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Definitely looks beautiful. But most of the time I see another Linux distro, I feel like the greater linux community is just spreading it's resources thinner an

Definitely looks beautiful. But most of the time I see another Linux distro, I feel like the greater linux community is just spreading it's resources thinner and thinner and wasting time on porting/recreating the file manager and other various operating system components and major applications to the new system just to justify cosmetic differences. I feel like there is so much redundant work being done, especially in the packaging category. I feel like with the new popularity of containers, the design of new operating systems should focus on a plug-in system where package managers are obsolete and everyone only has to make applications for architectures, not distros. That way all that energy can be shared on common code that gets used exactly the same way. Only then, can visual elements and gui things be layered on top. In other words, push the all the forking away from the OS and onto the GUI or X11 layer.

michaelmrose 11y ago
I feel like your suggestion is extremely naive and wasteful of both hard drive space, transfer, and ram. Please explain how you can put an entire system together that way in a non stupid way.
- nailer 11y ago
  > hard drive space, transfer, and ram are all incredibly cheap when compared to human effort in dependency management with dynamic libs. And most Linux packages managers don't elegantly support installation of multiple versions of libs (libfoo and libfoo123 isn't elegant). The way you'd fix that is similar to what the OP is proposing. Of course, there's many other concerns: but it's not entirely unreasonable.
  - michaelmrose 11y ago
    Its entirely possible for an individual app to have its deps included without forcing every app to work the same and I'm far from convinced that is a real benefit. It would be far better to work towards standardization to make producing a package for multiple distros easier.
- brianclements 11y ago
  There's always a trade-off. A little extra space (which is cheap) for less developer time accounting for all the distro/library/arch combinations. I think it's a very fair trade since space gets cheaper by the year and time does the opposite. One working example of this type of system is RacherOS[1] which I think could do what I'm proposing. I'm excited to see it mature. People can just package their app in a minimally sized container and be done with it. I think it's what the linux community really wants anyway (modularity and options) but adds the ability to switch without re-installation from scratch. [1]http://rancher.com/rancher-os/ http://rancher.com/rancher-os/
macco 11y ago
Unfortunately this is the big problem with the Linux-Community. So many energy is wasted. I am impressed what individuals achieve, but is it really necessary? KDE, GNOME, Pantheon, Xfce, Budgie ... There is to much competition in the Linux-Community. The mantra should be: Forking is eval.

michaelmrose 11y ago

I feel like your suggestion is extremely naive and wasteful of both hard drive space, transfer, and ram. Please explain how you can put an entire system together that way in a non stupid way.

nailer 11y ago
> hard drive space, transfer, and ram are all incredibly cheap when compared to human effort in dependency management with dynamic libs. And most Linux packages managers don't elegantly support installation of multiple versions of libs (libfoo and libfoo123 isn't elegant). The way you'd fix that is similar to what the OP is proposing. Of course, there's many other concerns: but it's not entirely unreasonable.
- michaelmrose 11y ago
  Its entirely possible for an individual app to have its deps included without forcing every app to work the same and I'm far from convinced that is a real benefit. It would be far better to work towards standardization to make producing a package for multiple distros easier.
brianclements 11y ago
There's always a trade-off. A little extra space (which is cheap) for less developer time accounting for all the distro/library/arch combinations. I think it's a very fair trade since space gets cheaper by the year and time does the opposite. One working example of this type of system is RacherOS[1] which I think could do what I'm proposing. I'm excited to see it mature. People can just package their app in a minimally sized container and be done with it. I think it's what the linux community really wants anyway (modularity and options) but adds the ability to switch without re-installation from scratch. [1]http://rancher.com/rancher-os/ http://rancher.com/rancher-os/

macco 11y ago

Unfortunately this is the big problem with the Linux-Community. So many energy is wasted. I am impressed what individuals achieve, but is it really necessary? KDE, GNOME, Pantheon, Xfce, Budgie ... There is to much competition in the Linux-Community. The mantra should be: Forking is eval.