What is a good x86 Linux OS similar to the Pyra to get familiar with?


Agreed, to a point. Linux was not originally intended to be used by everyone for everything. That is something that happened over time with many things added on. If someone is too lazy (or ignorant) to learn how to interact with the OS the problem lies with them, not those that created the thing. If they are unwilling to fix that deficiency there are other options they should should use instead. They will still need to learn how to use the other OS.
This is the point of disagreement, where the "elitist" comes from. It is not always laziness or ignorance that prevents someone from being able to interact with it, sometimes you have legitimately created a design that only works for a subset of people. When you say "if you don't understand then you must learn full stop", ignoring the very real possibility that maybe your way isn't the best way, you are necessarily segregating yourself, defining yourself as better than others, ie the practical definition of "elite".

Your manual vs automatic transmission analogy is very apt here, because there was a time when people needed to learn to drive manual. Sometimes users struggled with shifting gears, either because they got momentarily distracted or because they physically could not shift the gear and hold the wheel at the same time (or push two pedals at the same time perhaps), it was a recognized problem, and one day someone invented the automatic transmission, thus making cars more accessible to those that struggled before AND to those that didn't. They did not say "you're using the manual transmission wrong, you need to learn how to shift gears", they worked on the problem until it was solved. And you know what happened? Several drivers began lamenting the loss of manual transmission, that you weren't *really* driving unless you were driving stick, that despite this automatic transmission invention everyone should still learn to drive manual because you needed to understand what your car was doing even if it was doing it for you automatically. That's elitist, and wrong, and still going on today actually.

This mostly ties all back to what Sulu originally said, that a "beginner friendly system" is flawed, the idea that there necessarily needs to be a certain level of difficulty to keep out "undesirables", that if the "beginner" doesn't want to become "advanced" then there's a problem with them. I disagree, fundamentally. I'm mostly arguing with you because you seem to fall on a similar side as Sulu, that there's certain "undesirable" people *unwilling* to learn that should be kept out, and you always make for an excellent debate partner.

Are there people that are bad drivers? Obviously. Just on my daily commute I've got people cruising in the passing lane, people changing lanes without signaling, weaving in and out of traffic and cutting people off. I swear there's, like, 5 people in this entire city that knows how to merge (I kid you not, someone actually flipped me off because there was traffic and I slowed down to initiate a zipper merge instead of flying to the end of the onramp and just forcing my way in, the latter of which has been proven over and over to be pisspoor traffic management, but I digress)

Would some of these people become better drivers if they were educated? Absolutely. Some of them are just assholes and know that what they're doing is wrong, but it saves them a few seconds so they don't care if it puts people's lives at risk. Others, like the zipper merge, could be solved if people just went on the internet and googled "what's the best way to merge". But who the hell does that? I actually got fed up one day, figuring there must be a better way, so I looked it up, but not everyone is going to do that, most people aren't going to think to do that. I recognize that I'm in a very niche set of people that learns in a specific way while others learn in different ways: merging works "well enough" that most drivers simply don't feel the need to expend the energy looking up a better way. This is not a fundamental problem; I have absolutely zero doubt that there are things I'm doing every day that are suboptimal but since they work well enough I don't bother looking up a better way, and I will bet hard money that sometime today you will do something that could have been done better but you didn't even think to find out, you simply did it the same way you always have or the way it seems obvious that you should. The "merge interface" (ie, the onramp) doesn't encourage a zipper merge, it actually discourages it, and this can be "blamed" on engineers that came up with the onramp design in the first place: there are better ways of doing it, ways that encourage a zipper merge, but at the time when most onramps were built they didn't know that, they designed it with the information they knew at the time. Even today, very few onramps are being built to encourage zipper merging because it's just not really efficient to do so. You know how some cities have fixed it though, cleanly and efficiently? By putting electronic signs along the road which tell drivers what to do: slow down here, wait to merge, merge here one car at a time. And it works. But the instant you start putting these "helper" signs into an OS you're "dumbing it down" and welcoming in the undesirables who are unwilling to learn. Guess what, the undesirables are already here. If the interface can be made a little better so that I don't have to deal with them not knowing what they're doing then I am 100% OK with that.
And there's going to come a day when the roads are populated with automatic cars, and you know what's going to happen? Elitist drivers are going to lament the days when you actually had to learn how to drive. You know what? Fuck those guys, making cars automatic saved lives, it made faster travel accessible to others that it otherwise wouldn't have been, and the fully autonomous car is going to do the same. If I want to literally drive to work and need to be relegated to the "human driver" lane while autonomous cars zip by I'm not going to be upset that the autonomous car came, I'm not going to complain that "no one knows how to drive anymore", I'm going to recognize that I'm in a minority, that autonomous cars have made the world a better place, and that I need to enjoy my hobby away from others if that's what I want to do.

Highly skilled linux users are a minority of people on the planet, the "excellent driver" of the computer world. Computers, however, are accessible to pretty much everyone: they're cheap and easy to get, people WILL use them, there's no stopping it. If we cling to the notion that you *must* learn certain things to use the OS we're going to miss out on the proverbial automatic transmission, the electric turn signal, power steering, windshield wipers, and all the other things that auto manufacturers invented over the years to make driving more accessible. Seat belts, man! Huge amounts of money went into advertising for them because people literally had to be taught. These things save lives, so many lives, it's stupidly obvious today that wearing your seat belt is important, but 30 years ago no one even thought of it, they didn't have to, they just didn't use them. But the proverbial linux elitist would suggest people just need to learn to drive, then we wouldn't have need of seatbelts.

I want Linux to be the inventor. I want it to create the seat belt, the automatic transmission, the proverbial widgets that helps everyone even if it takes away a small amount of control from a standard install, and then watch as Microsoft and Apple "invent" the exact same thing a few years later. This has happened several times, but looking around several linux communities there's been a lot of pushback, there's a lot of "this is good enough now, this new stuff is just change for the sake of change" and that's the elitist attitude that I don't like, that I legitimately feel is holding us back. Wayland vs Xorg, systemd vs sysvinit. Evolution is an inevitability and I'd rather be on the side of advancement theoretically guiding it than on the backside trying to hold it back. But this is where the computer vs car analogy breaks down, where there's even less to complain about when using a computer than there is to driving a car: if you buy an automatic transmission car, it's prohibitively expensive to replace it with a manual transmission, whereas ripping out systemd and replacing it with init again (and all the requirements on top of that) is a one day job I can do half drunk; if someone wants to drive their car themself in a world of autonomous vehicles they are forced to conform to certain restrictions because you are necessarily interacting with others on the road, whereas my computer at home I can use it in whatever way I want and not interfere with anyone else on the "road" (caveat being unless I am actually going out of my way to interfere with other users via virus writing or whatever, but that's a completely different discussion)

It seems I am not alone in long posts
This particular topic is very hot for me right now. I'm required to use a Mac at work (I'm petitioning for Linux desktops, they'll probably happen in May) and I just upgraded the OS to Sierra and the number of things that changed and the number of people telling me I need to learn the new way of doing it because that's the way that it is should be criminal. Nothing major, nothing that I couldn't get used to or work around, but things that I really shouldn't have to if the interface had been designed just a little better, marginally better; a little slider so that some currently static value is now dynamic or something. A week prior I probably wouldn't have thought of any of this, but this week I realize how much bullshit it is that some people think there's only one way to use a computer and everyone needs to learn to use them in that way. I, an advanced Linux user, am quite literally a victim of this kind of elitism, and it has made my daily work-life a little worse because of it. I'd feel mighty hypocritical if I didn't fight against it in my own "home" as it were.
 
Having spent several years offering help to German Ubuntu newbies on the net, I can actually say that even those tech-unsavvy people are a lot more open minded towards the terminal than most would realize. Many are hesitant, but only very few are actually reluctant - within all those years the amount of people I encountered that really didn't want to work with it at all can be counted with a single hand and I have seen only a single person that was really going all "fuck that shit"-like when being told to do something in a terminal. For me it's just a myth spread by Windows power users that think a command line is obsolete crap.
 
Not having a PC related job has a huge upside for me:
I don't have to use Windows or Mac ever - I just occasionally (every second or third month?) dust off my XP partition for particular games that have problems in WINE I'm too stupid/lazy/distracted to solve.
 
For example, to book a flight online you need to know how to: 1. use the booking site's UI just enough to book the flight, 2. use your browser just enough to get to the desired site, 3. get your OS to start the browser, 4. start your computer
These are also the steps needed to assist someone in performing a microsoft support scam on oneself, or bank phishing exploit (though those are normally started by email, since there are multiple banks, while most people* have a Windows computer somewhere). In fact, if they're any good they'll help you through those steps, so really you don't need to learn them all that well. That's why I think you need to know a little more than your four steps before using an internet connected computer.

* Most people in general, certainly not most people here!
 
Welcome to the thin clients. In the 70ties, when the VAX server was down, none of the 40 terminals worked (so nobody could gopher or mud). People then went outside, mingled in the cafetaria, and got good at pingpong. In the 10ties, if the Citrix interface is down, I can not tunnel to my desktop... sure, I can work locally on a file, see my local email (but not get new email), etc... but I can work from everywhere.
Yeah, they are still actions and in use. I was thinking more of consumer personal devices, especially of the portable variety (laptops, tablets, etc.). Just imagine people trying to find their way around if there is a widespread power outage. Sorta joking about that.

Having spent several years offering help to German Ubuntu newbies on the net, I can actually say that even those tech-unsavvy people are a lot more open minded towards the terminal than most would realize. Many are hesitant, but only very few are actually reluctant - within all those years the amount of people I encountered that really didn't want to work with it at all can be counted with a single hand and I have seen only a single person that was really going all "fuck that shit"-like when being told to do something in a terminal. For me it's just a myth spread by Windows power users that think a command line is obsolete crap.
When they feel they have someone there to help them out I have also found that to be true. There is also the possibility that these users chose Ubuntu on their own, and may have entered decided to learn those basics I keep talking about. Being comfortable with the command line may not be all that helpful if someone knows only one distro and they end up working with another that does some things differently. This is why I highly recommend people that will or want to work with *nix try a bit of everything.


@WizardStan, I will have to reply to you later, when I have more time.
 
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There is also the possibility that these users chose Ubuntu on their own, and may have entered to learn those basics I keep talking about.
We're talking about Ubuntu here, it attracts the newbiest of the newbies. It does not get chosen because it is what they want, it gets chosen for being the most popular and known to be user friendly distribution. You ask about "Linux", the most likely answer will be "Ubuntu".
 
yet again you you class the majority of users as MORONS because they do not need to or want to learn the nitty gritty of the OS they use. your fundamental mistake is thinking they need to learn to use the OS. They do not and don't want to USE the OS. There are millions of users of iPads and Android tablets who dont even realise that the device they use HAS an OS... they just turn it on open the browser or facebook or photoshop or a note taking app or whatever they want to use. The whole point of computers was to make things easier. If the OS gets in the way of using the computing device productively then there is something wrong with the OS. No matter what it is Linux,iOS,Android or Windows...
Then we need an OS that is exclusively for people like that. Computers are TOO complex to make that simple! They HAVE to be complicated, or make massive assumptions about what the user wants. I have an easy time with Gentoo Linux, but Windows drives me insane because it HIDES settings I NEED to change, because the morons would screw it up if those settings were exposed. THAT is why I am saying they're stupid.
 
@WizardStan, I will have to reply to you later, when I have more time.
Take your time. No need to address every point, most of it is rambling the same point in different ways hoping that something will stick, just pick the point where it falls apart and explain what's wrong with my thinking.
 
We're talking about Ubuntu here, it attracts the newbiest of the newbies. It does not get chosen because it is what they want, it gets chosen for being the most popular and known to be user friendly distribution. You ask about "Linux", the most likely answer will be "Ubuntu".
Good point I guess. Is it still popular? I thought Mint replaced it for the newbies.

Take your time. No need to address every point, most of it is rambling the same point in different ways hoping that something will stick, just pick the point where it falls apart and explain what's wrong with my thinking.
I like that rambling. I do it too. :D

I don't think your thinking is wrong, we probably just look at things currently and (maybe?) disagree.

I had already started replying in my head, but I wanted to get caught up in all the threads before I have to leave (at some time that has not yet been divulged to me) to pick someone up and take care of some things. The reason I like the automatic vs manual transmission example is because people don't buy manual and expect to have it be as easy to operate as an automatic. Kinda like how Neal Stephenson described various OSs in "In the Beginning Was the Command Line", the way the user thinks and approaches it should be different. (Stephenson now seems to prefer OS X, which I can respect.) If you want something that works like Windows, use Windows. I am not trying to dismiss Websites users, but if that is what you want, use it. Regardless of your reasons (like the ones @Klumpen listed, and which are totally valid reasons) you can't go at it like it is Windows (or has an automatic transmission) just because it looks similar. You can't always have everything you want when it comes to those things (I have personal experience with wanting to do what I feel is right and more socially responsible coming back to bite me in the ass because I decided to stand my ground even if things were mite difficult or impossible...I would actually love to discuss this so you all can laugh at/with me, but it would need to be a private discussion since it deals with some personal details I offerr not to make public).

The good thing for those that want an alternative to Windows is that there are DE to help make the transition easier. But that is exactly how I view that: It is familiar enough that you can mostly keep doing your day to day stiff the same way. This is particularly helpful in a corporation or school. When you need to handle everything yourself (no admins), or you are doing more than web browsing and creating a text document, you will need to learn the differences.

The reason I don't see it as elitist is that no one is forcing these people to use Linux. Things are MUCH easier than they used to be (to the point that installing some of the more popular distros requires nearly nothing from the user for a default install). I guess I just see it as complaining about things one is subjecting themself to. If your arm hurts when you lift it, don't lift it (maybe Beverly Crusher was/will be elitist). If you are going to use an OS, learn to use it or don't use it. If you want to drive a manual transmission car, learn to drive it or don't drive it. There are automatics, bicycles, public transportation (where available), cabs and others that can drive you, or you can walk. There are also other OSs. There are automatic transmission cars, and you aren't being forced into driving a stick. (It might be a good idea to learn, though, if you are going to buy an expensive specialty car that currently only has manual transmission options.)

Here, download and read this (it is quite dated, but fun, even if you disagree with his view, and I think it was this that got me interested in BeOS and eventually Haiku):
http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

I am going to try to reply more fully, with quotes and all, but may need to send this before I am done. I anticipate getting a text message anytime now saying "you were supposed to be here 20 minutes ago" even though I asked to be informed ahead of time when they need me...

This mostly ties all back to what Sulu originally said, that a "beginner friendly system" is flawed, the idea that there necessarily needs to be a certain level of difficulty to keep out "undesirables", that if the "beginner" doesn't want to become "advanced" then there's a problem with them. I disagree, fundamentally. I'm mostly arguing with you because you seem to fall on a similar side as Sulu, that there's certain "undesirable" people *unwilling* to learn that should be kept out, and you always make for an excellent debate partner.
I agree with sulu on some things. I don't think things that are already designed a certain way should be changed to make them easier when they work fine (that is one of my gripes about systemd, along with...needing to learn new stuff \o/). Rather than trying to keep people out I want everyone that is using computers to actually increase their knowledge. This makes things easier for everyone involved, and with things as they are now, you really need to keep learning to keep up with the changes. I don't feel it is asking too much, as I started out back in the DOS days, and I didn't have anyone helping me out. Most of the teachers seemed to look at the Apple IIs we had as magic machines that let us play educational games, and we rarely got to do that. (I really want to discuss this sort of stuff, too. Later and elsewhere.) I picked things up by watching those that knee more than me, reading, and trying things on my own. Later, in another state, we had to use an A2 for something I have long since forgotten, and no instructions were given, but I either had enough knowledge or was able to figure it out (and messed with my friend's stuff, because no security). By then, at that school, the library had a couple Windows boxes for research (CD-ROM encyclopedias in caddies) and possibly printing. I think I am going off on a tangent, but what I wanted to get at is that I saw with my own eyes computers that were not "user friendly" being used in educational institutions for general computer use after the turn of the century. They worked for what they were there for, and the users at the place I saw those at were already behind your average person of the time when it came to technology (and, for many, willingness to learn).

Does this mean that those that aren't willing to learn what they need to shouldn't be able to use their computer with whatever OS? Nah, let well do what they want. I would rather they make it easier for themselves and not become victims that I hear about on an almost daily basis (ransomware, phishing, etc., sometimes just straight up scams targeting ebay users).


I should be back in an hour or so. I will finish replying then. Sorry for typos (or auto-"corrections") and other errors.
 
i really think you should skip the whole "learn about your OS" bit and dive right into "build your own OS, kernel and all." it's much simpler that way, and you can learn all about how your system works. you probably just want to be able to port gcc to it, but that's my only major advice.
 
Ok, I'm cutting myself short lest more walls attack.
I'm standing by my original thesis: ignoring users complaining about something being difficult (or even worse, intentionally making it just a little more difficult in order to keep a certain type of person from using it), telling them they *must* learn more about the system in order to use it, that is elitist and toxic. To drag out the car analogy one more time, yes, if people would just learn to drive better or get off the road it'd make the roads significantly safer, but then we wouldn't currently be staring at a future of automated vehicles: everyone drives safe, they drive smart, they drive fast enough, so automating the process wouldn't really save anything, it's just "change for the sake of change". Like I said, I'm seeing a lot of similar rhetoric in various linux circles, that things are changing to be easier and that that is necessarily wrong. It's linux, if you don't like the easy thing then rip it out and put in what you prefer.

Even this:
I want everyone that is using computers to actually increase their knowledge
sounds like a noble goal, but then you're still telling people that they're using the tool wrong if they aren't using it the way you define: that's defacto elitism. Why should anyone *need* to learn more than what they actually need to do? If all they want is to surf the web then what more do you expect them to learn about their magic thinking box? So all they were doing was browsing for cat pictures and something went wrong and now they have a virus, and if they had just learned what to watch out for they could have avoided it, but you know what? I pay someone to change my oil, I have no idea how to do it. I could easily learn and then take care of it myself but why should I? People already exist with those skills, I can pay them to do it, just as I have skills that anyone could learn but instead they pay me to do. They get a virus, pay someone to clean the virus, install a virus scanner to make sure it doesn't happen again, and they're back to browsing again.
 
It's tricky though. If something goes wrong with your car, you know about it. Conversely, your PC could be acting as part of a botnet or a keylogger getting all your banking logins without you even spotting it until it was too late and you'd lost thousands of pounds.

I'm not sure the drive for autopilot in cars is because of potential improvement in safety. Some people find driving tiring, so having the ability for a lapse in concentation not to end up with your car upside down in a ditch is probably what people are looking for.

But your right, those of us who do know how things work must be careful not to talk down to people who don't. I'm not sure what the knack is to that apart from not being a dick about it. I think MS's autoupdates are probably a good thing for those users, as much as it annoyed power users when it was first announced.
 
I got used to Debian. Maybe software is not new, but works and if I want something other I can build as build instructions are usually for Debian, Ubuntu or similar systems.

ignoring users complaining about something being difficult (or even worse, intentionally making it just a little more difficult in order to keep a certain type of person from using it), telling them they *must* learn more about the system in order to use it, that is elitist and toxic.
This is a common problem with most Open Source software. It can be seen by intentionally rolling back automatic features in some management programs, removing GUI parts of many applications or even making technology dependent on specific server solutions. This is I think too close to "hire-an-expert" strategy, common in proprietary solutions, and making open solution dependent on some not-so-open servers puts openness in doubt.
 
with debian 7 i had to use a separate repo for that, and it was last year
I just booted an old virtual machine that runs a minimal Wheezy system. It only has the main repo in it's sources.list. It is in fact so minimal that it has no X installed.
After installing alsa and mplayer I could play mp3 files with no problems.

I see no reason why that should be any different with a full desktop including alsa and some audio player pre-installed, especially because I know I've played mp3 files on Wheezy systems that I ran on bare metal.
 
I see no reason why that should be any different with a full desktop including alsa and some audio player pre-installed, especially because I know I've played mp3 files on Wheezy systems that I ran on bare metal.
Generally, I don't remember this MP3 thing when installing Jessie. I remember thatto get playing MP3s in Lenny (I still have Lenny in some embedded system computers as later Debian lost compatibility with its graphics chip) I had to install something from non-free. Isn't it related with availability libav or ffmpeg?
 
I'm not sure about the details, but I just dug up an old Lenny/LXDE VM that plays mp3s with mplayer fine. This one also only uses the main repo.
As I said before, the problem with mp3 is not licenses but patents, and Debian doesn't care about them. OpenSuse on the other hand does (did?), therefore afair 10.2 and 10.3 couldn't play mp3 out of the box.
 
FWIW, I last experienced this with Debian 6 (squeeze) and I guess it's to do with the gst-plugins-foo packages, where foo is 'good', 'bad' or 'ugly'. Now I check my good package in Arch it does contain libmpg123.so, which I think it what my mplayer instance is using, but the purpose of the 'ugly' package amongst others is to contain patent encrusted codecs according to the gst team, so it's possible that back in 2011 it contained libmpg123, while nowadays it's clear that nobody's going to enforce those patents on Linux at least. I may well have chosen not to install the ugly package back in 2011, though I doubt Debian put that package in a different repo, so fixing mp3 playback should just have been an 'apt-get install gst-plugins-ugly'.
 
This elitest attitude that people HAVE to learn the nitty gritty of linux command line is the reason that linux is not more mainstream.
The reality of modern day OS's is that people do NOT want to learn and with iOS and Android and to an extent Windows is heading that way too. what people want, what they buy is a device they turn on. see a button for an "app"store where they can browse through many pictures of games,music programs, ebook readers,music making apps like pianos,drume,guitars etc. Then all they have to do is press the "install"button and iin a few minutes the app is installed ready to go. Apple and iOS actively discourage you from getting to the nitty gritty, With android you can get a little further. Even windows is going this way with Win10.
We are part of an older generation that does want to know how it works, there are still newer people who want this too, BUT the majority of users just want stuff to work, and they dont want to spend hours learning how. this is how apple conned millions into thinking they are good!!

Honestly Linux has pretty much evolved to the point where you don't need to know CLI or anything super in depth. Look at the Pandora, you don't need to know really any CLI to use it, sure most of us go deeper than general usage and do use the command line, but it isn't necessary with the graphical package manager. I have only used it a few times for aircrack, dvb-t and various themes. Same with most standard Linux, with things like Synaptic for easy install/uninstall and not requiring apt-get knowledge.
 
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