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Bedrock Linux – a meta Linux distribution

bedrocklinux.org

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Re: Bedrock Linux – a meta Linux distribution

#11

Post by [deleted] »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #10
swsieber wrote: post #2

I have never used bedrock linux in anger, but it fascinates me. I'm glad it finally made it to the front page. Edit: I've been fiddling with NixOS and reading up on pros/cons vs scripting everything and having a good repo with all the necessary stuff. It seems like Bedrock could provide a good foundation for making it safe and easy to rollback with said scripts, or maybe even divide the scrip up into pre Bedrock and…

>I have never used bedrock linux in anger, But you have used it in joy? Or what does this mean? And as for rollback capabilities, wouldn't snapshots just work far easier than any of your other ideas? Not only can you easily rollback, everything about the failure is still accessible.

[deleted]

Re: Bedrock Linux – a meta Linux distribution

#12

Post by AlexCoventry »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #10
swsieber wrote: post #2

I have never used bedrock linux in anger, but it fascinates me. I'm glad it finally made it to the front page. Edit: I've been fiddling with NixOS and reading up on pros/cons vs scripting everything and having a good repo with all the necessary stuff. It seems like Bedrock could provide a good foundation for making it safe and easy to rollback with said scripts, or maybe even divide the scrip up into pre Bedrock and…

>I have never used bedrock linux in anger, But you have used it in joy? Or what does this mean? And as for rollback capabilities, wouldn't snapshots just work far easier than any of your other ideas? Not only can you easily rollback, everything about the failure is still accessible.

It comes from the expression "fired in anger," which meant using a weapon in the heat of battle, i.e., that the weapon was battle tested.

Re: Bedrock Linux – a meta Linux distribution

#15

Post by boomboomsubban »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #12
boomboomsubban wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have never used bedrock linux in anger, But you have used it in joy? Or what does this mean? And as for rollback capabilities, wouldn't snapshots just work far easier than any of your other ideas? Not only can you easily rollback, everything about the failure is still accessible.

It comes from the expression "fired in anger," which meant using a weapon in the heat of battle, i.e., that the weapon was battle tested.

Ahh, I thought they harbored some ill will towards the project. Thanks.

Re: Bedrock Linux – a meta Linux distribution

#17

Post by myWindoonn »

ParadigmComplex wrote: post #9
myWindoonn wrote: post #3

It's pretty cool that this can host other distros, but is that the only advantage over NixOS? I don't know if I would enjoy crossing distro boundaries constantly just for a small handful of desired packages, and I'm not sure what other use cases this might have. Does anybody have experience deploying Bedrock in production? What are some pros and cons?

> It's pretty cool that this can host other distros, but is that the only advantage over NixOS? The ability to transparently get features from other distros is Bedrock Linux's defining characteristic. It's not trying to do anything more than that. Ideally the contrast wouldn't be Bedrock _or_ NixOS, but rather NixOS alone or Bedrock with NixOS. Bedrock's goal of getting features from other distros includes distros li…

Sure. But if the choice is NixOS alone or NixOS hosted by Bedrock, then NixOS has a pile of advantages which Bedrock would nullify, chief among them being the ability to atomically upgrade and rollback the entire userland, service configuration, and kernel. These are non-trivial goals of NixOS.

Re: Bedrock Linux – a meta Linux distribution

#18

Post by peteretep »

I think those of us who don’t use Linux as a daily driver forget how completely incompatible different distros are. I made the mistake of trying to provision Amazon Linux desktops to users via Workspaces, and quickly realised I was going to need to build almost everything I wanted from source.

Re: Bedrock Linux – a meta Linux distribution

#19

Post by theamk »

Reminder about alternatives:

For the less extreme case, when you want mostly one distro, but also a few packages from another one, there is “alien” [0] which converts between different package formats. It sometimes needs help with system integration or dependencies, but occasionally “just works”

For a more extreme case, there is a schroot (or a docker container) with /home, audio and X mapped in. Works surprisingly well for desktop apps, like those embedded IDEs which require a specific Linux distribution you don’t want to run. You do have manage desktop integration (menu items, file associations) yourself though.

Those solutions are hard to set up than bedrock, but they also do not have special filesystem magic, so I bet they are much easier to debug.

[0] https://manpages.debian.org/unstable/alien/alien.1p.en.html

Re: Bedrock Linux – a meta Linux distribution

#20

Post by qlk1123 »

ParadigmComplex wrote: post #13

I'm the Bedrock Linux founder and lead developer. I'm happy to answer any questions.

You mentioned both Arch and AUR in the target user part, which makes me wonder if you were mainly a Arch user before, and what triggers you do start this project.

As an satisfied Arch user, I always find AUR has already included something I need. Better, sometimes I just found them already in community repo.

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