OS Upgrades Powered By Git 92
JamieKitson writes "The latest Webconverger 15 release is the first Linux distribution to be automagically updatable from a Github repository. The chroot of the OS is kept natively in git's format and fuse mounted with git-fs. Webconverger fulfills the Web kiosk use case, using Firefox and competes indirectly with Google Chrome OS. Chrome OS also has an autoupdate feature, however not as powerful, unified & transparent as when simply using git."
Re:arg (Score:2, Interesting)
Using git (or any decent VCS) as the engine behind an updater system is incredibly smart and powerful. Roll your OS patches forward, backwards, merge customizations in or out, all very reliably, trackable, and managable. That isn't magic, it's just smart. A hell of a lot smarter then rolling one's own from scratch.
It always amazes me how often and fiercely the Linux crowd equates banging one's head against the wall with "understanding", "willingness to learn", "freedom", or most laughable of all, "power". It's bad ideas, half implemented, and hastily shipped off to the masses. Lather, rinse, repeat.
It's very rare to see solidly good ideas advanced in the Linux world and this is why: Moronic "If it's not hard it's not good!" fanbois trashing any smart idea that might pop its head up as quickly and vehemently as possible.
Re:arg (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that you are managing highly interdependent binary files (executable and libraries) which you can't merge in any useful way. With a large percentage of changes being security related so the goal is never to simply role back to previous versions.
Yes managing the dependencies that result form allowing people to choose different programs and libraries and even the versions they prefer is an incredibly difficult task. Lucky the are several brilliant systems already available.