New Linux Distribution — Exherbo, Announced

An anonymous reader writes "Former Gentoo developer Bryan Østergaard recently announced a new linux distribution aptly named Exherbo. The distribution, which has been underway for a couple of months and is based on ideas and experiences from his long work with Gentoo, features a new packaging format and several subprojects, such as a redesigned init system. Currently no installation medium is available but their package tree is public for the daring ones who want to play with the upcoming distribution. The developers strongly discourage any serious use though, as it's still highly experimental."

Cool....

[LWATCDR (28044)]

A new package format. Just what we need.
Man I have to admit that after reading the site I really want noting to do with this distro. Why is it even on Slashdot? ... Oh well must be a slow day.

Re:Cool....

[by Anonymous Coward]

> Man I have to admit that after reading the site I really want noting to do with this distro.

That's good, because this distro wants nothing to do with you.

Re:Cool....

[LWATCDR (28044)]

Or anybody else for that matter.

Re:Cool....

[CrazedWalrus (901897)]

I wonder why the hell this was even "announced" anyway. From the web site, it's incredibly obvious that this is a pet project by a few developers who just want to try some stuff out. Why is this on Slashdot? They don't want or need any outside involvement.

From the site:

OK, I Want to Try Exherbo

No you don't.

Yes I Do

OK, maybe you do, but we don't particularly want you to try it because we don't want to deal with you whining when you find that absolutely nothing works. Exherbo isn't in a fit state for users. We might get there one day, but it's not a priority. Right now, all we care about is getting it into a fit state for a small number of developers.

[ more snarky stuff amounting to "buzz off" ]

Really, all we provide is a few things that the few people working on all this find useful for themselves. When we have something for anyone else, we'll let you know.

Soooooo.... What was the point again?

Re:Cool....

[eln (21727)]

It doesn't even sound like a distro yet. It sounds like someone got their ego dented and posted a list of things they would want to change about Gentoo, but hasn't gotten much beyond the "writing a list" stage.

I predict this distro will quietly die as the developers get sick of reinventing the wheel. At best, it will be a very small niche distro.

Missing some subtle pun?

[naich (781425)]

"aptly named Exherbo" I've read both FAs and I can't see why. Am I missing something obvious?

Re:Missing some subtle pun?

[Daimanta (1140543)]

Well, exherbo is latin for obvious so you are indeed missing the obvious :)

Re:Missing some subtle pun?

[Thornburg (264444)]

I guess that was supposed to be funny, but "exherbo" apparently means to weed (as in to remove the weeds from a garden). At least, that was the only definition I could come up with using a short google search, and it certainly makes sense.

Re:Missing some subtle pun?

[Frosty Piss (770223)]

I guess that was supposed to be funny, but "exherbo" apparently means to weed...

Yes, Østergaard must have been on weed when he decided that the world needs another distro with an all new package format... Yes indeed.

Most Dangerous Badass Linux Distribution EVER!

[eldavojohn (898314)]

The developers strongly discourage any serious use though as it's still highly experimental.

It's so dangerous that a single developer can only work on a few lines of code at one time. I heard that one developer accidentally saw a whole module at once ... he's in the hospital now and his condition is stable, I think he's going to be ok.

Seriously, they treat this thing like they're trying to hype it. "It's not ready for users, not even developers!" The only thing it's ready for is Guatemalan Insane Asylum Inmates! Avert your eyes!

It is funny that they claim more progress working on this for six months than working on Gentoo for four years. Because of bickering and criticism. I can totally believe that. I wish them tons of success!

Re:Most Dangerous Badass Linux Distribution EVER!

[cblack (4342)]

"they claim more progress working on this for six months than working on Gentoo for four years"

Well, given Gentoo is usable and this is not, I disagree with their assessment.

Another new init system?

[cblack (4342)]

Sheesh, don't we have enough non-BSD non-SYSV unix init systems yet? Solaris has their own, Mac OS X has a different one, and I think I recall hearing some other distro changed theirs as well. This fragmentation is irritating for sysadmins and gains little. Have these people looked at the other systems out there (Sun's, Apple's, etc) and seen what needs of theirs are not met? Perhaps extending one of these would be worth considering...
Altho honestly, I find SysV style init to work just fine.

Re:Another new init system?

[SlashdotOgre (739181)]

I'm actually very impressed by Gentoo's new init system (baselayout-2) which was released to ~x86 not too long ago. It's so fast I'm actually considering just disabling the splash image, and it's very simple to configure (and even works with the init replacement projects like init-ng & einit). At work I'm mostly stuck with Sun's SMF (Service Management Facility) and find it too complex and inflexible. I haven't tried Apple's one, but I'm all for diversity. At the very least both Gentoo and Sun (and I'd presume Apple) can work with the legacy scripts, so if you don't like the fancy new methods feel free to stick with the old.

Aptly named?

[jesdynf (42915)]

Yeah. That's right. Aptly named. Because boy, when I heard it described, "exherbo" just jumped out at me.

The year of the linux desktop,,,

[DanWS6 (1248650)]

... is not going to come from this.

Rationale for new packaging system?

[Dwedit (232252)]

I'd like to see the rationale for creating yet another new packaging system. What's wrong with the current ways, and what will the new way fix?

Re:Rationale for new packaging system?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Exherbo is a source-based distribution like Gentoo. Gentoo uses ebuilds for managing packages. But Gentoo is too tied to their stale package manager (Portage) which means the ebuild format hasn't been updated for a long time. As a result of that, many features aren't implemented and probably never will be. This is what calls for another way of handling source-based installs. The list of involved people contains several current and former gentoo devs, that have fought for changes in gentoo and now, it seems, finally given up on ever seeing those changes implemented in gentoo.

Design Goals

[Mysteray (713473)]

"Phrase all design goals in such a way that it is hard to use them as slogans to justify stupid changes."

It might be worth checking out just for that!

From TFA

[sm62704 (957197)]

OK, I Want to Try Exherbo
No you don't.

Yes I Do
OK, maybe you do, but we don't particularly want you to try it because we don't want to deal with you whining when you find that absolutely nothing works. Exherbo isn't in a fit state for users. We might get there one day, but it's not a priority. Right now, all we care about is getting it into a fit state for a small number of developers.

We don't provide packages for lots of things you consider critical.

A lot of the packages we do provide don't work.

A lot of the packages that worked five minutes ago all just broke because we just decided to redesign several large features.

We don't provide support.

We don't provide install media.

We don't provide a usable init system.

Really, all we provide is a few things that the few people working on all this find useful for themselves. When we have something for anyone else, we'll let you know.

OK, I don't need to try it. However, I'm curious about one thing:

Former Gentoo developer Bryan Østergaard recently announced a new linux distribution aptly named Exherbo

OK, wikipedia has no clue what an "Exherbo" is. What is an "Exherbo" and why is it such an apt name? I don't speak Klingon, are there any Klingons here that can explain this to me?

From TFA I would guess that "Exherbo" means "fuck you" in Swahili?

Why is this a Slashdot story?

[by Anonymous Coward]

They state clearly on their page [exherbo.org] that

In Conclusion
It's not that we hate you (unless we do). It's just that we have nothing to offer you, and you have nothing to offer us.

They don't have a finished product. They don't even have a product yet. There is nothing to see, and they say it as well. Post this on slashdot when there is something to see. Then they will be happy about the traffic and the press, but now it's just a link to a page that says that maybe, one day, there will be yet another linux distro that wants to make everything better and nicer than the current Big Players(tm).

Exherbo

[hpa (7948)]

Exherbo [google.com] apparently means "to weed" in Latin...

Do we really need....

[mofag (709856)]

...another post asking do we really need another Linux distro?

Re:Wow, just what we need

[domatic (1128127)]

It's really a shame for F/OSS that, time and time again, there is such a huge duplication of effort and half-assed half-finished projects lying around in the junkyard of the Open Source cemetery.

And once again someone falls prey to a common misconception: F/OSS is not a monolith. If these guys didn't have the option of having their own sandbox to play in then what makes you think they'd be compelled to play in someone else's? The way this will more than likely shakeout is that fifty or so people will use this for awhile. Maybe it'll be a bit more popular if the primary devs have more stature than I'm giving them credit for.

These guys will get to have their fun and most everybody else will use an established distro. And that isn't to say good won't come of it. If they have good ideas, the bigger distros might adopt them. If they have REALLY good ideas they may supplant Gentoo among that crowd of people. Bugfixes may also go to upstream projects.

I know this is weird idea to someone accustomed to being served what they think they want from proprietary software houses but this is nothing but an exercise of freedom. Others are free to use what they make or not. What would you propose? Some sort of law saying that henceforth no one may attempt to start a BSD or Linux distribution?

The F/OSS world operates on a form of street-cred. These guys will either get it or not. It won't cause any sort of actual problem either way.

Re:Wow, just what we need

[Chandon Seldon (43083)]

I'll probably get modded down by the groupthink mods around here (hint: metamods: moderate any downmods as unfair).

No. You're getting modded up due to the "there are too many Linux distros" groupthink (that you're completely participating in).

Re:oblig FP

[sm62704 (957197)]

But does it run Linux?

From TFA:

absolutely nothing works

So, no. It doesn't run Linux.