4 ms·

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

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
      Yeah, that sounds about right. Gentoo and Arch are different takes on the same ways to build a distro. Gentoo took the FreeBSD ports tree model and applied it to Linux: still relatively conventional packages, but they're source and you compile the whole thing each time. Arch, still conventional packages, but no fixed release cycle. Nix throws all that, and the directory tree, out. Slackware: tarballs are good enough, they're all my dad and grandad ever needed. RHL: we'll have a package format, where packages can depend on others. Debian: we'll take the RH idea, but make a tool that can go fetch and install what's needed by what you asked for. Nix: you don't need to worry about stuff like packages or where stuff is. Tell us what you want and we will make it happen. (But you won't like the disk layout, so don't look.) Guix: we'll do Nix but with Scheme. AppImage: hey, you know Acorn did that apps-as-bundles thing first? And it's on Linux as ROX? What if we just zip up the bundles and mount them on demand? Flatpak: that sounds too hard, dude. But we all agree Git's cool, right? So, what if we could, like, distribute apps over Git? Gobo: all this packaging and dependency stuff is BS because you're still using a disk layout you improvised on the fly on some 1960s minicomputer with like 20 tiny little hard disks. Here, let's do a clean modern layout like NeXTstep did, but for the whole OS, then you don't really need a packaging tool any more. It's all just bundles, all the way down. But they're versioned. Just copy what you need. (Entire rest of Linux world) Waah! But mah FHS! If I don't have my FHS then I won't compile! Gobo: OK, OK, I'll fake it with symlinks for you, then hide it. Snap: hey, app bundles sounds good, but let's compress them into single files and mount them when needed. Bunch of symlinks and you'll hardly be able to see the joins.
- rconti 1y ago
  > Red Hat went in another direction. Red Hat Linux 7 became RHEL, a commercial, paid-for, supported distro. This was the second time we had a Red Hat 7, though.
- michaelmrose 1y ago
  Going to have to disagree with the chronology. Fedora and RHL isn't a substantial divergence and it belongs with SuSE based on its 1995 roots. Fedora DID diverge substantially but not when they slapped a new label on the same tin. Arguably Ubuntu/Mint Make up a 4th generation and Nix/Qubes/and Silverblue are 5th
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Slackware 2.0 in 1995's Summer was my first distro, it came with the first edition of Linux Unleashed book. For the younger in the audience that is how we distributed software back in the day, floppies, CDs and DVDs, alongside books and computer magazines. Very few people had the means to go online, let alone connections able to download a complete distribution.

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
    Yeah, that sounds about right. Gentoo and Arch are different takes on the same ways to build a distro. Gentoo took the FreeBSD ports tree model and applied it to Linux: still relatively conventional packages, but they're source and you compile the whole thing each time. Arch, still conventional packages, but no fixed release cycle. Nix throws all that, and the directory tree, out. Slackware: tarballs are good enough, they're all my dad and grandad ever needed. RHL: we'll have a package format, where packages can depend on others. Debian: we'll take the RH idea, but make a tool that can go fetch and install what's needed by what you asked for. Nix: you don't need to worry about stuff like packages or where stuff is. Tell us what you want and we will make it happen. (But you won't like the disk layout, so don't look.) Guix: we'll do Nix but with Scheme. AppImage: hey, you know Acorn did that apps-as-bundles thing first? And it's on Linux as ROX? What if we just zip up the bundles and mount them on demand? Flatpak: that sounds too hard, dude. But we all agree Git's cool, right? So, what if we could, like, distribute apps over Git? Gobo: all this packaging and dependency stuff is BS because you're still using a disk layout you improvised on the fly on some 1960s minicomputer with like 20 tiny little hard disks. Here, let's do a clean modern layout like NeXTstep did, but for the whole OS, then you don't really need a packaging tool any more. It's all just bundles, all the way down. But they're versioned. Just copy what you need. (Entire rest of Linux world) Waah! But mah FHS! If I don't have my FHS then I won't compile! Gobo: OK, OK, I'll fake it with symlinks for you, then hide it. Snap: hey, app bundles sounds good, but let's compress them into single files and mount them when needed. Bunch of symlinks and you'll hardly be able to see the joins.
rconti 1y ago
> Red Hat went in another direction. Red Hat Linux 7 became RHEL, a commercial, paid-for, supported distro. This was the second time we had a Red Hat 7, though.
michaelmrose 1y ago
Going to have to disagree with the chronology. Fedora and RHL isn't a substantial divergence and it belongs with SuSE based on its 1995 roots. Fedora DID diverge substantially but not when they slapped a new label on the same tin. Arguably Ubuntu/Mint Make up a 4th generation and Nix/Qubes/and Silverblue are 5th
pjmlp 1y ago
Slackware 2.0 in 1995's Summer was my first distro, it came with the first edition of Linux Unleashed book. For the younger in the audience that is how we distributed software back in the day, floppies, CDs and DVDs, alongside books and computer magazines. Very few people had the means to go online, let alone connections able to download a complete distribution.