Unneeded new distro(s) and their immaturity.
Unneeded new distro(s) and their immaturity.
168 comments
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Idk, it's a hobby. There's no problem with new distros. If they're good, they take off, if not, it's going to be a niche project. No issue at all.
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It's more than a hobby. That's kinda the point.
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Cybersecurity engineers and pentesters don't need Kali or Parrot. You don't need Proxmox to use LXC and KVM. You don't need OpenMediaVault to have Samba and NFS shares. You don't need Clonezilla to make use of the OCS toolkit. You don't need LMDE to have a Debian OS with Cinnamon and nonfree drivers installed, or Endeavour to have Arch with KDE Plasma.
But it's sure as shit good to have everything packed together and preconfigured by professionals.
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Or if not professionals at least someone who knows more about it than yourself.
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And even if they don't, they know enough to do it to a level I am happy to not bother doing it myself.
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Absolutely.
Edit, responded to the wrong comment somehow.
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Or at least willing to push whatever barely working bullshit they forgot to test.
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Clonezilla is more like an app that comes with an OS on a liveCD for convenience, as it's troublesome to use the very OS you're cloning.
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Yeah its a program that has a minimal OS. Its more about the program than the operating system.
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Proxmox does add extended hardware support, as does Kali. Parrot enables necessary repos and kernel modifications for Red and Blue team workflows. I don’t know enough about DEs to speak about the others but those three don’t apply to the meme.
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Sounds like a perfect application for Nix, IMO. Either ship a flake or a NixOS config module, and you’re set.
The only disadvantage I can see is the unusual directory structure of NixOS.
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I'm not sure I'd go to the lengths of using OMV just to have a samba share.
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Maybe the existence of these distros (appliances) is a sign of the state of Linux.
May the next distro win.
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I'd say actually a bit of the opposite. Generally speaking we don't need a new package manager or init system, and better hardware support is almost entirely a kernel concern (one might make an argument that the loose bits of key management and tpm2 tools and authentication agents could be better integrated for "Windows Hello" type function I suppose, but I doubt that's what the meme had in mind.
Not really needing to reinvent the wheel on those, we got a variety of wheels, sometimes serving different sensibilities, sometimes any difference in capability went away long ago (rpm/dnf v. deb/apt).
The best motivation I can think of at this point is to make specialty distribution that is 'canned' toward a specific use case. Even then it's probably best to be an existing distribution under the covers. I think Proxmox is a good example, it's just Debian but installer made to just do Proxmox. You want to do automated installation? Just use Debian and then add Proxmox (the official recommendation), because they have no particular insight on automated deployment, so why not just defer to an existing facility?
The biggest conceptual change in packaging has been "waste as much disk as you like duplicating dependencies to avoid conflicting dependencies", maybe with "use namespace and cgroup isolation to better control app interactions" and we have snap, flatpak, appimage, and nix very well covering the gamut for that concept.
For init, we have the easy to modify sysv init, or the more capable but more inscrutable systemd. I don't see a whole lot of opportunity between those two sorts of options already.
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It's usually easier to criticize something than to go through the effort of understanding it. Posts like the OP are an example of that.
... And ironically, your post is doing the same thing here with software packaging:
The biggest conceptual change in packaging has been “waste as much disk as you like duplicating dependencies to avoid conflicting dependencies”,
Nobody is perfect, so it's important to keep an open mind about things, especially when one don't understand them, and especially² when one thinks they understand them as it's always possible to be wrong (unless they don't care about going through life as an ignorant asshole. Plenty of people thrive like that.)
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I understand it fine, and it's not just a packaging phenomonon, all sorts of software developers have stopped trying to have consensus on platform and instead 'just ship the box'. 99% of the time a python application will demand at least virtualenv. Golang, well, you are just going to staticly build (at least LTO means less unrelated stuff comes along for the ride). Of course docker style packaging is bring the whole distro. I'll give credit to snap and flatpak that at least allow packaging to have external dependency packages to mitigate it somewhat.
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i like novel implementations of these things, it's the reason why linux as it is today is so good, people were willing to try novel methods of package management, and the repo worked great.
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Nah. Push them out like rabbits do with their babies. Let them fight and see which ones prevail!
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I mean, bait aside, creating a new distro with an existing package manager allows you to set up a different set of default packages and even add your own new/updated ones. That's the value of it there.
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But that doesn't deserve to count as a separate distro. At best it's just a variant, like the relationship between Kubuntu and Ubuntu.
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Ship of Theseus.
How much do you need to change to make a new distro? Is Linux Mint still Ubuntu? Or is Ubuntu still Debian?
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Choose a distro by the default wallpaper.
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By logo openSUSE ftw
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In that case uwuntu for life.
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Or do, that guy isn't your boss. If he is, what are you doing listening to him about non work stuff he seems like a gatekeeper kina guy.
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They can go ahead and create all they want. I just wont use any of them unless they give me a reason.
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Exactly! Nobody has to listen to OP and change plans because OP doesn't approve! Like you, OP is free to NOT use the product!
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But what if... I took Debian, and disguised it as my own distro? Ho ho ho! Delightfuly devilish, Seymore!
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I daily Debian because I realized all of the distros I tried and liked were Debian based. That was 20 years ago.
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Ubuntu, Knoppix and MEPIS? I first used Ubuntu in 2006, but it was still very immature then. I didn’t really know much about any other Debian derivatives.
The other big one that was popular was Mandrake but that was rpm based, and a bit later PClinuxOS which was Mandrake based. I didn’t think Debian derivatives were much of a thing then aside from Ubuntu.
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Daring today, aren't we
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Mmm, systemd clams.
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All the different distros are all about the vibe and not a lot else. The Linux kernel remains pretty much the same and we just choose different window dressings.
I suppose we could role it all back to Debian Stable and Slackware I guess. Do we need a "Distro Thanos?" Besides, without all those different distros, how you gonna surf?
So don't harsh the vibes man.
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We already have NixOS, why anything else?
(Guix is cool too).
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A good wiki for it?
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https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/NixOS_Wiki
Still lacking a bit of information about specific stuff.
Unofficial should have the same information, but sometimes there is a discrepancy.
https://search.nixos.org/options
For any option you might need the name of.
https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/options.html
For basically anything else where you just have the implementation documentation
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Gentoo with an external build server. (for storage ir performanceconstrained systems)
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Sorry, the best I can do is busybox as init.
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I mean Linux wouldn't be as it is actually without Hannah Montana Linux and Justin Bieber Linux
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New distros get a lot of crap, but often they are solving a need for someone.
Take Windowmaker Live: ostensibly it's just Debian + Windowmaker. I have seen comments saying why not just install WM on Debian? By asking that question, it's clear the asker hasnt tried recently. There is a lot to configure, and there are lots of usability papercuts.
A custom distro allows someone to fix those problems for themself, and share those fixes with others. It's not fragmentation, it's just FOSS.
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It would help more people to improve the installer for difficult-to-install software rather than creating an entire operating system around that software. Using the entire operating system as an installer is over the top
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You're both right
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Maybe a script or deployment tool config would suffice
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If you improve the installer to the point it can install any combination of software together (including incompatible versions of deps) you end up with NixOS again
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Yeah I'm reading what they said and that kind of solution wouldn't be acceptable in any industry...
Imagine if you wanted to add AC to your central heating system and they told you they need to add a second furnace in parallel to the one you already have because it's possible to add AC to your current setup, but it's very complicated to do so...
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Don't know the case for this - but there are absolutely cases where the merger is blocked for some reason, and why not just fix it yourself with a distro? It hurts nobody.
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+1, kubuntu was a lot simpler than installing KDE on Ubuntu and still having grub applications
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Or a new based DE, like with new libs and frameworks for making ui
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At least own the libs
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Make your own framework just to own the libs.
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Owning libs in this economy? You'll have to settle for renting a few.
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No need to make a new distro, just package it into NixOS
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Just a reminder that nix packages works on most any distro, and then they work like other universal packages, but without the sandboxing
NixOS is just when you take this to the logical conclusion and have every part of the distro packaged in Nix, including configuring your OS, and optionally your users configuration files as well.
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Good point
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Hardware support is not really the province of distro, to me. Which makes them even more ridiculous.
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Cat on a table.jpg says:
"I'm going to create a new distro by changing the name of Debian"
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I too know how to run
sed -r!
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Every project eventually makes their own package manager. Its pretty insane if you stop and think about how routinely the package manager is re-invented.
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For real. I don't mind the million distributions, but can we agree on one single package manager?
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Where is that comic about standards now that we need it? The one where they create a new standard that is going to solve all the problems, except for now there is just one more standard??
Edit: https://xkcd.com/927
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Every time someone complains, another package manager is created
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the number of package managers went up by 1
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Sure! As long as it's nixpkgs.
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There are only two options that fix dependency hell. Nix and Guix
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Flatpak it is.
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Not really
There are only a few mainstream package formats and ultimately you are going to probably be using distro packages or portable formats like Flatpak.
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FU I won't do what you tell me!
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Honestly I'm kind of excited for the infrastructure as code tools. I think it is only going to get easier to customize a install quickly.
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Does my distro qualify for this? I already implemented my own package manager and init system in Rust, and the only thing to do is to port build scripts from Arch to my format and make an ISO.
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Do you have a minute to talk about GNU Guix?
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May I introduce you to left parenthesis and right parenthesis? May I further introduce you to millions of parentheses?
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Lol no.
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Ah good, so
::: spoiler NSFW distro open at your own risk YiffOS :::
is okay-
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Well, it lacks a proper bootstrap and its documentation is basically empty trash.
hell live bootstrap has those and did it without requiring a file system or a kernel to get there https://github.com/fosslinux/live-bootstrap
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ALSO BRING BACK HANNAH MONTANA
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average yiffos distro experience really.
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This post and comments create a whirlwind of emotion. What do I believe!?
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Yep, your talent can be used elsewhere. Whether it's a new program or contributions to open spurce
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I miss Pardus... Yali and Kaptan were the best
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I wonder how many people genuinely used Pardus for just being Pardus until the Turkish government fucked it up
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I don't really get this distro thing.
So it is basically just like choosing which app to access reddit with, except that if i choose the wrong app i might be auto-banned from a lot of the subs?
Also, i won't see stuff i am searching for sometimes, because the distros sometimes make trouble if someone else hasn't already subscribed? Or is that only on mastodon?
I am using Voyager, and chose lemm.ee for no apparent reason. But so far, it just feels like a shittier version of reddit but with better mods? I dunno.
Edit: turns out i was indeed confused.
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Only 5 distros exist: Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, RHEL/Fedora, and built it yourself.
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You listed Debian three times.
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Eh ... Mint is Ubuntu based, Ubuntu is Debian based so they're all Debian ... Also Arch? ^I ^use ^Arch ^btw
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And OpenSUSE?
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Arch? Isn’t that just CRUX?
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Do you count openSuSE as rhel? Also mint is just Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is not Debian because Ubuntu has more up to date drivers software and what not.
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168 comments