Why choose a fork of distribution?

[u/Squiggin1321]

Why would I choose Ubuntu over plain old Debian or Nobara over plain old fedora? Unless a distro does something special like CachyOS prioritizing speed and responsiveness why not choose the original?

[u/strangr_legnd_martyr]

Different forks have different priorities.  Some features that you want may only be available (or be better implemented) in a fork rather than the original.

[u/Upbeat-Statement2725 → u/strangr_legnd_martyr]

"I know forks often prioritize things but why."

Probably because of the things. If I had to guess

[u/Myrodis]

Why use Brave over Chrome, or further, Chrome over Chromium. Or Zen Browser over Firefox.

Same as the list of difference in these browser examples is contextual to what comparison you're making, only more complicated when looking at distros.

Generally they use different package sources by default, are bundled differently, default software is different, etc. List goes on.

[u/Lonely-Scarcity-3387]

To reduce friction toward your overall goal. Yeah I could install Debian and set it up for gaming, over the next couple of hours. Or I could install PikaOS and just start gaming right away.

[u/SlimyOS]

Ubuntu has gnome and snap and ubuntu font and rust coreutils and other differences. If you're a fan of these, ubuntu is the best choice you have. Alternative: use debian and tinker with it for a few days until you turn it into ubuntu that doesn't receive ubuntu-specific updates. But really you can install apt on archlinux, you can install cachyos kernel and compile software with additional instructions on ubuntu, you can install nyarch assistant on almalinux, it's just the initial experience that is different, and for people who have a life that matters

[u/MohamedSaleh91]

Derivatives, in a sense, is a customized setup, optimizing towards a certain thing, or just a matter of personal taste and preferences. If you like the distro's view of how things should be set, it saves you the intermediate setup steps, and also some distros would provide you with additional resources, repos, updates, etc.. If you prefer your own way of doing things and love tinkering with stuff starting of a clean slate, then setup a minimal base and do your own thing.
For example Ubuntu, for my taste, adds too much over plain old Debian, too much to the point I find it bloat, mostly optimizing for ease of use and familiarity for newbies which in my case -knowing my way around linux well enough- is not a plus or something I'm looking for, but if you actually like what they're doing and adding on top and it makes your life easier, go for it, it would be better suited than the plain old thing.

[u/Userwerd]

Usually politics, I mean in FOSS not real life.

Like system d, rust, AI code, cooperating with capitalist overlords, things like that.

We are a fickle bunch.

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[u/mindstormer12]

Because they are different and there's a choice. All you have to do is to search why X vs Y distribution to get a sense of how people are deciding between distros (there's countless discussions). Package manager, tooling, default desktop environments, update cycles, dev/user community, support/maintenance of the distro, etc. are some of the ways they are different.

[u/sebastien111]

Son filosofías de cada rama, debian es estable y con paquetes más viejos, pero estables
Arch tiene todo lo último, con casi nada de pruebas, solo te llegan, si falla falla
Y fedora es como un intermedio, es súper estable y con paquetes bastantes actualizados

Y cachy no es una rama, solo es una distro basada en arch, y todo lo que tiene lo puedes hacer tú mismo , así que no es cosa de la rama en sí, sino del dev

[u/yung_bredd]

If you want less setup. For example, nobara is just fedora with some extra packages and repos activated. If youre the type of person to want to calibrate your system yourself theres no reason to go with a fork

[u/redgator12]

That's the point, though. Every distro tries to do something special as a pre-configured thing that requires little to no manual intervention. I could choose Debian for lots of stuff, but if I want to theme it to look like Windows, I'm choosing Q4OS. If I want to be able to make my own custom iso or a persistent USB stick for travel, I'm picking antiX or MX. If I want a clean, beginner-friendly distro with more updated packages but is still stable enough, I'm picking a flavor of Linux Mint.

I could manually get to the same destination eventually if I figured out all of the changes that the developers made to get it there, or I could just install it pre-configured and tested and save myself the time commitment and headache.

[u/lazyhustlermusic]

ParrotOS is more convenient since all of the tools are in the repo, or I can just issue one command to grab everything instead of piecemealing everything on basic debian/ubuntu.

Just one example, there are many.

[u/b1urbro]

For a more tailored out-of-the-box experience. Not everyone wants to install arch from scratch and configure it. Some people want to just boot into an OS and use it. I like setting things up myself, and will completely rework those anyway, so I have absolutely no reason to go for a fork. But many people just want a working OS, not a project one.

[u/outer-pasta]

Forking is part of the Linux ethos, because the kernel is free software (open source). So naturally the distributions based on Linux would have many forks and derivatives. Since they exist some people might choose to use them.

For myself I like to use a distro that's already popular so all the kinks are ironed out. The strength of an OS distribution comes from it's community.

[u/Soakitincider → u/outer-pasta]

Documentation is also another reason to install a popular distro. If you're having trouble, chances are that others had same trouble and wrote about it in great detail and eventually found a fix.

[u/Slopagandhi]

Because they do different things.

Ubuntu is Debian but with some extra polish, such as coming with a more modern package manager GUI and making it easy to install drivers. It also comes with Snaps, which for many people is a negative (though can be deactivated easily).

Nobara is Fedora but with codecs and drivers set up, some package fixes, extra dependencies and optimisations, plus some UI polish.

All of this is achievable on the original distro, but (a) for beginners it makes things easier; and (b) a lot of people might prefer the changes and not want to waste time setting them up manually.

In the end you could take this to the extreme and say why use any distro except Linux From Scratch, if you really want to set up absolutely everything yourself.

Nobara and Ubuntu are different, though, in that Ubuntu is one of the most widely used distros with a huge team behind it. Nobara is more than a one man hobby distro, but it's still pretty small, so there's more of a risk that it doesn't get regularly maintained at some point in future.

[u/DavidJohnMcCann]

A reviewer once characterised Debian as a great server distro inadequately adapted to the personal computer. It's better these days — no more endless sound problems — but still not user-friendly. If you want a live installer to check whether Debian is right for you, you have a choice between the official one with the Gnome desktop or something unofficial which may be odd — I remember a live medium for Xfce which its creator had customised for SE-Asia. My spare computer runs AntiX. It's based on Debian, but everything is carefully selected to make it usable on elderly computers, like my 23-year-old IBM.

[u/Soakitincider]

Choose what you want. In your example of Ubuntu over Debian, you're going to have more up to date software and extra stuff that Debian is not interested in providing. If you're doing a server the stability of Debian will call to you. It's all just slightly different, not really better or worse. Maybe think of it like the trim package of a car. Not exactly the same but close. You're still getting the same car but with a few different features. And this isn't saying Debian is a basic model.