{"id":223122,"date":"2026-03-13T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/13\/these-4-distros-tried-to-reinvent-linux-but-failed\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T07:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T11:20:09","slug":"these-4-distros-tried-to-reinvent-linux-but-failed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/13\/these-4-distros-tried-to-reinvent-linux-but-failed\/","title":{"rendered":"These 4 distros tried to reinvent Linux (but failed)"},"content":{"rendered":"

These 4 distros tried to reinvent Linux (but failed)<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/these-x-linux-distros-tried-to-reinvent-linux-but-failed\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-13 06:30:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.howtogeek.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Linux is an accepted OS in the tech world, but that hasn’t stopped Linux developers from trying to shake things up. Sometimes it works, but here are the times it hasn’t.<\/p>\n

\n Debian 2.1 in a box
\n <\/h2>\n

\n Make sure people can actually use it before the shrink wrap goes on
\n <\/h3>\n

About as long as Linux has existed, there have been attempts to sell Linux distributions to ordinary computer users. In the ’90s, most people still bought computer software in boxes, with discs and printed manuals. This went for operating systems as well. You might remember the hype over the launch of Windows 95 in the summer of 1995.<\/p>\n

You could also buy boxed copies of Linux distros in computer stores. YouTube NCommander happened to open a boxed copy of Debian 2.1 from 1999. While it might have sounded like a great idea on paper, anyone who was tasked with installing it from the CD was met with a text-based installation that, more often than not, would fail to detect your hardware. NCommander demonstrates how painful it would have been to install Debian back then:<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, Debian did not seem to undercut the Windows 95\/98 juggernaut. The tagline on the box was that this would be “the last Linux you will ever need to buy.” That claim might have been truth in advertising. The big deal was that you could download and update your system over the internet, which was a novel concept in the dot-com days. Most people still had dial-up internet, and the actual updates would have been prohibitively slow if they could actually connect over Linux in the first place. I’m sure anyone who bought the package wouldn’t feel the need to buy another boxed copy of Linux.<\/p>\n

Of course, Debian itself is going strong without boxes as the basis for other popular distros like Ubuntu, becoming my distro of choice. It’s a lot easier to install than it was back then.<\/p>\n

\n Eazel and Nautilus
\n <\/h2>\n

\n Even…<\/h3>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These 4 distros tried to reinvent Linux (but failed) https:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/these-x-linux-distros-tried-to-reinvent-linux-but-failed\/ Publish Date: 2026-03-13 06:30:00 Source…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":223123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static0.howtogeekimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/the-linux-penguin-sad-on-the-street-corner-in-the-rain.jpg?w=1600&h=900&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[91,71,79],"class_list":["post-223122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-debian","tag-linux","tag-ubuntu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223124,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223122\/revisions\/223124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}