I am thinking of moving off Debian/Mint-DE, to Nixos linux for this type of flexibility.
-tl On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 5:40 PM, Peter Platek <[email protected]> wrote: > > Yeah, that (sadly) is a good use case. But surely a proper package > > management system would let you do this too. > > > > - allow more than one version of a package to be installed > > > > - allow more than one instance of the same package, but with different > > global configuration. Perhaps global configuration is evil. > > > > - allow package dependencies to contol which versions of each package > > talk to each other. For example, if A talks to B, under some > > conditions, old A should talk to old B > > > > - make sure that distinct package's configurations don't affect each > > other. Example: two different packages that use Apache; they should > not > > configure Apache in ways that conflict. > > I think Red Hat's software collections are supposed to do that: > > https://www.softwarecollections.org > > On 22 April 2015 at 17:24, D. Hugh Redelmeier <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > | From: Giles Orr <[email protected]> > > > > | I've been using VirtualBox a lot recently, and I've been pretty > > | impressed with it - running more than one simultaneous machine, > > | setting up an internal network and running ansible between them, > > | nifty. > > > > It is a neat trick. > > > > But what is it useful for? > > > > Clearly it is great to be able to run different OSes if you need to > > run more than one. For example, to be able to run MS Word when you > > mostly want to run Linux. Or to test on multiple platforms. > > > > In the Libreswan project, we use virtualization to test networking > > software. Since some of the code is in the OS, we at least sometimes > have > > to run different OSes. > > > > But most of virtualization seems to be for other purposes. > > > > | Today at work we had an interesting discussion about Digital > > | Ocean: the suggestion was made (and undoubtedly it's obvious to many > > | on this list, but it was eye-opening to me, I'm still getting my head > > | around disposable machines) that if you weren't sure an upgrade to a > > | droplet would work, just clone it, do the upgrade on the clone and see > > | how it goes. Then you can make your decision and destroy the unwanted > > | version. > > > > Yeah, that (sadly) is a good use case. But surely a proper package > > management system would let you do this too. > > > > - allow more than one version of a package to be installed > > > > - allow more than one instance of the same package, but with different > > global configuration. Perhaps global configuration is evil. > > > > - allow package dependencies to contol which versions of each package > > talk to each other. For example, if A talks to B, under some > > conditions, old A should talk to old B > > > > - make sure that distinct package's configurations don't affect each > > other. Example: two different packages that use Apache; they should > not > > configure Apache in ways that conflict. > > > > - job migration between machines, even while running, seems useful. > > (That's not a package management problem.) > > > > One step more towards virtualization: > > > > Jails are minimal and may be good enough but a lot cheaper than > > supporting true virtual x86 machines. > > > > | All of which made me think "wouldn't it be cool if I could > > | have a system with an totally stripped Linux with VirtualBox as the > > | "Window Manager" so I could toggle between two or three running OSes > > | with graphical interfaces ..." So: > > > > I think that Serious VMware products are stripped Linux systems that > > can run VMs without a lot of extras. > > > > I think that Zen Dom0 (host) can be minimal too. > > > > So much of the noise this day is about things like Docker and CoreOS. > > A lot feels like branding exercises rather than technology. I find it > > too hard to figure out what they actually are. > > --- > > Talk Mailing List > > [email protected] > > http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk > --- > Talk Mailing List > [email protected] > http://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk >
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