Linux Distributions that deserve more Love
linuxfederation.com
linuxfederation.com
It would be nice if short reviews like this made some mention of that aspect of the different distributions.
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.
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.
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.
Waiting until the last minute to port all my init scripts to systemd was definitely not a good idea.
Frankly I remember going through more pain every 6 months from in early Ubuntu days (although that's a lot better now also).
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.
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?
I do wish it took off.
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.
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.
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?
My point is that the real problem of Linux on the Desktop _is_ the Desktop Environment, and I just don't understand why people trying to fix that problem think that assembling a new distribution _is_ the solution.
Building a new distribution gives these people the choices they want (a custom installer, better quality repositories, a decent system-wide configuration interface) - it's a way to create a unique take on Linux. A desktop environment is but one part of that - and it seems those people don't agree that it should be the most prominent one.
All these words written on why the available Linux DEs suck were so far unconvincing from my point of view and I would've loved to see another thorough explanation. Most of the things I've read aren't specific to any Linux DE and mostly "I don't want to adapt to change" arguments - just like "Windows 8 is the downfall of Microsoft Windows" and "Maverick is the worst OS X ever" (or "Firefox changed the default theme!!").
Technically I'd say that there are a number of decent DEs available, all with benefits and tradeoffs. In fact, my biggest gripe with Linux on the desktop isn't that there's no decent DE, my pet peeve is the inconsistent looks between applications written for different DEs/in different Toolkits. Mixing GTK with QT (with motif, tk, swing, e17's libraries and whatnot in the mix) looks bad, feels unnatural and restricts my selection of tools for a job ("Am I going to install that thing? Naaah, it's based on QT"). I don't want more DEs, I'd prefer more progress a la freedesktop / a unified path forward.
Obviously this is all a rather subjective thing, but Linux runs fine on my desktop for a long time already.
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'd argue the best way to achieve unification would be to make GNOME 4 a Qt based DE. Qt is just superior and GTK+ only exists because of ancient Qt licensing issues that are no longer relevant. That said, this will never happen because, being C++, it'd alienate a lot of GNOME developers. During the transition you'd also set back GNOME for years.
and likewise when I'll care to learn Lua I'll move onto awesome-wm. Which will probably never happen.
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.
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.
Rather, the idea is that you can install packages from just about any other distribution, including things which are typically seen as mutually exclusive. The majority of the system can be comprised of packages from something known to be stable like Debian or CentOS, while still having easy access to things like packages from Arch (including Arch's AUR), retain extremely good library compatibility with popular Ubuntu for precompiled non-distro-provided things like proprietary software, and still get to leverage the flexibility tools like Gentoo's portage provides.
So, yes, you could use binary packages unless you need to build from source - Bedrock Linux can fit that design if you want it to work that way. That's a perfectly fine way to use it. But I would frame that as one of a number of ways to go about things, as the system is quite flexible.
Edit: I guess you can think of it like "arch with an installer and configured desktop environment".