osOpinion: Linux Distributions: Making Things More Difficult?

[ Thanks to Kelly
McNeill for this link. ]

“Linux, of course is due to its Open Source license, has
more distributions than most people can count. This means of
course, no two setups are identical. I, for example might
install Red Hat 6.1, a friend may try Mandrake or SuSe. We’re both
running Linux, but we both have different utilities, windows
managers and even the file locations may be different. Now, for
people who know Linux this may not seem to be a problem, but what
about all these people who are starting to use Linux for the first
time? Surely debugging, installation and administration becomes
easier for the learner if there was a ‘standard’ Linux distro? If
people have a problem with Windows 98, they can compare their
problem with someone else who is running Win 98. For example, I
have been using Linux full time for about 3 weeks. Not long you
might say, and I would have to agree. Anyway, I was trying to get
some true-type fonts working on my machine and looked at the HOWTO
files to get some instructions. The first problem I encountered?
The XF86Config file was not where the HOWTO said it was. Okay, so I
had to hunt around for it. When I finally found it, in a completely
different branch of the file tree, I loaded Emacs to edit it. Now,
my file was substantially different to the demo file. Rather than
having a list of 5 or so FontPaths, I in fact only had 1.”

“After doing some more questioning to other Linux users, I
discovered that this setup is different for every distribution – a
fact I am taking a truth merely from their superior knowledge of
the subject. So, the help I had found was next to useless, because
it was based on an earlier/alternative setup. Same OS, different
distribution.”

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