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Funtoo Linux is shutting down
- pxc 2y agoDid MocaccinoOS ever become anything complete and usable? Is that project still related to Funtoo?
- posrgl 2y agoLooks like it's been abandoned. The website hasn't updated since 2022 it seems.
- sleepycatgirl 2y agoThe git repos on the other hand, have latest commits days, or even, hours ago, so I wouldn't call it exactly abandoned.
- oogetyboogety 2y agoEnd of an era. I remember installing funtoo before I went through the handbook to install Gentoo itself
- chrisfosterelli 2y agoIt would be unfortunate to find out your distro of choice will stop existing within a month. I used to run Gentoo but haven't heard of this until today -- do many people use it?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- suby 2y agoUnfortunate for sure, but it should hardly be surprising if you choose a distro with a small userbase and limited set of maintainers. If it's a significant inconvenience for someone, they should re-evaluate their decision making process around their infrastructure / tool use.
- gunapologist99 2y agoYes I used it, but then switched back to Gentoo and now Void and Devuan. It's a great distro but suffered from a slow and difficult on-boarding process and the docs seemed often out of date with the actual distro, sometimes years so. I'd used Gentoo for a long time but struggled with Funtoo to get everything working.
- adrian_b 2y agoI have switched to Gentoo as my main Linux distribution for desktops and laptops around 2003. Gentoo still has reasonably good documentation today, but in the beginning its documentation was really outstanding and I have learned a lot from it. Then, some time more than 10 years ago, perhaps around 2010 or 2011, the Gentoo package system began to have some annoying problems and I have discovered Funtoo at the same time. At that time Funtoo was clearly better, so I have switched to it. I have used Funtoo for about a decade on a large variety of computers with great success. Then, a few years ago, the package system began to have maintenance problems, like packages that were not updated for long periods, becoming obsolete. At that time I have switched back to Gentoo, which I am still using. Due to their great similarity, switching between Gentoo and Funtoo is very easy. Therefore anyone who still uses Funtoo can easily go back to Gentoo with minimal effort. In any case, I am extremely grateful to Daniel Robbins, the creator of Gentoo and Funtoo, for his work. Like also the work of other great contributors to open-source software, it has saved many years of my life that would have been required to duplicate the results of such work.
- quilnux 2y agoI haven't heard of this distro before. What made it unique?
- onli 2y agoHave a look at https://www.funtoo.org/Funtoo_Profiles https://www.funtoo.org/Funtoo_Profiles. Funtoo had a very different way to configure your version of the distribution, especially if you are used to something like Ubuntu. It was a spin on Gentoo, I think later diverging a bit more. And it opted against shipping systemd (ever) and wayland (until tested, say the docs), which is a minus for some and a plus for others, but certainly rare.
- jjmarr 2y agoFor those that don't understand the differences between Funtoo and Gentoo, this is a good summary: https://www.funtoo.org/Wolf_Pack_Philosophy https://www.funtoo.org/Wolf_Pack_Philosophy My understanding is that it was created after the founder of Gentoo had some disagreements about the direction of the distro and forked. Many of the big distinctions (like git instead of rsync for updates; gentoo supports both now) have eroded over time.
- Waterluvian 2y agoI’m honestly not sure I understand any better. I also think we might accomplish more if people could find themselves to being more compromising. Not that we don’t benefit from having a bunch of distros, but perhaps there’s a bit too much segmentation.
- massysett 2y agoThese folks are volunteers giving me stuff for free, so I’m not fit to say what they should be doing with their free time.
- jjmarr 2y agoIt's on-topic when the author said: > Funtoo started as a philosophy to create a fun community of contributors building something great together. For me, it's no longer that so I need to move on to other things. It's clear that his intention was to build a community around his vision and it's always sad to see when that doesn't work out.
- quilnux 2y agoAlthough a bulk of my career has been in the IT space, I've been a developer for a lot longer. I can tell you, anytime you build software as a means to a "community" it never works out. You don't build software to get a "community", you build software and a "community" will eventually evolve around it organically. A developer should never focus on anything beyond the software itself. When you lose focus of the software you are building, the project will suffer. That's been my experience. YMMV.
- whalesalad 2y agoBeen using Linux since 2003, distro hopped like the best of them, and I’ve never heard of this distribution.
- raegis 2y agoI used Gentoo on the Desktop from 2002-2007. It was very popular back then. Daniel Robbins created the project, and later left for personal reasons (IIRC). He tried to return to the project, but some of the leadership was not welcoming, so he forked and created the Funtoo project. I think most people who never used Gentoo would not know about Funtoo.
- joecool1029 2y ago> left for personal reasons Afaik he was hired by Microsoft and didn't have the time to do Gentoo with the new job, so the Gentoo Foundation was setup. When he left Microsoft year or two later he asked to come back but there were disagreements in direction with the Foundation so he created Funtoo instead.
- usr1106 2y agoNever heard of it. The tone in the announcement makes me guess that I did not miss anything > nor am I interested in trying to find one, or hand the project off to someone else. Of course if it's all open source anyone can take over the code base. But why saying "not interested to hand it off"?
- fsckboy 2y agohe founded gentoo to scratch his own itch, ran it for good long while, and handed it off. he founded funtoo based on gentoo to scratch his own itch. So he's been through the search handoff process before. my guess is that funtoo is not popular enough to have a community from which to recruit a bdfl. gentoo is not for everybody, but it was a major achievement, and he did it. funtoo was a little sideproject more tailored to his personal interests. there is simply no reason for so many people here to be criticizing him. sheesh.
- hluska 2y agoYou have replied to the only remotely critical comment in this entire thread and it just asked a few reasonable questions. Did a lot get deleted?
- Aeolun 2y agoI think the reason the critisism comes is because the tone of the post on the forums kinda reads like (to me) ‘fuck you guys, I’m off’. He’s completely within his rights to do so, but it still leaves me feeling offended, and I never even heard of the distro.
- usr1106 2y agoAh, that gives some perspective that he is actually the founder of the much more widely known Gentoo. I don't think that had been mentioned elsewhere at the time.
- mid-kid 2y agoNah, the idea is that if anyone wants to continue it, they can fork it and create their own infrastructure and management, instead of trying to preserve the existing way things are ran.
- usr1106 2y agoThere seems to be rather good documentation, e.g. https://www.funtoo.org/Support_Matrix https://www.funtoo.org/Support_Matrix But excluding systemd it wouldn't have been for me. While I am not a fan of all aspects of the project, it's technically superior to the older/simpler systems.
- Arnavion 2y agoFWIW, OpenRC has a new developer who's interested in adding features that Gentoo and Alpine Linux would like it to have. They were in the Alpine Linux devel IRC channel a few days ago talking about adding support for user services, socket activation, readiness notifications, INI-like declarative syntax for services, etc. https://github.com/navi-desu/openrc/ https://github.com/navi-desu/openrc/
- mid-kid 2y agoWhile it sounds great that it's finally getting some much-needed love, I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of "we need to have everything systemd has". It's good to be opinionated and come up with solutions of your own. Systems work fine without systemd's entire featureset, and it's not openrc's job to be compatible. Out of those you listed, I only think readiness notifications are necessary for the existing OpenRC featureset to work more reliably. I'd rather enshrine a different method of doing user services (for example[1]) instead of having openrc require elogind to take over user session tracking, and I'm not a huge fan of socket activation bloating up the amount of running processes the longer the machine runs, outside of the user's control. [1]: https://github.com/raforg/daemon/ https://github.com/raforg/daemon/
- adrian_b 2y agoThat is debatable, so for many people the fact that a distribution like Gentoo offers the choice between using systemd and not using systemd is a strong argument in favor of using such a Linux distribution.
- jonahbenton 2y agoWas an early Gentoo user, before moving to other distros. Learned so so much from Robbins' incredible build system work and then just tremendous documentation. With all respect to those who continued the project, I see that as his legacy. He started and drove an incredible piece of work. Without opinionating on the latter Gentoo dispute- which I didn't follow but superficially from what I saw was sympathetic to Robbins- my sense was that Funtoo was literally just a rebound project. Surprised it lasted this long...but maybe it took this long for all of the spirit that drove Gentoo to reach its natural conclusion. Just factless psychological speculation, but things like that happen when project breaks occur.
- onli 2y agoIt's sad to see Funtoo go, especially with so little of an explanation. I used it for a while, it was quite interesting! Without knowing too much about Gentoo it clearly had influence from there, you compiled your software locally almost always, safe some binary packages for the browser (optional, but they'd take too long). A good system to apply patches, fitting for the suckless terminal for example. And a powerful set of tools to manage the system. It then worked as a very configurable, but stable distribution. Mostly current packages, just despite the rolling release model not necessarily bleeding edge, which is a good compromise. And Funtoo kept out systemd, which was great. Even if you like systemd you might respect the thought that monocultures are not a good thing, alternative efforts always need to exist and should be fostered. Like Funtoo. Flaws for me were the slowness of the package manager when calculating dependencies and that compiling everything is in the end just an unreasonable effort, especially on aging hardware.
- mech422 2y agoDrobbins founded both gentoo and funtoo - so they're bound to be very similar. He basically fell in love with BSD 'ports' back around 2000, and decided to build (two!) distro's based around the idea in it...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- reanimus 2y agoThis sort of situation is why I've been hesitant to try smaller Linux distros in the past, especially for daily drivers or any sort of long term use. The allure of innovative features and modernity tends to be weighed against the long-term prospects and likelihood of longevity. That being said, I did think funtoo would be around longer. I totally get the motivation; if a volunteer hobby isn't doing it for you, you ought to be free to let it go. I'm sure that the remaining dev/user base is perfectly free to fork off and rename to maintain the spirit of the distro too.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago> The allure of innovative features and modernity tends to be weighed against the long-term prospects and likelihood of longevity. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Gentoo_Linux_derivatives&diffonly=true#Funtoo https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Gentoo_Li... says it's 16 years old; I think it did just fine.
- reanimus 2y agoThere are much more long-lived distros still around as well... But really, I meant more the danger of having the distro die without any clear plan for transition. In Funtoo's case it was less a matter of how long it would be around as much as what the plan would be if the BDFL decided they're done.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago> In Funtoo's case it was less a matter of how long it would be around as much as what the plan would be if the BDFL decided they're done. Good point; it's less a matter of time per se and more of structure and governance; a project with a single person point of failure is likely to have weaker long-term prospects than a project with a higher bus factor even if the latter is younger.
- pxc 2y agoOne of my all-time favorite Linux distros is a long-defunct Gentoo derivative called Sabayon which I daily drove for years. I don't regret it in the slightest! It was a great distro. I'd much rather see what a unique or otherwise outstanding distro has to teach me by relying on it thoroughly for a while, even if it's small, and even if it doesn't last a decade. The most established distros are pretty much all the same as each other anyway so it's not like you'll miss much.
- tester457 2y agoI've never used funtoo but I like their tool keychain. > Keychain helps you to manage SSH and GPG keys in a convenient and secure manner. It acts as a frontend to ssh-agent and ssh-add, but allows you to easily have one long running ssh-agent process per system, rather than the norm of one ssh-agent per login session. > This dramatically reduces the number of times you need to enter your passphrase. With keychain, you only need to enter a passphrase once every time your local machine is rebooted. https://www.funtoo.org/Funtoo:Keychain https://www.funtoo.org/Funtoo:Keychain
- mid-kid 2y agoI used funtoo a bit back in the day, and have seen a few of the development videos that drobbins posted. While some funtoo features have been backported to portage and gentoo (git support in portage, distribution kernels), I wish more would be. Funtoo had some higher-level ebuild generation utilities and similar nice things that I wish would eventually be made more generally available. Out of the nice utilities that funtoo has, keychain is the only one I've seen become available across all distributions, and I use this on every single machine. It's less of a necessity now that systemd can handle gpg-agent and ssh-agent unlocking on login, but I've never been able to figure out how to set that up, keychain is very set-and-forget. It just works.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- SushiHippie 2y agoIsn't this basically what gnome keyring does? I disabled the ssh and gpg functionality of it, and use gnome keyring only for programs that need it to store login information. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GNOME/Keyring#SSH_keys https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GNOME/Keyring#SSH_keys
- bjgiusg 2y ago[dead]