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Comment by i80and | Hacker News Reader

My experience is that distros with traditional package management can't be counted on to work over the long term without manual administrator intervention.

Debian in particular would not be my first choice, or my second, for people who can't do their own system administration.

(And this is a bit of the problem: nobody can agree on this stuff)

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Nobody agreeing on this stuff is freedom and beauty. If you want a managed OS there are already many options.

You look at Linux as an issue because someone you know can’t do system administration, something Debian almost requires none of. I look at Linux as an opportunity to rip people off their safe OS and introduce them to something that works but allows deep customization when they’re ready.

You’re operating out of fear, I’m operating out of faith. I really don’t care if the user “gets it”. They barely get their mobile device.

This touches on a larger problem that I think we tech people don't address as much as we should. That the modern big tech OS (Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS) has a huge advantage, which is that it's managed. Actively supported by the vendor, well after the purchase. That, and the heavy restriction of the user makes the computer orders of magnitude more stable.

With Linux this is not the way. The closest I can get is unattended-upgrades.

I think Fedora Silverblue, Bazzite, et. al. is the right direction for linux on PCs. It still feels a little immature yet, but also I'm way more confident in the system's durability than I've ever been in the past.

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