They are using the wrong kind of Linux! My kind of Linux is superior, because it’s broken in a different way and more difficult than yours.

Homebrew is supported on Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora.

I use it on my recent Linux Mint install. Mint has pretty old packages or enormously bloated flatpacks, that come with limitations.

neovim only came in an ancient version, that doesn’t support lazyvim. Nicotine+ came as ancient from the Mint packages or as a 4 GB monster via flatpack.

I used Homebrew and everything installed quickly in current versions and worked like a breeze.

The great thing about Homebrew is that removing it is as easy as rm -r /home/linuxbrew

Nix is great as well of course and very powerful. Can be a bit of a bitch to write all the config files though.

As a user the license doesn’t matter for you. Even if you contribute back to a project, you will be able to use your changes in the project.

The license only matters if you want to redistribute a changed version yourself or use parts of it in your own software.

Best of both worlds:

• install boring stable distro
• use Homebrew to install bleeding edge stuff, separately from the base system.

You have the ability to break anything. Your distro, maintainers, developers also like to break things from time to time.

Don’t blame yourself for others breaking things.

Distros might package some stuff for you, yes.

Most window managers come with no GUI apps. They don’t even have a launcher (start menu), status bar, notification area, wifi menu, task bar, dock, etc.

For most window managers you pick and choose a shell, launcher, etc, to combine it with. Then you configure all those separate tools and the window manager to your liking

There are preconfigured packages, distros, and scripts that make sensible choices for this already. Even they usually don’t bring a lot of applications with them.

Omarchy brings a lot of applications in their default install. Check out this uninstall script to get an idea. KDEnlive is a KDE application, gnome-calculator, nautilus, gnome-diskutil, gnome-keyring are GNOME. Chromium is GTK too, I actually don’t know if LibreOffice is. So not many I would dare say. Others ship less.

Dank Linux, a full features shell for Niri, Wayland, mangowc describes it pretty well.

Batteries Included

The age of assembling your desktop from dozens of separate tools and spending hours trying to make it feel cohesive is over. While traditional Wayland setups require you to hunt down, configure, and maintain a sprawling collection of utilities, Dank Linux delivers everything in one cohesive package with minimal dependencies.

The Traditional Way: Package Hunting Simulator

A typical Hyprland, niri, Sway, MangoWC, dwl, labwc, Miracle WM, or generic Wayland setup forces you to learn about and configure a dozen or more separate tools, such as:

• Status Bar: waybar, eww, or custom scripts
• Notifications: mako, swaync, or dunst
• App Launcher: rofi, wofi, fuzzel, or tofi
• Screen Locking: swaylock, hyprlock, or gtklock
• Idle Management: swayidle, hypridle
• System Tools: htop, btop, nm-applet, blueman, pavucontrol
• Audio Control: pavucontrol, pamixer scripts
• Brightness Control: brightnessctl with custom bindings
• Clipboard Manager: clipman, cliphist, or wl-clipboard scripts
• Wallpaper Management: swaybg, swww, hyprpaper, or wpaperd
• Theming: manually configuring gtk, qt, various apps, bars, compositor gaps and colors
• Power Management: custom scripts or additional daemons
• Greeter: gdm, sddm, lightdm, greetd

Each tool has its own configuration format, its own quirks, and its own dependencies. You’ll spend hours writing glue scripts, debugging integration issues, and discovering missing functionality at the worst possible moments.

How is MATE nowadays? Is it just Gnome 2 frozen in time or does it have modern features?