 distro reviews. Some people love them. Some people hate them. And that's the topic for today because I've been seeing this particular topic come up a lot on Linux subreddits, Linux forms, on the next YouTube videos, in the comment sections, on certain people's YouTube videos. And of course it's a recurring topic that comes up on my channel over the years because I've done a lot of Linux distro reviews, although I don't call any of my videos distro reviews or any piece of software I ever take a look at. I never call it a review because a lot of people have a problem with that term because what people think of as a review, everybody's got a different kind of definition for that. And I learned that early on in the history of my channel. When I started my channel, my very first video was a distro review, if you will. It was a look at Manjaro's Katie edition. That was the very first video on this channel about five years ago. And then like the next video I made was some command line stuff. And then we got into Openbox and Qtile and Window Manager stuff. But I did take a look at a lot of different distros in the first year of the channel, especially. I would say probably in the first year of my channel, I was making content almost every day. And it was almost every other video was probably a distro review, a first look, a first impression of a distribution. So I've probably reviewed like 200 of the Linux distributions out there in that first year of my channel. And since then, I've done a few more, although I've really backed away from doing those kinds of videos. I've probably, no lie, I've probably taken a look at more than 300 Linux distributions in the five years of this channel. So I have a very unique perspective on this, having made so many of these types of videos, right? And this is not something that very few people have done as many of these kinds of videos as I've done. And because I've taken a look at so many Linux distributions on camera, on a rather popular YouTube channel in the Linux space, I can really talk about some areas of concern that I think most people that want to debate this topic have never thought about. So first up, some people like the distro review kind of videos, obviously, some people can't stand those kinds of videos. But honestly, what does that matter? Is that any different from any topic of video or any formative video about anything on YouTube? No, right? There are people that like certain kinds of content, and some people just hate certain kinds of content. And that is just all opinion. And does it really matter in the big grand scheme of things? No, it doesn't. Now I can say with some confidence that the people that like these kinds of distro reviews, I'll use the term distro review loosely here. But really, they're more first impression, first look kind of videos, the kind of videos I typically do. The people that like that kind of content are typically novice Linux users, they're new Linux users, or maybe they've used Linux for a little while, but they're more surface level Linux users, they really don't want to dive deep into anything, right? They're not looking for really deep, dense content. Typically, they just want to see a preview of the latest release of whatever Linux distribution I happen to be talking about on camera or whoever is doing, you know, this kind of video. They just want to see a general overview of the latest release of that distribution. And they really don't want, they don't want you to go really hardcore into the technical details. They don't want you to do things at the command line. They don't want you to start reading manuals, man pages. They really don't want to know, you know, the nuts and bolts of the thing, right? Again, they just want to know the general overview of that distribution. Now I can say with some confidence that the people that hate these kinds of videos are typically not novice Linux users. They're the more intermediate to advanced users who they are not impressed by a general overview of the latest release of XYZ Linux distribution because they've seen it all before, right? It becomes really just old hat after a while, right? You've seen everything about this distribution or that distribution or in some cases, if you've been around the block a few times, you've pretty much seen it all with every Linux distribution. So I'll be honest, I'm certainly that kind of Linux user where I never watch Linux distro reviews, first impressions, first looks, even though I make that kind of content because I want to cater to the audience that does appreciate that kind of content. Me, myself, I find it, I find no use in that content as far as me consuming that kind of content because I'm not going to see anything in any of those videos that I haven't seen before. For the intermediate to advanced user, they're looking for deeper, more in depth kind of content. They're looking for something a little bit more under the hood, right? Nuts and bolts. They don't want this kind of overview. They don't want general fluff kind of content. They don't want the high level look at something, right? They want to get their hands dirty a little bit. And that's why, generally, distro reviews, regardless of how you do them, whatever format you do them, they're never going to appeal to the intermediate to advanced user because they're really not looking for that kind of content anyway. They're much more geared toward things like doing things at the command line, getting again under the hood, doing stuff at the shill, doing stuff with scripting, learning the ins and outs of maybe package management, how to build packages, how to maintain your own repositories of software and things like that. That's why a lot of the stuff I do on my channel, of course, I have a ton of videos that cater to that crowd as well, which oddly enough doesn't necessarily cater to the novice Linux user. So you kind of have to strike a balance and it's okay to cater to two different crowds. You don't have to make videos that everyone likes. You can make videos that some people will watch and others won't. And then you can make another group of videos that, you know, the group that wouldn't watch that video, they'll watch that one. But, you know, vice versa. And again, I think that's perfectly okay at the end of the day as a content creator. You make your own choices on that though. But because of my personal opinion, as a more advanced Linux user and the fact that I personally would never watch a Linux distro review, I don't think I don't think I could ever make a Linux distro review that an advanced user would find useful because that kind of content, that kind of content, again, it's for the novice user. It's for the newer to Linux users for more of just your average desktop computer user that doesn't really want the under the hood stuff. And because of that, you know, even if I went in depth under the hood and tried to do a lot of, you know, really deep dive into the nuts and bolts of the operating system on camera, the novice user, he's not prepared for that. He could never appreciate what I was doing on camera anyway, because that's not why he's there. He doesn't even want to explore those avenues. Again, he just wanted to know, hey, what's the latest Fedora look like? What's the latest Ubuntu look like? You know, what kind of software does it ship with? What kind of theming and icon set and wallpapers? You know, that's what an average desktop computer user cares about. Now, when I say I can't make a Linux distro review type video that would cater to the intermediate or advanced user, I say that because the people that hate distro reviews, myself included, right? They typically all have the same complaints. Let's go over some of the common complaints of the people that hate distro reviews often bring up. The most common complaint people bring up is that these Linux distro reviews, almost all of them are done in virtual machines rather than physical hardware. And I can speak for myself. All of my distro reviews, I won't say all of them. There probably been some that I've done on physical hardware, but of the 300 or so Linux distributions I've taken a look at on camera, on this channel, probably 290 of them have been in virtual machines. Why is that the case? And again, I'm going to again give you guys some inside knowledge into this kind of video content creation, especially video content creation where you're recording an operating system, recording these Linux distributions. For example, there are very real reasons why I choose to record my stuff in a virtual machine rather than on physical hardware, because I could record it on physical hardware. That's not a problem. But there's some real benefits to doing this in a virtual machine. Again, I don't think a lot of people have considered the first benefit. Obviously, recording a virtual machine is a lot easier than recording a second computer that you're installing on. You would have to have some way to stream from the second computer that you're doing the installation on to the computer that you're actually recording on. Now, I've got equipment and I can make that magic happen. That's not a problem necessarily. But for I would say for 95% of the people that make this kind of content, that's a real problem. They just have no way to actually record that physical machine if they record it on a physical machine. That's why they do it in a virtual machine. And I will say it is easier even though I'm set up for it. It is easier just to fire up the virtual machine for recording purposes. But the real reason that I choose to do these things in virtual machines and I would suggest that most people should probably do this as well is that installing a Linux distribution inside a virtual machine, especially some of the smaller ones, some of the ones that have small development teams that maybe are a little flaky, a little buggy, recording them inside a virtual machine, installing them inside a virtual machine gives them the best chance at actually installing properly because they're much more likely to install properly and work in a virtual machine then on physical hardware. And I think a lot of people don't realize that because I see some people complain, well, you do this in a virtual machine because if you did it on physical hardware, it'd probably break and yeah, that's why that's why I don't do that. It's not because it's not out of any kind of concern for myself. I do it out of concern for free and open source software projects. I don't want to throw unnecessary shade on them because if I install something on physical hardware and it's kind of buggy on my machine, well, what does that matter, right? Because it's my machine with that certain set of hardware that's on that machine. Physical hardware, you have thousands of different variations on physical hardware where in a virtual machine, it's all the same. It's all the same environment, the same kernel, the same audio drivers and video drivers. If you set your VMs all up to use the same drivers every time, they're much more likely to work consistently. And I want to give these things the best chance to actually work in a positive way. I want them to be shown in a positive light. I don't want to trash these Linux distributions. Again, especially the smaller ones, many times they're one man projects. I'm not trying to rip out somebody's heart on camera by trashing their distribution. I really do. I want them to perform the best as they possibly can on camera. And that's partly why I do that in a VM. Now this will differ from content creator to content creator. But for me also my virtual machines are actually more powerful than like some of my test laptops because on my workstation here I've got a really good CPU and 64 gigs of RAM on my workstation. So I can spin up virtual machine. I can spin up half a dozen virtual machines have them all running at the same time and comfortably give all of them a couple of threads in my CPU it's 24 threads CPU and give them you know I don't six eight gigs of RAM all a piece and still have plenty for the physical machine to do the recording right and you guys have seen me actually do that because sometimes especially like with the Ubuntu reviews of where I review the flavors sometimes I'll show you six different flavors of Ubuntu in virtual machines. Many of you guys probably haven't realized this a lot of times I have all six of those machines running all at the same time while I'm recording is because that machine is a beast. I don't have any kind of beast for like these old Lenovo thinkpads that I have I got an old Toshiba satellite laptop you know some of these Linux distributions would run like a dog on those physical machines that I have compared to the virtual machines another common complaint that I hear people make that hate distro reviews is you can't really just take a first look or first impression kind of video where you know you just take a distro out for a drive for half an hour an hour two hours however you know the video length you know a lot of times my distro first impressions are typically 20 to 30 minutes a lot of people well that's all you spent well known because obviously there's some chopped up video right right I probably spend an hour or two in the distributions typically but again the video length you know as I chop things up and cut things out you know obviously there's going to be some dead air that's cut out and some other parts missing but an hour or two is that enough time to give an accurate representation of is that distribution good or bad no not really right I completely agree with that that's not enough time for me to tell you that that distribution is good or bad but then again I don't do that on camera I don't recommend anybody to make you know those hard and fast kind of judgments like this distribution that I just looked at as good or this distribution it's garbage it's terrible generally you just want to show the distribution let people make up their own minds whether it's good in their opinion or bad in their opinion or it's right for their use case or not and generally if I tell you some experiences as far as I think this is a good distribution is because I've had real world experience like I've I've used so many of these distributions all right when I say I've taken a look at 300 distributions on camera of course on physical equipment I've run I don't know dozens of distributions on my own personal machines over the years I've been a strictly a Linux user for 15 years right and I've installed Linux on many friends families computers and things like that so I've used a lot of these distributions so a lot of times like when I talk about I don't know with the last couple of first impression videos I did I took a look at the recent release of Ubuntu I took a look at the recent release of Fedora and of course I give you a lot of opinion on that my personal thoughts on those distributions because I've got a lot of experience with Ubuntu and I've got a pretty good bit of experience with Fedora as well as as far as I've actually installed those distributions many times on physical machines and I've actually used those distributions on my main production machines even over the past five years on this YouTube channel some of the videos I've made were on this workstation that was running Ubuntu or this workstation that was running Fedora so you know I can speak on previous experiences also on some of these review kind of videos and some people will complain about that some people think it's okay but honestly you kind of have to bring some of your past experiences into some of this because some of these distributions I've taken a look at dozens of times on camera there's some distributions I've probably taken a look at six seven eight times in the last five years like every single release so obviously they're never a brand new experience to me I've seen it all at this point right so obviously some of the experiences I've had in the past show up in the latest release as far as the videos I do on the latest release I tell you about some of the problems I had in the past or some of the things I really liked in the past naturally some of that does bleed through from the past videos I've done to the new videos I'm doing and one of the biggest complaints that people have is really it's a problem of semantics a lot of people just don't like the word review and I completely agree with that now I would sometimes call my Linux distro reviews distro reviews in the very early days of my channel but I quickly quit doing that mainly because people did bring up hey is this really a distro review you're just taking a first look and I was like hey you know what these people make a lot of sense and I actually quit doing that I don't think I know I haven't made a video probably and well over four years where I ever claimed to be reviewing anything and not just with distro reviews again I just quit using the term review at all for anything because too many people what's one person's review is somebody else's first look first impression what constitutes a review using something for a day using something for a week a month a year a lot of people really think for a review to be a review you have to use it long term and what's long term well again is a problem of semantics some people's long term is three months people's long term is six months some people's long term is two years you know who knows what people want to define as a review so if people are going to argue about it just just don't use the term review that's what I do on my videos just don't label them as such now getting back to the unique perspective that I have on this kind of stuff having done so many of these videos there is a complaint that people make that I completely disagree with but the complaint is doing a short term review doing your first look first impression kind of video is just being lazy you're just wanting to do quick lazy fluff content a long term review requires more work that's why you don't do it and that's complete and total nonsense as a content creator I can tell you that it's the same work regardless as far as I'm still going to record a video the same amount of time it's going to take me however long to make the video regardless whether I use the distro for a day used it for a year making the video about it is going to take the exact same time is exact same time recording exact same time editing the video exact same time making the thumbnail and coming up with a title and you know all the work you know hours of work goes involved into these kinds of videos I typically these first impression kind of videos I make that are 20 to 30 minutes long I'm going to spend six hours maybe real time work making the video and I'm not talking about any kind of preparation just making the video editing the video the thumbnail and all that you're looking about a six hour it's a full work day essentially for me to make that kind of video and it really has nothing to do with how long I use the distribution the distribution if I again if I used it a day or used it a year I'm still going to have to put in that exact same amount of time I think a lot of people yeah I don't know why they think it's being lazy right matter of fact I'll give you a perfect example I've never done a long-term review again I don't like using the term review anyway but if I wanted to do a long-term review on a distribution there's several I could do that on because I've used them long term right now I've got Arco Linux on this main production workstation here at my office this instance of Arco Linux I've had the same installation of it running for two years maybe over two years now at my house I have Arco Linux installed on my home computer the same installation a year maybe a little over a year now I could absolutely make a video a long-term review of Arco Linux but I would never want to make that video because I think making that video would absolutely be pointless and I'll give you some reasons again I don't think most people have thought about the biggest reason why I don't want ever want to do any kind of long-term distro review is because it would make no sense for somebody like me to do that kind of video it might make sense for a newer Linux user they install a Linux distribution and use it for a year they don't really change much they just use it as we're talking about your typical desktop computer user not a geek right a long-term distro review might make sense for somebody like that to make that video for somebody like me I can't make that kind of video I can't show you Arco Linux right now after having used it for more than two years on me my main workstation here because it doesn't even resemble Arco Linux the way it was installed I can't tell you what it even shipped with out of the box I can't tell you what programs it shipped with out of the box I can't tell you what kind of custom configurations it shipped with because I use all my own custom programs I got a lot of my custom scripts I even got some custom GTK apps I've been working on I use on my computer here you know for me to show you this after two years of using it and try to present it to you as Arco Linux is ridiculous I even got my own custom repository of software that I created for DTOS that I'm using on Arco Linux again I'm just not the kind of user that I could present that kind of content to you because this is in no way shape or form Arco Linux anymore I've done so much to it and that would be the same regardless of distribution if I install Gentoo on this machine and used it for a year and we come back to it and I want to make a long term review well how can I make a long term review on it Gentoo is a command line installation you build it from the ground up everything about that installation of Gentoo would be my choices I pick and choose all the software on a Gentoo installation then I'm using all of my custom configs and all my custom scripts and software maybe even create my own Gentoo packages maybe I create my own Gentoo repository of software again the kinds of things an advanced user will do and then I'm going to come back and present that to you as if that is an accurate representation of what Gentoo actually is no that's no longer Gentoo's distribution that's really DT's distribution after a year that's why I can't do a long term review they really just don't make any sense at the end of the day every single Linux distribution that I install and use long term is going to be great you know why it's going to be great because I made it great right it tells you nothing about the underlying distribution me telling you about how great I made the Linux distribution because after you know so much time again I actually think doing a short term or a first look first impression videos those actually have more real world value for some users you know again for the novice users that there's there's actually a need for that kind of content I don't think a long term distribution review really serves anybody's best interest another unique perspective I have on the the complaint that this is quick and lazy content is that when I say I've made about 300 videos taking a look at various Linux distributions I've also tried to take a look at probably at least 50 Linux distributions on camera that I never actually got the video made and actually put out why it's because the Linux distributions that I was trying that day failed to install properly or it installed but after installation it just didn't work is complete crash fest it was crash-tastic right and again I don't like throwing shade on free and open-source software projects I don't do that I'm never going to show off something on camera in an overly negative light so even though I spent all day at least 50 different times I've spent an entire day recording a video because again it takes a long time several hours to make these kinds of videos there's been 50 days in the last five years where I put in that time and even never even got the video out right because some of these distributions are just especially the smaller one it's almost always the smaller the lesser known projects which is usually the ones people typically recommend I had just heard about this new Linux distribution check it out dt and it doesn't work at all I can't put that on camera and sometimes I really try as far as those are the ones I that even involve extra work because I'm bug hunting I'm looking at error messages and I'm trying to actually fix it to where I can eventually get it to work on camera so I can record it and sometimes even after hours of trying to track down different bugs and things I still don't get it recorded so again the people that say this is quick and lazy content nonsense but there isn't a consensus on this kind of stuff right just because I have some experiences of my own I have my own opinions on some of this stuff your you guys are gonna have different opinions and they can differ and they should differ because honestly it's all subjective right it's all opinion right this is not objective nothing we talk about here should be taken as hard literal truth universal truth right that's not what we're talking about it's all opinion and we can have differing opinions on this stuff I'm cool with that I hope you guys are cool with that as well and certainly the community is split because again some people like these distro reviews some people hate them and really the channels that do distro reviews or first impression kind of videos first looks you know like I do I get a ton of people in my comments hey you shouldn't do these kinds of videos I don't like them and I don't think it's good content quit doing these videos DT of course a lot of people like them a lot of people watch them but I also see other Linux and tech channels that never do Linux distro review kindness of videos and then people in the comments are constantly asking them to do distro review videos so if you do distro review videos people are going to tell you not to do them and but if you don't do them people are going to beg you to do them so there's clearly two different groups of people out there and again you can cater to either one or you can even try to cater to both which is typically what I do so when people try to say that these kinds of distro review videos are negative they're a negative influence on Linux I call BS on that because I have received thousands literally thousands of comments from viewers that have contacted me to personally thank me that they've discovered Linux and the reason they even know about Linux discovered Linux switch to Linux is because they watch some of my videos and typically the videos they're talking about are these first impression first look kind of videos you know these beginner type of videos introducing Linux or a particular Linux distribution I've gotten thousands of those kinds of thank you messages and I know every other Linux content creator gets those same kind of messages so to say that we're somehow detrimental to the Linux space it's just a joke I can't even take that kind of comment from from the haters seriously the other thing is Linux distro maintainers love the people like me that do these kinds of first impression first look distro review kind of videos especially the smaller projects because the smaller projects how do they get discovered well unless somebody that has a sizable audience actually shines a spotlight on their small little project they're never going to get noticed right every Linux distribution that I take a look at well I won't say every but especially the smaller ones almost every time I take a look at a smaller Linux distribution I get a thank you message either posted in the YouTube comments or sometimes through patreon or mastodon or whatever it happens to be that I took a look at their distribution they're appreciative that however the video turned out the fact that I'm taking a look at their distribution just you know drawing more attention because they're going to get thousands maybe tens of thousands of more downloads of their ISO now because again I took a look at of their distribution and if they're appreciative again I don't know why people would think that this is a negative kind of content I we're actually doing harm to the Linux community again I think that is just total complete BS now I often get contacted by smaller content creators that are just getting into the game or people thinking about getting into the content creation game on YouTube especially those of you that want to do Linux content and some of you guys have asked me hey should I do distro review kind of content or I don't know if I want to do it here's my recommendation if you want to do distro review kind of videos do it and if you don't want to do distro review kind of videos don't do it right again make the content that you want to make at the end of the day that's what every content creator should be doing make the content that's right for you that you want to make that makes you happy that makes you feel proud that you put that video out there if you're trying to make certain kinds of content because of some thread you read on a subreddit somewhere right that is completely the wrong way to go about this because that's going to lead you down some very dark and dangerous paths where you're going to probably hate making the content that you end up making and within six months you're going to burn out and you're just going to quit doing YouTube all together may even delete your channel because you can't even stand that those videos you made or even on the platform because you don't want to look at them you don't want anybody else to look at them if you like making distro reviews and people are appreciative of you making distro reviews make them if you don't want to make them and I've been in both camps because I made a lot in the early days of this channel the first year first year and a half of this channel and then I just quit doing them all together I swore them off because I just don't like making that kind of content right and then gradually here in the last I would say year maybe two years I started doing some distro reviews and they're not often there's certainly not the majority of the content on the channel right but now I do them when I feel like doing them as far as I'll take a look at a distribution if it's a distribution I want to take a look at right I'm just not I'm not out there just searching for stuff to take a look at now I'm past that point especially because there's not much out there that I haven't looked at before anyway so now if something strikes me as being interesting or unique I'll take a look at it but for the most part yeah I'm not forcing myself to do these kinds of videos and it really doesn't matter as far as the success of your Linux channel because you can be a successful Linux channel doing distro reviews there's many examples of that you can also be a successful Linux channel without doing any distro reviews there's many examples of that as well again make the content that you want to make don't make it because you think some people might hate the content for example I make a lot of videos a lot of videos here in the last five years right in the history of the channel I made a lot of videos about Vim and Emacs and you know extensible text editors really nerdy stuff that unless you're kind of a real geek a programmer developer just a real nerd like me you're not gonna you don't you're not interested in that kind of content you're gonna hate that content you might still watch some of the other content on my channel but you probably hate all the Vim and Emacs stuff that's okay I didn't make that video for you I made it for the people that would be interested in that kind of content but really more than that I made it for me because I wanted to make that kind of content for myself I make a lot of content about tiling window managers some people love that content some people hate it doesn't matter to me I like making the content so I make it same thing with I make a lot of videos promoting the ideals of free and open source software and I know some people hate those videos I don't care about the ideals of the free software movement or the open source movement I don't care I use proprietary software all the time anyway so when you talk about this stuff it doesn't interest me at all that's fine that's why I again I'm not making that video for you if you don't care at all about free software then obviously that video is not for you and that's fine you don't have to watch the video I'm making it again for the people that are interested in that kind of content and oddly enough the people that complain about my free and open source ideological kinds of videos they have some of the same complaints of the people that complain about distro review types of videos as far as hey DT quit making videos about free and open source software that's bad that's negative that's detrimental to the Linux community when you talk about free software and open source and just like those people that say that stuff about the distro review videos being bad I already told you I think that kind of opinion complete BS anybody telling me that making a video promoting free and open source software is detrimental or harmful their opinion is BS too right there's a reason why free and open source software is winning it's because of all the content creators on YouTube right now and other places on other platforms talking about the ideals of free and open source software we're out there spreading this message we're out here doing the work and the people for whatever reason you know want to try to tell us that we're doing a bad thing I have real world metrics to back up everything I do I know that I am a positive influence on the world and honestly guys if you're out there making Linux content content about free and open source software you are making a positive influence on the world as well and I hope you continue to do so and any of you guys of your content creator any of you guys ever want to contact me ask me for for help or maybe you got any questions and again I don't mind talking to people sharing my experiences you know some some of my trials and tribulations over the years making this kind of content I feel free to contact me I'm happy to talk to anybody these guys