
Linux Distributions that deserve more Love - testrun
http://www.linuxfederation.com/linux-distributions-love/
======
ollybee
One of the most important things I look for in a Linux distribution or any
software project I may rely on for a long time is it's organisational
structure. Is there a committee, Benevolent Dictator for Life, sponsoring
company etc. It's not exciting stuff but any project wanting people to spend
time and effort on it should make sure they have thought about that stuff and
let people know what to expect.

It would be nice if short reviews like this made some mention of that aspect
of the different distributions.

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fit2rule
I'm intrigued enough by the Timeline view of ROSA that I'm downloading it now
and preparing to boot it on the linuxhack machine I've got just for the
purpose .. this is something I've wanted in a Desktop GUI for decades, and I'm
quite interested in the implementation in ROSA - anyone used it yet, got an
opinion based on experience?

For me, a Temporal interface to the work I've done on the computer is the One
thing missing from modern computer use interfaces. I've always thought that
the primary index key for all data created on the computer should be
date/time, and better tools for querying/navigating on that index should be
developed for users .. but it seems there is some work to be done on making
this interface mechanic sensible to the average user. It'd sure be beneficial
to me anyway - I'm often thinking "what is that file I made last week .. name
forgotten, but I remember _when_ it was, roughly .." while looking for things
- if a Time-weighted interface were oriented towards usability, it would be
quite useful, imho.

~~~
icebraining
Gnome is exploring the same space with Zeitgeist[1] and the Activity Journal,
which are based on the same technology as ROSA's Timeline (Nepomuk).

[1] [http://zeitgeist-project.com/experience/](http://zeitgeist-
project.com/experience/)

~~~
fit2rule
Thanks for the tip -I'll check it out, and now that I know its nepomuk behind
the ROSA Timeline thingy, I can investigate things further without much fuss
.. appreciate the tip!

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kfk
From the article: _if I want to use Arch Linux without banging my head with
the terminal, I should be able to do that_

Look, I got burned by Arch a couple of times and I finally dropped it after 2
years after some crazy nuts updates that broke my system even following the
news section.

HOWEVER, everybody does what they want, that's the point of linux and linux
distros. You can't think like that, you simply can't. If a distro wants you to
do crazy updates, you either do it or you go find another distro. The only
thing I can say in your favor is that if somebody makes a derivative for
simple folks like us, say Chakra, then it's mother distro community should not
ditch on them, it's linux after all.

~~~
jlgaddis
Knowing little about Arch Linux, I dismissed it entirely, even though a good
sysadmin friend uses it exclusively on his laptop.

In my personal life, I first installed Slackware in 1995 but had converted to
Debian by 1997 and I've used that almost exclusively until the last two years
or so (I have one RHEL6 and one FreeBSD server). I have, of course, used RHEL
and Ubuntu previously in my professional life.

About six months ago, I installed Arch Linux on a new Thinkpad W530. I didn't
intend to really _use_ it, I just wanted to see what the fuss was about. It's
stuck around and I'm still running it and I haven't had the first problem with
it.

I'm not gonna be converting everything over to it, obviously, but it works for
me on this laptop (which I do almost 100% of my work on).

YMMV but IWFM.

~~~
clarkm
Well, I hope you're subscribed to the announce mailing list then. Because
breaking changes that require manual intervention _do_ occur, and if you don't
deal with them in a timely manner you'll be SOL.

Waiting until the last minute to port all my init scripts to systemd was
definitely not a good idea.

~~~
nly
They do occur but they're rare. I remember the move from sysvinit to systemd
taking about 10 minutes, and I have a 3 year old Arch install that has never
outright broken on me after an update.

Frankly I remember going through more pain every 6 months from in early Ubuntu
days (although that's a lot better now also).

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drdaeman
Is there anything innovative or just fun in those?

For example, Gobolinux (now dead) tried to restructure the filesystem. NixOS
(pretty obscure) tries to innovate with package management. Vyatta (dead,
don't miss this one) tried to bring Cisco-like look-and-feel CLI for GNU/Linux
based routing. And so on. What's fancy in those mentioned distros - I mean,
except for the packages they have installed and/or pre-configured by default?

~~~
reikonomusha
A long, long time ago when I was learning C++, I remember the Gobolinux folks
were always happy to make new packages ("recipes" as they were called) for me
and add them to the repo. In particular, I remember them kindly adding
Code::Blocks. The people behind it were truly generous with their time, and
Gobo had, in my opinion, absolutely outstanding ideas.

I do wish it took off.

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pstack
While there are occasionally other fun linux distros to toy with for a few
days, I have never found any compelling reason to stray from Debian after it
has served me on the desktop and at the server level for sixteen loyal years.

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TacticalCoder
As a very long time Linux user distributions which I find intriguing are the
ones using the "Nix" package manager.

Nix describes itself as a "purely functional" package manager.

As I understand it you don't need to have admin rights to install package
(something I always found very, very odd since 20 years or so with both .rpm
and .deb based distros: why the heck do I need to be admin to install packages
that basically only one user is ever going to use?).

With Nix you can also install simultaneously several version of the same
package (even for a single user if I understand it correctly).

I really wish something like that would one day "catch up" in the Linux world
and see what gives.

By the way this is in no way a harsh criticism of Debian or anything: I'm a
"20-years long" Linux desktop user and a "Debian die-hard" fan :)

But I find the concept behind Nix really intriguing and apparently there are
regular releases.

~~~
rlpb
> why the heck do I need to be admin to install packages

This is being solved in mainstream distributions by adding another layer of
abstraction, instead of trying to do within "traditional" userspace.

We're rapidly moving towards a multi-VM model (be it full virtualisation or
LXC) where all users "have root" inside their own containers.

Not being able to install the packages you want isn't an issue when you can
quickly and easily create a VM or container and do it in there, all within
your existing userspace privileges on the host system.

It's no longer about who has root on a particular machine. It's now just a
distinction between who manages a system and who uses that system.

If you want to manage a system instead of just using it, you can achieve that
by having your own entire system by spawning a container or VM, rather than
just being limited to your home directory.

The cost in disk space is negligible in today's terms. The cost of memory in a
VM is still significant, but LXC eliminates that issue.

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Joister
I want to throw [1]Crunchbang into the mix. I use it for all my dev VMs.

[1][http://crunchbang.org/](http://crunchbang.org/)

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theboywho
Linux doesn't need more Linux Distributions, Linux needs new Desktop
Environments.

~~~
atmosx
New? More? Really? I beg to differ... I thin it needs the KDE + GNOME +
Englightment + etc. Guys to unite and create 1 full-featured DE, bug-free,
with at set of SOLID applications (mail, browser, etc.) and 1 unified layer
underneath.

But then again, we all know that's not going to happen and licenses is not the
only problem here or anywhere else where you see this kind of fragmentation
(android?).

~~~
dagw
First you say "I beg to differ" then in the very next sentence you suggest
that a large bunch of people should get together and create a new DE. So which
is it?

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pan69
I have been an Ubuntu user since 2005 and been horrified by the Gnome 3 and
Unity desktop disasters and I've been stuck with Ubuntu 11.04 because it's the
last release with Gnome 2. For the past 2 years I have been looking for a new
desktop environment but failed to find something that would fit my basic needs
until I recently tried XUbuntu again, this time version 13.10 and I must say,
I'm blown away. This is what my current desktop looks like:

[http://i.imgur.com/BK2leWF.png](http://i.imgur.com/BK2leWF.png)

No bells, no whistles but a plain a simple desktop for a developer to get
stuff done. I absolutely love the latest Xfce release but more importantly, I
have a stable distribution that's been around for quite some time so I'm
confident I can use this for the next few years to come.

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snarfff
It's nice to see Sabayon mentioned. I've been using it at work for a few years
now. I'd used Gentoo for a long time at home previously, and wanted something
at work that felt like it, but didn't have time for the tedious installation
process, nor the long builds if I suddenly needed to pull in a large number of
packages for other purposes. These are the very issues Sabayon purported to
address with an out-of-the-box setup and a binary package manager. I tried it,
liked it, and have used it since.

The package management tool (Entropy) is nice. It feels a lot like Portage,
but also handles a few other tasks (configuration updates, mirror selection,
etc.) within the tool itself. It's a nice compromise between Portage and the
binary package managers you find in most popular systems.

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gaius
2 Red Hats, a Debian, an Arch and a Gentoo.

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facorreia
Interesting. For my taste, I prefer Linux Mint Cinnamon.

~~~
_sabe_
Hey man, you were pretty fast trying out all those distros already!

~~~
facorreia
No thanks. Life is too short for that. But here it goes anyway. Rosa: modified
in Russia. I don't even want to know what shady things are going on in this
distro. Korora: Fedora-based. Not for me. Chakra: KDE. Nope. Ubuntu Gnome:
could be my second choice. But Ubuntu lost me, at least for the time being.
Sabayon: Gentoo. Nope.

~~~
SirSkidmore
Just because it's modified in Russian makes it shady? That seems a little
ridiculous.

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jbeja
I am using Elementary Os Luna, the best at the moment. No crashes, pleasant to
see and boots and runs pretty fast.

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xfalcox
I'm using Gnome Ubuntu at work, and its a great experience, even on my multi
monitor setup.

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staticelf
I am surprised that no one has mentioned Elementary OS in the comments yet.

~~~
jbeja
I did!.

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wanda
Sad that Bedrock Linux is not on that list. Also, why bother with Sabayon over
Gentoo? If configuring gentoo is too time-consuming just stick to arch or
ubuntu/ubuntu derivative.

~~~
supergauntlet
Source-based distro where you can use binary packages unless you need to build
from source? Sounds good to me.

~~~
ParadigmComplex
I'm not sure I'd describe Bedrock Linux quite like that.

Rather, the idea is that you can install packages from just about any other
distribution, including things which are typically seen as mutually exclusive.
The majority of the system can be comprised of packages from something known
to be stable like Debian or CentOS, while still having easy access to things
like packages from Arch (including Arch's AUR), retain extremely good library
compatibility with popular Ubuntu for precompiled non-distro-provided things
like proprietary software, and still get to leverage the flexibility tools
like Gentoo's portage provides.

So, yes, you could use binary packages unless you need to build from source -
Bedrock Linux can fit that design if you want it to work that way. That's a
perfectly fine way to use it. But I would frame that as one of a number of
ways to go about things, as the system is quite flexible.

~~~
supergauntlet
I was referring to Sabayon but sure.

~~~
ParadigmComplex
Ah, I misunderstood and feel silly. My apologies.

~~~
supergauntlet
Haha I just remembered that you're the primary maintainer of Bedrock. Very
cool idea for a distro, much respect.

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keithpeter
One comment on OA asks why fully free distros left out; Trisquel, Parabola and
I'd add gNewSense 3.0. Unless of course the OA thinks these get enough love
already!

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dlsym
Manjaro ([http://manjaro.org/](http://manjaro.org/)) works great for me. Arch
linux without much pain and with XFCE.

~~~
nly
Looks cool. Does it have access to the Arch repos, or is it actually a full
fork?

~~~
dlsym
It has full access to all arch repos including aur.

Edit: I guess you can think of it like "arch with an installer and configured
desktop environment".

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cliveowen
Deserve, not deserves.

~~~
testrun
noted

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jbeja
They i have nice Logos.

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garrettdreyfus
Yay Sabayon!

