4 ms·
One of the requirements on Bedrock Linux is the requirement that it can be developed and maintained by an individual - me. I've gotten plenty of help but I've
by ParadigmComplex 13y ago
One of the requirements on Bedrock Linux is the requirement that it can be developed and maintained by an individual - me. I've gotten plenty of help but I've been firm that in case the help dries up the project never grows out of the scope of what I can do alone. Another requirement is that the project actually get to a usable state - I actually want (and now have) what Bedrock Linux promises; I don't want it to remain some theoretical academic solution. Finally, it should stabilize - I don't want to have to maintain forks of anything, or continuously work against the tide of changes in the rest of the F/OSS world. Given that, I don't think there is a completely aesthetically pleasing way to go about doing what Bedrock Linux aims to do.
There are potentially cleaner approaches, but they require immensely more manpower than I could seriously consider mustering. There are options such as writing and upstreaming new system calls to implement some sort of union-filesystem/chroot() mix, which, based on past attempts to upstream a union filesystem into the kernel, won't happen. Other approach is to altering/packaging every single package I am interested in - including proprietary software - so that they play nicely together. Nix/NixOS is making an admirable attempt here, but they don't have the manpower to package enough things. For now, Nix is, sadly, academic.
Personally, I find that while it isn't the simplest system from a high-level design point of view, Bedrock Linux's approach is by far the most practical solution to the problem I aimed to remedy. And it works, and I'm running it now. It is certainly not for everyone or for every use case. I made it for my own uses, which it serves admirably. Enough people seemed interested that I made it available publicly. You're welcome to continue using whatever software stack you prefer - I don't intend to snag everyone. Or even very many people. I'm happy to be the only one using it. However, I do aim to share if there are others out there interested in it.
- tel 13y agoI was wondering if this was influenced by Nix. I believe they're really on to something with that system, but it's tremendously tricky to use at this point in time.
- ParadigmComplex 13y agoBedrock Linux wasn't influenced by Nix. When I started working on what ended up being Bedrock Linux, I wasn't familiar with Nix. Both projects are going about things in very different manners. Nix's is a lot cleaner, but will take a lot more manpower or time to get to the point where I could use NixOS as my primary system. I agree that they're on to something - I'd love for Nix project to take off.
- virtualritz 13y agoJust out of curiosity: why did you choose Portage over Paludis?
- ParadigmComplex 13y agoBedrock Linux can use either (or both!) portage and paludis just fine. What Bedrock Linux does is at a lower-level below package managers - in theory, it should work with just about every package manager out there. When listing examples of what Bedrock Linux can do I usually list portage as it is better known.