Quote-replying is probably a good idea

(For once regex find and replace in my editor worked!)

> I like the part in Photoshop, Where you could say for what you wish to use it and it would rearrange the menus or add and remove certain options which are needed for that Use case, this and some other cases influenced my question,

That's nice UX design, I agree. It certainly increases the Q&A workload though.

> Do you think it is a waste of resources having so many tools which do so many things the same way + a few unique options,

Most definitely, but we're stuck with no alternatives at this point.

> I like the ShareX tool (screen recording) which asks me to install the extra feature if i wish to use Screen recording, (goes back to the previous comenter who mentioned it is basically packages)

This is a wise approach. The problem is that it requires additional testing load than if everything were installed by default.

> I hope i am making myself clear in the questions and comments :D

You're fine.

> not a native eng speaker

But easily understandable :)

> and also didnt really prepare the question well

You've held together very well.

> it just came to me in a rush as it was stuck in my head for a long time, sorry about that,

It's fine. Really.

> Sometimes i look at old software and some new one (sublime text) where devs worked hard for our resources where as today, (luckily i have 16 GB) there seems to be a lack for performance or the will to design efficient systems (due to abundance of resources in PCs?)

I do this every day running Chrome on a 12-year old single-core 32-bit laptop with 2GB RAM :D everything's constantly swapping like crazy. Sometimes a single tab will take 10 seconds to open. New URLs routinely take half a minute or more for the webpage to display. It's fun, and a lesson in... something, I'm not sure what, but I'm definitely learning it inside and out.

I think it's all about the vague threshold that management can't get away with shipping a product because it's so horrible that users will simply outright reject it. Software bloats out to the point where it sits just above that unusability threshold, then it hovers there. I think this is the rule that governs everything.

Enterprise systems are at the worst end of this; they're frequently so horribly slow they're unbearable. This is because they are used by a captive audience that cannot switch away even if they want to.

Pretty much everything else "settles" after a while so it sits just above this threshold.

What with the progression of tech, this means that if you install Word 97 in a Win95/98 VM (or maybe it'll even work natively :D), you'll notice that it only uses 8MB RAM, and then when you minimize the window it suddenly collapses down to 4MB! Or, for another example, the cross-platform old KDX filesharing client uses all of 8MB RAM on Linux. Never seen another app like it. I think the reason this is depressing is because when we run out of RAM we get sad, and then we think of how amazing things could be... but in real life it doesn't work that way, when we build applications we take advantage of the resources that are available.

> What did you mean isolating users into groups? I wouldnt want that :D, but i mentioned it as a layer on top of Core things, example

> All users want video and web tech - but then some are more specific - these specifics would be the packages they get bundled on top of core features, and the Collective groups of devs work on those

OK, I meant this bit in your post:

> Imagine Having a Single distro which once you install the Core on your Computer asks you Which group you belong?

> -Musician -Scientist -Education -Artist - Developer etc.

These are very vague titles, and their meaning is not very unambiguously defined. I could interpret them in many different ways. This is where the leaky abstractions start.

Using your groupings:

- If I'm a game developer, I might be a musician, artist and developer.

- If I'm a teacher, I might pick education and scientist.

You said "which group [do] you belong [to]?", with group being singular not plural. This is where I was getting isolation from.

Okay, sure, so you make it so people can be in multiple groups. But then you loose the optimal efficiency you're chasing; if I'm a game developer I might want specific art tools installed, and installing _all_ the art tools might be a waste. So, okay, say you break the categories down, and add "game developer"... but then the 500 different kinds of game developers will all have something to say, and this is where things get really messy. :)

To rephrase my earlier comment, providing the complexity and not isolating it has worked out to be the best practical solution.

In order for grouping to be successful, it would need to be better, and provide more flexibility than simply throwing everything in everyone's face. So the grouping mechanism needs to hold up to the kinds of edge cases I've described.

> Linux drivers and installing certain software is sometimes a real pain and can vary from distro to distro , if the linux is to succeed shouldnt we collectively fight to avoid this barrier

Consider that 100 and probably 1000 people before you have tried to figure this out. As I said, I gave the same considerations 16 years :) so surely others have thought long about this as well.

Ultimately the solution there is to simply learn the various systems.

> Forgive me folks its my first time doing this i think i jump here and there ;D perhaps even confusing you sometimes...

Nope, it's fine, I can follow along.

I have a slightly tangential thought to add at this point.

The reason I personally went down the specific paths I did with trying to understand the way things were and the rationale behind everything, was as a coping/reaction mechanism for my ADHD. I had a hard time trying to grapple with the seemingly infinite complexity I was being presented with (with Linux, open source, software development, etc), and I tried various techniques to try and make sense of everything in spite of not being able to grasp the bigger picture.

Naturally, this noble endeavor was itself also compromised due to the ADHD. I couldn't even workaround my ADHD effectively, because of my ADHD. Sigh. Turtles all the way down.

I've found that alternative therapies can be unbelievably effective for mental health, so I've made some good strides with comprehension in recent years.

You mention jumping around a bit, that you decided to talk about this in a rush, etc. I used to be like that :) (let me see if I'm right: you posted this in a rush before you overthought about it or got bored?) so I'll mention something I realized that was specifically helpful from an ADHD standpoint.

First of all, when I started poking Linux I wanted to find "the one true Linux, the most authentic experience". It took me years to understand why I even wanted this in the first place and why it seemed so necessary.

It had to do with how I learned: I couldn't just throw a bunch of information in my head and have it arrange itself; the attention span necessary for that to function wasn't available. I needed to handhold the organizational process a bit more, and to do that I needed to explicitly find and tag foundational aspects of what I was learning about so I could keep those in mind as I stumbled on new information and figured out what to associate it with.

Problem was, I couldn't figure out what to classify as foundational. Where was "the root"?

Here's an answer that took me 10 years to realize: Linux is a relativist system, not an absolute system. Or, in more contemporary parlance (as noted by another comment in this thread), it's bottom-up, not top-down. So everything is relative. There are no roots.

The best way to properly understand "Linux" is to simply just dive in somewhere but focus on absorbing as much history as you can; each historical bit of info will help you make more sense of things.

> I will update the email Thanks

Cool!

FWIW, I must say upfront that I'm TERRIBLE at frequent back and forth communication. I tend to use email as a once-every-6-months ping mechanism. If I say hi any more frequently than that, miracles are happening :)

So, don't be surprised if I take ages to reply. I burn out easily (still working on fixing this).