 Today, I want to talk about a topic that's been on my mind for a little while that I wanted to bring up. It's something that bothers me about the way we in the Linux community talk about our various Linux distributions. When somebody talks about a Linux distribution, whether it be on a forum, on social media, in video content like I do, those of you that write blog posts about Linux or maybe you're a tech journalist, a Linux journalist, you talk about various Linux distributions, what is the terms that we often use to describe what a Linux distribution is? You know, XYZ Linux distribution is a easy Linux distribution or it's a hard Linux distribution. You hear that all the time and when I say that, I mean, I could throw out some names of distributions right now and immediately you know what the general consensus of the community is as far as whether that is a easy distro or a hard distro, right? When I say Ubuntu, right, immediately you think, oh, easy distribution. Everybody says it's a easy distribution. Linux meant the same way. When I throw out Arch Linux, what's the first thing that comes to your mind as far as what people in the community say about it? It's a hard Linux distribution. And to be honest, I sometimes use these terms. Sometimes I will use the terms easy or moderate or hard when I'm talking about, you know, different layers, different kind of tier levels, I guess, with these Linux distributions, but I try not to use those terms. I've actually made a conscious effort to use different terminology. So in my videos, you often hear me talk about certain Linux distributions being for beginners or for the intermediate user or for the advanced user, right? I don't use easy, moderate, hard. I use beginner, intermediate, advanced. I think those words actually properly describe what we're talking about with these Linux distributions. For example, calling a Linux distribution easy, right? What does that imply? Well, it implies it's easy. And if you're using it, you must be a lazy person. That's the only reason you're running it easy distribution. You're lazy or you're weak or you're not elite or you have some very basic needs. That's why that easy distribution will work for you or you're just the type of person to just settle on something. You won't look for something better. You'll just go with the easy option. And I do know people get offended because a lot of people love these easy distributions and they really hate people calling it a easy distribution. And I understand that. And that's why, again, I've tried to steer away from that term. It also really confuses people or sometimes offends people when you call their distribution at easy distribution, but they've broken it, right? Because I don't care how easy the distribution is. Take Ubuntu, for example. You go to the Ubuntu forms. There's plenty of people that have broken their Ubuntu installation and they're on the forms asking for help. Yeah, but everybody told me it's an easy distribution, right? I was lied to, right? I was lied to by the Linux community. Well, no, they just really, again, they didn't label things properly. They used the wrong term, the wrong moniker. They should have said Ubuntu is a good distribution for the beginner. They should not have said it is an easy distribution. And the flip side to that coin is, you know, the hard distribution. So the same thing. That term really is a bad label. I often hear people, you know, they say that no new user should use a distribution like Arch Linux, right? Or Gintu or Linux from scratch or Slack, where, you know, GNU Geeks, obviously, things like that. No new user should use a distribution like Arch. We'll take Arch as an example because it's hard, right? And that is not universally the case. There are plenty of people that install things like Arch Linux as their first Linux distribution or Gintu as their first Linux distribution because they wanted to explore those particular distributions or they needed to explore those particular distributions from maybe school or work or, you know, whatever it is they're into and telling these people that, hey, you can't go that route. That's not for you. It's too hard. You can't do it. I think that's offensive, right? Telling somebody that there's too stupid or, you know, they are not up to the level. They're not quite elite enough to install a particular distribution. I think, again, we should be encouraging people. We shouldn't be trying to discourage people. That's the wrong approach. And when we call a distribution hard, I mean, that term implies that there's some kind of difficulties that we have to overcome to get the thing installed or to even run it as our daily driver, that there's going to be, you know, these obstacles that are going to be actively trying to prevent us from running that distribution. Of course, that's not the case, right? Anybody that's ever run something like Arch Linux knows that it's, you know, it's different than installing something like Ubuntu. It's different than running something like Ubuntu. But there's not some force that's working against you trying to stop you from running that distribution. You know, trying to make your life hard, right? That's, again, that term hard. We should say it's for the advanced user. I like that. If somebody wants to say Arch is for the advanced user, I'm fine. If somebody wants to say Linux Mint is for the beginner, I'm fine using those labels. When we start labeling things as easy and hard, that's when it's really a problem of semantics. And I would say the distributions that people often label as hard, things like Arch Linux and Gen2, maybe things like NIC, certainly Canoe Geeks, I would put in this category, Slack where I'd put in this category. They're not necessarily hard. They are for people that maybe want more of a challenge. I could see that if you wanted to label them as people looking for something to actually challenge them a little bit, to push them a little bit. That is a good description for those particular distributions. But the truth is, if you've been using Linux for a while, and especially if you've distro hopped a lot, because all these distributions that I've talked about, I've actually installed them before. I've used almost all of them on physical hardware on my main production machines, a timer too, right? And these Linux distributions, the ones that are easy, the ones that are hard, they're all the same. And I'm not even kidding. At the end of the day, it gets to the point once you've seen all of these distributions, they're all the same. I think a lot of this comes from, you know, if you've never explored these different distributions, the fact that you don't know that distribution kind of leads you to have some preconceived notions, some misconceptions about things. If you've never used Arch Linux, for example, and you've just listened to what the community has told you about it, you've probably got some pretty bad ideas about what Arch Linux might be. The same thing, if you've never run a boon to, and you've listened to what people say about a boon to on the internet, you've probably got some pretty bad ideas of what a boon to is. But again, once you start using all of these Linux distributions, you realize they all have positives, they all have negatives, and all kinds of equals out at the end, right? It's kind of a zero sum game, you know? One is not better than the other. And really at the end of the day, I would say, one is not easier than the other either. It's, a lot of it is subjective, a lot of it depends on use case, a lot of it depends on the user. Now I think what many tech journalists, what many YouTube content creators talk about when they talk about an easy distro or a hard distro, let's take the easy distro. When they talk about an easy distro, they're really talking about the installation and how set up it is, how far along in the setup process. Because if I wanted to, I could go grab the source code for the Linux kernel and all the GNU utilities and Xorg and I could grab an init system, picking a init system. I could build my own Linux distribution from the ground up. You can think of it as Linux from scratch, right? That's basically what Linux from scratch is. You're building a Linux distribution from the absolute base, you know, up. And that's hard, right? That's what they label as hard. That's going to the absolute max as far as you build everything yourself. Now how far along that process you get, that's when things start getting easy. For example, something like Ubuntu has a graphical installer that's very easy. You click okay like three times and a graphical installer and it's installed in under 10 minutes typically, right? So that's easy and you didn't have to build anything yourself. You didn't have to compile, you know, the kernel and all the core utilities and all of this stuff. And you know, that takes hours, you know, it's time consuming. So it's further along that process. And I guess that's why they call it easy, but it's more of a time thing. It's not a degree of difficulty, you know, because is it really that difficult, for example, to compilage into? No, does it take a few hours to compilage into? Yes, right? When they talk about easy and hardest, again, I think they're really measuring the time aspect more so than, you know, difficulty, more than, you know, you have to be some kind of intelligent person to run this distribution, but you could be an absolute idiot and run this distribution. I mean, that's why I hate the terms easy and hard. Again, I think they give people the wrong impression. I think in many cases, they really do offend a lot of Linux users. Another thing to consider when you're using terms like easy or hard is the fact that they're completely subjective in a lot of cases. I mean, what is a easy distro? Everybody agrees that Ubuntu and Linux Mint are easy in the community. Pretty much everybody says that, right? Well, what about all the hundreds of Linux distributions that are based off of Ubuntu? Or in some cases, Linux Mint. There's plenty out there. Are all of those also easy? Well, a lot of them, you don't hear people describe that way, right? Same thing with Arch Linux. Arch Linux universally, everybody calls it a hard distro. Well, what about the hundreds of Linux distributions based off of Arch Linux? Many of them people describe as easy or at least moderate. For example, Manjaro certainly makes the best case of turning Arch Linux into an easy distro, but people will debate this because still being rolling release and based on Arch, a lot of people say, no, no, no, it's not easy. It's really hard just like Arch. But really, I think using my terminology, is it for the beginner user? Is it for the intermediate user? Or is it for the advanced user? Makes a lot of sense because then we know exactly what these things are. Ubuntu and Linux Mint, they're definitely good for the beginner. They can be used by the intermediate and advanced user, but they're definitely appropriate for the beginner user. I think something like Manjaro is definitely, I would put it in the moderate category, but if somebody wanted to argue it's a beginner distribution, I'm fine with that as well. And I would say Arch Linux is for the advanced user, mainline Arch, although I could also make an argument these days, especially as Arch comes along with their installer program, the Arch install more automated kind of installation script that they're doing these days. I would argue Arch is almost a moderate level distribution these days. And what about some of the big older distributions that people don't run on the desktop a lot, but they've got some users out there. How would you label OpenSusa? How would you label Fedora? How would you label Debian? Now that's a good one. OpenSusa for me, I could say it's for the beginner. I could say it would be appropriate for the beginner user, Fedora. I would actually label it more as for the moderate user. I know a lot of people want to pretend like Fedora is for the beginner, but it's really not. There's some weird stuff with Fedora. Debian, and I know a lot of Debian users love Debian and promote it. I love Debian, a long-time Debian user. I use Debian on my workstations in the past. I've used Debian on the server a lot in the past. And I love Debian as a distribution. It's definitely not for the beginner, right? It's much more for a moderate user. Probably I would even go to the advanced user. And the reason for this is because I think a lot of people when they think about easy and hard, those terms are really talking about more of the philosophy behind the projects. And I think any Linux distribution that is really hardcore in the free software philosophy, which Debian is definitely that kind of distribution, naturally it's more for the advanced user because you're gonna have to jump through some hoops to install a lot of your non-free software that is pretty much going to be required on 99% of the computers out there because they can't run strictly on free software. So a distribution like Debian is for the advanced user, in my opinion. Something like Arch Linux. Arch Linux doesn't care about the free software movement. Arch Linux is fine with proprietary software. They have proprietary software sitting in their standard core repositories that they don't care. And because of that, you're gonna be able to install all the software you need. All the non-free software and firmware and drivers and everything you need for Arch Linux rather easily. And that's why I could argue Arch Linux really is a moderate distribution where Debian is really more for the advanced user. So that's just some of my thoughts on this. I know I rambled on a little bit, but I often get questions from you guys about, hey, is this particular Linux distribution? Is it easy? Is it hard? I know those terms are thrown around a lot in the community and I've tried to make a conscious decision not to use those terms anymore. I know you guys, if you've been following my videos, no, I almost never use the term easy distro. Right, I always talk about this distro is a beginner friendly distribution. I think that's a much more kind of appropriate label to put on these things. I don't, more people start using those kinds of labels because again, I think using the wrong term confuses people and again, in many cases, it probably offends some people. Peace guys.