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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What are the worst distro-specific problems you have faced? (lemmy.world)

submitted 19 hours ago by TheTwelveYearOld@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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More specifically, issues for one distro (or maybe family of distros if applicable) and not other distros.

I'll start: NixOS. I love how I can have my whole operating system configuration defined deterministically with configuration files, but what I believe is a serious flaw, is when you choose the "unstable" channel, the channel for receiving the latest packages rather than ones up to 6 months old: stable. Unstable package often build dependencies on device, and I've often faced build failures, why are new package versions given if they fail to build?!

Why can't Nixpkgs backend ensure that new package versions build successfully before shipping them to end users?! It would take a lot of work to do so, but I can't think of any other distros that have this problem: where installing a new package version that came out a few days or even a week ago, has a chance of failing after its made available in the distro's official package manager.

There are a handful of workarounds for your NixOS configuration in this case, but it happens too often for me and I shouldn't have to edit my config for to work around it.

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[–] folekaule@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I thought this was how unix always has been? Sbin is for root binaries. It doesn't make sense to include a bunch of commands you don't have permission to execute in the path. I remember this being the case back in the 90s and didn't realize it was no longer the norm.

[–] Infernal_pizza@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Not sure about the history of it, but it's different to every other distro I've used! Admittedly I've not tried loads and I've not been using Linux for that long, but to me it makes far more sense to tell me I don't have permission to use a command/program than to pretend it isn't installed

[–] folekaule@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

I think it's fair to want a more helpful error message, but that's not necessarily the purpose for path. There is a real cost to every entry in your $PATH. Not as much as in the world of spinning rust, but some.

There are some completion modules for shells that will suggest misspelled or even installable packages if it can't find the command. Those are arguably better options.

As for traditional systems, I remember a time where running arbitrary commands, even with an --help argument could be dangerous and we had to set least try 'man command' first.