4 ms·

> Good system. No bullshit, and brave choices. Maybe if by "brave choices" you mean "finding creative new reasons to remove things", e.g. (in no particular ord

> Good system. No bullshit, and brave choices. Maybe if by "brave choices" you mean "finding creative new reasons to remove things", e.g. (in no particular order): - https://www.hyperbola.info/news/removal-of-php/ https://www.hyperbola.info/news/removal-of-php/ (no PHP) - https://www.hyperbola.info/news/end-of-java-openjdk-support/ https://www.hyperbola.info/news/end-of-java-openjdk-support/ (no Java) - https://www.hyperbola.info/news/end-of-d-bus-support/ https://www.hyperbola.info/news/end-of-d-bus-support/ (no DBus) - https://www.hyperbola.info/news/no-support-for-sudo-and-oriented-towards-init-freedom/ https://www.hyperbola.info/news/no-support-for-sudo-and-orie... (no sudo) - https://www.hyperbola.info/news/no-support-for-projects-with-freedom-flaws/ https://www.hyperbola.info/news/no-support-for-projects-with... (no rust, no Chromium) Perhaps in a few years Hyperbola will reach its final, perfect state: a distribution which contains no packages at all, thereby providing users with a perfectly Free and perfectly secure system.

anthk 2y ago
I use it daily. For java, I've just set the JDK by hand, as I'm learning it for a future job, but I plan to ditch it after I have no use for it at home. No Sudo? Doas does it fine under OpenBSD. And so does Hyperbola. On Chromium... gven the future Google choices on extensions (hint: UBlock will either no work at all, or be severely limited) and current telemetry, that's a good riddance. You can just use Luakit, or Iceweasel-UXP up to a limit.
- hobobaggins 2y ago
  Can you install chromium-derivatives like Brave?
enriquto 2y ago
> Perhaps in a few years Hyperbola will reach its final, perfect state There's still a long way to go. The elephant in the room, prudently sidestepped by the hyperbola community, is the removal of dynamic linking. Now that would be a great, but difficult, brave choice. Most of the other removals (except the removal of dbus, which is mind-boggingly awesome) are fairly isolated stuff. Fortunately, they are steadily taking steps in the right direction!
- machinestops 2y ago
  See https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis for a proof of concept. No dynamic linking locks you out of Clang+LLVM (mostly: static clang isn't an officially supported configuration, but it can probably be forced to exist. I haven't properly looked into it yet.), Firefox, Chromium, QtWebEngine, (so no alt browsers, either), and probably a lot more. Statically linking every single package out there requires a lot of patches to build systems to get them to properly do it. Many build systems don't respect LDFLAGS and CFLAGS, or respect one or the other, or only partially respect them, causing a great deal of annoyance if you have a nonstandard desired result, such as fully static builds.
  - enriquto 2y ago
    > Many build systems don't respect LDFLAGS and CFLAGS, or respect one or the other, or only partially respect them, causing a great deal of annoyance Sounds good, doesn't it? This means that efforts to produce a fully static distribution would imply a sweeping wave of fixes across a wide range of packages and build systems!
    - chasil 2y ago
      But your ideal UNIX has already come and gone. "[Ultrix] never supported shared libraries or dynamically linked executables." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrix https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrix
      - anthk 2y ago
        9front/plan9. Unix 2.0.
    - machinestops 2y ago
      The path of least resistance is to jam flags where they don't belong, sed patches, etc. Works well enough, so that's what ends up happening.
hobobaggins 2y ago
Honestly, most of those seem like strong marks in favor of Hyperbola! :) Now I'm wondering how easy it is to keep it automatically updated/maintained and how often config or packages break during upgrade.
LegionMammal978 2y ago
It's really weird that they target projects like PHP for their trademark policy, when the GPL itself contains no language allowing you to use an upstream project's trademark. In fact, the GPL explicitly grants you the ability to impose trademark restrictions on code you add to GPL code. For instance, Firefox is distributed under the similarly copyleft MPL, but Debian still had to distribute its version as Iceweasel until Mozilla gave its approval. (Also, seriously? Policing users' email providers in their mailing list [0]? Write all the blog posts you want, but banning addresses is just silly.) [0] https://www.hyperbola.info/news/hyperbola-rejects-all-email-domains-under-global-mass-surveillance-from-the-mailing-lists/ https://www.hyperbola.info/news/hyperbola-rejects-all-email-...
worik 2y ago
Curious to see why "no Rust" I followed the link https://www.hyperbola.info/news/no-support-for-projects-with-freedom-flaws/ https://www.hyperbola.info/news/no-support-for-projects-with... "...problematic trademarks". Say what? There is a link: https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_trademark https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_t... Follow that... Permission Denied Sorry, you don't have enough rights to continue. Really? Yougottabekiddingme....
- anthk 2y ago
  https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_issues https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_i...
- sourcepluck 2y ago
  I thought Rust's trademark-related controversy was pretty well-known. Here: https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/rust_foundation_apologizes_trademark_policy/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/rust_foundation_apolo... Also, does this link from the wiki not work for you? https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_issues https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_i...
- PotatoPancakes 2y ago
  Try this page, called "Rust's problems and concerns": https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_issues https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_i... In short, the Rust Foundation does not permit users to redistribute modified versions of Rust/Cargo without their explicit approval.
  - duskwuff 2y ago
    And, zooming out a bit: the reason Hyperbola wanted to modify Rust / Cargo was to prevent it from being used to compile non-free software ("[we wanted] to have Cargo removed as otherwise non-free packages could be used from projects being compiled"). This feels misguided. If you're in the position of adding limitations to software or stripping out features to keep the user from using it with nonfree software, you've lost track of why that software freedom mattered in the first place.
nemoniac 2y ago
Well that's a bit snarky but there is an element of truth to it. I'm reminded of the first line of the old spec for the Scheme programming language. "Programming languages should be designed not by piling feature on top of feature, but by removing the weaknesses and restrictions that make additional features appear necessary." https://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/r4rs_2.html#SEC2 https://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/r4rs_2.html#SEC2

anthk 2y ago

I use it daily. For java, I've just set the JDK by hand, as I'm learning it for a future job, but I plan to ditch it after I have no use for it at home. No Sudo? Doas does it fine under OpenBSD. And so does Hyperbola. On Chromium... gven the future Google choices on extensions (hint: UBlock will either no work at all, or be severely limited) and current telemetry, that's a good riddance. You can just use Luakit, or Iceweasel-UXP up to a limit.

hobobaggins 2y ago
Can you install chromium-derivatives like Brave?

enriquto 2y ago

> Perhaps in a few years Hyperbola will reach its final, perfect state There's still a long way to go. The elephant in the room, prudently sidestepped by the hyperbola community, is the removal of dynamic linking. Now that would be a great, but difficult, brave choice. Most of the other removals (except the removal of dbus, which is mind-boggingly awesome) are fairly isolated stuff. Fortunately, they are steadily taking steps in the right direction!

machinestops 2y ago
See https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis https://github.com/oasislinux/oasis for a proof of concept. No dynamic linking locks you out of Clang+LLVM (mostly: static clang isn't an officially supported configuration, but it can probably be forced to exist. I haven't properly looked into it yet.), Firefox, Chromium, QtWebEngine, (so no alt browsers, either), and probably a lot more. Statically linking every single package out there requires a lot of patches to build systems to get them to properly do it. Many build systems don't respect LDFLAGS and CFLAGS, or respect one or the other, or only partially respect them, causing a great deal of annoyance if you have a nonstandard desired result, such as fully static builds.
- enriquto 2y ago
  > Many build systems don't respect LDFLAGS and CFLAGS, or respect one or the other, or only partially respect them, causing a great deal of annoyance Sounds good, doesn't it? This means that efforts to produce a fully static distribution would imply a sweeping wave of fixes across a wide range of packages and build systems!
  - chasil 2y ago
    But your ideal UNIX has already come and gone. "[Ultrix] never supported shared libraries or dynamically linked executables." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrix https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrix
    - anthk 2y ago
      9front/plan9. Unix 2.0.
  - machinestops 2y ago
    The path of least resistance is to jam flags where they don't belong, sed patches, etc. Works well enough, so that's what ends up happening.

hobobaggins 2y ago

Honestly, most of those seem like strong marks in favor of Hyperbola! :) Now I'm wondering how easy it is to keep it automatically updated/maintained and how often config or packages break during upgrade.

LegionMammal978 2y ago

It's really weird that they target projects like PHP for their trademark policy, when the GPL itself contains no language allowing you to use an upstream project's trademark. In fact, the GPL explicitly grants you the ability to impose trademark restrictions on code you add to GPL code. For instance, Firefox is distributed under the similarly copyleft MPL, but Debian still had to distribute its version as Iceweasel until Mozilla gave its approval. (Also, seriously? Policing users' email providers in their mailing list [0]? Write all the blog posts you want, but banning addresses is just silly.) [0] https://www.hyperbola.info/news/hyperbola-rejects-all-email-domains-under-global-mass-surveillance-from-the-mailing-lists/ https://www.hyperbola.info/news/hyperbola-rejects-all-email-...

worik 2y ago

Curious to see why "no Rust" I followed the link https://www.hyperbola.info/news/no-support-for-projects-with-freedom-flaws/ https://www.hyperbola.info/news/no-support-for-projects-with... "...problematic trademarks". Say what? There is a link: https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_trademark https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_t... Follow that... Permission Denied Sorry, you don't have enough rights to continue. Really? Yougottabekiddingme....

anthk 2y ago
https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_issues https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_i...
sourcepluck 2y ago
I thought Rust's trademark-related controversy was pretty well-known. Here: https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/rust_foundation_apologizes_trademark_policy/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/rust_foundation_apolo... Also, does this link from the wiki not work for you? https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_issues https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_i...
PotatoPancakes 2y ago
Try this page, called "Rust's problems and concerns": https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_issues https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_i... In short, the Rust Foundation does not permit users to redistribute modified versions of Rust/Cargo without their explicit approval.
- duskwuff 2y ago
  And, zooming out a bit: the reason Hyperbola wanted to modify Rust / Cargo was to prevent it from being used to compile non-free software ("[we wanted] to have Cargo removed as otherwise non-free packages could be used from projects being compiled"). This feels misguided. If you're in the position of adding limitations to software or stripping out features to keep the user from using it with nonfree software, you've lost track of why that software freedom mattered in the first place.

nemoniac 2y ago

Well that's a bit snarky but there is an element of truth to it. I'm reminded of the first line of the old spec for the Scheme programming language. "Programming languages should be designed not by piling feature on top of feature, but by removing the weaknesses and restrictions that make additional features appear necessary." https://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/r4rs_2.html#SEC2 https://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/r4rs_2.html#SEC2