New Linux Distribution — Exherbo, Announced 322
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.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Missing some subtle pun? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, just what we need (Score:0, Insightful)
but really, is this what the Linux user community needs? Yet another Linux distro. Wow. And maybe we can add a new window manager and another variant of Firefox/IceWeasel/Netscape/etc.
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.
Notability??!! (Score:1, Insightful)
There are tons of linux distributions that are "new" and more ambitious than this one. In fact, reading the project aims on the website gave me the impression that this is a highly specialized project by somebody who has an axe to grind with the gentoo community. With so many existing gentoo variants out there with larger scope and communities, I am having problems appreciating the notability of this article and why it's even on Slashdot. I normally expect tighter coverage of Linux topics than this.
Another new init system? (Score:5, Insightful)
Altho honestly, I find SysV style init to work just fine.
Rationale for new packaging system? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this a Slashdot story? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Missing some subtle pun? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Another new init system? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Wow, just what we need (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Cool.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:My God- Do we really need another?!?! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wow, just what we need (Score:5, Insightful)
No. You're getting modded up due to the "there are too many Linux distros" groupthink (that you're completely participating in).
Re:Why is this a Slashdot story? (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, I can't tell you whether or not Gentoo merits a slap in the face, but whether or not they're right doesn't have anything to do with that they've done.
Re:Wow, just what we need (Score:5, Insightful)
You're given certain comments to metamoderate, but in the event I metamod whatever mod you get (so far they haven't modded it) will determine how I metamoderate. You simply asked a question so I can't see why anyone would downmod. It is an honest question afaict.
is this what the Linux user community needs?
No, but it may be what the Linux developer community needs. There could be some really cool code coming out of this that may benefit the user community in the future, but right now it's for developers only. If your hobby is hacking new code, this might be for you.
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.
Um, ok maybe I can see why you might get downmodded. I see no "junkyard" nor "cemetary", what Linux projects have died recently? A halfassed half-finished project deserves to die, but that's part of the open source process. And there's a "huge duplication of effort" having Windows, Apple, Solaris, etc, compete; or Ford, Chevy, Toyota, K.I.A. etc. as well. The difference is that if Ford invents something, Chevy's not going to have it in their cars unless they can come up with the same functionality without infringing Ford's patent. If some cool new thing comes of this, you may well see it un Red Hat or Mandriva shortly. That's one of open source's strengths.
I don't see "duplication of effort" as a weakness in either open source or closed.
As to junkyards, you might want to read a couple of articles I wrote a few years ago when I was at K5, Useful Dead Technologies [kuro5hin.org] and the sequel Good Riddance to Bad Tech [kuro5hin.org].
Necessiy isn't the mother of invention, it's the father. Hard work is the mother. Do people need more than one mother?
Re:Wow, just what we need (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhh no, we'd see one project doing one thing well, and 99 unresolved problems.
Or maybe we'd see a hundred people yelling at each other (multiply by 2.5 and you have gentoo)
Re:Another new init system? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow, just what we need (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice attitude, guys! (Score:5, Insightful)
Exherbo is not, at the moment, a user-targeted distribution. It supports packages that the people involved find interesting or useful; it probably does not support your favourite desktop environment or applications. That kind of thing will come later there are plenty of other options for users who want a distribution that does everything badly rather than a few things well.
It's not that we think that Gentoo is bad. It's just that we think we can do something that suits our needs better. We've tried, without success, to do this using Gentoo. Unfortunately, Gentoo has serious shortcomings in several areas that stopped this from being a viable long-term approach (...) Portage. (...) Gentoo management. (...) QA. (...) The users. (...) Lack of overall design and direction.
Thank God there's much more to that distro you don't think is bad at all.
- 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. (...) 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.
- But I'm a Developer, and I Want to Try Exherbo
- Well, you know who to talk to if you need to be told where to find the shiny things. And no, we don't want to use Exherbo to implement your pet project. Especially not if it's a stupid pet project. Go and inflict it upon Gentoo, they think that porting ebuilds to run on SunOS 2 ksh under Cygwin is a great idea.
Wow! It sounds great! Do i need a secret decoder ring to read the sourcecode?
Seriously. I'm a Gentoo user and this sounded like a great thing to peek into - Gentoo is not without its share of things to fix/improve. But come on. What exactly are they announcing here? A distro tailored for a handful of users (which is nice) that we can't download, try or even ask about.
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.
Sounds like it's coming along great, eh? Do us a favor and make your work public when, you know, it is useable by the public. Or even watchable.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow, just what we need (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy wants to experiment with a new init system and a new packaging system. He's put this out as a "distro" so that anyone else who wants to can help out, make suggestions, whatever.
His work might end up "half-assed half-finished", or it might get incorporated into something larger which changes the way all the current big name distros work. If we are truly championing OSS, we should rather wish this guy well. He's doing exactly what everyone is always talking about, changing the source to suit himself and trying to learn how it is all put together.
Re:Wow, just what we need (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Missing some subtle pun? (Score:1, Insightful)
Even on Slashdot. The thread's barely started and is already tagged "zzzz" and has people whining about Slow News Day, Yet Another Distro, and Yet Another Package Format. What is this, a
If you don't think that's newsworthy then you're in the wrong place, and you want some commercial lifestyle promotion pap like Wired. Get thee hence.
Suspiciously familiar (Score:4, Insightful)
While some points made are valid (eg portage, along with most other package managers sucks, and Gentoo's management is inefficient) it seems like the distro is completely misguided.
If anything, we need to be focusing on user-friendly *nixes, not developer torture - less still something more hellish than Gentoo. If someone desperately wants a system like this, they can read LFS. Or strip down a Gentoo install. That way, they're also more likely to get something that's more suited to their needs. And isn't written by someone who looks like they'd happily eat n00b stew for lunch.
Re:Cool.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Most Dangerous Badass Linux Distribution EVER! (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but in my mind, Gentoo died about the time Daniel Robbins gave up on the thing. And I can't say I blame him, either. Gentoo has to be one of the most spectacular failures in Linus Distro history. Constant bickering so nothing ever gets done. Flames that make even ESR's diatribe about Fedora look tame.
Gentoo was a good idea. Unfortunately, the man with the vision couldn't seem to keep it going in one direction.
Re:Wow, just what we need (Score:5, Insightful)
The "managed" pure source based distribution is not a solved problem yet. Projects like this are good not because many people will use it, but because they won't. These guys get to go off and do there own thing which will be more likely to make them happy and productive then anything else. They won't really piss off any of the other people working on the Gentoo project because they are not directly working with them any more, and end users won't be subject to their untested whims. Mean while people will be watching. If, and it is a big if I admit, they put something things together that really work then the parent project will be free the cherry pick their good ideas and roll them back in. If they decide to use enough of them these guys may volunteer to rejoin the project as maintainers of their contributions.
This fork and merge pattern is really the place where FOSS does produce innovative new ideas. Its the people who think like you that case all the YetAnotherXXXXX FOSS projects.
Re:Cool.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That last bit was the only "inviting" thing on the whole site, and it doesn't amount to much more than a "Try your luck, see if we think you're 1337 enough." Then again, the whole point was obviously to discourage most people. I guess it worked on me. Maybe some people are attracted by that attitude, but they're probably not the type of people you'd want to work with.
Re:Cool.... (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, I can readily see the utility of forking an existing distribution for use as a custom dev platform -- especially if they want to try something crazy and disruptive. Go for it, have fun, learn something, hopefully contribute what you learned back to mainstream distros. Maybe more people should do it.
Re:Rationale for new packaging system? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cool.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow, just what we need (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cool.... (Score:5, Insightful)
So is this place news for nerds, or just for whiners?
This is precisely the kind of news that belongs on Slashdot. Not a crosspost from the beeb or sci-am promoted to the front page solely to produce ad impressions for OSTG. Sorry if it's not cute and fluffy enough for you.
Re:Missing some subtle pun? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Most Dangerous Badass Linux Distribution EVER! (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I think it's great. Hopefully it'll draw Ciaran's buds away from Gentoo and maybe eventually Gentoo will be fun again.
But yes, losing Daniel was a tremendous loss.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)