One of the most important things I look for in a Linux distribution or any software project I may rely on for a long time is it's organisational structure. Is there a committee, Benevolent Dictator for Life, sponsoring company etc. It's not exciting stuff but any project wanting people to spend time and effort on it should make sure they have thought about that stuff and let people know what to expect.
It would be nice if short reviews like this made some mention of that aspect of the different distributions.
I'm intrigued enough by the Timeline view of ROSA that I'm downloading it now and preparing to boot it on the linuxhack machine I've got just for the purpose .. this is something I've wanted in a Desktop GUI for decades, and I'm quite interested in the implementation in ROSA - anyone used it yet, got an opinion based on experience?
For me, a Temporal interface to the work I've done on the computer is the One thing missing from modern computer use interfaces. I've always thought that the primary index key for all data created on the computer should be date/time, and better tools for querying/navigating on that index should be developed for users .. but it seems there is some work to be done on making this interface mechanic sensible to the average user. It'd sure be beneficial to me anyway - I'm often thinking "what is that file I made last week .. name forgotten, but I remember when it was, roughly .." while looking for things - if a Time-weighted interface were oriented towards usability, it would be quite useful, imho.
From the article: if I want to use Arch Linux without banging my head with the terminal, I should be able to do that
Look, I got burned by Arch a couple of times and I finally dropped it after 2 years after some crazy nuts updates that broke my system even following the news section.
HOWEVER, everybody does what they want, that's the point of linux and linux distros. You can't think like that, you simply can't. If a distro wants you to do crazy updates, you either do it or you go find another distro. The only thing I can say in your favor is that if somebody makes a derivative for simple folks like us, say Chakra, then it's mother distro community should not ditch on them, it's linux after all.
Knowing little about Arch Linux, I dismissed it entirely, even though a good sysadmin friend uses it exclusively on his laptop.
In my personal life, I first installed Slackware in 1995 but had converted to Debian by 1997 and I've used that almost exclusively until the last two years or so (I have one RHEL6 and one FreeBSD server). I have, of course, used RHEL and Ubuntu previously in my professional life.
About six months ago, I installed Arch Linux on a new Thinkpad W530. I didn't intend to really use it, I just wanted to see what the fuss was about. It's stuck around and I'm still running it and I haven't had the first problem with it.
I'm not gonna be converting everything over to it, obviously, but it works for me on this laptop (which I do almost 100% of my work on).
Filesystem snapshots should make any upgrades almost painless. If it failed, roll back to a pre-update snapshot and in the meanwhile inspect changes from a post-upgrade version (branch) of the filesystem. Maybe even run this version in a VM.
Sad things are: 1) almost no FS supports writeable snapshots and LVM snapshotting is far from being convenient; 2) you have to setup everything by hand.
Is there anything innovative or just fun in those?
For example, Gobolinux (now dead) tried to restructure the filesystem. NixOS (pretty obscure) tries to innovate with package management. Vyatta (dead, don't miss this one) tried to bring Cisco-like look-and-feel CLI for GNU/Linux based routing. And so on. What's fancy in those mentioned distros - I mean, except for the packages they have installed and/or pre-configured by default?
A long, long time ago when I was learning C++, I remember the Gobolinux folks were always happy to make new packages ("recipes" as they were called) for me and add them to the repo. In particular, I remember them kindly adding Code::Blocks. The people behind it were truly generous with their time, and Gobo had, in my opinion, absolutely outstanding ideas.
While there are occasionally other fun linux distros to toy with for a few days, I have never found any compelling reason to stray from Debian after it has served me on the desktop and at the server level for sixteen loyal years.
As a very long time Linux user distributions which I find intriguing are the ones using the "Nix" package manager.
Nix describes itself as a "purely functional" package manager.
As I understand it you don't need to have admin rights to install package (something I always found very, very odd since 20 years or so with both .rpm and .deb based distros: why the heck do I need to be admin to install packages that basically only one user is ever going to use?).
With Nix you can also install simultaneously several version of the same package (even for a single user if I understand it correctly).
I really wish something like that would one day "catch up" in the Linux world and see what gives.
By the way this is in no way a harsh criticism of Debian or anything: I'm a "20-years long" Linux desktop user and a "Debian die-hard" fan :)
But I find the concept behind Nix really intriguing and apparently there are regular releases.
> why the heck do I need to be admin to install packages
This is being solved in mainstream distributions by adding another layer of abstraction, instead of trying to do within "traditional" userspace.
We're rapidly moving towards a multi-VM model (be it full virtualisation or LXC) where all users "have root" inside their own containers.
Not being able to install the packages you want isn't an issue when you can quickly and easily create a VM or container and do it in there, all within your existing userspace privileges on the host system.
It's no longer about who has root on a particular machine. It's now just a distinction between who manages a system and who uses that system.
If you want to manage a system instead of just using it, you can achieve that by having your own entire system by spawning a container or VM, rather than just being limited to your home directory.
The cost in disk space is negligible in today's terms. The cost of memory in a VM is still significant, but LXC eliminates that issue.
New? More? Really? I beg to differ... I thin it needs the KDE + GNOME + Englightment + etc. Guys to unite and create 1 full-featured DE, bug-free, with at set of SOLID applications (mail, browser, etc.) and 1 unified layer underneath.
But then again, we all know that's not going to happen and licenses is not the only problem here or anywhere else where you see this kind of fragmentation (android?).
I have been an Ubuntu user since 2005 and been horrified by the Gnome 3 and Unity desktop disasters and I've been stuck with Ubuntu 11.04 because it's the last release with Gnome 2. For the past 2 years I have been looking for a new desktop environment but failed to find something that would fit my basic needs until I recently tried XUbuntu again, this time version 13.10 and I must say, I'm blown away. This is what my current desktop looks like:
No bells, no whistles but a plain a simple desktop for a developer to get stuff done. I absolutely love the latest Xfce release but more importantly, I have a stable distribution that's been around for quite some time so I'm confident I can use this for the next few years to come.
It's nice to see Sabayon mentioned. I've been using it at work for a few years now. I'd used Gentoo for a long time at home previously, and wanted something at work that felt like it, but didn't have time for the tedious installation process, nor the long builds if I suddenly needed to pull in a large number of packages for other purposes. These are the very issues Sabayon purported to address with an out-of-the-box setup and a binary package manager. I tried it, liked it, and have used it since.
The package management tool (Entropy) is nice. It feels a lot like Portage, but also handles a few other tasks (configuration updates, mirror selection, etc.) within the tool itself. It's a nice compromise between Portage and the binary package managers you find in most popular systems.
Sad that Bedrock Linux is not on that list. Also, why bother with Sabayon over Gentoo? If configuring gentoo is too time-consuming just stick to arch or ubuntu/ubuntu derivative.
Everything on that list is catagorized as "works-out-of-the-box" or "works mostly out of the box". My guess is the author has no interest in distributions like Bedrock Linux or Gentoo that require initial setup to get the ball rolling, even if the resulting system has benefits over the works-out-of-the-box crowd.
One comment on OA asks why fully free distros left out; Trisquel, Parabola and I'd add gNewSense 3.0. Unless of course the OA thinks these get enough love already!
[+] [-] ollybee|12 years ago|reply
It would be nice if short reviews like this made some mention of that aspect of the different distributions.
[+] [-] fit2rule|12 years ago|reply
For me, a Temporal interface to the work I've done on the computer is the One thing missing from modern computer use interfaces. I've always thought that the primary index key for all data created on the computer should be date/time, and better tools for querying/navigating on that index should be developed for users .. but it seems there is some work to be done on making this interface mechanic sensible to the average user. It'd sure be beneficial to me anyway - I'm often thinking "what is that file I made last week .. name forgotten, but I remember when it was, roughly .." while looking for things - if a Time-weighted interface were oriented towards usability, it would be quite useful, imho.
[+] [-] icebraining|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://zeitgeist-project.com/experience/
[+] [-] kfk|12 years ago|reply
Look, I got burned by Arch a couple of times and I finally dropped it after 2 years after some crazy nuts updates that broke my system even following the news section.
HOWEVER, everybody does what they want, that's the point of linux and linux distros. You can't think like that, you simply can't. If a distro wants you to do crazy updates, you either do it or you go find another distro. The only thing I can say in your favor is that if somebody makes a derivative for simple folks like us, say Chakra, then it's mother distro community should not ditch on them, it's linux after all.
[+] [-] jlgaddis|12 years ago|reply
In my personal life, I first installed Slackware in 1995 but had converted to Debian by 1997 and I've used that almost exclusively until the last two years or so (I have one RHEL6 and one FreeBSD server). I have, of course, used RHEL and Ubuntu previously in my professional life.
About six months ago, I installed Arch Linux on a new Thinkpad W530. I didn't intend to really use it, I just wanted to see what the fuss was about. It's stuck around and I'm still running it and I haven't had the first problem with it.
I'm not gonna be converting everything over to it, obviously, but it works for me on this laptop (which I do almost 100% of my work on).
YMMV but IWFM.
[+] [-] drdaeman|12 years ago|reply
Sad things are: 1) almost no FS supports writeable snapshots and LVM snapshotting is far from being convenient; 2) you have to setup everything by hand.
[+] [-] drdaeman|12 years ago|reply
For example, Gobolinux (now dead) tried to restructure the filesystem. NixOS (pretty obscure) tries to innovate with package management. Vyatta (dead, don't miss this one) tried to bring Cisco-like look-and-feel CLI for GNU/Linux based routing. And so on. What's fancy in those mentioned distros - I mean, except for the packages they have installed and/or pre-configured by default?
[+] [-] reikonomusha|12 years ago|reply
I do wish it took off.
[+] [-] pstack|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TacticalCoder|12 years ago|reply
Nix describes itself as a "purely functional" package manager.
As I understand it you don't need to have admin rights to install package (something I always found very, very odd since 20 years or so with both .rpm and .deb based distros: why the heck do I need to be admin to install packages that basically only one user is ever going to use?).
With Nix you can also install simultaneously several version of the same package (even for a single user if I understand it correctly).
I really wish something like that would one day "catch up" in the Linux world and see what gives.
By the way this is in no way a harsh criticism of Debian or anything: I'm a "20-years long" Linux desktop user and a "Debian die-hard" fan :)
But I find the concept behind Nix really intriguing and apparently there are regular releases.
[+] [-] rlpb|12 years ago|reply
This is being solved in mainstream distributions by adding another layer of abstraction, instead of trying to do within "traditional" userspace.
We're rapidly moving towards a multi-VM model (be it full virtualisation or LXC) where all users "have root" inside their own containers.
Not being able to install the packages you want isn't an issue when you can quickly and easily create a VM or container and do it in there, all within your existing userspace privileges on the host system.
It's no longer about who has root on a particular machine. It's now just a distinction between who manages a system and who uses that system.
If you want to manage a system instead of just using it, you can achieve that by having your own entire system by spawning a container or VM, rather than just being limited to your home directory.
The cost in disk space is negligible in today's terms. The cost of memory in a VM is still significant, but LXC eliminates that issue.
[+] [-] Joister|12 years ago|reply
[1]http://crunchbang.org/
[+] [-] theboywho|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darklajid|12 years ago|reply
Why do you think that? What DEs did you play with and what were the problems? Why do you feel that new distributions aren't needed/useful?
Can you expand your point and create a real argument?
[+] [-] fit2rule|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atmosx|12 years ago|reply
But then again, we all know that's not going to happen and licenses is not the only problem here or anywhere else where you see this kind of fragmentation (android?).
[+] [-] lmm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pan69|12 years ago|reply
http://i.imgur.com/BK2leWF.png
No bells, no whistles but a plain a simple desktop for a developer to get stuff done. I absolutely love the latest Xfce release but more importantly, I have a stable distribution that's been around for quite some time so I'm confident I can use this for the next few years to come.
[+] [-] snarfff|12 years ago|reply
The package management tool (Entropy) is nice. It feels a lot like Portage, but also handles a few other tasks (configuration updates, mirror selection, etc.) within the tool itself. It's a nice compromise between Portage and the binary package managers you find in most popular systems.
[+] [-] gaius|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] facorreia|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _sabe_|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbeja|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xfalcox|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] staticelf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbeja|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wanda|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ParadigmComplex|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supergauntlet|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] keithpeter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dlsym|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nly|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cliveowen|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] testrun|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbeja|12 years ago|reply