Hi Fungalnet!
Thank you for having taken care of publishing these two comments o' mine. They were respectively the 2nd and 3rd (or 4th) ones I posted on systemd-free — aka sf. (From now on, I may write "sf" for short. I find it funny it's the same acronym as the one for Science Fiction, haha! ;) But, since we may also come to talk about Science Fiction, sooner or later, I'll keep SF, with capitals, for the latter and I'll write sf for systemd-free. Agreed?)
I'm also glad you've taken the time to answer my question about these two comments of mine not having been issued when submitting them. (I've seen they are published now. I even added an erratum to one of them.)
It may seem small rubish but it was worrying me. (After years of posting nothing whatsoever anywhere!) And as Axl Rose put it, in one of the GN'R early songs: "worrying's a waste of my… time!" (It must be at the beginning of "Mr. Brownstone").
If I am wrong about ALT and you have seen something different let me know.
Well, as a start, I'd like to say that my comments @ sf about ALT were just born from curiosity (why wasn't this distro even mentioned?) and from a concern for exhaustive objectivity. The sf has become an amazing platform and ressource to those who are trying to live without, not only systemd: ANY crapware.
I'm not a fanboy of ALT Linux. And I have only tried it once, live-sessioning, on the same 32-bit netbook I installed Void on since, some eight days ago. To be more specific, it was the i585-edition of the "stable branch" shipping sysVinit & IceWM, which you can find following this link (the iso is sorted in "Installable LiveCDs" > "Experimental"):
https://en.altlinux.org/Starterkits
(I have not tried the GNUstep version I have refered to in my post @ sf.)
Now, that being said, SEVERAL things lead me to get interested by this distro.
1. The amazing variety of ALT's "offer". If you follow the link, you'll see. Now, you may think that's not quite tremendously original or creative. There's no s6/66 or runit option. And many of the editions are systemd's. But still, many too are sysV's.
2. ALT Linux is kind of a Russian "cousin" of (Texan) PCLinuxOS. (In itself, this very coincidence, in distros emerged from very opposite contexts, is quite funny.) ALT was forked from the same mother-distribution (Mandrake or Mandriva, not sure) and goes with APT managing rpm's — which I think is a curious choice, but I'm not qualified enough to judge this or elaborate on it.
3. The width of the available packages in their repos is good, if not excellent. Several applications I like because they are frugal, fun and fit some very precise needs, are in the ALT repos, and you won't necessarly find all of them in Void's or even Debian's! (Of course, you will find 'em all in AUR… But not in the Arch official packages.) Just one example: the Sayonara music-player.
—Of course, this merit is only from an end-user's perspective… I claim being an end-user (somehow semi-advanced and aware) but just an end-user nonetheless.
4. The ALT team DO have an ethos of software frugality. And that's this ethos (and not only the "libre" spirit) that convinced me to migrate to Linux some 12 years ago. Both do matter: for the Corporate pro-consumerism needs the available software to be more and more bloated and slow in order to people having to go on buying new hardware like crazy. (You do already know all this…)
5. I find ALT interesting as a government-endorsed project campaigning for frugalness and taking care of equiping schools, in a country (Russia) that has been ravaged by nearly one Century of dictatorship and, since, by the Yeltsin years. (I won't discuss Putin here.) 2000 schools were equipped when the interview was made, 11 years ago. How many more since?
You may feel concerned by the latter aspect of government endorsement. (I'm going to elaborate on WHY I find it interesting. Please, be patient.)
As for me, I'm not pro-State: I'm an anarchist, I'm a reader of Étienne de La Boétie, Guy-Ernest Debord and Pierre Clastres. I'm for autonomy, in its etymological meaning: the ability to give oneself (auto) one's own laws (nomos).
And yet, in the concrete world (which is not ideal as you know), I would like more governments to get involved in free software. For a matter of State sovereignty against the monopolistic Giants (I won't enumerate them, you know better than me who they are and what they are and what their agenda is.)
For instance, as a French guy (but I would be so, all the same, if I was not French), I'm stunned that France (which belongs to the "club" of rather "wealthy" countries) has NO vision whatsoever about the issue of digital sovereignty. (The government publicly pretend they have, but that's "PR", it's just a plain lie.) And it's not a matter of lacking talented people in France. Jean-Louis Gassée (BeOS), Gaël Duval (Mandrake, KDE 2/3, more recently /e/), Roberto Di Cosmo (despite his Italian origin) and the team behind Damn Small Linux in Paris, Qwant's team, possibly a part of the NuTyX team, and many others… are French!
And, of course, we have Éric and Jean-Michel here, who I friendly salute! :) (Yet, I'm not completely sure if Éric IS French or a foreign French-native-speaker —He could also be Belgian, Swiss, Quebecois, even African? But, I think he is French. As for Jean-Michel, it seems he's "half-French, half-Polish" as he put it in Polish on this very thread at # 11.) And they are many other French talented people that I forget or don't even know of.
Now, unfortunately, most of these talented people whether (1) go corporate (Gassée, Duval, etc), or (2) are confined in marginal projects, like Obarun. —I'm not being derogative calling it "marginal". It's even a compliment! First, because the margin is a place of resistance to the mainstream dictatorial trends. Second, because as Jean-Luc Godard once put it (in substance): "The margin [of a text] is the place where the reader can make one's own writing."
And why is there no third way between "go corporate" and "stay in the margin" (ie remain amateur/hobbyist)? (However skillful and inventive hobbyists can be!) Because the French state does not endorse enough the (free) software R&D. (They don't endorse proprietary software either. They don't endorse nuthin'.) There's an absolute lack of strategic vision here… just as in many other fields!
YET, there was a strong tradition in France of State protecting and supporting inovation and R&D. (Universities, SNCF, France Telecom, the space program, the roads, etc.) There was also a strong tradition of "non-alignment" of France on any of the two big opponents of "Cold War". (This tradition of non-alignment was initiated, far back in time, by king François 1er when negociating with Suleiman, in order to balance the power of the alliance of England with the "Holy Roman Empire" of Charles V.)
And both aspects (sovereign R&D and geostrategic non-alignment) are quite interconnected.
But it's been now half a Century this (no nonsense) tradition of France policy and strategy has been systematically betrayed by all successive French governments, by stupidity, cowardice and conformism to the "New World Order" ideology. And it's such a pity and shame for us and the reputation of France, which is now very sullied. I personaly suffer from this situation, in my everyday life, in my very flesh, because, despite all its today failures and flaws, I love my country: I am a patriot. I was born and live in one of the rare countries in the world whose name means "Liberty" or "Freedom" —and I mean, litteraly, not only as a connotation. The "Franks" named themselves the "free men". Hence, "to be frank": express oneself freely, and, in French, "affranchir": to free (someone) from slavery. In German, France is called "Frankreich": "the Empire of freedom" or "the Empire of the free men". (It may seem an oxymoron.) Yet, France has been officially an "Empire" only once: during Napoleon. (And this was a dark episode of betrayal of the French spirit, however admirative some people can be for Napoleon's military and state genius.) France is essentially an anti-Empire model. Since the Gauls, all along through the "Old Regime", until Charles de Gaulles.
I don't idealize the Russian government either. And you make a point when emphasizing their role in "behaviourism" (Pavlov was one of those who started it all). But this was during Stalinism, whose official ideology was historical materialism. Like Maoism, Stalinism hunted any spiritual-oriented tendencies as "petit-bourgeois". (Although when a Georgian youngster, Stalin wanted to become a pope! and wrote poetry, as you may know.)
I've never been in Russia, but I met a few Russian people. They are clever, fond of Arts, Litterature and Sciences, often very learned and articulated, and somehow… very special. It's a very curious mentality, completely opposed to the Western individualism. They are ASIANS. They THINK and FEEL collective. It's a question of deep and rooted ethnological values, whose roots come from old deep anthropological structures of the rural peasantry. (In France, we are lucky enough to have one of the most eminent demographers to study this field: Emmanuel Todd, who brought much light on these aspects.)
Being a patriot does not keep me from admiring value in "foreign" people I meet, on the contrary. (It's when one esteems oneself well that he/she is able to esteem others.) I consider highly the contribution of many Russians —as people, not as subjects of the Russian Empire or of the CCCP. Alexandr Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Alexander Zinoviev, Evgueni Schwarz, Dmitri Mendeleev, Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Sergeyevich Termen (the inventor of the music intrument called "theremin" after his name) and, in my drama field, Anton Chekhov, Konstantin Stanislavski, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Anatoly Vasiliev. To name A FEW. (Plus all the Russian anarchist authors you know much better than I do!!!)
In the West, the White people from Russia have the reputation of being racist —and some are, of course! But who knows in our Western "free" world that Pushkin, unanimously considered by Russians as the founder of Russian litterature, was a Black African "quadroon"? (Search "Abram Petrovich Hannibal".) They don't give a damn he was issued from African ancestry. (We have a French equivalent with Alexandre Dumas.) The Russians do not have an ethnicist or confessional conception of their identity. Much more less, at least, than USA people do, although this "myth" of the "American melting-pot" —which is a myth, precisely, it's PR, once again, ie whether self-promotion and/or a simple lie. In recently declassified documents, we now have proof that Abraham Lincoln, the "arch-abolitionist", was doing it because he aimed the Black people to LEAVE the land of the United States and go… somewhere else, in South America, as far as possible from the Country of milk and honey, the New Zion, which God provides for the White!
I wish one day Russian directors will shoot Russian "western" movies ("easterns"!?!) to show the odyssey of the Russian Conquest ("Go East, young boy, go East!") and also the way they relate to minorities and embraced them… a little bit better than Americans have, that is.
(Let's stop ranting here.)
This long digression lets me get to other reasons why I am interested in the endavour of the ALT Linux team, according to what we can read in this
interview of the project-manager.
6. (It's a bit corollary to my aforementioned 4th point.) It seems that their DNA includes a former involvement in hardware. In the interview, Alexey Rusakov says this (my emphasis):
ALT Linux was originally both scientific and commercial. The Institute of Logic, Cognitive Science and Development of Personality, a nonprofit organization founded by the Russian philosopher Vladimir Smirnov, was a central institution associated with the scientific part. His son, Alexey Smirnov, is now the CEO of ALT Linux.
The commercial part involved IPLabs company, a computer hardware retailer. In 1998, they cooperated and created a Free Software project that was named IPLabs Linux Team. They started localizing Mandrake and other distributions, and publishing these distributions in Russia.
That's quite interesting. It means they have the means to code hardware-awarely. And FRUGAL-hardware-awarely, I guess, when considering the state of Russian industry in that time (the 1990's)…
7. As mentioned in the quote, the project DNA is both commercial AND scholar. And I'm also sensitive to the fact that the person who founded the Institute, Vladimir Smirnov, is… a philosopher. And not an "ego" philosopher, eager to work for his own fame, but a philosopher who worked to exhume the works of another (somewhat forgotten) philosopher: Nicolai A. Vasiliev.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Smirnov_(philosopher)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolai_A._Vasiliev
So, I do NOT know how well this set of principles eventually RESULT in a good distro (which, once again, I have not tried long and not installed), but the global ENDEAVOUR pleases me much!!!
As usual: I've been quite verbose, lacking the time required to make it brief. ;)
See you soon! Take care. Regards