Iirc, the list is of operating systems that the FSF recommends. You could have a system running 100% free software, but the FSF won’t recommend it if the distro makes it easy to theoretically install proprietary code. It’s fine to run such a system, but the FSF won’t recommend it.

I respect how OpenBSD seems to work. Like “we do this for ourselves, but if you want to use our software, go ahead, we don’t mind (or care)”.

I have a swedish keyboard because I am swedish, we have three extra letters compared to the english alphabet. Which means that the standard swedish keyboard layout had to tuck away some symbols into very awkward places using AltGr to type. Programming and using Vim is a bad experience with a swedish keyboard imho.

Could it be that desktop usage in general has gone down? That people use their phones and tablets for browsing and similar tasks. Then Linux would have a bigger share, but maybe not because there are more users.

As a percentage of desktop users or percentage of any users (including people who use their phones mainly)?

I used to switch a lot, and created scripts that install distroboxes with all the stuff needed for various purposes like java programming etc. Now on a fresh install I can get back to having all third party libraries and IDE set up with extensions, git configured etc in a couple of minutes. Debian distroboxes for things where versions don’t matter, tumbleweed for latest versions when needed. I looked forward to distrohopping all the time. But now I’m just on debian as the “host” system, no need to switch.

What does this mean?

I agree on all points.

Banks sometimes need a 2FA app, this is what some people need “banking apps” for. The bank website itself is trivial to just use, but you need to be able to log in. In sweden, much of society, from fetching a post package to booking an appointment with a doctor or getting a bus ticket, relies on this 2FA app. You can barely function in society without this app.

A thorn in everyone’s side.

You wrote “It is a myth that arch is unstable”. Arch, being rolling release, is by definition changing. This is, imho, the opposite of stable. This is why it’s important to use precise words. I have no interest in continuing this discussion since you don’t seem to argue in good faith.

If you have a better word for the concept of unchanging functionality and interfaces, I’m open to using that in this context. In describing distros, I’ve only come across the word stable for this. Reliable is a wider concept to me, and also includes being relatively free of bugs. A stable distro can still be buggy, if it’s the same bugs tomorrow as yesterday.

Well, for the sake of clarity, lets separate stability and reliability? Stability means unchanging. Reliable means it won’t crash or behave in unexpected ways.

Do you think you would have that opinion if you ran arch on mission critical production servers for a couple of years?

Back in the day, ubuntu used to be the most user friendly distro. Linux for humans. It has a faster release cycle by not following stable debian releases. It had hardware support that you had to jump through hoops in debian to get. A great community. It made sense to base mint on ubuntu.

If I may ask, where are you from? The city I live in is a nightmare for cars, the roads were made for horses and walking, narrow and winding cobblestone streets and the city tries its best to keep cars out of the center.

Ubuntu is Debian based yes. Not all ubuntu-based comes with snap (for example Mint). Sometimes I think “why are there so many different distros? We only need like five of them”, but then, sometimes I think it’s a strength, each distro exploring a new direction to see what works.

Polishing dotfiles for the color schemes and vimrc. Version controlling those dotfiles. Using neovim to edit the dotfiles configuring neovim. Scripting the tiling wm to open neovim in a way that fits editing the neovim config. Configuring ansible to be able to deploy the neovim dotfiles quickly from codeberg after reinstalling arch because it’s the weekend and the kernel had some bloat parts so the whole system felt wrong.

You can always use sid. Or debian stable but you do everything that needs bleeding edge in a distrobox.

Yes, true. But then you need to carry an extra device. I know it’s just inconvenience.