Ok I want to get opinions

[woodsmoke]

Why IS it...that people who run "plain vanilla" machines and a "stock" OS...

don't seem to have problems ( at least they don't appear here on the forum with problems ).

This is going to be an OPINION thing...because there...is NO DATA...but...for all the people who are WAAAY smarter than the old woodsmoker...it is just a question...

of little worth.

woodjustaskin'smoke

[dibl]

After running Kubuntu/Ubuntu for 2 or 3 years, while testing other distros and desktop environments, and reading lots of posts on lots of fora, I gradually began to perceive the same pattern as you describe. First, I concluded that the Debian packaging system is clearly the superior system for Linux package management, so I found myself preferring the Debian family of distros. Then, the Debian mothership is, of course, famous for two things -- high stability and ancient software versions. A few bold souls in the developer community created several distros using the unstable branch of Debian, in order to mitigate the "old versions" issue. The distro was called sidux when I first tried it in the 2009 timeframe. "Creative differences" in the development team resulted in a fork to aptosid at the end of 2010. Later, more trouble and a fork in 2011 to siduction. This team, under the gentle leadership of Ferdi Thommes, has proven quite effective at managing the software transitions that periodically disrupt the "stability of unstable". They now offer a menu of DEs. I've always liked KDE for my desktop, but I'm typing this on an LXQt system running on an aged Dell laptop with a new SSD in it, and it really provides nice performance for typical non-gaming kinds of usage.

I currently have two desktop systems, both KDE, and two laptops, one KDE and one LXQt. This LXQt laptop was originally installed about a year ago (on 2011 hardware), the KDE laptop was set up in 2015, one desktop goes back to 2014 (on 2007 hardware) and the other to about 2012. But, since sid is "rolling", they are all fully updated to whatever versions of the installed software were in the sid repo as of yesterday. towo rolls new kernels for us as upstream kernel development proceeds, such that I'm running with a 4.15.2 kernel today.

So, my two cents' worth is based on a decade of experience, and I think you are correct.

[GreyGeek]

Dibl took the words right off my stylus!
I run plain vanilla right out of the standard repository. I’m using AppImag’s for “state of the art”.
My wife’s Acer 10” Notebook has been running Kubuntu 14.04 faultlessly since January of 2014.
It will stay on that Notebook till the hardware dies.

[claydoh]

Plain vanilla = not using many kewl features = less chance of discovering bugs.


Stock settings are usually well tested across the broadest set of hardware and software combos, while the fun features are less used, so will have a smaller test base.

One example is plasma's color schemes. While not buggy, there are just too many adjustments that can be made, so when someone finds that ultra £33t dark color set that looks like it will go great with that awesome background image, they often find that suddenly some of their program windows have no text (or rather the text color is the same as the background). This is due to a bug or limitation in plasma's Gtk theme integration.

Gnome gets around this by having more or less most customizations being third-party extensions.

I'm down to only one Kubuntu machine. The drive that I put in it died shortly after I put it in (17.04), but it started out as at least a Rating Ringtail install, maybe even earlier based on some of the cruft I removed at one point, upgraded to Zesty.

My laptops and chromebook are all Neon User. It's really the best way to experience a Plasma desktop:
rolling plasma with a relatively up to date core. At least for those who focus mainly on the KDE
The old laptop has run Neon since the day the User Edition came out, no reinstalls at all

Sent from my LG-H931 using Tapatalk

[jlittle]

I'm not into plain vanilla, sorry. I customize a lot. So, I try to avoid reinstalls.

For the stuff I want to get done, I sometimes need up to date versions, so staying on an LTS can be problematic, though ppas can help, or even building from source (which can be surprisingly easy thanks to APT goodness).

(With the benefit of hindsight I'd have been far better off staying on 14.04 till 16.04; I hope that btrfs will in the future give me better options if I end up in a similar mess.)

There's an opportunity cost to staying with "stable" releases: you might not find out about new stuff that you'd find really useful. There's a balance that suits each user, and the biannual Ubuntu releases usually suit me.

Sent from my Vodafone Smart ultra 6 using Tapatalk

[jlittle]

... Sent from my Vodafone Smart ultra 6 using Tapatalk

Where did that come from? My Tapatalk sig got reset, just for KFN, not for my other Tapatalk forums. It looks like claydoh's was reset, too.

Regards, John Little

[woodsmoke]

nice comments all folks!
any other people who care to share please so do!
woodsmoke

[sithlord48]

Its completely possible that some of those people who do not change the defaults are in the same group of people who are not always able to tell when a problem they have is a bug, oddly implimented feature, user error, or other reason for their issue. This group also may not even use most of the software on their machine. Think of how many people just turn their computer on for a browser, How many os bugs will you discover with that usage pattern? The stuff said above is also true.

[jglen490]

Its completely possible that some of those people who do not change the defaults are in the same group of people who are not always able to tell when a problem they have is a bug, oddly implimented feature, user error, or other reason for their issue. This group also may not even use most of the software on their machine. Think of how many people just turn their computer on for a browser, How many os bugs will you discover with that usage pattern? The stuff said above is also true.

It's also entirely possible that most users - "those people" - are entirely satisfied with the whole Linux experience and what they use will never stress ANY system to the point of revealing a system error. "Those people" are mostly not system administrators, not developers, and really only care about a system that works for what they want to do. If Linux works, and specifically if Kubuntu works, then it would be irrational to question their motives and usefulness - these are the ones that actually make Linux, and Kubuntu specifically, successful. Without them - and me, too - Linux is just a programmer's exercise without any utility beyond.

Never piss off the masses.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Why IS it...that people who run "plain vanilla" machines and a "stock" OS...

don't seem to have problems ( at least they don't appear here on the forum with problems ).

This is going to be an OPINION thing...because there...is NO DATA...but...for all the people who are WAAAY smarter than the old woodsmoker...it is just a question...

of little worth.

woodjustaskin'smoke

Well, in my case, I run Kubuntu and just don't have any problems to post about! My current laptop came with Ubuntu preinstalled and I replaced it in a day or so with Kubuntu, and there's just never anything wrong. Now, it was a different story when my mom was still alive! Some of you may recall--in fact, I believe the thread became a sticky--how my mom could do things to her desktop that I'd never seen before...or since. But that was user-caused problems, not OS problems, so they don't count.

[Bings]

I'm not sure what you have to do to an OS to class it as "non vanilla"

[sithlord48]

It's also entirely possible that most users - "those people" - are entirely satisfied with the whole Linux experience and what they use will never stress ANY system to the point of revealing a system error. "Those people" are mostly not system administrators, not developers, and really only care about a system that works for what they want to do. If Linux works, and specifically if Kubuntu works, then it would be irrational to question their motives and usefulness - these are the ones that actually make Linux, and Kubuntu specifically, successful. Without them - and me, too - Linux is just a programmer's exercise without any utility beyond.

Never piss off the masses.

I never questioned the value or motivation of those users I only said that some users are not inclined to report bugs and some of them are not able to reconize if their "bug" is a real bug or something else.

[Teunis]

For years I've been running two versions in a multi boot.

At the moment that is a virtually plain vanilla 16.04 and this 17.10 with a couple of more advanced repo's.
It works so much better than 16.04 that I will probably exchange 16.04 with upcoming 18.04.

My reason for the multi boot is I often like to tinker but at the same time I need something solid to get on the net and find solutions for what is broken in the latest version.
That's why I was so annoyed when 17.10 on btrfs (again) took down grub and by consequence everything else on this computer.

[woodsmoke]

good comments all!

keep them coming!

woodlikesreadingthemsmoke

[oshunluvr]

That's why I was so annoyed when 17.10 on btrfs (again) took down grub and by consequence everything else on this computer.

As a multi-booter myself, I keep a separate grub partition and run grub as a stand-only, not connected to a specific install. I'm comfortable enough with grub these days that restoring is is a breeze, but I'd rather not have to. I set this up after I accidentally wiped my grub out (for the third time or so) when I removed an install without first checking to see if it was the install hosting grub. The other factor for me is running btrfs almost exclusively, grub-probe has a bug that prevents it from finding installs inside grub subvolumes.