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Comment by amorousf00p | Hacker News Reader

This is where I draw the line. If you can't tinker with any linux you might as well buy a mac.

I agree with you in regards to most RH derived releases. Systems tinkering RH/Fedora may end you up in almost as much pain as if you tried it on OSX.

But SuSE has always been approachable in that regard (20 year user).

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Well, I'm not saying you can't tinker with those, just that you don't have to in order to get a working desktop out of the box. I have yet to run across a Linux based OS that outright discourages getting under the hood, except perhaps Android.

I guess what I was trying to say is that instead of dealing with the default parental guidance features of RH and Fedora (which usually ends up with impatient users disabling SElinux and then disabling the stock packet filter) and having to suffer the eccentricities of RH/Fedora systemd and 'socket' activation of an interfering frankenservice you could more profitably spend your time tinkering elsewhere.

Gotcha. Yep my goto hacking/tinkering/learning distros are Slackware, Alpine, and (on the BSD side) OpenBSD. I also consider all of those suitable as server/container OSes for varying reasons.

I run Elementary OS as my daily driver these days; no fuss, no muss, just log in and get to work. About the only thing I do on a fresh install beyond changing the background is setting up my tools. Surprisingly git isn't installed from the outset, but it's just a sudo apt install away. Likewise, I enable ppa support, add the ppas for Waterfox and Oracle Java, and install the ubuntu-restricted-extras package for better media support. Beyond that, the built in apps and programs suit my needs almost perfectly, and the OS fades into the background unlike Windows 10 or other flashy "LOOK at ME not your WORK!!" type OSes/DEs.

OpenBSD is very nice but it used to be a bit painful for a desktop. Funny, I ran linux on the desktop from 2000-2016 and then went back to windows because I'm getting old. :)

Keep fighting the good fight!

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