Template talk:Linux Distributions/Archive 1

Archive 1

WTF?

Why are linux distros mixed with unix-like OSes?

Can linux distros have their own template, and another one for unix-like OSes, which would link just to Linux? --tyomitch 08:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Why would the UNIX template link to Linux?Fsiler 10:31, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I have no objection to "mostly POSIX OSes" being lumped together in a category of reasonable name (eg UNIX or POSIX systems). However, calling such a category "Linux and other UNIXes" or similar is quite wrong. Additionally, using a penguin as a logo for such a template can only be called a travesty. This needs to be better thought out. I am removing the template from the FreeBSD and OpenBSD pages until this is resolved. Fsiler 10:31, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

What about "Linux distributions, BSDs and other Unix-like operating systems"? This is rather stylish, let's fix it and have it back. I don't care about the penguin but if you do, make a little daemon and and put it on too. NicM 14:03, 11 November 2005 (UTC).

IMO it's just as pointless as having a "Linux distributions, Windows, MacOSes and other operating systems" template. Why must we squeeze each and every unix-like thingy in a single template? --tyomitch 14:13, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

We don't, but a IMO loads of templates with very few entries is a bit pointless too. The BSDs and Linuxes do match together quite well since they are both free and open source. I would definitely suggest removing Solaris though. NicM 14:29, 11 November 2005 (UTC).

I beg to differ. These categories are technical in distinction, not political. If you want to have a category of "Free as in XYZ OSes", then it's fine to lump the BSDs and Linux together to the extent that they are free (note that the licensing is substantially different). Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, and all the other UNIX-type OSes belong in a "mostly POSIX-ish" category, and Linux distros can have their own category. People tend to have this idea that there's Windows, and then there's this Linux thing, which includes Solaris, OS X, and anything else that's not Windows. Lumping BSDs in with Linux perpetuates this idea rather than dispelling it, and for that reason I am strongly opposed to having a "linux distro" template with anything other than Linux stuff listed. Fsiler 01:11, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Just found out: that's exactly how it's done on Polish Wikipedia — see how disgusting it is. --tyomitch 15:12, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that is quite excessive and ugly. I don't think anyone would suggest going that far though. Just the BSDs and Linux distros would give enough entries to look good without going over the top and trying to cover every OS in one template. NicM 15:29, 11 November 2005 (UTC).

Would be nice if they were sorted alphabetically too. NicM 14:07, 11 November 2005 (UTC).

Or might be smart to remove Solaris and just make it "Linux distributions and BSDs". NicM 14:12, 11 November 2005 (UTC).

You can't fit them all into a single template without making articles stupidly bloated. You can't make it small without excluding a lot. This isn't going to happen. ¦ Reisio 16:51, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Template:Unix-like

I've removed all the non-linux unixes from the template, and the template from all the non-linux pages. If someone goes ahead and creates a Template:Unix-like, that's fine. It noone does, I'll do that myself a little later. --tyomitch 15:14, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, so I did create the template, and put a bunch of links in it, and inserted it into some articles. Provided there's no dispute over validity of the new template, I can add it to the remaining articles. --tyomitch 23:05, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I think this is fine. NicM 08:32, 15 November 2005 (UTC).

Reorder

Organization would be nice, and make it easir to weed out other variants:

Debian variants

Ubuntu (Gnome)/Kubuntu (KDE)

• MEPIS
• Knoppix
  • Damn Small
• Morphix
• Xandros

Mandriva
Fedora (from Red Hat)
SuSE (from Slackware)
Gentoo
LFS

Other distros

Arch
CentOS
Puppy
Red Flag
PCLinuxOS
Fox

The idea is to merge general distro families with distrowatch rankings:

1. Ubuntu 2647> Deb
2. Mandriva 1695<
3. SUSE 1556< Slackware
4. Fedora 1147= RH
5. MEPIS 988< Deb
6. KNOPPIX 880> Deb
7. Debian 861> Deb
8. Damn Small 716< Deb Knop
9. Slackware 609=
10. Gentoo 603<
11. FreeBSD 489= BSD
12. Kubuntu 477= Deb
13. PCLinuxOS 433<
14. PC-BSD 384>
15. Xandros 369 Deb
16. Vector 363>
17. SLAX 358=
18. CentOS 347=
19. KANOTIX 329<
20. Puppy

Preferring to keep it in the top 15, Xandros barely makes the cut. Puppy, CentOS, etc. are well beneath the top 15, and Fox, Arch, RedFlag arent even there. LFS should be there as a general "family." -St|eve 20:15, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I think it will be hard to group/show relationships without making the template cluttered with text or punctuation. I'd be happy to lose any that don't have a substantial Wikipedia article, or perhaps are <15 or 20 on distrowatch (leaving out the BSDs), or if anyone can come up with other criteria. NicM 21:07, 23 November 2005 (UTC).

There seems to be no opposition by now, so is it OK for me to go ahead and delete Arch, CentOS, Fox, Morphix, Puppy, Red Flag, and Red Hat from the template? --tyomitch 11:45, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I'd use top 20 and keep Puppy and CentOS, but it is fine by me if you prefer to do top 15. Is it best to remove {{linux-distro}} from the removed distro's pages? NicM 14:28, 25 November 2005 (UTC).

No, let the template remain there. It's even reasonable to add it to more obscure distros' articles, if there are any. Cf. Intel 8087, Intel 80287, Intel 80387, and Intel 80487, which all contain Template:Intel processors, even though that template doesn't link to any of the x87's. --tyomitch 09:56, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I think the template header should say "Most used Linux distributions" or something like that, if we use a distrowatch rankings to choose which distros to include and which not to. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.44.150.171 (talk • contribs) December 2 2005

I don't like this, even now as "Most popular". It's now ugly and the previous version was perfectly accurate (it was a list of Linux distributions, even if not complete). I'll leave it for now until others express their opinion. NicM 16:19, 2 December 2005 (UTC).

It's in fact most notable Linux distributions; note how Red Hat was kept though it's rather low at distrowatch. It doesn't claim to be an exhaustive list, either. Cf. other nav templates; none of them says most notable explicitely. --tyomitch 16:33, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Added "more.."

I try... I've added "more..." at the end of the list, linking to List_of_Linux_distributions. This makes clear it is a list of some distros but that a more complete list is available too. I wait for comments and opinions. Regards. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.44.150.171 (talk • contribs) 3 December 2005

IMO that's perfectly fine. --tyomitch 21:03, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that the dash must be spaced away from "edit". It just doesn't look right to me; and dashes don't always have to be spaced. --tyomitch 13:12, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

In a real sentence, you do not have to space dashes, but this is really a diagram rather than text so I think no spaces makes it look a bit ugly and squashed, particularly because the ellipsis have a large amount of white space above them, the words have different font sizes and the |s are spaced, so it looks oddly unbalanced not to space one separator. A better solution, if it is possible, may be to move the edit link out of the list and into the top right of the heading opposite the Tux image, similar to how edit appears in section headings.

Or, if it is to stay where it is, how about:

| more… ()

or using an em dash:

| more…—()

With the edit full size but without the brackets, a black dash runs into the e too much IMO, although I like this better than with a small edit:

| more…—

NicM 14:04, 3 December 2005 (UTC).

Actually, it should really be an em rather than en dash in any case and an unspaced em dash with a small edit looks less squashed, so maybe it is an acceptable option:

| more…—

NicM 14:12, 3 December 2005 (UTC).

I think this would be pretty good:

	Linux distributions

NicM 14:23, 3 December 2005 (UTC).

The lilac background broken in two parts doesn't appeal to me. OTOH, how about my current version? --tyomitch 14:42, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

(PS. I tried to put "edit" on the continuous lilac background, and spent half an hour to no avail; help from a css guru would really be appreciated.)

White background is okay by me until a guru appears (I can't figure it out either ;-), but I think it's better with the edit text vertically centred. NicM 15:23, 3 December 2005 (UTC).

Is the hard <br/> tag necessary? This requires a certain screen width/font size, or will produce ugly breaks. &ndasb Ylai 21:03, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

redisign

I've redisigned the template to use folddown divs and to have the edit link like the unix-like template. Now see Linux for folddown divs in action. Let me know what you think. Just another star in the night ^{T | @ | C} 13:02, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Very nice. I increased the font size to 100% since I didn't see any reason to make it harder to read ;-). NicM.

Popularity

• Be popular. I propose top 10, since that should already cover over 90% of the market. I don't think it's realistic to set a different number since the basic criteria (market share of each distro and costs of adding a distro to the list) are hard to evaluate and a flamewar would be unavoidable. There are 12 distros currently. IMHO, Damn Small and Xandros could be removed, but I'm not fighting distrowatch about that. I removed PCLinuxOS, which is currently 10th at distrowatch. Please remember that distrowatch largely emphasizes new/"user-friendly"/hype/LiveCD distros. For example, PCLinuxOS is obviously not a top 10 Linux distro. So use your experience. --Chealer 05:22, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

After more discussion, there is some agreement between NicM and me that for this criterion, the method and limit used could be to include only the distros with >=2 M Google Linux hits (see the section about this below). This is not really applied to the template yet. If you agree on something between 2 and 3 million, please mention the exact number and feel free to apply it to the template.--Chealer 17:10, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I just applied the results of this discussion with 2 M Google hits as a lower limit.--Chealer 05:46, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, 2M Google Linux hits is fine by me, so long as nobody disagrees within the next few days. If anyone disagrees in future they should hopefully bring it up here for discussion rather than unilaterally modifying the template. NicM 17:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC).

On another note, reorganising the talk page in mid-discussion make the diff cluttered and hard to follow. I know you may prefer not to read discussions using the diffs, but please bear in mind that others (like me :-) may want to and moving blocks of text around during an active discussion makes it hard to pick out what new text to reply to. It is also sometimes easy to make mistakes and accidently cut or edit people's text (not that I am saying you have done this). NicM 17:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC).

I do follow discussion using the diffs, and admit I could have commited the edits better. I also clearly did it at the wrong moment, sorry. I'll try to think about "archiving" this very last part of the discussion in a few days if there's no more activity to get clean criteria. --Chealer 05:31, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Rereading this discussion I relase I may have come off as a little short-tempered, but I always seem to keep being interrupted right when I am doing this stuff. In any case, I apologise if that is so. I think it is a good idea to have a consistent measure for this template and am happy you brought it up in the first place and that you suggested Google, which had not occurred to me before. Let's just leave it a couple of days to see if anyone else floats in, and then implement it. Sound good? NicM 18:15, 9 May 2006 (UTC).

Yes. No need to apologize, temper is not reliable and this discussion had good results, although it could obviously have been less painful. --Chealer 05:31, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

PCLinuxOS

NicM also believes that PCLinuxOS should be in the list, although 2 people (1 being me) disagreed with that. He seems to need a third confirmation to accept the removal. Please confirm the removal of PCLinuxOS, and give your opinion on the ideal limit.--Chealer 00:25, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

You are incorrect. I do not think PCLinuxOS should be included, I think you should not come along and remove it without discussion and based solely on the fact you think it should not be there. NicM 00:53, 9 May 2006 (UTC).

Great, I just removed PCLinuxOS. If anybody wants it back in, please explain why it should be. BTW, if thinking that it shouldn't be here wasn't an appropriate basis for removal, what were the appropriate basis? Thinking that it should be here? Heh.--Chealer 17:10, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I already said I am happy to see it removed when there is a consensus, not simply when we want to. 6 hours wait is not enough time. Leave it a 2-3 days at minimum and then if the discussion goes no further, apply the 2M criteria to entire list. NicM 17:27, 9 May 2006 (UTC).

Done.--Chealer 05:31, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I did not say I wanted a top 15, I do not want a "top" anything. I think forcing it to a fixed number of distros is a poor idea. A line should be drawn based on some quantifiable and verifiable measure (a concept you seem to have some difficultly with), after which the template may be adjusted. NicM 00:51, 9 May 2006 (UTC).

I'm sorry if I wrote you said you wanted a top 15. You mentioned that an appropriate limit for you would leave about 15, which is what I should have written. You have to understand, though, that using a limit of the kind "X M hits" is only possible if we trust a single source of information. Otherwise, we'd have to create a complex method of rating distros combining several sources giving "Wikipedia editors combined Linux distro market share points" and establish a limit on this kind of points. It's needless to mention that just seeing the huge debate that already happened between two editors, making all editors agree on such a method would be either impossible or require way too much effort for this template. I have no problem with the concept of quantifiable (see below my comment on verifiable) measures. I do have a problem with your problem with people's experience, though. It took someone's experience to code Google and make it a reliable source, and it took someone's experience to mention Google hits as an interesting quantifiable source, and to establish that relying solely on them could be acceptable for this template.--Chealer 17:10, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

It took someone's experience to do many things, that is not the point. The point is that what we should use should be verifiable and repeatable. Having this discussion once is fine, but it would be nice to avoid having it many times. NicM 17:27, 9 May 2006 (UTC).

Again, see below my comment on verifiable measures (referring to Google). Indeed, it would be nice to avoid repeating this, so I'm glad we agree on a measure which is at least repeatable.--Chealer 05:31, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I think a cut off point above 1 million Google Linux hits leaves the template too small. Perhaps we need to consider some more complex combination that includes several search engines, or Distrowatch, to leave us with a compromise list of around 12? NicM 00:51, 9 May 2006 (UTC).

Hum. This rather contradicts what you're saying later: "Combining the two is probably more effort than this template deserves". I'm quoting you about distrowatch and search engines, but I don't expect that combining several search engines would be any easier than combining Google and distrowatch. I'd rather settle for Google. 12 distros is not a problem for me (and is actually the number of distros I left before you started rollbacking me).--Chealer 17:10, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

It does not contradict anything I have said. It is a suggestion. I think we should use solely Google, I personally feel combining several sources is too much effort, but others may disagree. NicM 17:27, 9 May 2006 (UTC).

Well, if it was a suggestion, then OK, but I'd rather not follow it. Actually, there are two things I don't understand in your message two levels above. First, 1 M Google Linux hits seems to leave > 12 anyway, but you realized that later. The second is why suggesting to combine sources rather than lowering the barrier even more if 1M would have been too strict. But anyway, since we realized that 2 M is fine, it seems safe to skip clarifying this. --Chealer 05:31, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Or even not become complex. A line at 2 million Google Linux hits would leave us with 12 entries. NicM 00:53, 9 May 2006 (UTC).

Right...I did mention that although I preferred 3M, 2M was acceptable for me. I'm glad to see we can now agree on 2M.--Chealer 17:10, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

2M is fine by me too. Let's leave it for a week to see if anyone else disagrees and then adjust the template. NicM 17:27, 9 May 2006 (UTC).

Done.--Chealer 05:31, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, 11 at first, probably, but a few more may come or go. NicM 00:55, 9 May 2006 (UTC).