I had just upgraded all the Macs in the house to Apple Silicon models and was getting around to selling off the last Intel iMac (a 2020 vintage 10 core i9) when—
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Which distro shall The Linux be?
@oldcoder No idea yet: might be better to go for one of the BSDs, specifically to avoid systemd and wayland and other Microsoft-oid infections. (I have UNIX history and don't like the new-fangled bullshit.)
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I had just upgraded all the Macs in the house to Apple Silicon models and was getting around to selling off the last Intel iMac (a 2020 vintage 10 core i9) when—
AI bros crash the door: hey homie I hear you like memory and SSDs— *Stand and deliver!*
Me, side-eying the dust-covered 128Gb RAM iMac— you get The Linux now.
@cstross
I'm *that* short of re-activating my old Quadra 700. -
@oldcoder No idea yet: might be better to go for one of the BSDs, specifically to avoid systemd and wayland and other Microsoft-oid infections. (I have UNIX history and don't like the new-fangled bullshit.)
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@jernej__s @oldcoder I want KDE 3.5.x as well. Probably via Trinity Desktop Environment.
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@oldcoder No idea yet: might be better to go for one of the BSDs, specifically to avoid systemd and wayland and other Microsoft-oid infections. (I have UNIX history and don't like the new-fangled bullshit.)
You have UNIX history? I started with V6 at U.C. Berkeley in 1976. I have a few contributions in the BSD fortunes file.
The decision to avoid systemd and Wayland is sensible. There are serious issues with both and they represent wrong turns in the history of Linux.
There are standard Linux distros that might work for your purposes. Devuan comes to mind. Devuan eschews systemd and prioritizes X11/Xorg over Wayland. And it's essentially Debian, so everything important runs.
If you're an old UNIX hand, Slackware might be the AINeko's meow. Slackware was my first Linux distro in the early 1990s. For all intents and purposes, it was UNIX. I actually migrated my company [a software development firm] from SunOS and Solaris boxes to Slackware running on 486s.
Today, Slackware uses a BSD-like init system [instead of systemd] and treats X11/Xorg as the default. Wayland is supported as an alternative.
PCLinuxOS and Void Linux are two other options. However, I haven't tried those distros.
For what it's worth, my own Linux distro [30 years old this year] eschews both systemd and Wayland except for the minimum core Wayland libraries required to compile some packages.
On cloud servers, I run #Devuan because host dedis are able to boot it. From there, on the dedis, I run my own distro in an ultra-light container.
If you prefer a light Linux experience, you're far from alone. Most developers that I know directly do as well.
In a humorous note, one of my students once asked me to name the smallest thing in the Universe. "Planck's Constant", I replied. It turned out that he wanted to create the smallest distro possible. Thus was born Planck Linux.
I think that that distro fit on one floppy. Note: It isn't online any longer as the developer is presently working on a distro that is intended to be slightly larger.
In regular FOSS now, it's considered acceptable to have terminal emulators that require hundreds of megabytes of RAM.
For the sake of dancing icons and such, too, desktops now pile layer upon layer of unnecessary software until the result resembles the 100-layer dip shown in the attached screenshot. The end result isn't small or fast.
I'm not able to fathom the mindset.
My desktop core has taskbar, workspaces, systray, alt-tab, launch buttons, live dockapps, live wallpaper, start button, multiple terminal options, volume control, offline Wikipedia, and single-instance support. Does anybody truly need more? Additionally, response times even on a decade-old laptop are, blink, you're there.
The punchline is that the core consists of a single fast executable of about 300 KB plus a few support executables and scripts. KB and not MB.
That is how it's done.
My advice to people is to seek the light. A light Linux, that is. BSD is fine, too, but #Linux distros might be more complete and come with larger communities.
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Jernej:
Yes. But the distros that I listed are probably closer to out of the box support for Mr. Stross's purposes.
One of my associates is the lead for Adélie Linux, which is similar to Alpine. Another was one of the early leads for Gentoo. So I have some familiarity with these distros.
Adélie is probably better than Alpine for general use. It's a general-purpose distro with a focus on usability, stability, and broad hardware compatibility.
In an odd note, I see pages on the Web which suggest that Adélie is the love child of Alpine and Gentoo. I didn't know that.
But Mr. Stross is likely seeking a distro that is ready to go for his purposes and all three of these distros will require some work to set up.
If you're familiar with one of the three distros and could offer a recipe to meet the desired specifications, that might be a good option.
Note: I don't use recipes myself because my distro is monolithic. I put everything, including distro source code, on an SSD and boot that. It's nice not to need to worry about a laptop breaking. If it does, move the SSD to a new laptop and, presto, you're back and good as ever. -
You have UNIX history? I started with V6 at U.C. Berkeley in 1976. I have a few contributions in the BSD fortunes file.
The decision to avoid systemd and Wayland is sensible. There are serious issues with both and they represent wrong turns in the history of Linux.
There are standard Linux distros that might work for your purposes. Devuan comes to mind. Devuan eschews systemd and prioritizes X11/Xorg over Wayland. And it's essentially Debian, so everything important runs.
If you're an old UNIX hand, Slackware might be the AINeko's meow. Slackware was my first Linux distro in the early 1990s. For all intents and purposes, it was UNIX. I actually migrated my company [a software development firm] from SunOS and Solaris boxes to Slackware running on 486s.
Today, Slackware uses a BSD-like init system [instead of systemd] and treats X11/Xorg as the default. Wayland is supported as an alternative.
PCLinuxOS and Void Linux are two other options. However, I haven't tried those distros.
For what it's worth, my own Linux distro [30 years old this year] eschews both systemd and Wayland except for the minimum core Wayland libraries required to compile some packages.
On cloud servers, I run #Devuan because host dedis are able to boot it. From there, on the dedis, I run my own distro in an ultra-light container.
If you prefer a light Linux experience, you're far from alone. Most developers that I know directly do as well.
In a humorous note, one of my students once asked me to name the smallest thing in the Universe. "Planck's Constant", I replied. It turned out that he wanted to create the smallest distro possible. Thus was born Planck Linux.
I think that that distro fit on one floppy. Note: It isn't online any longer as the developer is presently working on a distro that is intended to be slightly larger.
In regular FOSS now, it's considered acceptable to have terminal emulators that require hundreds of megabytes of RAM.
For the sake of dancing icons and such, too, desktops now pile layer upon layer of unnecessary software until the result resembles the 100-layer dip shown in the attached screenshot. The end result isn't small or fast.
I'm not able to fathom the mindset.
My desktop core has taskbar, workspaces, systray, alt-tab, launch buttons, live dockapps, live wallpaper, start button, multiple terminal options, volume control, offline Wikipedia, and single-instance support. Does anybody truly need more? Additionally, response times even on a decade-old laptop are, blink, you're there.
The punchline is that the core consists of a single fast executable of about 300 KB plus a few support executables and scripts. KB and not MB.
That is how it's done.
My advice to people is to seek the light. A light Linux, that is. BSD is fine, too, but #Linux distros might be more complete and come with larger communities.@oldcoder Slackware was my first linux distro too. (Back when I was still working at SCO. Back when SCO was a UNIX VAR, not a brain-eating litigation zombie.) I do not, however, have as much history with UNIX as you evidently do!
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Jernej:
Yes. But the distros that I listed are probably closer to out of the box support for Mr. Stross's purposes.
One of my associates is the lead for Adélie Linux, which is similar to Alpine. Another was one of the early leads for Gentoo. So I have some familiarity with these distros.
Adélie is probably better than Alpine for general use. It's a general-purpose distro with a focus on usability, stability, and broad hardware compatibility.
In an odd note, I see pages on the Web which suggest that Adélie is the love child of Alpine and Gentoo. I didn't know that.
But Mr. Stross is likely seeking a distro that is ready to go for his purposes and all three of these distros will require some work to set up.
If you're familiar with one of the three distros and could offer a recipe to meet the desired specifications, that might be a good option.
Note: I don't use recipes myself because my distro is monolithic. I put everything, including distro source code, on an SSD and boot that. It's nice not to need to worry about a laptop breaking. If it does, move the SSD to a new laptop and, presto, you're back and good as ever.@oldcoder Wrong on all counts about me. (I used to be Computer Shopper UK's linux columnist for many years, but for the past two decades I've been a full-time novelist and I rely on @ScrivenerApp to earn my living, which adds its own level of pain: I'm looking back at UNIXen in anticipation of Apple's inevitable rapid enshittification after Tim Cook retires.)
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You have UNIX history? I started with V6 at U.C. Berkeley in 1976. I have a few contributions in the BSD fortunes file.
The decision to avoid systemd and Wayland is sensible. There are serious issues with both and they represent wrong turns in the history of Linux.
There are standard Linux distros that might work for your purposes. Devuan comes to mind. Devuan eschews systemd and prioritizes X11/Xorg over Wayland. And it's essentially Debian, so everything important runs.
If you're an old UNIX hand, Slackware might be the AINeko's meow. Slackware was my first Linux distro in the early 1990s. For all intents and purposes, it was UNIX. I actually migrated my company [a software development firm] from SunOS and Solaris boxes to Slackware running on 486s.
Today, Slackware uses a BSD-like init system [instead of systemd] and treats X11/Xorg as the default. Wayland is supported as an alternative.
PCLinuxOS and Void Linux are two other options. However, I haven't tried those distros.
For what it's worth, my own Linux distro [30 years old this year] eschews both systemd and Wayland except for the minimum core Wayland libraries required to compile some packages.
On cloud servers, I run #Devuan because host dedis are able to boot it. From there, on the dedis, I run my own distro in an ultra-light container.
If you prefer a light Linux experience, you're far from alone. Most developers that I know directly do as well.
In a humorous note, one of my students once asked me to name the smallest thing in the Universe. "Planck's Constant", I replied. It turned out that he wanted to create the smallest distro possible. Thus was born Planck Linux.
I think that that distro fit on one floppy. Note: It isn't online any longer as the developer is presently working on a distro that is intended to be slightly larger.
In regular FOSS now, it's considered acceptable to have terminal emulators that require hundreds of megabytes of RAM.
For the sake of dancing icons and such, too, desktops now pile layer upon layer of unnecessary software until the result resembles the 100-layer dip shown in the attached screenshot. The end result isn't small or fast.
I'm not able to fathom the mindset.
My desktop core has taskbar, workspaces, systray, alt-tab, launch buttons, live dockapps, live wallpaper, start button, multiple terminal options, volume control, offline Wikipedia, and single-instance support. Does anybody truly need more? Additionally, response times even on a decade-old laptop are, blink, you're there.
The punchline is that the core consists of a single fast executable of about 300 KB plus a few support executables and scripts. KB and not MB.
That is how it's done.
My advice to people is to seek the light. A light Linux, that is. BSD is fine, too, but #Linux distros might be more complete and come with larger communities. -
@oldcoder Slackware was my first linux distro too. (Back when I was still working at SCO. Back when SCO was a UNIX VAR, not a brain-eating litigation zombie.) I do not, however, have as much history with UNIX as you evidently do!
1. I remember the litigation. I wasn't involved, but it was widely discussed.
I'm quite literal for a reason that I might have mentioned or that might be clear. [The rhymes that I post come from a different side of me.]
So, I was puzzled by the SCO case. There was talk about stolen code but somehow it was never pointed to. I wasn't clear on why nobody ever said "Show us the code or the case is over". I understand that that is a simplistic view.
I see that a judge did eventually issue an order that was similar. But the case continued for years after that.
The punchline was that Novell as opposed to SCO turned out to own the copyrights to UNIX System V. So, I gather that SCO didn't have the standing needed to litigate to begin with.
2. It's nice to meet an unexpected former Slackware person.
Slackware was great because it delivered on the promise of a free UNIX [more or less] for PCs. One much like the SunOS and Solaris that we were accustomed to.
I kept my company on Slackware until I'd developed so many patches that it proved to be less effort to maintain a new distro instead of merging my work repeatedly.
3. To explain my UNIX experience:
I used UNIX for about 5 years at Berkeley ending in 1981. This was on DEC hardware. For about 10 years after that, UNIX was just one of the families of OSes that my firm worked in.
There was no such thing as Windows initially. PCs and MS-DOS existed but they weren't seen as significant. Instead, they were like the little mammals waiting for the dinosaurs to pass away so that they could take over the world.
In the end, most non-UNIX OSes [such as Data General AOS] did die. UNIX continued to be a robust market into the 1990s, though. SunOS and Solaris became the standard for UNIX developers. If you needed to sell a product to AIX or HP-UX users, you took your code to a porting center.
Our CEO didn't like to spend money, so it was difficult to get new Sun boxes approved. In the 1990s, a junior dev who was irritated by this asked me, "Bob, couldn't we use this Linux thing instead of Suns?"
I tried it, we could, we did, and I personally never looked back.
I've done Windows work in Windows houses and cloud work in Azure roles, but Linux [starting with Slackware] has been the only real OS for me for over 30 years.
I mean the type of Linux that is similar to the UNIX which you remember. I use GUIs but, really, CLI is the one true development environment. In my distro, the Terminal button is right next to the Start button where it belongs.
4. About BSD:
During the SunOS and Solaris era, we all knew that a free #UNIX for PCs was coming. It was supposed to be one of the three BSDs. There was a race to the finish line, three horses, and we expected the winner to take all.
In the early 1990s, I phoned CSRG at Berkeley to see if my company could work out some sort of BSD deal with them. They said that everything was on hold because they were concerned about litigation by AT&T.
During this period, Linus Torvalds entered a dark horse in the race and won decisively. It could have been Minix or #BSD instead. But Linux was in the right place at the right time. -
1. I remember the litigation. I wasn't involved, but it was widely discussed.
I'm quite literal for a reason that I might have mentioned or that might be clear. [The rhymes that I post come from a different side of me.]
So, I was puzzled by the SCO case. There was talk about stolen code but somehow it was never pointed to. I wasn't clear on why nobody ever said "Show us the code or the case is over". I understand that that is a simplistic view.
I see that a judge did eventually issue an order that was similar. But the case continued for years after that.
The punchline was that Novell as opposed to SCO turned out to own the copyrights to UNIX System V. So, I gather that SCO didn't have the standing needed to litigate to begin with.
2. It's nice to meet an unexpected former Slackware person.
Slackware was great because it delivered on the promise of a free UNIX [more or less] for PCs. One much like the SunOS and Solaris that we were accustomed to.
I kept my company on Slackware until I'd developed so many patches that it proved to be less effort to maintain a new distro instead of merging my work repeatedly.
3. To explain my UNIX experience:
I used UNIX for about 5 years at Berkeley ending in 1981. This was on DEC hardware. For about 10 years after that, UNIX was just one of the families of OSes that my firm worked in.
There was no such thing as Windows initially. PCs and MS-DOS existed but they weren't seen as significant. Instead, they were like the little mammals waiting for the dinosaurs to pass away so that they could take over the world.
In the end, most non-UNIX OSes [such as Data General AOS] did die. UNIX continued to be a robust market into the 1990s, though. SunOS and Solaris became the standard for UNIX developers. If you needed to sell a product to AIX or HP-UX users, you took your code to a porting center.
Our CEO didn't like to spend money, so it was difficult to get new Sun boxes approved. In the 1990s, a junior dev who was irritated by this asked me, "Bob, couldn't we use this Linux thing instead of Suns?"
I tried it, we could, we did, and I personally never looked back.
I've done Windows work in Windows houses and cloud work in Azure roles, but Linux [starting with Slackware] has been the only real OS for me for over 30 years.
I mean the type of Linux that is similar to the UNIX which you remember. I use GUIs but, really, CLI is the one true development environment. In my distro, the Terminal button is right next to the Start button where it belongs.
4. About BSD:
During the SunOS and Solaris era, we all knew that a free #UNIX for PCs was coming. It was supposed to be one of the three BSDs. There was a race to the finish line, three horses, and we expected the winner to take all.
In the early 1990s, I phoned CSRG at Berkeley to see if my company could work out some sort of BSD deal with them. They said that everything was on hold because they were concerned about litigation by AT&T.
During this period, Linus Torvalds entered a dark horse in the race and won decisively. It could have been Minix or #BSD instead. But Linux was in the right place at the right time.@oldcoder To understand the SCO lawsuit you have to look back to the DR lawsuit against Microsoft (for hobbling Windows 95 so it wouldn't run on top of DR-DOS). They won big, but only after DR and their IP had been bought by Caldera, then an also-ran Linux distributor.
The lawyers at Caldera then bought the SCO IP (they thought) and took aim at IBM because that *always* ends well and they thought "Microsoft, IBM, what's the difference?" (The rest of SCO ended up being eaten by Borland AIUI.)
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