 The question over whether or not there are too many links distros is an old one. In fact, I would say it's about as old as Linux itself. And I've talked about it before. And I don't really need to talk about it again, because my usual answer to that is that there aren't too many Linux distributions. That's just the nature of open source. It's not anything that we can either do anything about or anything that we should do anything about. So that topic is not something that we need to discuss at length. But the topic that I do want to cover today is whether or not there are too many isos. Now this is going to be a little bit of a nerdy topic, because when I talk about this, what I'm not talking about is distros themselves, but instead isos that a distro will create. So for example, and this is maybe the prime example, let's talk about Arco Linux. If you were to go to the Arco Linux website, you'll find that they have many different isos. Different versions that are kind of like top tier versions that you can get an iso of. You can also get an iso of every single one of their desktop environments or window managers if you wanted to. Each one of those are an iso that they have to maintain. Arco is obviously just one example, Manjaro also has several different isos. They have three that are official XFCE, GNOME, and KDE. They also have several spins, community additions. So each of those are isos that someone, whether it's part of the project or not, has to maintain. Fedora is similar in that they have a main version, which is the workstation version that comes with GNOME, but they also have several spins, things like Mate and KDE and i3. They all have their own isos and separate versions that need to be maintained by someone. Ubuntu is obviously the most popular example. They have flavors. So each flavor is its own separate kind of organization separated from canonical, but they're supported by canonical. It's a little bit confusing in terms of organizational structure. But basically, if you're an official flavor, you're part of family. So they have Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Mate, the official version, which is runs on GNOME, that there's a new one that is using the Unity desktop. They have like eight or nine different flavors. And each of them have their own isos. Several of them have multiple isos. So they have the 22.04, which is the LTS, they have the 22.10. Some of them still give a older version of Ubuntu. You get the idea. They all have at least one or two isos that they have to maintain. So every single distro out there, at least the main ones, all maintain multiple isos and additions that they have to support. Now, I am not a developer, so I can't really tell you how much work goes into creating each and every iso. But I would imagine that the answer to that question is at least some. There has to be some effort that goes into creating each and every one of these isos. Even if the differences between them are insignificant, there has to be, there is some effort there, whether I know what that effort is or not. The thing is, is that I am not opposed to distributions having different flavors. I'm not opposed to them offering different desktop environments or window managers. In fact, I'm all for that. I think that is fantastic. One of my favorite things about Arco Linux is that they offer so many choices when it comes to installing different window managers or desktop environments. It's amazing. I also like that Ubuntu comes in several different flavors because not everyone likes GNOME. Some people want to use Plasma. Some people want to use Mate. Some people want to use XFCE. It's good that those things exist. But maintaining multiple isos, even if it's a separate team doing so, takes the effort that could be used into bettering the distro itself and into creating its own thing, like it's fragmenting. And I hate to use that word. The effort people could otherwise be using into making the distro better. And really for no particularly good reason, in my opinion. So there are, or there is an excellent solution to all this. We have installers. Now, I know that a lot of the mainstream distros are almost terrified to complicate their installers. They want to make their installer as simple as possible. We saw this with the brand new Fedora installer. It's like three steps. That's it. And obviously that's going to get more complex as they finish it. But you can tell they're trying to make that as simple as possible. There's not even user creation in that installer. It is that is post install. Everything else is just the installer. And I can understand this idea. You wanting to create an installer that is as simple as possible. But it removes an opportunity that distros have to create fewer isos. Now, maybe they don't say this is a big problem. Obviously they don't because it's just kind of the way we've decided to do things as a community. If you want a different edition of a distro, you just create an iso that has the DE or window manager that you want on it. That's the way we seem to settle on it. But instead, we can do something similar to what ARCO kind of does, even though they still do the iso thing, where during install, you just select which desktop environment or spin or community addition that you'd like. And maybe that creates some effort up front to do those things. But instead of having eight or nine different isos that you have to maintain every time you do it a release, you just have one or maybe two. If you have two different versions, maybe maybe an LTS and an interim release version of Ubuntu or whatever. So you have two isos, but you install Ubuntu. And during the install, you can choose between the traditional Ubuntu, Zubuntu, Lubuntu, the Kubuntu, they really need to do some different names. But you get the point, right? You would choose during install what version of Ubuntu you wanted to install. Now, obviously this creates one big problem. Obviously, you can't put all of the possible versions of Ubuntu on one iso. That iso would be 20 gigabytes in size, maybe even more. That's impossible. That's not a good idea. And maybe there's no way of working around that other than a net install. I don't know. I'm not actually sure how you'd get around that particular hurdle. Because you could have a net install. Most people who when they install Linux have the internet connected to their computer and that would allow them to download the particular version of the files and packages that they need in order to have the version of Ubuntu or whatever that they need. So for most people, my solution would work fine. But obviously there are people out there who don't connect their laptops or their computers to the internet or can't. And for those people, this solution is not as good. Also, you'd have to understand that you'd be downloading more packages during the install. So that would mean that people with bandwidth issues or bandwidth caps would have a harder time downloading Linux and installing it because you'd have to put up with that extra stuff that you have to download during the install because you're downloading the ISO and then you're also installing whatever packages you need in order to get the addition that you want. So there are problems with my idea for sure. I freely admit that and I'm also freely admitting that I don't have the smarts in order to solve the problems. So there is all that. But it feels to me just personally that this could be an option for the future in that it would at least somewhat if you could work past the problems, allow developers of these distros to focus on the things that matter like making their distributions better. So this is just an idea that I've been thinking about for a while because every time I navigate to a new Linux distribution, I'm kind of shocked at the number of versions that they maintain. It just feels like a whole bunch of extra work when they could do it in a much simpler fashion. Now, maybe there's not a way to work around the bandwidth and the complexity issues that I was talking about. Maybe that's just the reason why that hasn't been done. That's possible. And it would only maybe it would only work for distributions that are guaranteed net installers. So things like Arch, Gentoo, whatever, maybe it would work in those cases. But where in the more simple distros where you're installing stuff straight from the ISO, maybe it wouldn't work for those. And the way that they do it now is just the best way to do it. That's possible, too. But I'm interested to hear from you guys. What do you guys think about this? Do you think that distros maintain too many isos, too many versions? 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