I understand why Ubuntu or Fedora exist, but what’s the point of smaller, less-known distros? Do they just fragment the community further, or do they actually solve real problems? Like niche package management or ultra-lightweight setups? Would it ever make sense for a beginner to try one?
What’s the point of non-mainstream Linux distros?
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Think of it like programming languages. Just as Python dominates data science but niche languages like REXX or Erlang solve ultra-specific problems, smaller Linux distros exist for corner cases. Alpine’s super lightweight because it’s written in musl libc, not glibc, so if you’re running containers on a $5 VPS where every megabyte counts, that’s not petty—it’s a real need.
The same goes for Solus or NixOS. Solus has its own package manager that actually makes third-party driver installs less of a nightmare, while NixOS lets you roll back an entire system state like Git commits when an update breaks things. For a beginner? Probably overkill, but if you’re hitting a wall with mainstream distros, they’re not just fragmentation—they’re tools designed for problems mainstream ones ignore.