 distro reviews are some of the most popular videos on my channel and that's true for a lot of Linux youtubers No matter their size a lot of Linux youtubers thrive on making Linux distro reviews And there's nothing wrong with that, but the problem is is that the way? We as a Linux YouTube community have decided to do Linux distro reviews is Not good and like I said, I'm not pointing fingers at anyone because I've done this as well Many of the first looks on my channel follow a specific format that the vast majority of Linux youtubers also follow You know we install the distro usually or almost exclusively in a virtual machine And then once the distro has installed will reboot the virtual machine get into the distro We'll walk you through what the distro looks like and then we'll walk you through The applications that are installed by default and then we give an opinion on it It's not good now the reason why it's not good is because you can't tell Anything or at least very few things about a distro by a and song and a virtual machine But also by spending like 20 minutes with it Like you can't I mean very rarely can you tell how good or bad a distribution is by spending 20 minutes with it Now obviously there are some exemptions like if the thing won't boot in past grub or something like that Then you can make an opinion like oh this thing is broken But past that if it's everything seems to be working your opinion based on 20 minutes Isn't going to be that well-formed you've only spent 20 minutes with a thing You can't have possibly made up your mind on how good or bad a distro is based on that amount of time And if you have made up your mind well, I mean you probably have some More preconceived notions over the distro than you probably expect so this whole idea That you can review a Distribution in a virtual machine in the course of 20 or 30 minutes is just it's farcical It's not a good thing and it's not a good way of going about doing things and like I said I'm not pointing fingers at anybody because I've done this exact same thing It is a very easy proposition to sit down in front of your computer go to distro watch find a Distro that no one's ever heard of before create a series called WTF and then make a Video in a half an hour or so going through that Outline that I just said it's very easy to do that These are very easy videos to make and usually very easy videos to edit and They do very well on YouTube. They Get a lot of views some of my Videos that are distro reviews that follow that format have gotten tens of thousands of views and Like I said people seem to be okay with it for the most part They click on these things like crazy and they seem to just watch them but as a youtuber as someone who's trying to Elevate the content on YouTube just a little bit. I have tried over the last Four or five months or so to ease myself away from distro reviews in that manner I've tried to do only long-term reviews or At least reviews that take longer than 20 minutes So for example, my last one was the Ubuntu review. I used that for two weeks Now that's not long-term or anything, but I installed it on hardware Multiple times I used it for two weeks and then I gave a review of it And I think that this is a better way of doing things It's just something it allows you to actually Have a sense of how good or bad a distro is if you've actually used it on hardware or even better a variety of hardware And you can give the people who are watching that video a sense of how good that distro is or how bad it is Or what problems there are chances are if you just use a distro in a VM for 20 or 30 minutes You haven't experienced the problems that you would experience if you've used it for you two weeks or three weeks Or a month or whatever so for me personally I've decided that there are going to be no Distro reviews on heat on this channel that follow that format any longer It's just not really anything that I'm interested for multiple reasons. I don't think that they're good Which is the biggest reason but also I'm just bored of them. I'm bored of watching them I'm bored of recording them. They're they're they're just not fun for me to make anymore They're easy Like I said, it's really easy to sit down and do these things because they all follow the same format or whatever And it's just popping them out You know, you could pop out three or four a week if you wanted to and and have yourself a really good youtube channel That probably gets gets lots of views and lots of subscribers But for me personally, I like making videos that I enjoy that take a little bit of effort You know, I joke all the time that I'm a lazy person and I think I am a lazy person But I would much rather put some effort into making a true review Then pop out these, you know, very simple VM based distro first looks that I've posted many times in the past. So Overall, I would Just kind of like to address the linux youtube community I understand where you're coming from when it you know making these videos as I've said They're very popular and there's a reason why when a buntu does a new release Every single linux youtuber out there releases a review that exact day And you know, I'm not going to say that those guys have never haven't used Ubuntu or whatever it is for you know a few days or something like that because some of them probably have But you can also tell the people who've only spent 20 or 30 minutes or whatever And especially the people who are trying to just kind of make it as fast as possible in order to get That video out so that it gets all the clicks that you'd get on release day You know you can tell all these things and it just it lowers the quality of The content that you're making at least in my opinion it just does And it shows a lack of effort and like I said, I'm not saying that that's a bad thing I do lack of effort videos all the time like Half of my videos at least are lack of effort videos And like I said, also I've done these videos in the past. So I understand But I just implore people to start thinking about the content that they're creating and maybe put a little bit more effort into it If you can simply because it does make a difference It will show not only That you're doing a good job and putting effort into something But it also gives a better idea for people who are actually clicking on these videos of what the distro is all about Is it good? Does it have flaws? You know, what's your actual experience with it because you know spending some actual time in the distro will do Not only use them good, but the people who are watching your videos, which is the whole point of it You want to give those the audience the Best overview of what that distro is about and make that video worth their time because at the end of the day times all we got and I don't really have any data to back this up But I would reckon that quite a few people who click on a video that says Ubuntu 22.10 review and it's just them installing Ubuntu and showing you what apps have been installed pre-installed and then saying Oh, this is really good You know, I would bet that a lot of people are pretty disappointed that they clicked on that video If they even made it past like the three minute mark So putting some effort into it and you know Doing an actual review. I think it is good for both the audience and the youtuber in the long run And that's my plan going forward So if you have thoughts on this, I know this was a little bit of inside baseball But it does impact the audience quite a bit on the linux youtube community. So If you have thoughts on this, you leave those in Comments in the comments section below. I'd love to hear from you. You can follow me on masted on our odyssey Those links will be in the video description You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash the linux cash just like all these fine people Thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon and youtube you guys are all Absolutely amazing without you the channel should not be anywhere near where it is right now So thank you so very very much for your support. You guys are all fantastic. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time