First, let me say that this forum and community is awesome. I've been lurking for a while, and have gained a lot of value from both the forum and personal blogs of people I found here. Thank you for building something great.

I'm ajz, 21 years old, from Hungary. I've been using *nix since I was around 13. Started out with Ubuntu (bad choice for a first distro in retrospect), spent some years on various hackintosh machines, now on OpenBSD and Void for the past 2 years. I work as a sysadmin / programmer. I love reading anything and everything non-fiction, and (hard) science-fiction.

Welcome to nixers.

(22-05-2018, 04:08 AM)ajz Wrote: Started out with Ubuntu (bad choice for a first distro in retrospect)

Why would you think it's such a bad choice, what would you recommend instead?

resk: I shall reword that as it was a bad choice for me. My goal at the time was to learn about unix and to get my feet wet with coding. This is certainly possible with Ubuntu, but I feel like I would have benefited more from a distro that requires some more reading and holds your hand less. e.g. I was installing everything from the Software Manager (or idk how it's called) -- I got introduced to the command line interface of the package manager much later by a friend. Whenever something broke, I was searching the forums and copy-pasting anything I found, hoping something would work -- I say it was a bad choice because it took me longer to snap out from this mentality than it would have with something less desktop and ease-of-use oriented. I wish a friend showed me how to install a minimal Debian (or even Ubuntu) for example and set up my own desktop environment. On the other hand, Gentoo or Arch would have scared me away for sure as a first distro. So my problem wasn't really Ubuntu, rather that it had a full DE and everything handed to you, so for the first 1-2 years I really didn't learn much about unix (which is my fault), just switched my Windows 7 desktop to something with different colors and buttons. I needed to peek behind the curtain to realize there is so much more to it. Ironically, this came with Crunchbang linux, which was also based on Ubuntu, the only difference was it didn't have a full DE, just openbox. This pushed me to discover the system, as I didn't understand / knew how to do anything -- before, I thought I can't even change the status bar color (and I wasn't thinking about it, really), let alone replace it with a different program. :)

For what would I recommend... that's a good quesiton. If the person in question has the same goals as I did, then a minimal Debian install, something like tldp.org and a friend with a lot of patience :)

Welcome to the forums ajz!

(22-05-2018, 04:08 AM)ajz Wrote: First, let me say that this forum and community is awesome. I've been lurking for a while, and have gained a lot of value from both the forum and personal blogs of people I found here. Thank you for building something great.

Nice to hear you're finding something of value.

As for the discussion, I think the point about having a mentor or someone to point you in a direction is much more important than the choice of distribution. As you said:

(22-05-2018, 04:47 AM)ajz Wrote: I got introduced to the command line interface of the package manager much later by a friend.

(22-05-2018, 04:47 AM)ajz Wrote: something like tldp.org and a friend with a lot of patience :)

Welcome to the forums!

(22-05-2018, 04:47 AM)ajz Wrote: This pushed me to discover the system, as I didn't understand / knew how to do anything

This is exactly how I push myself to learn something. I try to change things in my workflow, even if it works fine, just so I *have* to understand a new concept/system/tool.

Welcome to the forums ajz :)

Welcome to nixers. I, too have a strong feeling that "easy" distributions will cause more problems later because you won't learn how to solve your problems in them. There are reasons why the Ubuntu help forum is so large.

(22-05-2018, 06:00 PM)jkl Wrote: There are reasons why the Ubuntu help forum is so large.

It might be the case, or it might be because it's a starting point for a lot of persons and beginners are more prone to ask those kinds of questions. Also, it's nice to have a help desk with answers to any imaginable questions, even though it might not be too good as it incites not learning but searching for a quick solution. Again, the burden is on the individuals and not really on the system they use, if someone wants to learn there's nothing stopping them.

Welcome ajz!

(22-05-2018, 06:00 PM)jkl Wrote: There are reasons why the Ubuntu help forum is so large.

One reason surely being that it's a popular distro with many users.