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I have something that is bothering me and I have no idea how to present the question. Please understand, we will all pass away some day and our legacy will be left behind for others to either carry on or simply forget,
I have 3 children whom have never used a Windows computer in our home. They get by just fine with GNU/Linux.
Now, my question is tough for me to ask because I have reflect on my own eventual demise hopefully in many years.
I am concerned with what version of GNU/Linux to get my kids interested in. My position, in reflecting on my own dismissal from life is I want to introduce them to a distribution that will be around for there lifetime. Sure, I understand we don't have a crystal ball here. But I was one whom bought into Libranet and I at that point realized nothing will last forever, or could it?
I feel pretty safe raising them on Debian. I mean Debian does not depend on one person to continue on. Slackware is a favorite of mine, but would the torch be carried on? Arch is probably a safe bet as well.
My reasoning for this thinking is my kids might grow to simply be users, unlike me the computer tinkerer I am. If I can raise them to not be dependent on Windows, I feel I would be doing them a favor and saving them some headaches in the process.
I hate to even post this question and believe it or not this has bothered me for awhile. I even wonder if someone will carry on the torch of this very forum? An excellent place I hope lasts forever for the betterment of mankind.
Distribution: Debian Wheezy, Jessie, Sid/Experimental, playing with LFS.
Posts: 2,900
Rep:
I think distros like Debian will continue because of the huge volunteer base it has. Fedora is similar but also has the backing of Red Hat which is an added advantage. Even if Canonical doesn't end up fulfilling its owners desire I can't see Ubuntu disappearing either.
I'd be trying to get them using a distro that has ease of use (I personally think Debian is easy) and is stable.
I think distros like Debian will continue because of the huge volunteer base it has. Fedora is similar but also has the backing of Red Hat which is an added advantage. Even if Canonical doesn't end up fulfilling its owners desire I can't see Ubuntu disappearing either.
I'd be trying to get them using a distro that has ease of use (I personally think Debian is easy) and is stable.
That's pretty much how I see it.
Debian I believe is gonna get it here. I mean they can roll with the updates by simply changing a file, easy. If that file is tought to them it will be second nature for them.
I feel pretty safe raising them on Debian. I mean Debian does not depend on one person to continue on. Slackware is a favorite of mine, but would the torch be carried on? Arch is probably a safe bet as well.
Debian has a pretty good chance of lasting a long time.
Slackware would go on without Patrick Volkerding IMO. There are a lot of dedicated Slackware users with high technical skills. It might turn into a 'community' distro, it might take different directions than it would if Patrick Volkerding was still around, and it could even fork into several different distros, but I cant see it going away.
One other distro family that I think has a very long term future is Red Hat/Fedora.
Quote:
Originally Posted by corbintechboy
My reasoning for this thinking is my kids might grow to simply be users, unlike me the computer tinkerer I am. If I can raise them to not be dependent on Windows, I feel I would be doing them a favor and saving them some headaches in the process.
I'm a fellow tinkerer...but mostly hardware, not software. Thats why I use debian, it lets me do what I want to do with a reasonable amount of not-that-hard-to-do tinkering. Even with my basic software skills, I find that moving from Debian to things like Fedora is airly easy..the commands might change but the basic idea is the same.
If your kids have basic software skills and a 'normal linux users' knowledge of how linux/BSDs work (and computers in general), they are better equiped to deal with the computers and OSes of the future than your average windows user. IMO anyway.
I also suggest Debian. Even if Debian disappeared for whatever reason, I think its package management system (dpkg, apt-get, aptitude) would probably continue being used by other distros, and this would ease a contingent switch to another distro.
It's great that your kids are starting with linux. Even though the working and business world is using Microsoft products, I'm pretty sure your kids can handle windows with ease if they ever need to. After all, if you use linux you can handle any other OS
Nothing lasts for ever, but Unix has been around for 44 years to Windows's 28! Since Linux is the most common form of Unix, it's not going to vanish any time soon!
If you look at institutional use, the big players are SUSE and Red Hat. Surveys of web servers show a tie between CentOS and Debian. One can probably conclude that SUSE, Red Hat, and Debian are going to stay the course.
Slackware will probably continue, but it will never make it out of "hackers' corner" without tools for automated installation on multiple systems, a commercial support service, and a repository that includes things like LibreOfficerather than rubbish like Calligra.
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