On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 2:35 PM, mak umba <[email protected]> wrote: > Usually, I use Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, and now trying GuixSD. The > BIG PROBLEM that I have with distributions, is that I often find myself > jumping from one to another because of something that's available on a > distro, and not on others (or because I hate some distro decisions, such as > Debian for using systemd).
As George already mentioned in another post Slackware (or one of its derivatives) might be a good option. Packages are often built from source (so you can install any application you want) and there are Slackbuild scripts to help you build them if you don't want to figure out what you need to do to compile (command arguments, etc.)/patch to get something to build. At this point in time, Slackware does not use systemd. That may change in the future, but for now, they aren't using systemd. Some distributions like Crux have stated they will not be using systemd. Devuan is a fork of Debian specifically without systemd. Porteus (which is a Slackware derivative which runs from a flash drive) gives you a lot of options for picking what packages and options you want in a distribution. Also, I've seen mention of the OpenSUSE build service as an option by people discussing custom built systems. > I was wondering first of all if it's possible, and secondly if somebody > reading this list is able / wants to work on, what I'd consider the > "ultimate gnu distro". Basically, an "essential" distro that I can build > on-demand with the software that I want, chosen from a list. It could be > something very basic, a list where I can choose which kernel I want, which > init system, and basic tools. Once I have an "essential" distro build on > demand (with only the basic tools), then I can install whatever application > I want. But what I'd really like is a basic distro that I can build > (choosing the basic component from a list). I'd certainly be interested in this as well and would be willing to help out or compare notes. As others have already mentioned, everyone has their own idea of what they'd like in a distribution, so it's hard to come up with something that would please everyone. At this point, I'm personally interested in trying to simplify things down enough so that I have a system I can understand, build and modify as needed. Since X appears to be going away (possibly being replaced by Wayland or Mir), I'd prefer a system without the complexities of X Windows. I've been looking into using applications built with SDL and FLTK. SDL can be built to work with the framebuffer or DirectFB. FLTK currently works with Nano-X in framebuffer mode. I'm also looking for applications that do one thing well rather than programs that try to handle everything or in place of software suites. I tend to prefer BSD or MIT licensed applications to GNU licensed ones. A lot of the code for GNU utilities that I've looked at tends to have feature creep (although that's not always the case). Personally, I'd prefer options like sbase or Busybox over the standard GNU utilities/tools. I've also started using CDetect to replace GNU autotools in some situations. One thing I dislike about most distributions is their choice of package management system. I prefer a simple package manager like the one Slackware uses. I started trying to use the slackbuild scripts and spkg on my system, but I've diverged and created my own package management tools. The concept is similar to the Slackware package manager, but I'm using templates and I've automated as much of the functionality for creating/updating build scripts as I could. MXE has a technique of checking for updates by doing a wget on an application's web page to see if an update is available. I've adopted a similar technique. So, I can run a script to see if application versions have changed. I update my scripts to the new version numbers I want if I want those updates and then I run another tool that runs the build scripts for each of the applications. The build scripts download the version specified if it's not already downloaded and then attempt to build, package (tarball) the results and install the packages. There's still some manual intervention needed if the updated version won't build as is without requiring new patches, but when I'm building from scratch I expect that. Would be interested to hear how your project progresses and let me know if there's anything I could do to help. Sincerely, Laura http://www.distasis.com/cpp -- http://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/listinfo/lfs-chat FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
