 So in psychology there's this concept called the paradox of choice And it was popularized by this guy named Barry Schwartz. He wrote a book, you know by the same name about it And it's really simple to understand the idea is that well the example he uses is Let's say you go to the store and you want to just buy like a new pair of jeans So you go to the store and you talk to whoever's selling you the jeans and you ask all right I want some jeans. What do you got and he'll tell you something like all right? Here's the deal. I got low cut. I got boot cut. I got dim jeans. I got nice and colorful jeans I got black jeans blue jeans brown jeans, you know really tight jeans I got all these different choices got bell bottoms. You know, I don't care. I got it And part of the paradox of choice is when you actually put people in situations like that when you give them an information overload They either make bad decisions or they make fine decisions and they get disappointed about the results So now he you know Schwartz was complaining. Okay. I just want a normal pair of jeans I I don't want to have to think about all these different choices. I just want a pair of jeans so this this sort of Decision should be pretty familiar to anyone who's been using Linux Because the thing about a Linux is that unlike, you know Mac OS and unlike Windows you get a lot of choices with Linux You actually get too much sometimes and you have all these different distros that choose from and all these different decisions about the Distros like what kind of desktop environment what kind of blah blah blah blah blah, so you just get confused And you're like constantly worrying. Oh god. Am I doing the right thing? I could be doing this slightly better if I want another if I were on another another distro or something and If that's the case just just shut up about it. Just don't don't worry about it I mean the way Schwartz puts it is You know, if you want to overcome the paradox of choice, all you got to do is realize, okay, I'm not here to do the best thing I'm just here to get what I need done done and that's it Because when it comes down to it, there is no best choice in Linux just revolutions It's an all it's all an issue of am I doing what I need to do And if I am I have no worry like reason to be worried about it. Okay, so let's say I mean, let's say you clicked on this because you're like a you're a beginner and you're like Oh, I want to and you know install a distro. I want to know what the right one is Well, if you already got one installed, it's the right one. Don't worry about it Just just run with it. And if you run in it run into any huge problems that you can't deal with And you think another district can help you well then switch and that's it Okay, if you haven't installed anything yet, just run with Ubuntu. That's it. Just that's what everyone else did That's what I did. That's what I mean Everyone starts in Ubuntu. And if you don't like the way it looks get like a Ubuntu Ubuntu mate or like subuntu or kubuntu or something. All right And don't worry about it. Okay, the question you need to ask yourself I mean, let's say let's say you're using a distro and you want to know should I change The question is really easy. All you have to do is ask yourself Is there some kind of program or is there something I need to be able to do that? I can't do now and if the answer is no then stick with what you got. That's it Because the only reason you should be switching is there's something I can't do so I have to switch Don't be like oh, I could be oh, maybe if I run a arch I'll be running at you know two seconds faster when I open this program or said don't don't worry about it It's no big deal. Don't sweat it. Yeah, I guarantee you Any differences there might be Are just You know, they're they're not worth the effort. Don't worry about it. Okay, so Should you change a distro? No, probably not if you're you know in one that satisfies is The other question is should you know, well, let's say let's say you're in your distro But you don't like the way it looks. Okay. Well, if you're a newbie You should know that distros aren't the way that you know distros are not the appearance The appearance is your desktop environment or your theme and if you want to change that look into desktop environments or themes Don't worry about you distro if you're on Ubuntu and you hate unity, which lots of people do look into other desktop environments Don't don't do all this stuff where you're like, oh, well, I got a switch to Fedora or something You know anything like that just because you want a totally different setup, you know It's Linux you have the freedom to change what you want You don't need to like throw the whole baby out with the bathwater if your distros doing fine Because if you're familiar with the Ubuntu or you're familiar with you know, Debian or Mint or whatever just run with it It's fine, you know, one of the unfortunate things about this is there's a lot of like social signaling about some distros I mean particularly I well usually the most common is arch because you know archer sometimes gen 2 less people use gen 2 I think at least less of the signalers I mean the thing about the thing about sort of arch Linux is because it's difficult to install Well, actually, let me say it's not really difficult to install You just have to follow some directions But because it has the veneer of being difficult to install, you know people there's a sort of Signaling that you get with it because oh, you know, you got to go through the effort of installing it and it you know proves that you can at least do this stuff on the command line and I'm If you want to install arch because you think it's like an elite distribution Let me just tell you there are no elite distributions any distro of Linux is fine Okay, don't switch because you know, you have the idea Oh, I've always been using Ubuntu and now I want to switch to something else even though Ubuntu is fine But I feel like I should be moving up the world because I guarantee you there are lots of people who do that They switch the arch they have a miserable time and then they come you know come back to Ubuntu and I like okay I should have just done this at the beginning So listen if you're unhappy with your distro, just remember the paradox of choice. Just remember you're suffering from it You're just worrying about oh, man am I doing the right thing and let me tell you what unless there's something you cannot do In your distro, which I sort of doubt Then you shouldn't switch. Okay. Now. What disorder I use I wasn't trying to I wasn't trying to you know Shit-talk arch because I am an arch user And there's nothing there's nothing amazing about that It's just arch gives me a couple advantages that I would have You know over other distros so you know actually a couple weeks ago I got really pissed at arch and I you know, there's a big update the thing about arches. It's a little unstable So like every couple of updates Something might happen, you know what happened a couple weeks ago is that Python had this update and it messed up all my configs for a bunch of Python programs So I had to redo stuff in fact actually when it happened I wasn't even sure what was going on So I was like no, I'm gonna switch to a more stable distro So I saw you know tried out Ubuntu again tried out Debian I'd never actually used Debian before but you know, I sort of liked the idea of it And the thing is listen theoretically you can do anything on any distro But the reason I use arch is just because there's some things that are a lot easier to do like in terms of customizability on arch right so For example on Debian. It was really hard getting i3 gaps installed. That's the the windows manager I use which is the pain doing these little things like that The thing about arch I like and the reason a lot of sort of What's the term for it power users? I think that's the term so Power users like some people who want to customize everything they want to you know have everything Really just people like me with like raging computer autism. They have to have everything perfect People like that right? Arch is a good distro because you even though you get some instability There's a whole bunch of stuff that you can really easily do you can use the a you are and get all these different programs that sometimes Like immediately mess up or sometimes they're totally incompatible with your other software But you can at least experiment experiment with it So that's something I like about arch and I was really pissed when you know, you know Things will just go wrong sometimes you'll I'll have printer problems I'll have you know, I'll have to reinstall something every once in a while But you know arch gives me what I want and other distros, you know, don't necessarily give me what I want But you're not me, you know, if you're like a normal Linux user who is happy with your desktop environment and you don't have to have everything on as you know few Key presses as possible Then your distra is fine. So don't don't sweat it Let's see what else. Oh, yeah So there's one other thing I wanted to talk about. It's not I don't see it talked about as much as it should be But you know, it's it's something at least important to me and it should be important to you and that's the idea of Moving towards a distro that's totally free software So, you know, everyone knows the FSF is out there that the free software foundation And they're total zealots everyone knows But sometimes zealots have a point like they are a little embarrassing sometimes And I think pretty much everyone who's in Linux for Not that well, let's put it this way. There's some people who are in Linux for the, you know Oh, look at me. I'm I'm a cool nerd and I use a cool, you know operating system Ignoring those people most people in Linux want a customizable and free You know operating system that, you know, you don't have to deal with spyware You don't have to deal with proprietary software You don't have to deal with any of that junk and it develops, you know, in, you know, sort of Emergently, you know, this the cathedral versus the bizarre kind of kind of thing And for people like that using all free software is a pretty important thing So I say that I use arch I most of my machines actually have parabola parabola is the is the Libra Equivalent of arch basically all the same you install it the same way actually the installation is easier You can use this sort of shortcut install But yeah, so they use the Linux Libra kernel, which doesn't have any proprietary firmware And they don't have any proprietary stuff in their Repositories so there are some things I can't get and that You know, for example, they don't have Cal say, I don't know why is that proprietary I don't even know why they don't have that but that's a little thing But you get the point there are some things you can't do or you can't do easily But I I am a firm believer that if you can use one of the FSF approved distributions on your machine, you should try and use it Well, I shouldn't say you should try you should use it Now it might not run on your laptop. You usually the problem is they're not always compatible with Wi-Fi Devices just because you know nearly all of them are proprietary. You have to get one of those Ethyros, is that how you pronounce it ethyros, whatever it is you have to get one of those Wi-Fi cards usually and sometimes it doesn't work with your bios. Yep, blah, blah, blah But so right now I have although my desktop now runs arch on this machine I'm recording on right now my little my x200 think pad. I got this thing Libra booted I got parabola so it's a hundred percent free software And I'll just say if you want to narrow down your choices if you want to avoid the paradox of choice Go to the FSF's website and check out their distros and see which ones work for you And if one of them look if Triskwell or whatever works well for you Just run with that because if you can use one of those distributions meaning if you have you know a Wi-Fi device That's compatible effectively. I think you should I think even if it is sort of this Extremist I mean, it's not even extremist, you know, we only call it extremist because sometimes it's hard But if you can do it you should there's no reason not so, you know, don't install Ubuntu install Triskwell If Triskwell doesn't work, there's nothing wrong I mean, you know, I'm sure the people at FSF might be pissed, but I don't think there's anything wrong with using a Distro like Ubuntu that's not a hundred percent free because the way I look at it is You know if people are using 80% free software rather than a hundred percent. That's much better than people using Mac OS Or something like that So, you know one of the reasons people are so pissed that the FSF is just that it's so Dogmatic about this and it doesn't want to accommodate It doesn't even want to make it easier. I'll just say they could make it a lot easier for them and get their The their word out better if they just gave you an option, you know, just a hidden away option to install proprietary You know drivers for, you know, whatever Wi-Fi cards people have but anyway, that's that's just my view on it So I think you should use one of those if you can if you can't just use whatever all distros don't matter Just use or all distros are all the same. Don't worry about it unless you specifically run into something You can't do so just don't sweat it. Just don't worry about it. That shouldn't be an issue So anyway, that's about it. So I'll I'll see you run