look like they put more effort into
self-promotion than into development.  These are separate teams and
don't look at all related to core Ubuntu development, though it's hard
to say just looking at the website top pages.  Still, you'd expect an
Ubuntu project's website to be "Copyright Canonical" (Mark S is a bit
of a dick about IP).

Also, with smaller organizations look for focus.  For example, Solus
appears to be trying to be too many things to too many different
audiences. Talking about a desktop for home users and convenience for
developers on the same web page is not a good sign: the requirements
of the two groups are rather different.

 > Have flavours - especially smaller and newer ones become a bit
 > fragmented for users to troubleshoot with?

No.  They're better than ever, both at the top end and on average.
But if you choose one with a smaller community, not backed by a
substantial business of some kind (which doesn't have to produce a
billion dollars in capital gains with a 1% increase in stock price,
but does need to have a presence in its own community), you're at
risk.  Integration and maintenance of a modern distribution is labor-
and process-intensive.

For internationalization specifically, you want an international
community, as well.

And as always, anything proprietary (whether hard, firm, or flaccid)
is risky.  NVidia video, professional GPU-supporting compilers,
Yubikey, you pays your money and you wait on hold (if something goes
south).

 > What do tluggers consider the better places for support like this?

Like Jens, I go with RedHat/Fedora/Centos, Debian/Ubuntu, SuSE,
FreeBSD (if you're not wedded to the Linux kernel).  At present, I go
pretty much exclusively Debian, but "XEmacs is my Valentine": I don't
much care about slick graphical anything (and when I do, I'm more
likely to use a Mac).  You can expect their basic install and upgrade
processes (including internationalization) to be as bullet-proof, if
not quite as slick, as Windows or Mac.  Their user forums are well-
populated with both experienced helpful users and frantic developers
and package maintainers.

If the home pages of derivatives like Solus and Budgie are well-done,
they may be good sources of ideas for additions/substitutes for the
core spins from the upstream maintainers, rather than trusting them to
supply a reliable distro already configured to meet your needs.

Steve