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The thing I don’t understand about these specialty distros is what they offer over eg normal Debian, plus install Fluxbox/Openbox/AwesomeWM/i3 and use that inst

by jitl 3y ago

The thing I don’t understand about these specialty distros is what they offer over eg normal Debian, plus install Fluxbox/Openbox/AwesomeWM/i3 and use that instead of Gnome. I did this with Ubuntu for years and was very happy to have a very well supported distro with a huge community and many learning resources, plus my efficient highly customized login session of Openbox + Rox on top. The upside of using my own desktop configs is that I can stand up my personal desktop session on top of any distro that offers Openbox and Roxterm by cloning my Dotfiles git repo and symlinking some configs. Is this kind of specialty distro “just” a very fancy and high labor way to share some dotfiles? All too often these hobby distros die off unmaintained — it just doesn’t seem to be worth it to adopt one. This one uses runit which I like, but I don’t really care about init system as long as it’s a supervisor.

doix 3y ago
> Is this kind of specialty distro “just” a very fancy and high labor way to share some dotfiles? > This one uses runit which I like, but I don’t really care about init system as long as it’s a supervisor. I mean, changing init system isn't the same as changing a window manager. It's probably one of the few things that does matter between distros. And systemd isn't just an init system, it's a whole load of other stuff that comes bundled. It might be enough for some one to choose one of these specialist distros. Personally I just gave in and accepted systemd into my life and that I'll probably never be able to debug any problems. Luckily the days of figuring out why my Linux desktop won't boot are much less frequent than 20 years ago.
benj111 3y ago
You're getting a working whole though. I've always found that if you really strip down a distro something breaks. Either, uninstalling something wants to uninstall the entirety of gnome, or an installation wants to pull in the entirety of the KDE desktop, or you get weird breakages. Plus I 'upgraded' crunchbang Linux (rip) to Debian, probably wouldn't work with a different init system though. Plus plus. Debian is/was a 'hobby' distro, same with arch, same with Gentoo.
- jitl 3y ago
  Debian, Arch, Gentoo are not going to die off in the way "dotfile distros" like Cruchbang did, or this thingy will.
  - tentacleuno 3y ago
    You seem to be fairly confident that antiX is going to shut down. Do you have some inside knowledge, or is it just a baseless assumption?
    - jitl 3y ago
      False dichotomy - it’s a risk assessment. Distros take work to maintain. The fewer people there are in a community, the less likely there will be people who want to do that work. Maybe the AntiX developers remain committed for the next 10 years, I hope so, I like the feature set and the mission. But I’ve seen enough niche distros halt development - and been burned before by Crunchbang - to be wary of them. I haven’t seen a distro of Debian’s scale stop development yet.

by jitl 3y ago

doix 3y ago

> Is this kind of specialty distro “just” a very fancy and high labor way to share some dotfiles? > This one uses runit which I like, but I don’t really care about init system as long as it’s a supervisor. I mean, changing init system isn't the same as changing a window manager. It's probably one of the few things that does matter between distros. And systemd isn't just an init system, it's a whole load of other stuff that comes bundled. It might be enough for some one to choose one of these specialist distros. Personally I just gave in and accepted systemd into my life and that I'll probably never be able to debug any problems. Luckily the days of figuring out why my Linux desktop won't boot are much less frequent than 20 years ago.

benj111 3y ago

You're getting a working whole though. I've always found that if you really strip down a distro something breaks. Either, uninstalling something wants to uninstall the entirety of gnome, or an installation wants to pull in the entirety of the KDE desktop, or you get weird breakages. Plus I 'upgraded' crunchbang Linux (rip) to Debian, probably wouldn't work with a different init system though. Plus plus. Debian is/was a 'hobby' distro, same with arch, same with Gentoo.

jitl 3y ago
Debian, Arch, Gentoo are not going to die off in the way "dotfile distros" like Cruchbang did, or this thingy will.
- tentacleuno 3y ago
  You seem to be fairly confident that antiX is going to shut down. Do you have some inside knowledge, or is it just a baseless assumption?
  - jitl 3y ago
    False dichotomy - it’s a risk assessment. Distros take work to maintain. The fewer people there are in a community, the less likely there will be people who want to do that work. Maybe the AntiX developers remain committed for the next 10 years, I hope so, I like the feature set and the mission. But I’ve seen enough niche distros halt development - and been burned before by Crunchbang - to be wary of them. I haven’t seen a distro of Debian’s scale stop development yet.