 If you've been using Linux for a reasonable amount of time, you probably have noticed that there are multiple ways of doing pretty much everything. If you want to move a file in the terminal, there are at least three ways of doing it. If you want to back up your home directory, there's at least four ways of doing it just that I can think of off the top of my head, and I'm sure there are actually many more. If you want to install a new Linux distro, there are probably at least two ways of doing it, probably more. And this phenomenon kind of permeates everything when it comes to open-source software. And if you're fairly new to this community, you're probably wondering why. The answer to that question is a little bit complicated, and it really has to do with the nature of open-source software and the nature of humans really, because when it comes to pretty much everything, we're all unique little snowflakes. And we all have our particular ways of doing things, and that leads us to not liking the way other people do things. So how I manage my workspaces and workflow and everything like that isn't the way other people manage their workflow. And that leads to conflict when it comes to development. So for example, if everyone loved the way Debian worked, let's just say Debian is our Daddy distro. It's the distro that we started from. It's not actually the first distro. I'm pretty sure Slackware beat it by a year maybe, but I might have those things mixed around. But the point is Debian is a really old distro, and it has been around for a long time, and it's the granddaddy of a lot of other distributions. If we all liked the exact same things, and we all enjoyed the way Debian worked, Debian would be the only distribution in existence. But of course, we know that that's not true. There are literally hundreds of Linux distributions out there, many of them based on Debian. So we know for a fact that not everyone is hunky-dory with the way Debian functions. Some people want rolling releases, so someone went out there and they created Arch Linux. Some people like the way Debian worked, but they wanted a different user interface. So they went out and created a boom too. You get the point, right? When someone comes across a way of doing things that doesn't really mesh with the way their ideas work, they went and created something different. And that's just in the realm of Linux distributions. The same thing applies to pretty much every piece of open-source software. Someone didn't like the way that LS worked, or they didn't like the language it was written in. So they went and created a program called EXA. And it's basically LS, but with some pretty features, but also written in a different language. Same thing with a rust clone of Cat. And there are rust clones of NeoFetch. And the whole thing goes on and on and on. Some people use this as an opportunity to learn new languages. Some people do this kind of development work simply because they have used a piece of software, realized that they didn't really like it, or thought that they could do better, forked it, and then decided to either rewrite it or put in new features, whatever happens to be. At the end of the day, and what it results in, is multiple ways of doing pretty much everything. Now, that all transitions into the question, is it a good thing? Because it does lead to fragmentation. The argument over whether or not fragmentation is a good or bad thing when it comes to Linux and open-source software is one as old as Linux itself. There are arguments on both sides of this debate. And really, what it comes down to is whether or not you think the open-source itself is a good thing. Or if it's a good thing but has some negative aspects to it. So if you fall down on one side of the argument where you think that open-source is 100% good and it was a good idea and the licenses and everything work properly, you probably think that fragmentation is a good thing. Because it allows choice, right? And choice is always supreme to having no choice at all. This is the argument of probably most people in the open-source and Linux community. They would argue that it would be much better to have an abundance of choice when it comes to distros and ways of doing things than to have no choices at all and just have to be forced to use either one distro, one desktop environment, and that's just the way things are. Most of these people, and I hate generalizing, but at least a lot of these people would look at the other camp and think that they're all fascists or communists. There's something really bad, you know? Because the other group would argue that fragmentation is bad and it actually hurts adoption. And their arguments is that too much choice is confusing and overwhelming to new users and therefore there should be a set of defaults, sane defaults, that permeate the Linux and open-source community, that everyone should agree on. And those are the things that should be the most popular. So in their world, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch would probably be the three main distros and those are the ones that we would point everybody towards. I don't know if that's how everybody would argue it, probably not, but that's kind of the idea that there'd be some kind of sane default system that everyone is kind of agreeing upon that this is how we get new users into the community and then they can branch out if they want to. So these two arguments are not really all that compatible because one says that all choice is good choice, one says that some choice is good, but really we need to have a set of sane defaults and that would make it easier for new users to enter the community and not be so overwhelmed. So that all leads to the question which side is right and I don't think that there's a true answer to that because in some ways the way open-source and Linux works is a good thing. So all the choices that we have, all the distros, all the ways of doing things, those are all the results of the way open-source works and if we didn't let open-source work that way, we wouldn't have open-source because it's just kind of the nature of the beast. You are free to take a piece of software and do with it what you want and that includes fork it, change it, rewrite it into a new language, add features, take away features, whatever you want. As long as you abide by the terms of the license, you can do that. If we were to curtail that and make it so that these things were all, you know, some the most popular things were the standard and we changed the license so that it was harder to fork things or whatever, that would take away some of the aspect of how good open-source can and really is. So for me personally, I fall down on the side of that fragmentation is a necessary evil. It's something that we have to put up with because taking it away trying to solve the problem would really kind of dilute the awesomeness that is open-source. However, I empathize with the people who say that there's just too much choice. There's too many distros. There's too many ways of doing things and it's confusing. I can completely understand that and the problem is that there's no solution. There's just really no solution. There's no way for us to go back in time and say, hey, Debian is the way we're going to go or we're only going to allow Debian and Arch. Those are the two distros we're going to have. That's it. You can't fork these, you can't use them, whatever. We can't go back in time and do that and even if we could, I don't think that we should because I think that by limiting the freedom that developers have to do what they want with software would actually lead them to be less interested in actually doing things with the software. If you don't have the right to take audacity or OBS or whatever and do with it whatever you want under the terms of a license, you're probably not going to do anything at all. It's a lot different to say, well, I'm going, especially with these two, especially with those two examples, especially audacity. Audacity is now owned by a major corporation and if it was not open-source the way it is now so you could fork it and do whatever you want with it, that means that if you wanted to contribute you would have to do so under all the rules that that corporation sits down so you'd have to sign their contributor license agreement and all this stuff and there are certain aspects of that that just aren't going to be appealing to the vast majority of developers who aren't going to be paid for their work in the first place. So their ability to take software and then do what they want with it actually motivates them to do work at all. It just makes them have the opportunity and the inertia to move forward with whatever projects they like and while it does lead to obviously multiple different clones of audacity, the vast majority of which now have been abandoned, it's still good that the developers who chose to do that had the opportunity. Otherwise audacity probably would just be a proprietary piece of software for the most part or I should say it would be open-source only in name. So those are my thoughts on the idea behind fragmentation and the whole duplication of effort thing. I've talked about that before on the podcast and on the channel before and I think that my thoughts on this have evolved over the last year or so because I think I fell down much more on the side of there's too many distros before and that we needed to do something to make it easier for new users. Now that I've kind of grown into the open-source philosophy a little bit more I find myself thinking that yes fragmentation can be bad, yes choice and stuff like that can be overwhelming but in the grand scheme of things there's nothing we can do about it and even if we could it would probably make open source worse. So the real solution to all this is to solve another problem which is to have a place on the internet that can kind of point users towards sane first options for them. So when someone comes up on reddit and asks you what distro should I start out with we should all have a fairly sane answer to that. Don't point them towards gen2. Okay it's just I mean that seems fairly obvious but that's definitely not a good choice for a new user. You probably shouldn't point them towards Arch Linux because that is not going to be easy for them to install if they're brand brand new, right? Point them towards Ubuntu or Fedora something that is easy to install something that is easy to get their software on things like that. Of course we're not all going to agree on what we should point those people to and that kind of comes up with the problem is that it's hard when there's a community this large to kind of say hey this is what we're going to point people towards but really they can try whatever they want. Really the answer of course is to tell them to try everything and that has been my advice for quite a while. If you are a new user there is no best distro. There's just not. There are distros that are better for new users absolutely true. Fedora, Ubuntu, maybe even Manjaro, PopOS, elementary OS maybe that's still around in four or five years Zoran, things like that. Those are really good for new users but at the end of the day the best thing you can do as a new user is try everything. If you want to try Arch Linux do it. Throw that on an ISO make sure your data is backed up try to install it. Follow the ArchWiki you probably will get it installed because ArchWiki is fantastic. If you want to try Gen2 more power to you I wouldn't recommend it you'll probably just be a sad sad person at the end of it and be left with a system that just doesn't you know work because Gen2 is hard to install or at least hard for new users even experienced users really but in the process of failing you've probably learned something so that's a good thing. So at the end of the day the best thing to get past the fragmentation and the overwhelming feeling of so many choices is just to start somewhere you know you probably have heard of Ubuntu go try Ubuntu use it for a little while see if you can find some of your software choices on there that you're going to need in order to replace the programs you used to use and if it works really well for you fantastic maybe that's your home you know some people try a distro and that's just what they stick with because it absolutely works for them. If there's a couple problems and you don't feel like solving them hop to a different distro learn how that works if that has problems and you don't want to solve them hop to another one you know just continually learn and you'll have a good experience and it won't be so overwhelming at the end. So those are my thoughts on fragmentation and how new users should kind of deal with that if you have thoughts on this topic you can leave those in the comment section below you can follow me on twitter at the linuxcast you can support me on patreon at patreon.com linuxcast just like all of these fine people thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon youtube you guys are all just absolutely amazing people if the rest of us are snowflakes you guys are i don't know snowballs or something it just it was a really bad metaphor i i don't know where i was been with but thank you so very much for your support truly do appreciate it thanks everybody for watching i'll see you next time