this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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This article is strange... The author uses "being able to open Microsoft Office documents" as a common example of what an OS that claims to be easy to use should be able to do. Then says...
No default installation of Microsoft Windows EVER opened Microsoft Office documents. If this was a simple oversight in the write-up it'd be fine, but the point is hammered over and over again.
I don't have an opinion about Ubuntu including or not including more software in the default installation (my guess is it became too big to fit on a DVD?) but this article failed to make it's point to me by making a comparison to Windows that isn't true.
Also...
Is this supposed to be a cocky joke? I can't tell. What metric of "most popular" is the author using?
I reckon a nifty idea instead of preinstalling software is to have a file extension finder that suggests software based on the file extension. Sure, there are some file types that have multiple uses, but many proprietary solutions use distinct extensions, making it quite straightforward to organize the recommendations.
You don't even need to look at the extension to identify most file formats, as there are unique magic numbers stored at the beginning of most (binary) formats. Only when a single binary format is reused to appear as two different formats to the user, e.g. zip and cbz are extensions relevant. This is how the
filecommand and most (?) Linux file explorers identify files, and why file extensions are traditionally largely irrelevant on Linux/Unix.This means your idea of suggesting software based on the file type is even more practicable than you described.
I'd love having that tbh. Doesn't even need to be fancy, could just as well suggest packages in the terminal. It would be massively helpful.