100% agree. I also would like this to be read by everyone whoever installed a distribution on a second computer/laptop or in a virtual machine.
If you are buying a new phone, new laptop, new computer or install a new operating system, you can’t just play around for an hour with it and be “done” with it. If you really want results that can tell you anything, then you have to tests it for weeks and perhaps months!
But, even then, this wouldn’t be enough to give a generally valid opinion regarding this distribution! Even if you used this operating system for years, you still most likely wouldn’t be able to give an opinion about it, that would account for most users. You have your machine and everyone else may have different hardware. This alone is already one of the biggest reasons, why testing a distribution, especially if only done for a relatively short time, does not say anything about how it would behave on someone else’s computer, from someone else’s perspective.
This is a known problem known across the IT world and that is the exact reason why many games struggle to run on some computers, while they run perfectly fine on others. The same thing happens with Windows OS. You always hear how shitty the updates are, bla bla bla.
Did you ever notice, that most people having those update problems are having update issues with Windows for their first time ever? Pretty much on every update wave, whenever I read the actual comments and posts from affected users, most mention explicitly, that they never experienced update problems with Windows before this specific one. Yet to most readers, especially Linux proponents, it seems like every update is breaking everyone’s computer, though this is most of the time not true.
After all, such things are all a matter of perspective. You may like Ubuntu or Mint and be ready to use it forever. Others perhaps need to use Windows for work reasons.
What I find most important – not only regarding this topic, but generally in your life – is to always stay open minded. Always be ready to learn and change your view about a topic. This is one of the most important things in your entire life.
My most recent example: have been using Debian in so many ways for over a decade. It was my favourite GNU Linux distribution. However, as already foreshadowed here:
I was interested to see what NixOS had to actually deliver, as I was very intrigued by its premises and promises.
Recently, I finally found the time and motivation to try it out and I must say…
From my point of view, it’s the best consumer Linux operating system that you can currently find on earth. Straight up, undeniably. It has only 1 downside: it has a learning curve and if you are not used to Linux or if you are too used to Debian/Ubuntu or one of the other generics (like me), then you will have a hard time getting used to it!
Besides that though, this distribution is amazing and became now my new favourite. Debian is great, but holy shit, NixOS rocks the Linux world!!
What is most important about my discovery is the following:
I have used Debian for such a long time. But I was willing to drop it from the throne it inhabitated, because I remained open minded, open for ideas, open for newer and better operating system solutions. Therefore, here came NixOS and I took it. Now this one lives on the throne. Perhaps it will be a different OS in another decade, who knows. All I have to do, is remain open minded and not try to clinge to stuff that is old, elitistic and just utter crap, from a modern day perspective.
(cough Looking at you, hardcore C fans… cough)