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What a glorious piece of history. I wonder what other "scratching my itch" solutions became so mainstream that people forgot about the original authors.

Foxboron 1y ago
I think all of todays popular Linux distros, Debian, Gentoo, Fedora, Arch, SUSE and so on, are all very much "scratching my itch" projects that somehow managed to outlive the original authors engagement with the project. It's not like any of them where planning to be used by millions of people.
- kryptiskt 1y ago
  Fedora wasn't like that, it was spun out of Red Hat when they went enterprise only with RHEL.
- lproven 1y ago
  Yes and no. I realise that to younger members of the Linux community they're all from long ago, but they're not the same age. There aren't really clear generations in Linux distros, but as an approximation: Debian is pretty old, but it's a 2nd gen distro, borne from dissatisfaction with the very early SLS. So was Slackware, but it took SLS and improved it. Slackware is arguably the oldest surviving distro. SuSE has roots as a German version of Slackware. Red Hat's package manager was bolted on later. Gentoo and Arch are relatively modern, being 21st century projects. Arguably, they're 3rd gen. Fedora is a 4th gen distro, younger than any of the others here. Its ancestor was Red Hat Linux, which was contemporaneous with Debian -- but was left behind by Debian's technical encancements: in 1996 or so, Debian introduced `apt`, a package manager with automatic recursive dependency resolution. This put it far in the lead of Red Hat, which still only had RPM and no dependency resolution. Red Hat went in another direction. Red Hat Linux 7 became RHEL, a commercial, paid-for, supported distro. The free RHL went on for 2 more versions, reaching Red Hat Linux 9, which then became Fedora Core, version 1 of the free unsupported community distro. RHL was killed off after v9.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    As I understood the story as an analyst at the time, Red Hat’s intention was to just kill RHL after a decent interval but there was sufficient outcry that they came out with Fedora. But I’m sure there are many different recollections and variants of the Fedora was planned all along story told over the years that the “truth” is probably pretty elusive at this point.
  - Foxboron 1y ago
    > Debian is pretty old, but it's a 2nd gen distro, borne from dissatisfaction with the very early SLS. Scratches their own itch, check. > So was Slackware, but it took SLS and improved it. Slackware is arguably the oldest surviving distro. Itch scratching, check. >SuSE has roots as a German version of Slackware. Red Hat's package manager was bolted on later. Pretty sure this was itch scratching as well. > Gentoo and Arch are relatively modern, being 21st century projects. Arguably, they're 3rd gen. Both are itch scratching projects! > Fedora is a 4th gen distro, younger than any of the others here. Its ancestor was Red Hat Linux, which was contemporaneous with Debian -- but was left behind by Debian's technical encancements: in 1996 or so, Debian introduced `apt`, a package manager with automatic recursive dependency resolution. This put it far in the lead of Red Hat, which still only had RPM and no dependency resolution. Arch and Gentoo are from 2002, and Fedora from 2003. Fedora was based on someone starting to package FOSS software for RHEL, more itch scratching!
  - qiine 1y ago
    what about nixOS ? third gen as well ?
    - daeken 1y ago
      In this kind of hierarchy, I'd personally say fedora is third gen (due to it being so similar to Redhat) and that nixOS is fourth gen. Both came out around the same time, but took such vastly different routes with different kinds of itch scratching.
      - lproven 1y ago

Foxboron 1y ago

I think all of todays popular Linux distros, Debian, Gentoo, Fedora, Arch, SUSE and so on, are all very much "scratching my itch" projects that somehow managed to outlive the original authors engagement with the project. It's not like any of them where planning to be used by millions of people.

kryptiskt 1y ago
Fedora wasn't like that, it was spun out of Red Hat when they went enterprise only with RHEL.
lproven 1y ago
Yes and no. I realise that to younger members of the Linux community they're all from long ago, but they're not the same age. There aren't really clear generations in Linux distros, but as an approximation: Debian is pretty old, but it's a 2nd gen distro, borne from dissatisfaction with the very early SLS. So was Slackware, but it took SLS and improved it. Slackware is arguably the oldest surviving distro. SuSE has roots as a German version of Slackware. Red Hat's package manager was bolted on later. Gentoo and Arch are relatively modern, being 21st century projects. Arguably, they're 3rd gen. Fedora is a 4th gen distro, younger than any of the others here. Its ancestor was Red Hat Linux, which was contemporaneous with Debian -- but was left behind by Debian's technical encancements: in 1996 or so, Debian introduced `apt`, a package manager with automatic recursive dependency resolution. This put it far in the lead of Red Hat, which still only had RPM and no dependency resolution. Red Hat went in another direction. Red Hat Linux 7 became RHEL, a commercial, paid-for, supported distro. The free RHL went on for 2 more versions, reaching Red Hat Linux 9, which then became Fedora Core, version 1 of the free unsupported community distro. RHL was killed off after v9.
- ghaff 1y ago
  As I understood the story as an analyst at the time, Red Hat’s intention was to just kill RHL after a decent interval but there was sufficient outcry that they came out with Fedora. But I’m sure there are many different recollections and variants of the Fedora was planned all along story told over the years that the “truth” is probably pretty elusive at this point.
- Foxboron 1y ago
  > Debian is pretty old, but it's a 2nd gen distro, borne from dissatisfaction with the very early SLS. Scratches their own itch, check. > So was Slackware, but it took SLS and improved it. Slackware is arguably the oldest surviving distro. Itch scratching, check. >SuSE has roots as a German version of Slackware. Red Hat's package manager was bolted on later. Pretty sure this was itch scratching as well. > Gentoo and Arch are relatively modern, being 21st century projects. Arguably, they're 3rd gen. Both are itch scratching projects! > Fedora is a 4th gen distro, younger than any of the others here. Its ancestor was Red Hat Linux, which was contemporaneous with Debian -- but was left behind by Debian's technical encancements: in 1996 or so, Debian introduced `apt`, a package manager with automatic recursive dependency resolution. This put it far in the lead of Red Hat, which still only had RPM and no dependency resolution. Arch and Gentoo are from 2002, and Fedora from 2003. Fedora was based on someone starting to package FOSS software for RHEL, more itch scratching!
- qiine 1y ago
  what about nixOS ? third gen as well ?
  - daeken 1y ago
    In this kind of hierarchy, I'd personally say fedora is third gen (due to it being so similar to Redhat) and that nixOS is fourth gen. Both came out around the same time, but took such vastly different routes with different kinds of itch scratching.
    - lproven 1y ago