The testimonials page is a gem: https://kisslinux.org/testimonials
A Linux distro with a focus on simplicity and the concept of less is more
61–70 of 88 posts
Re: A Linux distro with a focus on simplicity and the concept of less is more
#62The description reminds me of Slackware, circa 1996.
Re: A Linux distro with a focus on simplicity and the concept of less is more
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alpine is amazing. One of the best distros I've ever used by far. So good for desktop, so good for servers, so easy to use and install, amazing package manager.
I just wish there was better musl or static linking support in the Linux ecosystem for Alpine. A lot of one-off binaries in my experience were dynamically linked only for the latest Ubuntu's glibc.
Isn't that what things like Flatpak or Nix / Guix are for though?
Re: A Linux distro with a focus on simplicity and the concept of less is more
#64less is more?
Please don't, I understand that "more" is simpler but I like the ability to scroll up.
Re: A Linux distro with a focus on simplicity and the concept of less is more
#65less is more? Please don't, I understand that "more" is simpler but I like the ability to scroll up.
I think if a distro replaced less with more I would be confused if it differs slightly. That’s pretty entertaining my first read of your comment I was confused took me a moment to let it sink in.
Re: A Linux distro with a focus on simplicity and the concept of less is more
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn’t look into Kisslinux but the rather obvious problem with Arch is that the installation process scares people away (regardless whether it is hard or not). The terminal/command line is a scary place for people who didn’t use it before. Otherwise I tend to agree that Arch can be absolutely minimal if you want to. Didn’t use Slackware so I can’t comment on that.
In cases where people simply have to follow instructions, I find the fear of the command line to be disappointing. It is far easier to provide support and that support is far less failure prone simply because you can state exactly what has to be done, rather than describe how to navigate a user interface while hoping that the other person interprets visual cues in the same way. That being said, there is a deeper prob…
I don't know, I've installed installed arch many times and I still occasionally will forget some step or make a typo or something. Then I have to boot the installation image again, remount everything, fix the issue... it's annoying. GUI installers don't really have this problem.
Re: A Linux distro with a focus on simplicity and the concept of less is more
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn’t look into Kisslinux but the rather obvious problem with Arch is that the installation process scares people away (regardless whether it is hard or not). The terminal/command line is a scary place for people who didn’t use it before. Otherwise I tend to agree that Arch can be absolutely minimal if you want to. Didn’t use Slackware so I can’t comment on that.
For the niche audience that these distributions target, the terminal is not a problem.
And for those that it is there's always EndeavourOS or ArcoLinux
Re: A Linux distro with a focus on simplicity and the concept of less is more
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn’t look into Kisslinux but the rather obvious problem with Arch is that the installation process scares people away (regardless whether it is hard or not). The terminal/command line is a scary place for people who didn’t use it before. Otherwise I tend to agree that Arch can be absolutely minimal if you want to. Didn’t use Slackware so I can’t comment on that.
There's an installer now, but what drives me away from using it is it's heavy dependence on systemd utils by default. Of course there's forks that fix it, of course you can do things differently, but yeah. There's distros that offer better with less, and are simpler to set up.
Installers are always opinionated in some way. That's why even though there's now an installer, I won't be using it.
Re: A Linux distro with a focus on simplicity and the concept of less is more
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just wish there was better musl or static linking support in the Linux ecosystem for Alpine. A lot of one-off binaries in my experience were dynamically linked only for the latest Ubuntu's glibc.
Isn't that what things like Flatpak or Nix / Guix are for though?
Flatpak is great, you're able to install and run programs without configuration on most distributions. exept it also (obviously) installs all dependencies, configurations and settings while you usually only need glibc or some other variant to make a program run.
I'd prefer running without flatpak because when something doesn't work you'll be wondering wether its flatpak, the system or the program that is missing something.
Re: A Linux distro with a focus on simplicity and the concept of less is more
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
These two measures are probably ended up conflated because they're two ends of the same metric. "How many people need to be hit by a bus", which for simplicity I'll call the "bus factor", measures unusually high levels of resilience, but it doesn't go lower than 0 so it can't measure how fragile a fragile project is. "How many people are indispensable", which for simplicity I'll call "inverse bus factor", measures un…
>same way zero is the center between positive and negative numbers. More like the way 1 is halfway between 0 and infinity. I think you're nearly there, and the answer to the dilemma is that fractional bus factors are possible. A bus factor of 0.5 means there are two indispensable people. We might disambiguate the two conflicting definitions by renaming them with suitably inverse words - "redundancy" and "fragility" p…
> 1 is halfway between 0 and infinity
That would be true if "infinity" meant 2.