Since i see so much linux talk on lemmy i got curious and watched a video about the common distros. How true is the information in this video? The person hardly describes why debian and arch are just better than every other distro. At least i'm definitely now curious about Mint or something for gaming.
Don't like that he called some distros pointless. I would have found a better word. Lots on there that I have never used, obviously, because I am not a sadist. I couldn't tell you what would be good for gaming or not, but flatpaks have made some things easier (or so I've heard, don't quote me on that). And Fedora is a "Devil?"
Anyway. While I don't watch this channel ever, I am aware of it as a reputable channel for things like this, so it might be trustworthy.
Why are Debian and Arch at the top? Debian is one of the grandaddies. Many distros are built on Debian—MX, Mint, Ubunu, Pop, Zorin, Neon, etc.—and there are many packages in the repos, which are divided into stable, and testing, and unstable sections. So, a Debian base can be stable or extremely up to date. The Debian community and maintainers are another reason the distro is so well-liked. Arch also has a large selection of packages, an excellent wiki, and the AUR to have access to anything missing from regular repos. Manjaro and dozens of others are based on Arch as well, meaning the community is rather large.
No need to follow rules and conventions though. There are many people, myself included, that use Alpine for their desktop because the packages are very up to date.
Interesting that you said Arch has a good wiki. Maybe its just because its not common for beginners to start with Arch but when i read through the installation guide i noticed that there is no explanation on how to create a bootable usb in windows, at least the part for how to verify the signature wasnt explained for a windows user. For Linux Mint it was pretty much at the top, how to create a bootable usb in windows. I was very suprised that this guy called fedora and ubuntu the "devil" when i saw many people here use fedora.
One question though, you talked about packages and how they are sometimes different. How much had the amount of options for packages an effect on you, or anyone, while choosing your distro?
The number of packages was not something I looked at. I checked the availability of the packages I wanted, and whether or not they we're up to date.
When I switched to the current distribution I'm using, I did not plan on using it for more than a few days. I just wanted a quick and easy way to try out an up-to-date version of a DE on a low-powered device and have the newest version of the browser I use. It worked so I put it on my main laptop and it still works
If I were going for numbers, Nix has the most I think. The AUR is up there as well. Debian is in 3rd place. But, like I said, I didn't really think about that.