Wednesday, April 28, 2010

A Future Opening

As I look through DistroWatch's list, I see a trend. The top ten at the moment are: Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, OpenSuSE, Mandriva, Debian, PCLinuxOS, Sabayon, Arch, and MEPIS. Strangely, we find two relatively non-n00b distributions in there: Arch, Debian. The other 8 distributions aim to be relatively easy to use, while Debian and Arch are not.

Arch's uptake has been surprising. The first time I installed Arch, I was rather unimpressed. The installation procedure seemed like a somewhat menu driven LFS installation, though faster because it used binaries. Since that first use, the installation has become better. It's now somewhat similar to a Slackware installation, though the system-after-install is much more similar to a Debian installation or Ubuntu Minimal installation.

Debian is more of an intermediate Linux user distribution. First, their website is terrible. Second, no one I know is going to download more than 3 CDs. This usually means that people download a minimal, or net-install ISO of Debian. After that, they simply apt what they need.

The rest of the top ten are astoundingly similar systems. They all give you a GUI-centric system that does not require much if any Linux or UNIX knowledge. This is a good thing. This means that more people can sit down with open source software, and do what it is they need to do with little to no hassle. This is a bad thing. This means that systems are becoming more complex, more difficult to maintain, and more difficult to secure. Perhaps this is the reason for Arch's success? Perhaps this is the reason for Debian's placement? Aside from Slackware or LFS, I no of no other distribution that offers the security and stability of a Debian installation (note that I hate Debian and most of its derivatives... I am a Slackware guy, but I must give credit where credit is due).

So, if my assumptions are correct, we could use a system with the following features:
1. Ease of use
2. Dependency resolving package managment
3. Bloat free
4. GUI-centric system managmenet
5. Hassle free
6. Small package set making it easier to manage
7. Performance, performance, performance
8. No upgrade breakage

The last point was one of my selling points on Arch. The rolling release system has yet to leave my VM broken. Awesome work. I still fear this problem and therefore stick to Slackware though. Note, I do not want those 8 points in my system, but this seems to be what people are looking for. Something like SliTaz with a kernel config similar to Slackware or Ubuntu would probably be close.

I could easily be wrong, as this is all conjecture. Let me know what you think.

9 comments:

Jack said...

I'm sure people would love a Debian spinoff that has rolling releases like Arch, and an easy installation like Ubuntu.

We could just call it, "SoBadAssYouWonderWhyYouUsedUbuntuOS." You know, something embarrassingly named but still somehow better, so it makes everyone cry at how it ever occurred. Open Software makes it so that, if you fork Debian and make a pretty website, you can revolutionize computing.

I don't see why we can't think of ways to make this all easier on people. Making the upgrades simpler, like in Fedora. I suspect Ubuntu will get those things figured out sooner or later.

But yeah, a slick, easy to use, easy to update, speedy OS would be quite nice to have.

As soon as e17 is finished, I'll make it for you. How's that? XD

Glenn Greenfield said...

"rolling releases like Arch, and an easy installation like Ubuntu."

Sounds like Debian testing and Sid.

"SoBadAssYouWonderWhyYouUsedUbuntuOS."

Sounds like Debian.

"You know, something embarrassingly named but still somehow better, so it makes everyone cry at how it ever occurred."

Debian

"the rest of your points..."
Debian.

mpincpn said...

Isn't sidux a rolling release? I know it's debian sid, but I've been using it for over 2 years with only one problem. The Virtualbox VM was broken for a couple of weeks. And even then I could have fixed it by grabbing the necessary software from another source. But I don't use my Windows VM very much lately. So I just waited for the dependencies to get sorted out. Like I said, it was only about 2 weeks.

Gaetano Andrea said...

I found my perfect system with Chakra (http://chakra-project.org/). Which is basically Arch with and optimized for Kdemod with a few GUIs such as installer, package manager (i prefer to use pacman anyway) and others.

The installer made me try it at first, despite its alpha state. I didn't want to spend and afternoon installing Arch.

It includes all of you points and hasn't broke a single thing. I use since alpha3 stage (now it's at alpha5v4).

They also have a nice netbook remix.

Future plans include also a lesser bleeding edge sync with Arch. It will still continue to be a rolling release distro which can use Arch repos with 100% compatibility, but with a sort of parachute time lapse.

Really a valid solid distro that I advice to anyone who can understand what an operating system is and love to have the latest software with no hassles. Nice community too. In case one needs help to configure the system, can find a good response.

--
cga

ove said...

I like Debian because of its flexibility and no pre-assumptions. I installed it like in 2006 and use the same system (obviously updated) all the time. I like that it's solid and everything works. It also has a good amount of software and because it's popular enough, it has high availability of non-repository software as well. That is also partly to the fact that a gazillion of distributions use the dpkg.

Regarding the website, I kind of like that old-school style. I think they aren't even trying to be cool or please anyone. All the info is there. I think there are lots of highly respected websites like that. I respect their self-respect.

I agree that some of the cool OSes have become way too bloated just in order to fit with the needs of almost anyone without them having to do something. For me Linux has always been about making the choices myself and customizing the way things are. I recently installed Ubuntu on an old laptop and was astonished at the assumptions that system made at installation and how terrible it was altogether. Just like having a Windows computer. I think sticking to a distribution that is maybe a little old-fashioned and conservative (yet up-to-date) in terms of all the fads is a good thing for me. I did my distro-juggle until I landed on Debian, and haven't had the need to change it. I haven't tried all of them but during my eight years of Linux only, I've seen some.
Debian also works well on all sorts of hardware, so I have felt like at home even with things like NSLU2.

As far as I understand, Slackware and Gentoo are pretty solid alternatives, and the BSDs obviously.

茂恒 said...
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
Distro Queen said...

An aggressive rolling release distro like Arch inevitably brings breakage when run on bare metal rather than VM. It's just part of the ethos. I think the real unmet need among the popular distros is a stable and stationary core married to rolling release user apps. Similar to what Ubuntu does with PPA for newer version apps but without having to do the PPA business.

bahaltener said...

I like Debian and don't get these "hard to use" notions. Hype of Ubuntu which draws everything from Debian doesn't impress me.

Ford said...

@behaltener,
note that in the post, i talked about the reasoning behind Debian's intermediate status. the website layout is appallingly awful, and most people are going to choose a netinstall that leaves the system rather bare bones. the reason for this is download times.

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