figosdev
today i wasted part of a day trying to explain to some people what i do with their software. im not complaining, it was all valuable feedback. im not even bitter about it, though i am a little disappointed. im only mentioning this here since honestly, everyone that responds to me here tends to do so thoughtfully. thats really a higher standard than i hold a forum to, guys; at least one of you could say something unreasonable, you know?
i dont literally believe that i have "handlers" who follow me around the web trying to manage what i say. i mean its not impossible, eh? perhaps i triggered the wrong super-ai at some point, and its busy targeting me as someone to hush up no matter what i say. i never (ever) thought i was that important, but it would explain my experience. and by the way, this really is about my view on distros.
i really think the things i say arent that controversial. when i was a kid, i thought it would be completely awesome if we could have cpus that could be reprogrammed by the user to either be a "mac" or a "pc," and this was in the days when the 8088 was a useful chip (at least for something.) we have these fpgas now, they exist. and yet i thought the idea was too "idealistic" and would never be allowed because commercial vendors would stand in the way.
i dont think any of the ideas i have about software are more controversial than that. and still, everywhere i go i find the people who think they are. they call me a troll (again and again) even when i spend literally years maintaining fairly simple code that demonstrates my ideas. im not making demands, im not saying "hey, you should do work for me, for free." though i think many people expect that now, there are so many users per developer these days.
a controversial idea for sure is that "linux" should be "unified" for the sake of enterprise users, or even enterprise vendors. this is not a free software idea whatsoever; this is a triumph of other things over user freedom. and yet only a small number of people would dream of calling that idea "trolling." why im held to a higher standard than that? i dont know. i mean the foundation of all this "controversy" for me is something very simple like:
* the user should be free
* developers are users too
* just to be certain, users are also users
perhaps we should be pretty free to talk about anything software-related that doesnt threaten those three things. "free" is just a word, but of course in this context i am referring to the 4 freedoms to use, study, remix, share. those 4 freedoms are why we can work (freely) on this software without producing all of it by ourselves. its idealistic and it has a very practical outcome.
my most controversial idea ever then (which i havent gotten any backlash for yet) is that the entire distro concept is "limiting." this is not a request or demand. this is a comment on the state of the gnu/linux ecosystem. and this is the only place i can name today, where someone (other than fsr) might get what im saying. people here are pretty charitable.
there seems to be more quibbling about the way things are said than what is intended-- if you say "_____ encourages derivatives" or "make it your own" this is well received. we are all here to use software, and some of us are here to develop and share it, too. we are doing what we love.
whether youre part of "team obarun" or "team ubuntu" or even "team red hat" (theres just this one guy from red hat i respect, its definitely not my favourite team) im going to judge you more for your "love of the game" than your player stats or trophies, or even your friends.
to me, a gnu/linux distro is nothing more than a space for you to work on your software. its a platform to make your software easier to distribute; you might dedicate a lot of effort to making it the way you want and i respect that, even though to me-- its about the software, more than the distro. this is like maslows hierarchy of needs, but in a software context.
theres really no such thing as "distro freedom." you can switch from one distro to another. generally speaking, you can take a distro and modify it. but you can only do that very easily if you have the skills, or the tools, or both. its really about software, and this isnt nitpicking (though one might think it is.)
i have spent years watching people on their diasporas from puppy, ubuntu, debian, and devuan. these arent all negative; in some instances its a simple triumph of freedom. my "gripe" with the distro is the friction it creates between the user and their personal quest for freedom; between users of different distros, and between users and developers.
to take eric as one example-- eric owes me nothing, i hope we give each other the basic mutual respect of humans, which is a pretty rare and idealised thing really. and i will say the same of fsmithred.
but compared to other developers-- they do nothing to stop me. im not part of their threat model, and they do nothing to stand in my way. they do truly nothing to discourage me from trying to be free; if eric doesnt do things "my way" he does absolutely nothing to try to make it more difficult for me to go and do things my way. this is "live and let live" practiced with software; its the best way to represent a distro.
if you say "you can do absolutely whatever you want with _____" and thats true in theory for virtually all distros; but in practice the results are surreal. i dont have to pick on any individuals about this; the way distro communities (even lead developers) actually work in practice, there are only a few exceptions.
with most gnu/linux distros today, its not quite: "you do this because its the way youre told" or even "this is the pythonic way" but it ultimately becomes more about the distro than the software. on average, distros become a little shrine to the developers instead of a shrine to user freedom. (and developers are free too, i never said otherwise. it only works if we have a clear definition of "freedom", which we do.)
based on my limited experience with 50+/60+/70+ distros (it could be a 100, dont ask me, id tell you if i really kept track) i can hold up obarun as the exception that proves the rule: "distros limit your freedom." its not impossible to work around this, but its very rare that people do. and of course, the obvious question there is "what the heck are you talking about?" this is one of those weird ideas you cant prove in just 3 pages, sorry about that. for now, maybe you get what im saying and maybe you dont.
am i declaring war on the distro? certainly not. im declaring introspection, on the gnu/linux ecosystem.
even if we stood just a little bit farther outside this "distrocentric" habit that is so common, that would do it. as it happens, systemd is the best reason weve had in a long time to do so. today, many of us are about init freedom; its a pretty effective rallying cry to introduce a new generation to software freedom.
theres nothing wrong with distros really. but the tendency to be distrocentric has caused so much friction between users, developers and everybody. its almost everywhere you go. if we simply decided to focus on software more, and "what distro?" less, imagine how that would free us all to collaborate per our needs/desires/talents. but just look at all the fences theyve built! you can climb over them, though youll get (at best) a lot of funny looks from people.
this about cooperation between neighbors, but its not about everyone doing everything the same way. s6 doesnt stop neighbors from working together, python doesnt stop neighbors from working together, qt doesnt stop neighbors from working together-- and the distro concept doesnt have to either.
but among these software concepts, it is the distro that presently limits our cooperation the most. it neednt stop us, if we have enough reason to put other goals ahead of it-- a common "enemy" (systemd) is the always the easiest way to unify people. something more positive, like freedom for everyone? its a sad comment on humanity that enemies unite us more reliably; though i suppose thats better than being conquered. (this article is in the public domain.)
banned_9-26-2021
The meaning of life
It is a good movie by Monty Pythons, I think you need to watch it, ?again?
There are 310 distros on distrowatch and as FigOS writer you would know there are more, just like last week there were 310 and Obarun wasn't included (someone was dropped).
A large number of them are just a desktop selection and modification of a "true" distro. Some people just have money to rent servers and space to have their own repository for a theme or two of gnome or plasma.
The ones that use systemd, without maybe realizing it, are beggining to be the same thing.
If you look at popularity orders quality contradicts quantity.
Meanwhile Obarun was unknown, even Arch is half way down the list and below a handful of xUmbuntus.
Freedom? What freedom? Freedom to silently choose and get out of the way maybe. The moment that mouth opens up and criticism flows out you are shot by linux-ecosystem-rambo-sniper!
The fact that BBC got to produce and play monty-pythons was a product of struggle. freedom is never handed easily back from those that took it!
figosdev
oh i think its great that obarun is featured on/included in distrowatch. it deserves it just as much as any other distro. and if fig os ever gets on there it would be cool too, i can finally submit it since its more than a year old. right now im thinking more about getting native packages working, now that its no longer debian-based.
"what kind of freedom" is a question i explicitly answered. most distros (90% or more, at a guess) have their own overton window, so one of the costs of switching is encountering new customs, values and social mores. apart from solid technical reasons (which i consider more debatable, though im tired of those as well) this is largely why i decided 10 years of debian was plenty. is arch more free? i sort of think it is, but im curious how much. i dont think i know that or you know that, maybe theres someone who does.
theres a difference between being against distros (which i am not) and having some qualms about the distro concept (which i do.) as i said already, its not that the distro concept exists, but the importance that its given over some related things. its more about priorities than good vs. bad. and i think obarun does just fine, as an exception to what i was talking about. that, and i think earlier on, the thing im talking about largely didnt exist (but distros did.)
eric
by chance, Obarun is not a distro :)
figosdev
by chance, Obarun is not a distro
well i love that... but what is it then?
i tried to explain to someone recently that gnu is more than an operating system, its a philosophy. that went over about as well as youd think. i actually dont like the fsf very much, the people in it are ok.
banned_9-26-2021
eric wroteby chance, Obarun is not a distro :)
So if you had the money to have a server that would be an arch mirror but you would call it obarun, and it would be updated as any arch mirror, wouldn't it be a distro then?
I arrest my case your honor(s) ;)
figosdev
"not a distro" watch would be a cool site, though i doubt ladislav would be as amused as i would be.
eric
@ but what is it then?
A build concept based on Arch Linux.
@ So if you had the money to have a server that would be an arch mirror but you would call it obarun, and it would be updated as any arch mirror, wouldn't it be a distro then?
Maybe distribution do not have the same definition for me as the majority of the people :
a distro is/have :
own repo (i mean with all neccessary packages into to have a complete working system, Arch have approximatively 5000 package)
own packager
own tools
own wiki
own philosophy
independant from any other distribution
Bonus, doing stuff that bring something really new on Linux community.
not the case for Obarun. I never had the pretention to be a distro. Obarun is far away of this above definition.
Making copy/paste and just changing themes do not make you as distro even if you rebuild all the package coming from the main distro. What's happen if the main distro stop to work? just my point of view...
figosdev
just my point of view...
i think youre being too modest (worse, i think the concept of "distro" is too highfalutin now, its just a bunch of software) and linguistically, the universally accessible alternative is calling it "the operating system" when we all know that 99% of them are not "their own os," they are their own distro.
but, i think its undoubtedly your right to define your work on the terms you did. if i think obarun is a distro and call it a distro... i will probably continue to call it one but i probably wont argue with you about it (you would win.)
on the other hand... there are good reasons (other than just the ones you mentioned) to not call it a distro.
if everyone had a similar build system, distros would be a little less important, and the ecosystem would be a little more free. and that would actually be just fine.
greater separation between "distro" and user-- a "distro" being "the thing one creates build systems like obarun from/for" would reduce all the tight-coupling or "gratuitous interdependency" in software, such as emacs requiring systemd. and indeed-- with obarun, it has already achieved that. (emacs may require systemd in arch, though i read it does not require it in obarun.)
so bring on the distro alternatives...
ray
Obarun from my (as a user) point of view: It's Arch distro, with s6 init instead of systemd:D. Finally, a user decides what system will be used, not devs. Arch devs have imposed system:D on their users and don't care of or support other init systems. But I don't care of system:D. And I can use Arch resources (wiki, forum, packages in main repos / AUR / elsewhere) as far as they are free of system:D footprint. If a package requires system:D, I can ignore the package, rebuild it or ask for support here. But if one day there's something better for me than Linux / Arch / Obarun, certainly I'll use it.
eric
@ ray
a ton of no-system:D system exist now on the linux community or BSD ... the choice is not missing... :)
ray
@ eric, I know about them) But subjectively, Obarun is more attractive for the time being. It's Arch, but with the least possible correction - its init, the point where Arch devs lost their inner freedom. It would be interesting to know how you came to the concept of Obarun.
figosdev
its init, the point where Arch devs lost their inner freedom
init was really just the camels nose in the tent, but its also pid 1, so...
emacs is a funny example, i was joking that leafpad would need systemd very soon.
eric
@ ray
for the same reason that you use Obarun, keeping Arch but without system:D. And so, my brother see my works and told me to share it with him, then i thought : "if i'm not happy with system:D, surely some other are not happy". So i decided to share my works.
So, nothing execptionnal here :)
figosdev
if i'm not happy with system:D, surely some other are not happy
but no, no, everybody is happy with systemd...
though the more people who do work to keep the replacement os out, the more obvious it is to everyone:
* not everyone likes systemd
* not everyone is just asking to have other inits "supported for free."
in fact they dislike it so much, they are doing the work themselves (and sharing it with others, and there is interest.) sort of goes against the whole "everyone likes systemd" thing.
the third advantage is: the more evidence there is against the "everyone likes systemd" slogan, the better (or more likely) the support for alternatives will be. if you create obarun, you weaken the monopoly-- then people who dont even use obarun benefit from obarun too-- same for all sans-systemd distro-branches.