6 ms·

Building a “real” Linux distro

56 points by ddevault 10y ago

torollol 10y ago
yet another anti-systemd troll. haters gonna hate
- kbenson 10y ago
  While normally I would agree, if the goal is to run your own distro for personal use, you want it to to fit your own needs and abilities as closely as possibly. If you consider systemd to be annoying, or bloated, or complicated, since you're the main and/or only user, that's an extremely valid reason to not use it in that case. The reasoning for a large public distro is different, because most users might not ever even know what they are interacting with, or only interact with it through a few layers, so other features are more important (and in my opinion, where systemd really has some benefits).
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    And that may well be the biggest split that has come within the Linux communities in recent years. Across time home grown minimalism and large name distros have largely coexisted in piece. This because large name distros where at its core an expanded home grown minimalist setup. But systemd is shifting all that, because it is clearly built from the ground up with large name distro wants/needs in mind (or maybe it is the wants/needs of big name DEs, with Gnome at the front, and distros have to begrudgingly accept systemd as they want to ship with a big name DE as their default UI), and little else. And as time goes on, it will be harder and harder to find projects that do not expect some part of systemd to be present. And given how systemd is maintained it will be hard to use just those parts and nothing else. More and more systemd seems like a massive case of the tail wagging the dog.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      At some point I think we just have to accept that, like most automobiles, all the things we want come with a complexity cost, and eventually the complexity is too much for the average person, and then too much for even most exceptional people. Compartmentalization helps this somewhat, even if it initially looks like the opposite. You can still build a hot rod without too much advanced knowledge. Want to include anti-lock brakes? What about traction control? What about variable valve timing? At some point even the savants will start acquiring whole systems to drop in as needed, as needed. Systemd is to sysinit what a brand new aluminum or magnesium alloy modern engine is to a 70's cast iron engine. It's not something you want to mess with too much, and it has a bunch of inputs and outputs you probably don't care about, but it's designed for what it's used for. If I was buying a new car, I want the modern engine unless I expect to need to do a bunch of maintenance myself. This is the normal progression technology takes. It's fine to still run your own distro, just as it's fine to build your own car, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking the custom distro not the hot rod are just as good general purpose devices, even if they may well be better for a specific subset of things (and that subset may well fit what you care about).
      - zzzcpan 10y ago
        Wouldn't you expect more decoupling and decentralization with growing complexity instead of a single engine that does everything? It's not like we are constrained by size or weight of an automobile, we can simply agree on some IPC protocol and let everyone have their own managing daemons completely isolated from the rest of the system, that are started and managed by other managing daemons and so on. In fact, this is the only way to make it reliable, otherwise errors in centralized components will affect everything.
        kbenson 10y ago
        I don't think it is one thing doing everything. It may seem that way if you zoom in to a small portion of what the system does, but it's a fairly contained system that has some parts that extend beyond what you would normally consider it's boundaries to achieve specific goals. The kernel handles hardware abstractions and provides a base interface. Systemd handles system boot and service management.The windowing system (including window manager) handles GUI interaction. Whether you would or could draw the definitions elsewhere doesn't really matter, as the systems are in enough flux (especially recently) that they aren't very static. As features are needed, they shift between those systems (or or even others) to find a place where there are resources to implement it, where it's feasible to to, and where it's efficient to do. Those aspects are weighted differently over time (especially resources available, which is developers with skill and time), so some features will swap between systems. A well defined API between them would be nice, but that's not the type of development that's generally done in open source. It requires a lot more understanding, effort and time up front, and even where there's a will, there those resources don't always exist. Systemd tried to solve a lot of problems, and create new capabilities (or bring them to linux at least). Expecting everything to both have not only have been thought about, but planned, for, tested and accounted for prior to it starting is a tall order. Even if ther had been an exceptional amount of effort put into that, it's likely that other systems (such as the window system or the kernel) would change to offer new capabilities or want to offload some responsibility that they saw as better handled elsewhere. This is where the metaphor breaks down. A car is generally designed in whole by one group (or the systems they integrate are complete and finished), and that doesn't really exist in Linux, since everything is always in flux.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  To be fair, I also hate every other init system.
  - tehabe 10y ago
    Essentially a perfectionist who can't settle, reminds me of myself. I've made a good experience with Arch Linux, and since I didn't care much about the init system it worked quite well for me. Sadly the hardware didn't so I ended up in another world again. Happens I guess.
  - mixedCase 10y ago
    What would you like to see in an init system/service manager?
    - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
      runit but with better code, basically.
      - JdeBP 10y ago
        There are plenty of workalikes available. * http://jdebp.eu./FGA/daemontools-family.html http://jdebp.eu./FGA/daemontools-family.html That said, I disagree with your premise that runit has bad code.
        Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
        Thanks for the link! I'll have a look at these. >That said, I disagree with your premise that runit has bad code. Have you seen it? Bad code may be subjective, but it certainly doesn't come close to my standards.
        JdeBP 10y ago
        Of course I have seen it. A lot of it is the same free Bernstein libraries that have been used by Felix von Leitner, Paul Jarc, Laurent Bercot, et al., with some of the same C1999 modernizations; and that inspired various similar libraries. * http://www.fefe.de/djb/ http://www.fefe.de/djb/ * http://www.skarnet.org/software/skalibs/libstddjb/ http://www.skarnet.org/software/skalibs/libstddjb/ * http://untroubled.org/bglibs/ http://untroubled.org/bglibs/ * http://www.fefe.de/libowfat/ http://www.fefe.de/libowfat/
- peterwwillis 10y ago
  Systemd sucks, so it's not a troll.
tanderson92 10y ago
One can bootstrap a system with a source-based package manager too. Here[0] is the process for bootstrapping a new architecture on Exherbo Linux. Note that the package manager is built on the host system and installs to the new system. Exherbo supports cross-compiling with multiple concurrent architectures (both called 'multiarch') and installing into non-host environments. A lot of other cool stuff, but the biggest point is that one can do what this blog describes with dependency management taken care of. The other point is that simply by managing the special 'system' set, one can pare down the base system. The OPTIONS flag can reduce system size by minimizing unneeded features (similar to Gentoo's USE). [0]: http://exherbo.org/docs/bootstrapping.html http://exherbo.org/docs/bootstrapping.html
jacobroyquebec 10y ago
What's so wrong about GNU?
- thesuitonym 10y ago
  This is really a case of "If you have to ask, you'll never know." That's not meant to be derogatory, just that if you don't have a problem with GNU, you won't have a problem with GNU, because there's nothing wrong with it, it's jut a matter of opinion (usually about the GPL).
  - jacobroyquebec 10y ago
    Allright! The article nor the FAQ page didn't mention why it was hated so much haha. Thank for the answer!
    - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
      I updated the FQA with some stuff discussed in these comments: https://agunix.org/fqa https://agunix.org/fqa
      - jacobroyquebec 10y ago
        Thanks! BTW, It seems to be a really tedious work, I like the result :)
  - regularfry 10y ago
    There are some areas where GNU (particularly glibc) is somewhat bloaty in the code department compared to other implementations. That can, sometimes, matter, but I agree it tends to be a question of taste and not one of morals.
- insulanus 10y ago
  glibc and buildtools can be a bit of a pain to work with. Maybe he was exposed to that during cross-compilation.
fhood 10y ago
Could someone elaborate on the "cons" the article mentions? I don't totally understand why those would be problems.
- tanderson92 10y ago
  apt has significant limitations vs. a more flexible package manager. I would never use an apt-based distribution; I would use a Paludis-based distribution: see its feature list for many of the reasons why. Bloat is a concern because I don't want unnecessary system processes running, nor do I want cruft installed that can be done without. Gentoo is good at minimizing cruft, and others in the same spirit as well. Can't help you with systemd and GNU, as I am comfortable with both. The writer seems more like a Gentoo or Exherbo or Arch user than any of the more popular distros. In other words, one of the people who used to use Linux when it wasn't as mainstream.
- Veratyr 10y ago
  They're mostly matters of personal preference or opinion rather than real issues.
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  Service, configuration and package management are not solved problems in any distro. It's only normal to list systemd and apt as cons.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  I originally went into more depth, but replaced it with a small summary of my motivations. The article is more about making a distro than about agunix itself. See the website for some information about agunix.
davexunit 10y ago
Yet another anti-GNU, anti-systemd article. For folks interested in reading about how distros bootstrap themselves, the GNU Guix manual has some good details: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Bootstrapping.html https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Bootstrap...
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  No, it's an article about making a new Linux distro, with a brief summary of my motivations. Someday I might write an anti-GNU, anti-systemd article, but this is hardly it.
  - davexunit 10y ago
    If you are anti-GNU and anti-systemd, I am highly skeptical of your design choices.
peterwwillis 10y ago
Can somebody explain to me the obsession with static linking? Do these people not realize that performance gains from shared memory between disparate applications hinges on dynamic linking mmap'd libraries and COWing shared memory sections to private on demand, reduces duplicate code, standardizes operations, and simplifies debugging? Has the world gone mad?!
- insulanus 10y ago
  That is a nice feature, but if code is only 1% of your process image, it doesn't matter.
- stonogo 10y ago
  Think of it like docker without the network overhead, using the os kernel as kubernetes. Think of it like webworkers with the kernel as the js runtime. Ram is cheap. Complexity is expensive.
  - peterwwillis 10y ago
    Multiple different versions of the same software running in the same environment increases complexity. Ram is cheap, loading code into ram wastes cycles and following new or different code paths trashes cpu cache and recent code paths.
    - zzzcpan 10y ago
      So far I see only the opposite. Inability to be flexible about multiple versions adds a lot of unnecessary complexity.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  Most of the applications you will have running at any given moment probably have few libraries in common. A typical linker will only include in the final executable any functions you require from your dependency as well, which can dramatically reduce the footprint of a piece of software (when considered in combination with its dependencies). Statically linked binaries also load faster and don't break when you have a botched update. My distro does support dynamic linking, but prefers static. In practice the RAM footprint and disk footprint is much, much smaller than any dynamically linked distro I've tried. Avoiding GNU also helps a lot to reduce bloat. Static linking also makes agunix more portable. Stuff like this is possible: https://sr.ht/5HTs.png https://sr.ht/5HTs.png
shmerl 10y ago
Cons include ... systemd. The author doesn't elaborate how it's a con, same as some other examples.
- RX14 10y ago
  It's clear the author thinks it's a con, but I don't see why this article should justify that, it's a pretty unrelated topic to the one at hand.
  - shmerl 10y ago
    The tone of the article suggests it's something obvious and universal, which it's not. So there should have been some elaboration, or at least something like "for my purposes".
    - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
      https://agunix.org/fqa https://agunix.org/fqa
      - shmerl 10y ago
        Most of that sounds quite debatable and a matter of taste. I don't find those arguments objective enough. Calling anything they don't like "bloated" doesn't sound right.
        Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
        Have you ever dug into the internals of GNU tools and compared them to other tools in the same niche? It's self-evident.
- skywhopper 10y ago
  The one that stumped me was GNU. Do they mean the GPL? GNU userspace? gcc?
  - 10y ago
psadauskas 10y ago
My 2012 MBP is getting a bit long in the tooth, and had several software-ish issues that were totally unfixable. As a long time Linux user, I decided to switch back, and purchased a powerful laptop to replace it. I did a similar survey of distros, and haven't been happy with any of them. Ubuntu worked fairly well in a vanilla configuration, but as a developer, I prefer a more powerful and customizable desktop UI. My preferred window manager is awesomewm, but trying to get it to integrate with Unity or Gnome-shell is pretty much impossible. If I run just bare awesome, I lose all the power management & audio niceties. I can probably set it all back up, but documentation on how to do so is slim. Additionally, installing newer software than what is provided by apt is a giant pain. You basically have to hope the vendor provides their own apt repository for you to use, and that they've updated it for Zesty. Arch linux was by far my favorite before I switched to OSX ~10 years ago. It always has the latest software available in core. Additionally, AUR provides betas and even more esoteric software. Anything I come across here or on reddit probably already has an AUR package for it, and in the rare case it does not, it is trivial to write a PKGBUILD for it. However, installing Arch is way harder than it used to be, particularly on laptops. There's so much variety and complexity in hardware now, you could spend a month getting everything set up and it still would not be satisfactory. Power management, sound, full-disk-encryption, webcam, display hot-plugging, hardware sensors... I used Fedora for quite awhile on a desktop before I got this laptop, and really enjoyed it. However, the latest Fedora uses wayland for everything, which doesn't work with the closed nvidia drivers, and nouveau on the 1070 in this laptop basically doesn't work. However, `dnf` is 10x better than `apt`, and I found it much easier to find copr repositories for updated software. Maybe I'll revisit once wayland and nvidia work together. I wish there was a distro half-way in between Arch and Ubuntu/Fedora. A nice installer that autodetects and sets up hardware automatically, but still easy to hack on. The problem with the former, though, is you pretty much need the resources of Canonical or Red Hat to get it done. Also, for the record, I love systemd. I've been using unixes for 20 years, and never managed to grok init scripts that I was comfortable creating or modifying them. Systemd (like Upstart and Launchd before it) is a huge improvement over that mess.
eatonphil 10y ago
This is really cool, Drew. I can get behind a lot of the motivations here. I didn't realize clang can't compile Linux. Doas is awesome on OpenBSD and I've been using its port on FreeBSD too. I'm glad to see the Linux port getting more use too. The coolest part about NetBSD for me right now is that you can cross-compile it on other OSs. That's quite a feat. However, OpenBSD has my heart for simplicity of core code. It has become my go-to reference for generic userland and kernel questions. I'll have to follow the guide for installing this sometime. Some great stuff to learn here. Overall, keep up the awesome work. Seriously.

56 points by ddevault 10y ago

torollol 10y ago

yet another anti-systemd troll. haters gonna hate

kbenson 10y ago
While normally I would agree, if the goal is to run your own distro for personal use, you want it to to fit your own needs and abilities as closely as possibly. If you consider systemd to be annoying, or bloated, or complicated, since you're the main and/or only user, that's an extremely valid reason to not use it in that case. The reasoning for a large public distro is different, because most users might not ever even know what they are interacting with, or only interact with it through a few layers, so other features are more important (and in my opinion, where systemd really has some benefits).
- digi_owl 10y ago
  And that may well be the biggest split that has come within the Linux communities in recent years. Across time home grown minimalism and large name distros have largely coexisted in piece. This because large name distros where at its core an expanded home grown minimalist setup. But systemd is shifting all that, because it is clearly built from the ground up with large name distro wants/needs in mind (or maybe it is the wants/needs of big name DEs, with Gnome at the front, and distros have to begrudgingly accept systemd as they want to ship with a big name DE as their default UI), and little else. And as time goes on, it will be harder and harder to find projects that do not expect some part of systemd to be present. And given how systemd is maintained it will be hard to use just those parts and nothing else. More and more systemd seems like a massive case of the tail wagging the dog.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    At some point I think we just have to accept that, like most automobiles, all the things we want come with a complexity cost, and eventually the complexity is too much for the average person, and then too much for even most exceptional people. Compartmentalization helps this somewhat, even if it initially looks like the opposite. You can still build a hot rod without too much advanced knowledge. Want to include anti-lock brakes? What about traction control? What about variable valve timing? At some point even the savants will start acquiring whole systems to drop in as needed, as needed. Systemd is to sysinit what a brand new aluminum or magnesium alloy modern engine is to a 70's cast iron engine. It's not something you want to mess with too much, and it has a bunch of inputs and outputs you probably don't care about, but it's designed for what it's used for. If I was buying a new car, I want the modern engine unless I expect to need to do a bunch of maintenance myself. This is the normal progression technology takes. It's fine to still run your own distro, just as it's fine to build your own car, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking the custom distro not the hot rod are just as good general purpose devices, even if they may well be better for a specific subset of things (and that subset may well fit what you care about).
    - zzzcpan 10y ago
      Wouldn't you expect more decoupling and decentralization with growing complexity instead of a single engine that does everything? It's not like we are constrained by size or weight of an automobile, we can simply agree on some IPC protocol and let everyone have their own managing daemons completely isolated from the rest of the system, that are started and managed by other managing daemons and so on. In fact, this is the only way to make it reliable, otherwise errors in centralized components will affect everything.
      - kbenson 10y ago
        I don't think it is one thing doing everything. It may seem that way if you zoom in to a small portion of what the system does, but it's a fairly contained system that has some parts that extend beyond what you would normally consider it's boundaries to achieve specific goals. The kernel handles hardware abstractions and provides a base interface. Systemd handles system boot and service management.The windowing system (including window manager) handles GUI interaction. Whether you would or could draw the definitions elsewhere doesn't really matter, as the systems are in enough flux (especially recently) that they aren't very static. As features are needed, they shift between those systems (or or even others) to find a place where there are resources to implement it, where it's feasible to to, and where it's efficient to do. Those aspects are weighted differently over time (especially resources available, which is developers with skill and time), so some features will swap between systems. A well defined API between them would be nice, but that's not the type of development that's generally done in open source. It requires a lot more understanding, effort and time up front, and even where there's a will, there those resources don't always exist. Systemd tried to solve a lot of problems, and create new capabilities (or bring them to linux at least). Expecting everything to both have not only have been thought about, but planned, for, tested and accounted for prior to it starting is a tall order. Even if ther had been an exceptional amount of effort put into that, it's likely that other systems (such as the window system or the kernel) would change to offer new capabilities or want to offload some responsibility that they saw as better handled elsewhere. This is where the metaphor breaks down. A car is generally designed in whole by one group (or the systems they integrate are complete and finished), and that doesn't really exist in Linux, since everything is always in flux.
Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
To be fair, I also hate every other init system.
- tehabe 10y ago
  Essentially a perfectionist who can't settle, reminds me of myself. I've made a good experience with Arch Linux, and since I didn't care much about the init system it worked quite well for me. Sadly the hardware didn't so I ended up in another world again. Happens I guess.
- mixedCase 10y ago
  What would you like to see in an init system/service manager?
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    runit but with better code, basically.
    - JdeBP 10y ago
      There are plenty of workalikes available. * http://jdebp.eu./FGA/daemontools-family.html http://jdebp.eu./FGA/daemontools-family.html That said, I disagree with your premise that runit has bad code.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
        Thanks for the link! I'll have a look at these. >That said, I disagree with your premise that runit has bad code. Have you seen it? Bad code may be subjective, but it certainly doesn't come close to my standards.
        JdeBP 10y ago
        Of course I have seen it. A lot of it is the same free Bernstein libraries that have been used by Felix von Leitner, Paul Jarc, Laurent Bercot, et al., with some of the same C1999 modernizations; and that inspired various similar libraries. * http://www.fefe.de/djb/ http://www.fefe.de/djb/ * http://www.skarnet.org/software/skalibs/libstddjb/ http://www.skarnet.org/software/skalibs/libstddjb/ * http://untroubled.org/bglibs/ http://untroubled.org/bglibs/ * http://www.fefe.de/libowfat/ http://www.fefe.de/libowfat/
peterwwillis 10y ago
Systemd sucks, so it's not a troll.

tanderson92 10y ago

One can bootstrap a system with a source-based package manager too. Here[0] is the process for bootstrapping a new architecture on Exherbo Linux. Note that the package manager is built on the host system and installs to the new system. Exherbo supports cross-compiling with multiple concurrent architectures (both called 'multiarch') and installing into non-host environments. A lot of other cool stuff, but the biggest point is that one can do what this blog describes with dependency management taken care of. The other point is that simply by managing the special 'system' set, one can pare down the base system. The OPTIONS flag can reduce system size by minimizing unneeded features (similar to Gentoo's USE). [0]: http://exherbo.org/docs/bootstrapping.html http://exherbo.org/docs/bootstrapping.html

jacobroyquebec 10y ago

What's so wrong about GNU?

thesuitonym 10y ago
This is really a case of "If you have to ask, you'll never know." That's not meant to be derogatory, just that if you don't have a problem with GNU, you won't have a problem with GNU, because there's nothing wrong with it, it's jut a matter of opinion (usually about the GPL).
- jacobroyquebec 10y ago
  Allright! The article nor the FAQ page didn't mention why it was hated so much haha. Thank for the answer!
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    I updated the FQA with some stuff discussed in these comments: https://agunix.org/fqa https://agunix.org/fqa
    - jacobroyquebec 10y ago
      Thanks! BTW, It seems to be a really tedious work, I like the result :)
- regularfry 10y ago
  There are some areas where GNU (particularly glibc) is somewhat bloaty in the code department compared to other implementations. That can, sometimes, matter, but I agree it tends to be a question of taste and not one of morals.
insulanus 10y ago
glibc and buildtools can be a bit of a pain to work with. Maybe he was exposed to that during cross-compilation.

fhood 10y ago

Could someone elaborate on the "cons" the article mentions? I don't totally understand why those would be problems.

tanderson92 10y ago
apt has significant limitations vs. a more flexible package manager. I would never use an apt-based distribution; I would use a Paludis-based distribution: see its feature list for many of the reasons why. Bloat is a concern because I don't want unnecessary system processes running, nor do I want cruft installed that can be done without. Gentoo is good at minimizing cruft, and others in the same spirit as well. Can't help you with systemd and GNU, as I am comfortable with both. The writer seems more like a Gentoo or Exherbo or Arch user than any of the more popular distros. In other words, one of the people who used to use Linux when it wasn't as mainstream.
Veratyr 10y ago
They're mostly matters of personal preference or opinion rather than real issues.
zzzcpan 10y ago
Service, configuration and package management are not solved problems in any distro. It's only normal to list systemd and apt as cons.
Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
I originally went into more depth, but replaced it with a small summary of my motivations. The article is more about making a distro than about agunix itself. See the website for some information about agunix.

davexunit 10y ago

Yet another anti-GNU, anti-systemd article. For folks interested in reading about how distros bootstrap themselves, the GNU Guix manual has some good details: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Bootstrapping.html https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Bootstrap...

Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
No, it's an article about making a new Linux distro, with a brief summary of my motivations. Someday I might write an anti-GNU, anti-systemd article, but this is hardly it.
- davexunit 10y ago
  If you are anti-GNU and anti-systemd, I am highly skeptical of your design choices.

peterwwillis 10y ago

Can somebody explain to me the obsession with static linking? Do these people not realize that performance gains from shared memory between disparate applications hinges on dynamic linking mmap'd libraries and COWing shared memory sections to private on demand, reduces duplicate code, standardizes operations, and simplifies debugging? Has the world gone mad?!

insulanus 10y ago
That is a nice feature, but if code is only 1% of your process image, it doesn't matter.
stonogo 10y ago
Think of it like docker without the network overhead, using the os kernel as kubernetes. Think of it like webworkers with the kernel as the js runtime. Ram is cheap. Complexity is expensive.
- peterwwillis 10y ago
  Multiple different versions of the same software running in the same environment increases complexity. Ram is cheap, loading code into ram wastes cycles and following new or different code paths trashes cpu cache and recent code paths.
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    So far I see only the opposite. Inability to be flexible about multiple versions adds a lot of unnecessary complexity.
Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
Most of the applications you will have running at any given moment probably have few libraries in common. A typical linker will only include in the final executable any functions you require from your dependency as well, which can dramatically reduce the footprint of a piece of software (when considered in combination with its dependencies). Statically linked binaries also load faster and don't break when you have a botched update. My distro does support dynamic linking, but prefers static. In practice the RAM footprint and disk footprint is much, much smaller than any dynamically linked distro I've tried. Avoiding GNU also helps a lot to reduce bloat. Static linking also makes agunix more portable. Stuff like this is possible: https://sr.ht/5HTs.png https://sr.ht/5HTs.png

shmerl 10y ago

Cons include ... systemd. The author doesn't elaborate how it's a con, same as some other examples.

RX14 10y ago
It's clear the author thinks it's a con, but I don't see why this article should justify that, it's a pretty unrelated topic to the one at hand.
- shmerl 10y ago
  The tone of the article suggests it's something obvious and universal, which it's not. So there should have been some elaboration, or at least something like "for my purposes".
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    https://agunix.org/fqa https://agunix.org/fqa
    - shmerl 10y ago
      Most of that sounds quite debatable and a matter of taste. I don't find those arguments objective enough. Calling anything they don't like "bloated" doesn't sound right.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
        Have you ever dug into the internals of GNU tools and compared them to other tools in the same niche? It's self-evident.
skywhopper 10y ago
The one that stumped me was GNU. Do they mean the GPL? GNU userspace? gcc?
- 10y ago

psadauskas 10y ago

My 2012 MBP is getting a bit long in the tooth, and had several software-ish issues that were totally unfixable. As a long time Linux user, I decided to switch back, and purchased a powerful laptop to replace it. I did a similar survey of distros, and haven't been happy with any of them. Ubuntu worked fairly well in a vanilla configuration, but as a developer, I prefer a more powerful and customizable desktop UI. My preferred window manager is awesomewm, but trying to get it to integrate with Unity or Gnome-shell is pretty much impossible. If I run just bare awesome, I lose all the power management & audio niceties. I can probably set it all back up, but documentation on how to do so is slim. Additionally, installing newer software than what is provided by apt is a giant pain. You basically have to hope the vendor provides their own apt repository for you to use, and that they've updated it for Zesty. Arch linux was by far my favorite before I switched to OSX ~10 years ago. It always has the latest software available in core. Additionally, AUR provides betas and even more esoteric software. Anything I come across here or on reddit probably already has an AUR package for it, and in the rare case it does not, it is trivial to write a PKGBUILD for it. However, installing Arch is way harder than it used to be, particularly on laptops. There's so much variety and complexity in hardware now, you could spend a month getting everything set up and it still would not be satisfactory. Power management, sound, full-disk-encryption, webcam, display hot-plugging, hardware sensors... I used Fedora for quite awhile on a desktop before I got this laptop, and really enjoyed it. However, the latest Fedora uses wayland for everything, which doesn't work with the closed nvidia drivers, and nouveau on the 1070 in this laptop basically doesn't work. However, `dnf` is 10x better than `apt`, and I found it much easier to find copr repositories for updated software. Maybe I'll revisit once wayland and nvidia work together. I wish there was a distro half-way in between Arch and Ubuntu/Fedora. A nice installer that autodetects and sets up hardware automatically, but still easy to hack on. The problem with the former, though, is you pretty much need the resources of Canonical or Red Hat to get it done. Also, for the record, I love systemd. I've been using unixes for 20 years, and never managed to grok init scripts that I was comfortable creating or modifying them. Systemd (like Upstart and Launchd before it) is a huge improvement over that mess.

eatonphil 10y ago

This is really cool, Drew. I can get behind a lot of the motivations here. I didn't realize clang can't compile Linux. Doas is awesome on OpenBSD and I've been using its port on FreeBSD too. I'm glad to see the Linux port getting more use too. The coolest part about NetBSD for me right now is that you can cross-compile it on other OSs. That's quite a feat. However, OpenBSD has my heart for simplicity of core code. It has become my go-to reference for generic userland and kernel questions. I'll have to follow the guide for installing this sometime. Some great stuff to learn here. Overall, keep up the awesome work. Seriously.