[Discussion] How I came to Linux and Debian

[Curius]

As I just arrived on the forum, this is only a way of presenting me and of talking about the history of Linux seen through the eyes of a complete newbie.

I am well aware that this is not about technical requests or technical information about Debian but, as I found out that this forum has an "Off-topic" section, I thought I may write this story. Perhaps the moderators will yell at me (bad beginning for me…).

How I came to Linux and Debian

Until 2005 I used Windows.

It was a time when you could still fall upon a 3½-inch floppy disk.

It was the time when everyone had to met with the "BSODs", the Blue Screens Of Death: blue screens appearing each time Windows crashed, and, kindly and pleasantly, informing you that you were well f…

The time when, for penalty of system death, you had to get a register cleaner, an antivirus, an antimalware, and an anti-everything, and you had nonetheless to reinstall Windows every 6 months or else it would have become so slow that you could go and concoct yourself a nice cup of tea each time you had the cheek to click on anything.

The time, so, when you ended up spending more time maintaining the OS (Operating System) than using the softwares and doing your business.

The time when the people at Microsoft would sell you a very expensive new version of Windows or of Office every other year and, not being a cash cow and a half-wit, you had to roam the web to find the new versions and their install keys (oops…).

But when, at last, you got bored of having to get around this swindle and extortion, you progressively replaced those commercial softwares with FOSS (Free and Open Source Software), what I did: OpenOffice (the ancestor of LibreOffice), image viewer, Gimp, etc.

And the day came when I asked myself THE question: do I still really need Windows and why on earth do I go on spending my time trying to keep this so-called OS from taking water, and participating in the persistence of this fraud by using these softwares?

Several times I then tried to install Linux. I've had in the first place to learn about hard drives and partitions and how to make place on the disk for the trials.

At the time, Mandrake Linux (the ancestor of Mandriva) was the easiest one (at least that's what they said, guys who could have sold used cars, for that matter…) but I could not manage to install it. When I finally succeeded, the system was not usable.

Indeed I had entered the dependencies hell, the curse of Linux in this era. You want to install a software but it depends upon a package that is not installed nor even present in the system. You wander all over the world wide web to find the package but, when you work your way through its installation, you find out that it, itself, depends upon another package, and so on, and so on: that is the dependencies hell.

And then came Ubuntu! Its creator, Mark Shuttleworth explicitly said that he wanted a Linux for the end-user, the man in the street, and for the everyday desktop use, and not for the people who worked in computers and for nerds.

So, in august 2005 (19 years ago now), I installed Ubuntu. There, one had not to make several trials, and there was (almost…) no dependencies hell: unbelievable!

Well, nearly… Actually Ubuntu offered you a framework inside which you could begin to learn!

And, first and foremost, learn what was this very strange beast, I mean: a terminal! Why the hell would sane people want to use a computer by typing strange, convoluted, and esoteric spells into a black box?

Spells that would strangely and stubbornly refuse to work if you happened to forget a comma or any one of the other of its cabalistic signs.

Who were these guys? Or, rather, what mental institution did they belong to? And, most importantly, how came that they could be granted exit permissions?

Fortunately, there was not only Ubuntu but also the Ubuntu forums! And these were the refuges for the newbies, the sanctuaries where you could be saved. The French one, particularly, was wonderful.

Of course some grumpies and curmudgeons would answer your questions by an angered "RTFM!" (Read The F… Manual!). But at the time, for a few of them, how many wonderful computer professionals and nerds who would, with praiseworthy patience and persistence, answer your naive and primitive questions of ignorant newbies.

If I could go on using Linux, it is, without doubt, thanks to them! And I am very grateful to them because, from then on, for nothing in the world would I have come back to Winshit.

I write "at the time" because today I feel rather irritated seeing that half the answers on the forums actually don't answer at all but are of the kind: You've got either a problem or a bug with this software, why don't you use instead this other one? You want to do this, why do you want to do this? What are your reasons for wanting to do this or for using this software? Are you sure that this is what you want to do?

What? Why man, I'm looking for some help and computer knowledge and I'm willing to make efforts and learn something, I didn't ask for philosophical lessons!

Reactionary assertion here: the forums aren't what they used to be in 2005…

After that, for years, Ubuntu became more and more usable and polished and, for this reason, became the most popular Linux by far, until, in 2011, they dropped the Gnome 2 desktop environment for Unity and they engaged into this bizarre idea of creating an OS that would work not only on desktop computers but also on tablets and smartphones. We know that this ended up in a big failure…

The result was that Ubuntu, created for the desktop, became less and less usable on it. The softwares, as what was the case with the new Gnome 3, had less and less features.

Many years before, another pioneer, Clément Lefèbvre, had anticipated this state of affairs, had, in advance, drawn the conclusions from it, and had created Linux Mint. And the fun of it is that it was created with the same goals in mind as were those of the creation of Ubuntu: the man in the street and the easiest desktop use.

And also with the wise idea that one should not try to reinvent the wheel and that the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer) interface is the wheel of desktop computers.

I was so bored and irritated by the nonsense and absurdities of Unity (or Gnome 3) that, in 2016, after 11 years, I dropped Ubuntu for Linux Mint in which I found back (even to a higher level) the common sense and practicality that made the success of Ubuntu.

To my taste (oratory precaution here so no feuds please) Cinnamon is, and by far, the best desktop environment I may dream of, neither too simplistic and non-ergonomic (Gnome) nor bloated with options (KDE), customizable just as is necessary so that your working environment suits you without you being lost in an ocean of options, and equipped with all the tools enabling you to do your everyday work with ease.

For 8 years now I had a wonderful Linux OS but in the last months I became more and more discontent with the last version, the 21.3, for having encountered with it several bugs and regressions, and regressions are really and by far the most infuriating thing: a feature, an option, something you used, disappears from the old to the new version of a software!

So I live tested LMDE, also Linux Mint but based on the more conservative, more tested, and more stable packages, those of Debian, the Rolls-Royce, and then installed it on a secondary partition. But, very rapidly the question came: why not the real Rolls-Royce?

In the Ubuntu years I had tried to install Debian but never succeeded in configuring a working system: almost everything was a pain in the ass, the wifi, the sound, the nVidia graphic card, etc. When you could find a solution in the forums, it would involve pages of terminal commands and configuration files modifications which were far beyond the pay grade even of a newbie who had tried to learn the basics of the terminal.

So I then undertake to test Debian 12 Cinnamon out of pure curiosity, quite reluctantly, and with almost no hope. To my surprise, in the live USB-key test I found no problem, and, after having installed the system on an other secondary partition, found that everything worked to perfection and that I could not find any bug (and none of those that drove me away from Mint-Ubuntu to the wonderful LMDE). I could install the graphic card driver with no more than 5 words: sudo apt install nvidia-driver.

For this we may be grateful to the Debian maintainers of the last years who wisely decided that Debian may now be for everyone, that it should work on the hardware people actually use, and that the wifi should work out of the box for anyone willing to use Debian and not only for post-doctorates in computer science… At last, Debian included the proprietary firmwares in the install images.

So here I am: in the months (years?) to come I'll see if I finally got the most reliable Linux system, Debian, combined with the most ergonomic and wonderful desktop environment, Cinnamon.

And here you have it: 19 years of the history of Linux seen through the eyes of a complete newbie (who still wouldn't make it out without the nice nerds who spend time helping on the forums…), how it is that strive and endeavour to use Linux people who never studied computer science in high school or university and never worked in computers (actually I'm an MD, a physician).

P.S. As you may have guessed it, English is not my mother tongue (I'm French) so I beg for your leniency for any mistake in vocabulary or syntax or any awkwardness of style.

[ftb]

Many thanks for the nice report.
My career was similar.
My main system is still Mint. But I run Debian in parallel. It has become a very good system.
I write in German and have Deepl translated.
https://www.deepl.com

[Curius]

Hello Ftb,

The translation to English is fine.

I am glad that you liked the story. Perhaps, when you have time, you may tell us how you ended up with Linux Mint and Debian and what is your desktop environment of choice and why.

For now thank you for the reply!

[juribel]

Almost the same to me except the Mint episode which never made any sense to me (being a derivate of Ubuntu which is derived from Debian). I started in about 2009 replacing Windows with a thing like "Netbook Remix" (Ubuntu? I forgot) on a weak 10" Medion Netbook (which worked very fine anyway!), later changed to Ubuntu, also replaced Windows with it on the "main" computer. Changed to Xubuntu when they replaced Gnome 2 and made the system unusable (for me). Changed to Debian Live with Xfce a year ago (because of Snap and such) and since then, I am a happy Debian 12 user except when that update occured for a few days with the broken NVidia driver. Never before I found it easier to install a Linux system before Debian 12 Live system. Of course, it does NOT prevent you from using your grey matter
For the case of emergency, I still own a 12" Netbook with 1 GB memory. Even on that machine Debian just works (oh well, what would you expect from 1 GB memory), while the the formerly pre-installed ancient Windows 7 needed >20 mins to start and was completely occupied with itself, continuously swapping in and out (I wonder how can anybody sell such a machine with Windows??). Opposed to that, Debian 12 Xfce still leaves Hundreds of Megabytes free and is fully operational.

[Curius]

Hello Juribel,

Yes it seems to have been Ubuntu Netbook Remix (or Ubuntu Netbook Edition):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Netbook_Edition

It's interesting to see that all the three of us have been disgusted by the inefficiency of Windows and have also been driven away from Ubuntu by Unity (for you) or later by Gnome 3 (for me; and I don't know for Ftb).

I am very aware and mindful of the importance of the Desktop Environment (DE) for, you may have the most achieved and technically perfect Operating System in the world, if the DE is not efficient you won't be able to work on your computer.

I think that what I liked in the first place in Ubuntu was Gnome 2.

For me Linux has been, and still is, Gnome 2 and Cinnamon, as much as or even more than the underlying Ubuntu (per se or it's Linux Mint customised set of packages) or Debian OS.

If there wouldn't have been Cinnamon (or as a second choice Mate which is a continuation of Gnome 2) I would, as you did, have opted for XFCE, but I am not satisfied with it because, to my taste, I find that it is a bit muddled and lacks the polish and the orderly arrangement and structure of a Cinnamon.

And so I feel that as important of the technical quality of the OS is the magic that Linux alone do offer us so many and so différent DEs that you, and Ftb, and me, and others, may find the perfect DE for each one of us.

[Uptorn]

Why the hell would sane people want to use a computer by typing strange, convoluted, and esoteric spells into a black box?

That actually makes it sound pretty cool.

My journey shares some similarities.

Windows --> Tried Ubuntu but couldn't stand Unity --> Linux Mint --> Debian with Cinnamon DE --> Debian with Gnome 3 DE

Gnome 3 gets a lot of hate, but if you're one of those questionably sane people who prefers typing strange, convoluted, and esoteric spells into a black box, then the DE doesn't matter very much.

[Trihexagonal]

And here you have it: 19 years of the history of Linux seen through the eyes of a complete newbie (who still wouldn't make it out without the nice nerds who spend time helping on the forums…), how it is that strive and endeavour to use Linux people who never studied computer science in high school or university and never worked in computers (actually I'm an MD, a physician).

I'm a Behaviorist trained in the use of Behavior Modification and Behavior Management to address inappropriate behaviors in a clinical environment and have never taken a computer class of any kind to this day.

I started using Linux in 2000 and settled on Debian early without too much distro hopping. I really wanted to use UNIX (Ma Bell turned me) and tried vanilla FreeBSD but the installer intimidated me.

In 2005 I found PC-BSD which came default with a KDE 3 desktop and that's all it took. I became a PC-BSD beta tester tore the hood off it to see what made it tick, taught myself to use ports and never looked at the FreeBSD Handbook once.

Because I was so dumb back then I didn't think it applied to PC-BSD, but determined enough to stick with it and achieve my goal of using UNIX with a Solaris desktop a few years ago.

And who RTFM anyway... :p

Solaris SysV

[angelique77]

greetings all, my name is angelique kowalski(she/her) 57 out of nw indiana usa , a newly minted debian user here. before i get started i will be using a mix of movie and tv metaphors , snark, weird humor be understanding here. with that out of the way lets get started and come to cases here, this all begin in 1981/1982 with my dad buying a ibm pc with basic on it and dos since then i been on the assorted computers during my lifetime using default microserf or microsoft products on them. my last tower asus i7 quad core i upgraded to winblows 10 from win 8 and a new graphics card which i could play cyberpunk 77 in 2020, im a pc gamer by advocation. my computer was aging out and there was a growing dissatisfaction in me about the microsofts account problems, the store, the news button.and also as a legacy system winblows 11 wont work on it i was kinda screwed . one of my side projects was making raspberry cyberdecks or diy laptops. i tried several operating systems like ferdora debian 7 i cant remember and ubuntu to be honest with you i was not impressed by them didnt have firmware support and was turned off of gnome by ubuntu CCCCCCCONINALLLLLLL. My last cyberdeck i landed on freebsd with the help with robonuggie a top tier uk user of that system help me by the way of his youtube videos got me to use freebsd though windowmaker started my journey to the linux side of computing. will back in march/ april of this year i heard that microserf will not supporting legacy machines. i was like thats a pickle so i started to look for a computer i could afford and upgrade at cost. landed on the trigkey s5 ryzen 7 5800h mini pc, a dvd burner and port hub and new mouse and keyboard and webcam. the plan was to use freebsd and go from there will things went wonky freebsd mel installed was not a viable option i look on distrowatch for plan b which was mx linux that was ok run great for a time then got buggy with the soundcard dropping out during a dota 2 session amoung other bugs which got me researching debian because of mx linux is a debian's child and heard of its rock solid stability and thourough testing of applications. since i choose kde as my main desktop of choice the install was not difficult the partitioning part was wonky i got though it. i freaking love debian its stable, dependable, all around general purpose system. even got skyrim working better than winblows could ever have. thats says some about the system you developed today i installed parmen star trek tri dimensional chess playing program without one peep . as using debian for over 2 weeks none of the issues i had with mx come up and been stable as a rock and wish many thank to the community for developing bookworm because i dont no time to mess with arch or gentoo on the command line rolling release bah overrated . debian is a solid ,robust ,stable, dependable system like tngs Promellian battle cruiser that was modernized could kick arch's newer bleeding edge heavy crusiers by it being dependable and solid thoroughly battletest over 31 years and got biggest repositorys so i perfer that thank you again

[sunrat]

@angelique77 Your post is very difficult to read. Here we prefer to use grammar with sentences, paragraphs, capital letters, and punctuation.

[angelique77]

i did my best i can sorry

[Onsemeliot]

I moved away from Windows in 2008 when Vista was on the horizon. I had already known about free software and told people about the great concept of free software but I hadn't really got the hang of it. After some research I clearly preferred Debian because it doesn't depend on any company and provides stability with completely free software over anything else.
At some point earlier in the past I got an early Ubuntu CD from a magazine but I only briefly looked at its surface before I finally needed to replace my broken old laptop. I thought I was clever by ordering a cheap Acer Extensa 5220 that came with Linplus Linux pre-installed. (I was very proud that I managed to avoid the "Windows tax".) I had never heard of Linplus but I figured this was a smart move to avoid ending up with hardware that wasn't supported by free software. Unfortunately, I could only boot it into a command line and I had no idea what to do with it. So I decided to actually install the then stable Debian Etch on it. Unfortunately, the device used a Broadcom wireless card that had no free driver. So I was stuck with using an ethernet connection on my laptop because I didn't want to install any non-free software.
Despite reading everywhere that Debian wasn't a good choice for newbies back then I never really wanted an other distribution. At some point I tried Suse, Ubuntu, and Trisquel, but I always came back to Debian. An other plus of Debian is that I needed to administrate a web server in my old job that was running Debian. I wasn't qualified, but I somehow managed to keep it running for years without any serious issues.
Nowadays I support my colleagues who use Ubuntu, but I myself still run Debian on my systems. I do have a soft spot for Trisquel but in the end it isn't so tempting to use a rather old freed derivative of a non-free derivative.
I always valued Debian for sticking to free software and for not including non-free software by default. And it is somewhat painful to me to now have non-free firmware in the installation media included by default, but I understand that this makes things much easier for a lot of people. It always bugged me that the FSF didn't accept Debian as a free software distribution. Now it is clearer than ever before, that this won't happen.
Despite me agreeing with Richard Stallman on the idea that free software is even better where it works worse than proprietary software for it providing freedom, I still prefer Debian over the distributions he and the FSF promote.

[Uptorn]

And it is somewhat painful to me to now have non-free firmware in the installation media included by default, but I understand that this makes things much easier for a lot of people. It always bugged me that the FSF didn't accept Debian as a free software distribution. Now it is clearer than ever before, that this won't happen.
Despite me agreeing with Richard Stallman on the idea that free software is even better where it works worse than proprietary software for it providing freedom, I still prefer Debian over the distributions he and the FSF promote.

This is a case of Debian conceding a loss in a longer battle, where the battle line gets drawn (moved backward into our territory) between sides. Hardware vendors have succeeded in normalizing nonfree firmware to the point of ubiquity.

My concern with this decision is the slippery slope. What else is Debian going to cede ground on? Is it just a matter of popular vote?

[Onsemeliot]

My concern with this decision is the slippery slope. What else is Debian going to cede ground on? Is it just a matter of popular vote?

I share your concern. And my argument against this step was that there are so many distributions going this route and only very few that don't include non-free stuff for convenience. But the popular vote indeed decided other wise. The only chance to avoid such development would be to not have a public vote on such matters. I guess that is the reason why smaller projects like Trisquel will always have a place. Debian seems to big to have enough users/developers who truly care about this level of freedom.

[TiberiusKG]

@Curius Nice write-up! After reading it, I feel compelled to share some of my thoughts on the matter.
As many people here, I also come to Linux after many years of Windows. However, I have opted to stick with XP privately, as well as professionally, where I have managed to resist against IT department pressure to upgrade, until I have chosen to enter retirement towards the end of the pandemic... And shortly after that, I have started experiencing problems with logging in to certain web sites, on grounds of outdated browser (in fact, I had already experienced these problems earlier, but to non-vital sites).

So I was under pressure to take action. Upgrading from XP after so many years of resistance was out of question; migrating to the competing paid OS even more so, so I have started to look for general opinions about Linux and BSD distributions, and I have ended up installing Ubuntu (strongly advertised as being beginner-friendly). However, I was spontaneously put off by the apparent resemblance to OSes that I wanted to avoid (I did not know at that time that it is possible to install other desktop environments), and my next move was to install Lubuntu, which I have happily used until recently, when they have started pushing their snaps. In fact, I was not even aware of their existence, until I have got "bitten": while on a limited Internet subscription, I have started a large download, and just before completion, Firefox had decided to update itself without asking. And after updating, it had restarted itself and... forgotten the ongoing download!

This experience, plus opinions of concerned people on the net have determined me to take action once again. Since this time I wanted to avoid running into similar problems in foreseeable future, I have had a closer look at the other popular Linux distributions, and especially who is behind them and what are their goals, while still keeping an eye on the volume of the offer, and I have ended up with Debian (Bookworm, and then Trixie shortly after, due to improved support for my rather new laptop). I have also "bookmarked" Arch Linux for trying out one day, but for the time being, I am fully satisfied with Debian.

Regarding the dependencies hell that you have mentioned, this is a problem that still exists Today, and I think the snap system has been created specifically to address it. Distribution repositories are quite dynamic, and sometimes, newer package versions break backwards compatibility; I am sure that developers have their good reasons to do so, but I suspect that this is exactly the "food" that the "dependencies hell" needs to stay alive! And when major packages (Python 3 and Qt6 come to mind) decide to do breaking upgrades, they force all depending packages to upgrade (which can be hard and time-consuming at times, to the extent that some familiar packages disappear, hopefully only temporarily, from the repository), and this goes on and on...

Regarding the Desktop Environment choice, plus the choice of Window Manager, where available, I have grown into LXQt over the Lubuntu years, that time with OpenBox, and now with kwin, but I also occasionally log into a KDE session, when I need some of the additional features that it provides. None of them is to my liking out of the box, but I can set them both up so I can work with them; it is just that with LXQt, I have less setup work. My beef with them is that they overtake too many keyboard shortcuts other than Meta + whatever, overriding shortcuts that I want to use in my applications. Sure, I can disable them, and this is part of the setup work that I have mentioned, but sometimes it is not so easy to find where they are defined.

Otherwise, I don't have much interaction with the DE during a computing session; the whole workspace is occupied by applications that I use, and I only occasionally interact with the taskbar, which I want to have along the bottom edge, and as thin as possible, in order to maximize the area available to applications. Aside from this, the chosen widget style also has a notable influence on my computing experience, not so much by how the widgets look, but by how they behave. I can think right now of two widget types that behave differently than expected (in an unpleasing way) under certain widget styles: combo boxes and scroll bars. And for this reason, I most often choose the Windows style, which, even if not aesthetically very pleasing, has all widgets behaving in the way I expect them to.

Anyway, there are applications, including ones that I frequently use, that partially or fully don't obey the user preferences. I can live with that, but the scroll bar as former Windows users know it seems to be strongly "usurped" by UI designers: the up/down arrows are often absent, and sometimes, the scroll bar is absent altogether. In Firefox, it is at least possible to get the scroll bar back, but in Okular/full page mode, it is impossible by design decision: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=432007. I could argue with the designer, but it is her software after all, and I can still keep looking for another PDF viewer.

Hardware vendors have succeeded in normalizing nonfree firmware to the point of ubiquity.

What would be the alternative? Probably to let the user install all the non-free firmware/software that he needs by himself. The end result would be the same: that firmware/software would land anyway on the user's machine, but the additional effort required on the user side would probably scare off some potential new users.

[Onsemeliot]

Maybe I shouldn't comment on this here. We could start a new discussion in case anyone wants to get deeper into this ...

What would be the alternative? Probably to let the user install all the non-free firmware/software that he needs by himself. The end result would be the same: that firmware/software would land anyway on the user's machine, but the additional effort required on the user side would probably scare off some potential new users.

Don't you think just publicly documenting what commands and functions the hardware understands and needs would be reasonable?

[TiberiusKG]

@Onsemeliot That would surely be desirable from the point of view of people who want to write free firmware or drivers for them, but their stakes are not the same as the stakes of hardware vendors, who need to sell their products, and would probably sell them less well when competitors offer identical products. In most cases, you WILL get complete documentation after signing a non-disclosure agreement, which is of course no option for free software writers, whose code would inherently disclose the gained information.

I know that there are hardware vendors that actually DO publish full documentation, and this may be the reason why you consider this act to be reasonable, but they may be in different strategical positions, and their stance may also vary from chip to chip. Therefore, I am inclined to consider reasonable to accept that, until a Free Hardware Foundation gets founded and starts providing free hardware, current hardware vendors may sometimes feel the need to protect the "kernel" of their knowledge.

[Fossy]

Since and thanks to the new path that the developers of Debian have taken, namely, the provision of the installation-friendly Calamares program and the introduction of the iso-hybrid possibilities with a range of DE possibilities;
https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/cu ... so-hybrid/

The beginner / newcomer has no use for sterile philosophical / political discussions / considerations ... food for nerds and / or mental masturbators on the respective forums.

As for ditto forums: if you want to find out which operating system is suitable for your hardware ... just install and test it out and afterwards call on the expertise of those who are voluntarily ready to solve any problems you may have ... but do not let them determine your choices.

Code: Select all

phil@phil-gl753vd:~$ cat /etc/debian_version
12.7
phil@phil-gl753vd:~$ uname -a
Linux phil-gl753vd 6.1.0-25-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.106-3 (2024-08-26) x86_64 GNU/Linux

 GNU nano 7.2                                                                                   /etc/apt/sources.list                                                                                             
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian/ bookworm-updates main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
deb https://security.debian.org/debian-security/ bookworm-security main contrib non-free non-free-firmware


phil@phil-gl753vd:~$ LANG=C sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
[sudo] password for phil: 
Hit:1 https://security.debian.org/debian-security bookworm-security InRelease
Hit:2 https://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm InRelease
Hit:3 https://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-updates InRelease
Hit:4 https://files.eid.belgium.be/debian bookworm InRelease
Reading package lists... Done                 
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
All packages are up to date.
phil@phil-gl753vd:~$ 

Evolving from Microsoft Windows to Debian GNU/Linux is (should be) a learning process .
Don't think twice ... install it , You won't regret it

[Onsemeliot]

Since and thanks to the new path that the developers of Debian have taken, namely, the provision of the installation-friendly Calamares program and the introduction of the iso-hybrid possibilities with a range of DE possibilities

I don't argue against convenience but if Debian didn't have such a firm stand on by default only including fully free software in 2008 I wouldn't have considered using it in the first place. And since almost all distros do include non-free software for convenience I do not see your point. Not every distro needs to cater to the same audience. You could just as well argue that Debian should have a rolling release as the stable branch because many people don't want to use stable but outdated software.

I know that there are hardware vendors that actually DO publish full documentation, and this may be the reason why you consider this act to be reasonable, but they may be in different strategical positions, and their stance may also vary from chip to chip. Therefore, I am inclined to consider reasonable to accept that, until a Free Hardware Foundation gets founded and starts providing free hardware, current hardware vendors may sometimes feel the need to protect the "kernel" of their knowledge.

This is a fair point. My next thought goes to regulators: Open documentation on hardware needs to be part of the right to repair movement and of citizens initiatives promoting democracy. But in my experience most such organisations do not even have IT on their radar. In my country they more often than not use Zoom instead of independent distributed solutions like Jitsi for organizing and see no issue with it.

[TiberiusKG]

The beginner / newcomer has no use ...

There seems to be a category for everyone here; beginners have "Beginners questions" as dedicated category, plus other support categories. This is the "Off-Topic" category, where people can come and show off with desktop screenshots, express themselves and so on, not necessarily to support beginners. And if you don't like one topic, you can just skip it, instead of coming and making insulting allusions at the participants.

@Onsemeliot Ahh, regulators... That is a whole different matter, better left for other sites altogether. Nevertheless, I wouldn't even use the plural, and I strongly suspect that THE regulator does not have democracy on his radar...