Since the list has been slow lately, I figured I'd try to stir up some conversation/debate by asking a few questions. :)
First a quick note. I'm an LFSer (Linux From Scratch) when I'm not using OpenSUSE. I've often thought of making some of my LFS packages available to the community, but haven't because of the nature of LFS. Anyway, I was thinking more about that tonight and decided to ask the list some questions.
If you were to start a new linux distribution, what would you use for package management? rpm? dpkg? none (tar.bz2s)? portage? roll your own?
What about managing dependencies and fetching packages from remote repositories? yast? apt? smart? yum? urpmi? portage?
What architectures / hardware would you support? ppc? alpha? x86 / x86_64?
On multilib capable arches (such as x86_64), would you support both 32 and 64 bit, or go 64 bit only?
Would you go the way of Ubuntu, and work around Gnome mainly? Or the way SuSE traditionally was, and be mostly KDE oriented?
There we go, I think that might get the ball rolling. :)
Rich
On Mon, 2006-06-26 at 22:49 -0500, Rich Edelman wrote:
If you were to start a new linux distribution, what would you use for package management? rpm? dpkg? none (tar.bz2s)? portage? roll your own?
dpkg; won't use RPM any time soon because of bugs like this one: http://hivearchive.com/2006/06/08/embarrassing-red-hat-rpm-bug/
What about managing dependencies and fetching packages from remote repositories? yast? apt? smart? yum? urpmi? portage?
apt stack + aptitude; yum, urpmi and portage are all too slow, too young
What architectures / hardware would you support? ppc? alpha? x86 / x86_64?
x86, x86_64; PPC is dying due to Apple's abandonment.
On multilib capable arches (such as x86_64), would you support both 32 and 64 bit, or go 64 bit only?
Both. Incremental changes are good.
Would you go the way of Ubuntu, and work around Gnome mainly? Or the way SuSE traditionally was, and be mostly KDE oriented?
GNOME. I used KDE until a few months ago. Just switched. I like it so much, I'm now the GNOME Games module maintainer.
On 6/27/06, Jason D. Clinton me@jasonclinton.com wrote:
What architectures / hardware would you support? ppc? alpha? x86 / x86_64?
x86, x86_64; PPC is dying due to Apple's abandonment.
I think a good case can be made for PPC gaing ground in Linux due to the abandonment. Ove the next 5 years or so people will be wanting a modern OS to run on their PPC hardware. OS X 10.5 (and maybe .6 or .7 if they are nice and keep developing it) will be the last releases of OS X for PPC and that is the time that all the millions of PPC Apple machines could use a nice burst of life with a PPC Linux, such as Ubuntu. People are already making the jump or testing the waters in preperation of the EOL for OS X PPC. Why would a dev want to drop support for an inceasing user base? Heck, it took 10 years to drop support for Amigas in OpenBSD, and they had a much smaller available user base than PPC Apple machines do.
On Tuesday 27 June 2006 03:49, Rich Edelman wrote:
If you were to start a new linux distribution, what would you use for package management? rpm? dpkg? none (tar.bz2s)? portage? roll your own?
As a developer of the Utopios OS, we're working on our own.
What about managing dependencies and fetching packages from remote repositories? yast? apt? smart? yum? urpmi? portage?
Plans are for a decentralized, distributed package repository encouraging both third-parties to host and maintain their own packages and easy forks of the OS.
What architectures / hardware would you support? ppc? alpha? x86 / x86_64?
Any platforms we can, especially x86/ppc in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants.
On multilib capable arches (such as x86_64), would you support both 32 and 64 bit, or go 64 bit only?
64-bit only. There's no benefit to 32-bit support when building from source.
Would you go the way of Ubuntu, and work around Gnome mainly? Or the way SuSE traditionally was, and be mostly KDE oriented?
GNOME sucks. ;)
Rich raised one facet of interest.
Would you go the way of Ubuntu, and work around Gnome mainly? Or the way SuSE traditionally was, and be mostly KDE oriented?
Here's my 4 possible path outlines.
#1 Find a way to make the Distro desktop agnostic at core. With a painless selector at install or some earlier stage.
#2 Status Quo. Distro comes the way it's creator decides. Has it's points.
#3 Go to extremes. One release is "Heavy" with all possible "Eye/Ear candy, Second is skeletal between single fd to BBC size.
#4 Variant of #1 -Desktop of choice installed by online setup from repository.
#1 Find a way to make the Distro desktop agnostic at core. With a painless selector at install or some earlier stage.
Thats one reason I love the ubuntu mentality , its all the same core , just basicly diffrent DE and Preinstalled App's ( but easy to grab other DE's too via easy meta packages like apt-get install kubuntu-desktop / xubuntu-desktop etc etc etc )
On Tue, 2006-06-27 at 12:09 -0500, Brandon Holtsclaw wrote:
#1 Find a way to make the Distro desktop agnostic at core. With a painless selector at install or some earlier stage.
Thats one reason I love the ubuntu mentality
That's a Debian feature which Ubuntu has inherited for free.
On Tuesday 27 June 2006 16:49, Oren Beck wrote:
Would you go the way of Ubuntu, and work around Gnome mainly? Or the way SuSE traditionally was, and be mostly KDE oriented?
Here's my 4 possible path outlines.
#1 Find a way to make the Distro desktop agnostic at core. With a painless selector at install or some earlier stage.
Well, the GNU system isn't hard to keep desktop agnostic-- but everything has a default, and with an easy-to-fork OS, the "default" is simply a matter of what the install disc includes.
Rich Edelman wrote:
If you were to start a new linux distribution, what would you use for package management? rpm? dpkg? none (tar.bz2s)? portage? roll your own?
Well as a Kubuntu Developer I'm partial to apt / dpkg but one small thing about that is it dosent support biarch ( x86 / x86_64 or ppc32 / ppc64 ) that i would really like to see but afaik thats being worked on / patched in.
What about managing dependencies and fetching packages from remote repositories? yast? apt? smart? yum? urpmi? portage?
Smart is looking really good , infact at the (K)Ubuntu Developers Summit in Paris this past week it was one of the topics for edgy ( the october release of *ubuntu ) but over all it is still very young and has some issues of its own , I would probbly try to get dpkg and smart to co-exist for the time being
What architectures / hardware would you support? ppc? alpha? x86 / x86_64?
x86 and x86_64 ( with legacy ppc support ) if i was targeting just desktops , with the addition of server targets I would imagine UltraSparc T1 Niagra ( the GPL Sun Chips ) support would be a good target also
On multilib capable arches (such as x86_64), would you support both 32 and 64 bit, or go 64 bit only?
We'll in _MY_ senerio it would be hard without the patches to dpkg or use a a 32bit chroot ( cleaner IMHO anyhow ) but incremental upgrades even with a chroot are alot better than total 64bit untill more and more software is ported.
Would you go the way of Ubuntu, and work around Gnome mainly? Or the way SuSE traditionally was, and be mostly KDE oriented?
KDE to the end BABY !! ;) ( but again i'm a tad bias being a Kubuntu Developer )
On 6/26/06, Rich Edelman rcedelman@comcast.net wrote:
If you were to start a new linux distribution, what would you use for package management? rpm? dpkg? none (tar.bz2s)? portage? roll your own?
I really like how *BSDs do things with packages/ports, that is where portage got its roots from, packages are precompiled stuff, and ports is you compile from source. Most of the time I never use more than 2-3 ports and rest is packages. All dependencies are dealt with (pkg_add) for more info see [1].
What about managing dependencies and fetching packages from remote repositories? yast? apt? smart? yum? urpmi? portage?
What architectures / hardware would you support? ppc? alpha? x86 / x86_64?
I only have x86, but I think my next upgrade will be to x86_64.
Would you go the way of Ubuntu, and work around Gnome mainly? Or the way SuSE traditionally was, and be mostly KDE oriented?
I prefer fluxbox, though wmii looks really neat.
On Tuesday 27 June 2006 16:40, djgoku wrote:
On 6/26/06, Rich Edelman rcedelman@comcast.net wrote:
If you were to start a new linux distribution, what would you use for package management? rpm? dpkg? none (tar.bz2s)? portage? roll your own?
I really like how *BSDs do things with packages/ports, that is where portage got its roots from, packages are precompiled stuff, and ports is you compile from source. Most of the time I never use more than 2-3 ports and rest is packages. All dependencies are dealt with (pkg_add) for more info see [1].
One goal of Utopios's new package manager is to more or less always build from source, but if it's already been done, use those binaries. Think Portage, but if someone has compatible CHOST/CFLAGS and the same USE flags, it will use their binaries or distcc if they're not done yet. Plus a bit of security measures, of course.
On Tue, 2006-06-27 at 18:24 +0000, Luke-Jr wrote:
One goal of Utopios's new package manager is to more or less always build from source, but if it's already been done, use those binaries. Think Portage, but if someone has compatible CHOST/CFLAGS and the same USE flags, it will use their binaries or distcc if they're not done yet. Plus a bit of security measures, of course.
What would be really cool would be if some people could offer their servers for hosting these "already compiled" packages -- and then separate out individual modules for things like different USE flag settings in to different binary subcomponents so that you could download whatever you wanted any time without having to compile. It would be called B.I.N.A.R.Y. D.I.S.T.R.O. which would stand for Better, Individualize, Non-compile, All-arch Redistribution, Yes, Don't Include, Source To Redistribute Originals.
Yes, someone should invent that. Oh wait.
You know about apt-get source package; dpkg-build right?
On Tuesday 27 June 2006 18:44, Jason D. Clinton wrote:
On Tue, 2006-06-27 at 18:24 +0000, Luke-Jr wrote:
One goal of Utopios's new package manager is to more or less always build from source, but if it's already been done, use those binaries. Think Portage, but if someone has compatible CHOST/CFLAGS and the same USE flags, it will use their binaries or distcc if they're not done yet. Plus a bit of security measures, of course.
What would be really cool would be if some people could offer their servers for hosting these "already compiled" packages --
Plans are a peer-to-peer system for actual sharing of the binaries.
and then separate out individual modules for things like different USE flag settings in to different binary subcomponents so that you could download whatever you wanted any time without having to compile.
Generally, USE flags are compile time options. Meaning you *need* to recompile to change them.
You know about apt-get source package; dpkg-build right?
Yes.
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Brandon Holtsclaw -
djgoku -
Jason D. Clinton -
Jon Pruente -
Luke-Jr -
Oren Beck -
Rich Edelman