Nitrux – Powered by Linux, KDE Plasma 5, Qt and Nomad Desktop
nxos.org
nxos.org
Uses rpm-ostree for atomic updates with desktop applications run in Flatpak containers and development done in VMs or Docker/OCI images.
To be honest, I appreciate attempts like VoidLinux that tries something genuine and brings enough difference to warrant its existence and support, but this really feels like some consumer wanting their own named distribution of what already exists.
To me e.g. Fedora's Team Silverblue and NixOS seem genuinely different, since they completely rethink how installations and upgrades are done.
* Void Linux is minimal by default, and comes without Systemd
* It can be had with Musl instead of Glibc as a lighter weight alternative
* Option of binary packages or source pages that you can compile yourself with -native
* LibreSSL by default.
Not saying that all of the above are how all Linux distributions should be, but the lack of Systemd already hooked me in to try it out.
This genuinely made me smile :)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Di...
Everyone and their dog have been rolling their own distros long before cryptocurrencies were a thing.
Not much from what i can see other than their 'Nomad Desktop' which just seems to be some custom desktop applets for KDE. I use KDE Neon myself, this doesn't look all that appealing to me personally.
This is great. I guess they need a landing page that does not use SQL server to render.
I smirked while reading that. A base of data.
Well, actually, they themselves describe KDE Neon as "not quite a distro".
> Is it a distro?
> Not quite, it's a package archive with the latest KDE software on top of a stable base. While we have installable images, unlike full Linux distributions we're only interested in KDE software.
Anyway, I recently switched my laptop over to KDE Neon after my faithful FreeBSD install broke.
I have previously used KDE-based desktops on Fedora and on openSUSE. (And a lot of other DEs and distros over the years but the point was to speak about KDE.)
For my laptop I have been very satisfied with KDE Neon. Still debating whether or not to run it on my desktop.
Who knows, maybe they enabled some power management or browser hardware acceleration out of the box, which would make it immediately better than most attempts at a Linux general purpose OS. I saw no mention of that, only desktop environment features..
Speaking of which: I’m not too well versed on the state, but isn’t chromeos just a Linux browser with power management and hardware accelerated browsing? Ubuntu and fedora and as far as I’m aware none of the traditional distributions do that, instead they make desktop environments all day. Maybe it’s time for some market analysis?
Can't download the thing because the torrent file is behind a crashed database.
We have magnet links for a reason, goddamit. /rant
If you are curious about Nitrux:
Nitrux is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu suitable for laptops and desktop computers. Nitrux provides all the benefits of the Ubuntu operating system combined with a focus on portable, redistributable application formats like AppImages. Nitrux uses the LTS branch of Ubuntu as a basis using only the core system and then slowly building up to ensure a clean user experience. Nitrux is suitable for newcomers to Linux as well as *nix experienced users. Nitrux uses KDE Plasma 5 and KDE Applications; we also use our in-house software suite Nomad Desktop adding to the user experience.
Christ, they might have even fixed some of this since I last used it, but I can't tell because they don't offer an ISO you can dump on a USB to try out
"...this means that the ONLY way to use Nitrux is deploying the ISO image using znx. We DO NOT recommend that you flash the ISO raw to a storage device AT ALL, please use znx." [0]
Once again, a fancy website and lots of ambitious words built around a shoddily implemented half-baked idea.
Vanilla Ubuntu tends to include the mid range GUI, the one that performs OK and doesn't look too bad. Plasma should likely be the default unless you know you want a lighter weight GUI. Unity and GNOME just don't cut it for serious multiple monitor usage. I always find myself on Plasma or xfce4. One example is in Ubuntu 18.04 it is impossible to move the top taskbar off your 'primary' monitor. That is so ridiculous.
Still, a distro with nice, modern UX is welcome. I also enjoyed Manjaro for a while.
It's a lot more than that. The point is that applications should be self-contained and should not depend on the host operating system, and can be installed and run in isolation without affecting each other unless you want them to.
Hopefully it will one day mean that app developers can make just one package that can be installed on all Linux distributions.
Isolation is one thing. We can accomplish that with kernel primitives we have today. Yeah, a distribution mechanism like snaps would be needed.
But snaps are simply doing too much. Like, I should be able to download and run software like I can on Windows and to a lesser extent, Android. The deployment mechanism and the sandbox and the ABI issues all need to be solved separately. Boxing an entire distro per each app is Not necessary for isolation, Not good for security, and generally not a good solution to the ABI issue that prompted it.
If it weren't for ABI stability problems, there would be no issue with still having the isolation of snaps while being able to update components of the base system like libssl.
On a side note, I really dont like how these things clutter the shit out of mounts. Like, I appreciate that they are doing so for isolation, but the side effect is that merely having an app installed adds n mounts? That seems unsustainable.
Actually AppImage would work significantly better if there were some stable and consistent base system it could rely on other than just the kernel. They're more a work around for the limitations of package managers, which require package maintainers, can't handle installing to alternate disks, aren't portable, are fragment as hell, etc.
And this:
> "Nitrux is made with <3 by people like you"
What the fuck? This is some kenneth reitz-level pandering.
I think the widespread usage of his libraries speaks for itself as to whether they are "good", especially considering they have standard library equivalents.
Am a big fan of Arrow, it's far better than DateTime.
Some of what Kenneth builds is very good, some less so. Sometimes he just pulls annoying stunts that are disrespectful of the community at large, like with pipenv. With all that “Human” marketing, he has burnt quite a bit of the goodwill accumulated with Requests, but he’s also built a critical mass of developers who will basically adopt anything he makes regardless of actual merits; which in turn generates backlash. The two phenomenons tend to feed on each other.
Also - I don't think you can really sustain an open source project that brings almost nothing, except a really good API (which some people really value) to the table without good marketing.
This project looks very similar to the style Elementary took with their respin.
Kenneth Reitz aside, why is any of this a bad thing?
Seriously though, you need a lot more to sell me on a new distribution than "Ubuntu, but with AppImages". That's actually a large part of the problem of FOSS in general: We focus on the technical underpinnings rather than on the problems that we intend to solve. If the creators of this distribution want to address specific issues of the Linux desktop experience, they should do a better job communicating that, not least to attract contributors.
The whole deal is about the software developers who are having hard time managing the dependencies. Because they've got to update the code all the time. Especially bad for the proprietary ship-once-and-forget software.
Ubuntu has not changed the package format. To be used, it has to be tested. To be tested, it has to be used.
One that isn't snapshot images (docker, bundled java/ruby/libraries)
One that takes testing and integration seriously
One that takes security seriously
One that uses c-groups like they were intended
One that allows multiple versions
There are a lot of things that could come together for a new style and generation of package manager, but to do it right you would have to manage a whole lot of things
I am curious why "snapshot images" are bad though. What's the fundamental difference between this and shipping a static binary (they're just a different image format, right?).
Not all programming languages can produce static binaries. That's the point of an image format to begin with.
Reducing redundant code is a nice idea, but there aren't any systems^1 that solve for dependency hell and disk efficiency, and I'd rather trade a few hundred MBs of disk than fight with dependency hell.
^1: This isn't entirely true; Nix (and friends) do solve for this, but it's a relatively niche system and it's got its own usability issues that are (in my opinion) well worth sacrificing some disk to avoid. If these systems cross that threshold, then I'm happy to jump on that bandwagon.
Wasn't aware of the one-version issue with APT, though MSI definitely allows multiple versions (and attempts to manage the resulting dll hell)
Testing is logically discrete from package management its entirely possible to test well or poorly with any system.
For several other points nix also featured on the front page right now seems interesting.
I do agree that it's overemphasized though.
I do tend to look askance at things written in JavaScript that aren't destined to run in a web browser, but ultimately what I care about is whether it works, and I suspect users who aren't developers (that would be most of them) really only do care if it works for what they need it to do.
We keep promoting stuff as "ooh look this is written in Rust!" or "it's in JavaScript!" but the important thing should be the effects of those things - i.e. you might choose to write something in Rust for performance and reliability reasons, and to write something in JavaScript for portability.
"Look at how awesome our rich desktop UI is at only 2% CPU usage on an average quad-core!"
versus all this "made with love" garbage