Do Distros Really Matter Today?

I do a lot of reading on various technology topics. This includes the “reviews” of various new or upgraded distros as they come out. What I’ve begun to recognize more and more, though, is that most of those reviews focus less on the technical aspects of the distribution under review and more on the Graphical User Interface of the distro. That is, at least 75% of the discussion is centered around changes to the Desktop Environment, whether those changes be functional, in the sense of added features, or aesthetic in the sense of color changes, font selection, etc. That realization got me to thinking about what is really important in today’s Linux environment and whether the DE is more important than the underlying distribution.

Let’s be fair here. All Linux distributions are built on the same kernel (else they wouldn’t be Linux, now would they?) And they’re all generally Posix compliant, meaning that they all work in essentially the same way, using the same commands and providing the same results. All of that is under the hood. Yes, there are some differences: Some distros are built for performance, some for gaming, some for stability, and so on. And, of course, there are changes in how applications are installed (dnf vs apt vs zypper, etc) But on the whole, the differences from the user perspective are, at least in my view, pretty much the same.

What differs – and what I think may be more important – is the implementation of the DE that comes with each distro. It seems that most distros may take a generic DE, Gnome or KDE for example, and tweak it to make it more visually appealing. Or they may add features to make it easier to use in some way. And that, it seems, is what gets the most attention from the reviewers. These changes do little to differentiate the actual distro, only the perceptions around the distro’s ease of use.

But those changes are important. For the “normal” user, that is the average Joe or Jane who might pickup a Linux machine to replace their Windows machine, it is the DE that they are interacting with and it is the ease of use provided by that DE that determines whether they perceive Linux to be easy or hard to work with.

When I first started using Linux over 25 years ago, the DEs were pretty rudimentary. Many programs had to be installed from the command line and there were few programs that matched the functionality of Windows applications. That complexity, coupled with the lack of relevant applications led to the reputation that Linux was a difficult OS to use and was, therefore, off-putting to the ’normal’ user.

But there have been tremendous improvements over the intervening 25 years. Today, the normal user is unlikely to need the command line at all. They can install the software they are most likely to use via graphical interfaces that are easy to navigate. Virtually all of the settings that they would need to change are also readily accessible from the DE. And, there are applications available to Linux users that rivals what is available on Windows or Mac OS. They may not be quite as pretty; they may not be quite as feature rich, but the functionality that the vast majority of people would need is there.

I mean, let’s face it: The vast majority of computer users use their machines to surf the web, read and write emails, and maybe write a letter or other document in a word processor. They don’t need a bunch of fancy, power hungry applications. It’s likely that the vast majority of the software a typical packaged DE provides is never used or even opened. But, the user feels like they’ve gotten a bargain because of all those available applications! In fact, I’d wager that the majority of people who believe they need an equivalent to MS Word could get by just as readily with a basic text editor. But they’ve been “brought up” to think that all those extra features are somehow necessary.

All of this leads me to believe that the distro, itself, is far less important today than the DE that is packaged with the distro. Ubuntu isn’t user friendly so much because of the underlying technology but because they’ve tweaked the DE to make the system easier to use.

That said, there are DEs that are more user friendly and those DEs are generally associated with specific distros. I still recommend Linux Mint to new users precisely because it is easy to understand and use. It mimics their experience with Windows and, whether we seasoned Linux users like it or not, new users want something that is familiar. And, frankly, if I’m using a GUI, so do I. I don’t like the Gnome DE because it seems too different from what I’m accustomed to. Give me XFCE or KDE any day. Of course, I don’t so often use a mouse anymore, preferring to navigate using the keyboard. And, I also tend to prefer the command line over a GUI. That’s why I’m running MangoWM on two devices at the moment.

So, I go back to my point: I believe that the distro is less important than the DE you’re running on that distro, at least for most users. Power users, excepted.