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Operating Systems Linux

Another Linux Distro Is Shutting Down (neowin.net) 36

Posted by msmash from the end-of-road dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Kaisen Linux, a Debian-based distro packed with tools for sysadmins, system rescue, and network diagnostics, is shutting down. This comes not long after Intel's Clear Linux also reached the end of the road.

Kaisen offered multiple desktop environments like KDE Plasma, LXQt, MATE, and Xfce, plus a "toram" mode that could load the whole OS into RAM so you could free up your USB port. The final release, Rolling 3.0, updates the base to Debian 13, defaults to KDE Plasma 6, replaces LightDM with SDDM, drops some packages like neofetch and hping3, and adds things like faster BTRFS snapshot restores, full ZFS support, and safer partitioning behavior.

Unlike Clear Linux, Kaisen will still get security updates for the next two years, giving current users time to migrate without rushing.

Another Linux Distro Is Shutting Down More | Reply

Another Linux Distro Is Shutting Down

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  • This little known bistro shutting down, no news.

    As far as the ref to Clear Linux to make it seem like the sky is falling ... Intel is failing generally so their special distro getting axed isn't a surprise and honestly with 200+ other distros ... doesn't matter.

  • This is why I love Devuan (and used to Debian) because it's not specifically focused on anything. Maybe on the truly open source software but there's still the non-free apt option.

    For me it matches simplicity the best, and it seems it's one of the best traits for a long-living distro.

  • I mean, seriously ...

  • Part of the reason that Linux has troubles competing with the commercial operating systems for mind share is that once things are to a prosumer level of fit and finish, people start spending effort on minor respins to build semi-custom distros to target specific market segments. This is great for prosumer users who enjoy tinkering around to get a perfect fit, but it doesn't stack up into a strong offering for casual users, because often each respin is backed by one or six people who don't have time to prop

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      So use Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, or (possibly) SUSE.

      I don't like Gnome, but if you want what somebody else chose for you, just pick the defaults. (Personally , I use either Mate or xfce.)

      • Re:Proliferation of distros is not a sign of vigor (Score:4, Insightful)

        by iNaya ( 1049686 ) on Friday August 15, 2025 @05:30PM (#65592816)
        It's like OP's point went right over your head.
        • Person 1: "I don't know what to use!"
        • Person 2: "so use Red Hat, Debaian, Ubuntu, or possibly SUSE
        • Person 1: "I'll just use Windows then".

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          I guess it did, and your response didn't clarify things. Suppose I listed the choices as
          "Apple, Debian, Red Hat, Suse, Ubuntu, Windows"? Putting them in nice alphabetical order, and leaving out the choices that require a bit of tech knowledge. (I'm not sure about SUSE, but I suspect it's just as easy to use or install.)

          The real limit is that most people don't install an OS, so they just use whatever their computer came with. The last time I installed windows it was harder to install than Debian...of cou

        • Person1: "I don't know what to use!"
          Person2: "What do you normally do with your computer? Is this for home or business? How often do you use it? Etc..."

    • More choice doesn't help, because you have no idea if you want a unit from the X39-extreme line, or from the B2-19Gr4 line, or perhaps the Alpherio line would be a better fit?

      More choice isn't a bad thing. What's bad is when you can't get the information you need to make a decision.

      Worst case of this I've ever seen was HP's old web site that had a drop-down menu list of over 100 laptops listed by model number, and no easy way to compare/sort models by their features. I was dumbfounded at how such a large company could possibly be so incompetent at selling their products.

      A more relevant example is how Linux distros tend to offer you a choice of 3-5 desktop environments, but don

  • I'm fine with this. (Score:3)

    by Rendus ( 2430 ) <rendusNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday August 15, 2025 @04:43PM (#65592722)

    Honestly, more distributions that have no reason to exist and no distinguishing traits should shut down. The people that worked on them should move to projects that aren't just rehashes of existing projects.

    When your eulogy can't come up with a way to describe you in any meaningful way, your life nor death were worthy of celebration or remembering.

    • I'd agree; there is too much fragmentation. If we really want "the year of the Linux desktop", then we need no more than 2 major distros (ignoring the small specialty ones for embedded systems and such). Yeah, I don't think its going to happen; but it'd be nice if we did.

      • For the desktop there's kindof already that.
        Want easy, polished .deb based? Mint (either flavor) or Ubuntu
        Want easy, polished .rpm based? Fedora (KDE version) or OpenSUSE

        Those four are the ones that work great out of the box, and easy to Google for things requiring tweaking, and have huge package libraries

        • I can kind of see your point that we have flavors of Debian (Debian itself, Ubuntu, Xbuntu, Kbuntu, Mint, etc) that are mostly alike, but then we also have other major ones like Fedora, Arch, RH (several flavors), Centos, Rocky, etc, then Suse flavors, then smaller players like Slackware, Devuan, Gentoo (and variations), and... OK, maybe I don't agree with you.

          One place I could really see helping ourselves out is to come up with 1 package format. Why do we have .deb -AND- .rpm -AND- .tgz? (There might even

          • Well we have tgz for the same reason we have zip and bz2- it is a way to get software WITHOUT package management in this context.

            The others all do the same thing more or less- manage packages.

      • False, there's no reason this has any affect on people. 99.9% of people can just use Ubuntu and move on with their lives.

    • Honestly, more distributions that have no reason to exist and no distinguishing traits should shut down.

      All distros have distinguishing traits. They don't just exist for nothing. Forks occur because someone isn't happy with a specific upstream project and wants to make it theirs. Now *you* may not find that distinguishing trait relevant, but telling someone else they should shut it down would be Linux-gaslighting.

  • This has happened many times over the decades. Osmosis (mostly!) results in the better changes trickling back into mainstream linux distributions.

    My least/most favorite example of this is Stormix Linux.

    It was based on Debian, back in 1999. It was geared towards a simplified desktop experience and introduced a lot of new things, at the time: graphical installer that detected hardware (and had a broad set of hardware support not found elsewhere); GUI apt manager; and a number of other really clean add ons tha

  • Good, the more distro's die, the better, because that's exactly what's wrong with Linux, too many flavors. The less flavors, the better they can concentrate on what really matters. In this case it's rather more about sysadmin tools as I gather, but that's the whole point, having a complete different distro just because it contains a specific set of tools is just ridiculous, the tools themselves are what is important, not the distro. So having a better 'application store' or something like that, where you ca

  • I'm not a Linux expert, and not aware of all the different distros and why they exist, so if my question makes no sense, please nail only ONE of my balls to the wall, and leave the other unscathed.

    With that disclaimer, on to my question.

    What if there was one "standard" distribution, whatever one that is. Let's just say "Debian" for the sake of argument.

    Then, for anyone who feels there is a market niche for something different or specialized, they package those customization as something that installs "on to

    • There will, at a bare minimum, always be two "standard" Linux ones. One Debian-based and one RedHat-based. That said, a lot of the differences are just... derivatives of those two.

      First RedHat - In the case of RedHat's relationship to Fedora and Centos Stream, those two are the upstream guinea pigs before things end up in RedHat Enterprise Linux. From there it ends up in Oracle Linux, Rocky, Alma, etc. The "RedHat" ecosystem is similar enough that if you learn one you've learned them all. The reason for the

      • In theory, if RedHat went away, that entire side could die, and we'd be left with Debian

        Are you saying that as if it were a bad thing? I think the world would be a much better place if the entire RedHat lineage were purged.

    • Your question makes sense, but I think you're right - It's not that simple.

      Your theoretical Debian distro might be fine for general purpose use, but there may be people who want a distro for games, or a wide range of hardware compatibility. In both of those cases, you might need to have a kernel compiled with specific options, and a distro bundled with certain desktop GUIs and applications.

      The hardcore linux enthusiasts will tell you to compile your own kernel. Have you ever tried it? It's not for beginne

      • >Your theoretical Debian distro might be fine for general purpose use, but there may be people who want a distro for games, or a wide range of hardware compatibility.

        So your installer installs a custom compiled and signed kernel, proton packages, and whatever else needed for gaming on the base install? Just like every full distro does for updates... You know you can have multiple kernels and have them be selectable - with one default selected through grub-setup - at boot time, yes?

        >and a distro bundle

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      hat if there was one "standard" distribution, whatever one that is. Let's just say "Debian" for the sake of argument.

      Then, for anyone who feels there is a market niche for something different or specialized, they package those customization as something that installs "on top" of the standard distribution?

      tl;dr there is too much choice for a unified platform.

      what you suggest is (sort of) what happens with the kernel and the very basic tools, everyone uses the same (more or less). but as soon as you build on top of that it becomes too complicated because of the huge variety of options at every level. systemd or sys init, different package managers, file systems, desktop stacks, window manages on top ... you have choice at every step so there is no sensible common basic subset to fit all possible expectations

  • It is beyond me why so many out there seem to be so keen on having their own Linux distribution, which for the most part is likely to be little more than one of the three or four major ones with some eye candy.

  • There should be a way to compose a system like this from Trixie sources.

    Extra debs, package lists, setup script, etc. but not all the work of making and hosting a distro. Worst case should be hosting an addons repo.

    Let Debian do the hardest work and let guys like this hot rod their distros like we used to do muscle cars.

    deb-spin mydisto.conf

    makes

    mydistro.iso

    or whatever.

  • As of today, DistroWatch.com lists 1,048 Linux distributions of which only 334 (or 31%) are considered active. New ones will arrive, then shut down. It has been like that for decades; back 20 years ago, people were saying "there is no need for new distributions, the developers creating ones should join existing projects, blah, blah, blah", and 20 years later nothing has changed.

    It's human behaviour, nothing to do with Linux. Like it or not, new Linux distributions will keep appearing. Is it a bad thing? No

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