Not sure why, but this remembered me of Tiny Core Linux: https://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/
It's a very different and clever way of deploying Linux.
Wasted Creativity in the GNU/Linux Distribution Diversity
31–40 of 46 posts
Re: Wasted Creativity in the GNU/Linux Distribution Diversity
#32Not this self-centered, ignorant complaint again. Even if this time really is 100% wasted, it's not your wasted time, so it's none of your business anyway. Open source devs don't owe your their time, and you're not entitled to tell them what to work on. But the time isn't wasted, in any case. If existing solutions met people's needs the alternatives wouldn't have been created. A huge project like a desktop manager or…
It's still a bit weird. Everybody wants to "contribute" but at some point there's so much noise and redundancy .. it's backward. Note that I do understand we're all so different in context, understanding, drive, needs .. so bazaar will occur whether or not I like it. I still believe we should have a tiny bit more integrative groups. Just a tad. No need to force people and resist their energy, but a bit of constructiv…
> I still believe we should have a tiny bit more integrative groups. Just a tad. No need to force people and resist their energy, but a bit of constructive interference.
There's nothing stopping you from running a vanilla Ubuntu install.
What other people choose to do is still none of your business, though.
Re: Wasted Creativity in the GNU/Linux Distribution Diversity
#33It's not wasted at all - people are learning and configuring, tweaking and optimizing their use of a computer. I for one really like the fact that Manjaro is an easy Arch for me. Is it wasted creativity now that I can focus on non-distro work since I found my distro?
Besides, who is the author to tell people to not waste creativity. It's remarkable to have this audacity. Even the notion of "wasted" creativity is just not nuanced.
Re: Wasted Creativity in the GNU/Linux Distribution Diversity
#34Not this self-centered, ignorant complaint again. Even if this time really is 100% wasted, it's not your wasted time, so it's none of your business anyway. Open source devs don't owe your their time, and you're not entitled to tell them what to work on. But the time isn't wasted, in any case. If existing solutions met people's needs the alternatives wouldn't have been created. A huge project like a desktop manager or…
> But the time isn't wasted, in any case. If existing solutions met people's needs the alternatives wouldn't have been created
This argument has merit. However, it also true that sometimes we developers are overly biased towards creating a new project in order to solve some set of problems, when it may be more effective and productive to get our hands dirty in an existing project.
Obviously, this isn't always the case, and there are other important factors. Perhaps the individuals involved have other goals besides simply addressing the issues in most practical way. But the mere existence of a project certainly doesn't demonstrate that its creation was the most effective method of solving the problem at hand.
Re: Wasted Creativity in the GNU/Linux Distribution Diversity
#35Not this self-centered, ignorant complaint again. Even if this time really is 100% wasted, it's not your wasted time, so it's none of your business anyway. Open source devs don't owe your their time, and you're not entitled to tell them what to work on. But the time isn't wasted, in any case. If existing solutions met people's needs the alternatives wouldn't have been created. A huge project like a desktop manager or…
>If existing solutions met people's needs the alternatives wouldn't have been created.
I'm not so sure about that. This modern age of change for change's sake must have resulted in hundreds if not thousands of javascript frameworks that appear to be even less diverse than the linux distributions.
Why are these flavourOfTheWeek.js frameworks being created? Is it really that someone's needs aren't being met or is it developer hubris, and the desire to be able to put Founder on one's CV?
I suspect much of the same attitude exists among those starting niche linux distros.
Re: Wasted Creativity in the GNU/Linux Distribution Diversity
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's still a bit weird. Everybody wants to "contribute" but at some point there's so much noise and redundancy .. it's backward. Note that I do understand we're all so different in context, understanding, drive, needs .. so bazaar will occur whether or not I like it. I still believe we should have a tiny bit more integrative groups. Just a tad. No need to force people and resist their energy, but a bit of constructiv…
> I still believe we should have a tiny bit more integrative groups. Just a tad. No need to force people and resist their energy, but a bit of constructive interference. There's nothing stopping you from running a vanilla Ubuntu install. What other people choose to do is still none of your business, though.
> What other people choose to do is still none of your business, though.
So they're not allowed to opine on it? What if that's what they chose to do?
Re: Wasted Creativity in the GNU/Linux Distribution Diversity
#37Not this self-centered, ignorant complaint again. Even if this time really is 100% wasted, it's not your wasted time, so it's none of your business anyway. Open source devs don't owe your their time, and you're not entitled to tell them what to work on. But the time isn't wasted, in any case. If existing solutions met people's needs the alternatives wouldn't have been created. A huge project like a desktop manager or…
It's not self-centered or ignorant, it's an observation. Are observations inherently an attack now?
You're right that the time isn't wasted though. The fallacy here is that, if someone weren't working on , they would be contributing to Slackware or Knoppix. That definitely isn't what I've seen in the open-source world... People work on what interests them, and that usually means a new take on an old idea. The people who are logging into the Debian bug tracker every day looking for ways to improve Debian are a totally unrelated kind of programmer.
Re: Wasted Creativity in the GNU/Linux Distribution Diversity
#38Not this self-centered, ignorant complaint again. Even if this time really is 100% wasted, it's not your wasted time, so it's none of your business anyway. Open source devs don't owe your their time, and you're not entitled to tell them what to work on. But the time isn't wasted, in any case. If existing solutions met people's needs the alternatives wouldn't have been created. A huge project like a desktop manager or…
Note that this position is mutually exclusive with "It's open source so you can just fix it yourself when it breaks". I can go fix it myself, sure, but then it is my wasted time, that there are 8 or 10 major distros. We shouldn't have to fix the same bug so many times.
I don't want 8 or 10 distros. I only want one. I don't even care which one it is. I haven't contributed to that OS in 10 years because so much of my time ended up being wasted.
Or, if you take the position that "Developers don't owe you anything", then that's fair on its own, but it means that it's not an OS that I can depend on for anything. It's true there's no literal debt to be repaid but project maintainers are supposed to be good stewards. They can be replaced, but it's a slow and rare process. I can count on my fingers how many successful open source forks I've seen. Most projects will die before they'll change maintainers.
> If existing solutions met people's needs the alternatives wouldn't have been created.
That doesn't follow at all. There are plenty of reasons for starting an alternative software project which have nothing to do with meeting any user need. "Ego" is a common one -- it serves only one person's interest.
Re: Wasted Creativity in the GNU/Linux Distribution Diversity
#39Well, perhaps so, but Linus, regarding Linux (although I think he meant mostly the kernel), said, "I'm deadly serious: we humans have never been able to replicate something more complicated than what we ourselves are, yet natural selection did it without even thinking. Don't underestimate the power of survival of the fittest. And don't ever make the mistake that you can design something better than what you get from…
That is indeed a powerful mechanism -- but it still sucks to be a beetle, especially if you're not on a dominant branch of your family tree.
Imagine you had the job of recruiting beetles. You'll die soon, and your offspring (if you have any) probably will, too! What's the upside? Your species will be stronger for your death! That's a pretty tough sell. You're going to get the young and ambitious, and they're going to fight each other as much as they possibly can.
That's not the only way to win, or even the best. Pine trees are genetically successful, too, and they don't go out and murder each other.
I wouldn't complain that there are too many kinds of beetles, but I would complain that there are very few trees. It would be sad if beetles were the highest form of life on the planet.
Re: Wasted Creativity in the GNU/Linux Distribution Diversity
#40I worked on Sun Solaris (it's now dead, I know), and now on Linux. This was like switching from a Universe with one Linux distro, to the current one with many.
The speed and priority of bug fixes and feature development was higher with one distro. Everyone was working on the one thing. Any bug ever found could go straight to _the_ best engineer to fix it, who could replicate it _immediately_ since they were running that distro as well, and they could make it a priority to fix as it affected _all_ customers.
Now consider many Linux distros. A user says "this doesn't compile on NiftyLinux". A) The developer hasn't even heard of NiftyLinux, and doesn't have immediate access to reproduce the bug. B) It's a low priority to fix, since most of the developer's users are on Ubuntu or CentOS.
I've felt this firsthand with the performance tools I've developed for Solaris and Linux. With Solaris I could provide better support. With Linux, there's bugs that are open for months or years for odd Linux distros that I don't have time to explore.