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."

Exherbo

[hpa]

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

Re:Missing some subtle pun?

[Thornburg]

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:Rationale for new packaging system?

[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.

Re:Cool....

[CrazedWalrus]

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:Wow, just what we need

[CrazedWalrus]

From the looks of this it's just a sandbox for a few guys to try out some ideas. It'll probably never amount to anything other than hopefully some cool new ideas. Those ideas will probably then be reincorporated into Gentoo or some other projects.

The major problem seems to have been that they couldn't try out their ideas in Gentoo mostly due to political problems, so they made another Gentoo-esque platform they could directly control.

Re:Cool....

[Sponge Bath]

...hasn't gotten much beyond the "writing a list" stage

1. Get mad
2. Make a list
3. Get article on or post to /.
4. ???
5. Profit!

Sounds like half way there to me.

Re:Well, hasn't the world been screaming ...

[m0n5t3r]

.. for a new Linux packaging format?

why yes, of course it does... it seems that this is part (or a consequence) of an entertaining soap opera [gmane.org] involving [gmane.org] Ciaran McCreesh and Daniel Robbins, among others (this [gmane.org] sounds a lot like TFA, for instance)