Don't panic and keep forking Debian

The same freedom that leads to all the many, many flavors of linux gives a great diversity of ideas. The downside is it fragments the finite development efforts of the contributors to the point where it becomes difficult to compete with the wider marketplace. I wonder sometimes if it were possible for everyone to contribute to one linux desktop if the situation would be different today.

As it stands, after nearly three years using ubuntu desktop, I came to the conclusion that a windows license is very cheap by comparison. The amount of time and effort I spent wasted on package incompatibilities, instabilities, and debugging strange hardware/driver related issues isn't worth it. I keep linux in a VM where it's very easy and cheap to backup and rollback without affecting my data or ability to work. I really gave it a good try, and I liked a lot of things about the freedom to configure things like I want, without metro crapware infesting the place, but the downsides were just too much for me.

Again I wonder how things could have been if everyone was pulling as a coherent team instead of in different directions.

Re: Don't panic and keep forking Debian

#6

Post by orik » Sat, Nov 29, 2014, 1:03 AM UTC

there was a lot of discussion on /r/linux about this yesterday.

concessions seemed to be that Devuan seems fishy, but I'll let you read for yourself. http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2nm2u9/theyre_going_t...

Re: Don't panic and keep forking Debian

#7

Post by pronoiac » Sat, Nov 29, 2014, 1:03 AM UTC

Hey, I know that domain! I used to use the Dyne:Bolic live Linux CD to edit video.

Re: Don't panic and keep forking Debian

#8

Post by agumonkey » Sat, Nov 29, 2014, 1:08 AM UTC

Isn't this the largest fork ?

Re: Don't panic and keep forking Debian

#9

Post by ahomescu1 » Sat, Nov 29, 2014, 1:10 AM UTC

Earlier submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8669913

Re: Don't panic and keep forking Debian

#10

Post by mikepurvis » Sat, Nov 29, 2014, 1:14 AM UTC

eloff wrote: post #5

The same freedom that leads to all the many, many flavors of linux gives a great diversity of ideas. The downside is it fragments the finite development efforts of the contributors to the point where it becomes difficult to compete with the wider marketplace. I wonder sometimes if it were possible for everyone to contribute to one linux desktop if the situation would be different today. As it stands, after nearly thr…

Same here, except with a Mac as the host. I really like the setup of a OS X developer environment and tools, with the ability to summon Vagrant boxes or whatever else on command.