[sf-lug] News on some less "mainstream" distros

[Bobbie Sellers]

On 09/17/2017 01:41 PM, acohen36 wrote:
>
> As a reminder, I recently and previously wrote [01] about various 
> distros with different desktops. Some Hopeful news and Questionable 
> news on some of these, at least those I've recently seen so far.
>
> Some hopeful news is that the systemd-free Devuan distro [02] is at 
> least "planning" to come out with its Debian Stable/Stretch and 
> Testing/Buster equivalents fairly soon. Devuan Ascii is similar to 
> Stretch and is "In development", and Devuan Beowulf (intentional use 
> of the same name as the Linux Beowulf clustering-management technology 
> [03] ?)  is similar to Buster and is "Coming soon".
>
> Also several pieces of what are to me Questionable distro news.
>
> LinuxBBQ which I mentioned before in [01], is now recommending BORK! 
> "an openbox minimal spin" [04]. That's unfortunate, b/c there is the 
> usual meaning of "bork" in the tech world [05] to mean "Irreversibly 
> damaged". Is LinuxBBQ's BORK! implying that if one installs this, it 
> _may_ bork your machine according to this definition?? Ouch!
>
>
> Partially quoting a recent Devuan mailing-list posting [06]
> ~~~~
> ..If you want sans-systemd that's rolling release, you have no 
> shortage: Void, Funtoo, Gentoo. Devuan is the only committed 
> sans-systemd that is version-release. Why would anyone want to change 
> that?
>
> If you like rolling release, why not switch to Void or Funtoo?
> ~~~~
>
> IIRC, I previously mentioned Void Linux [07] in an SF-LUG post from 
> three months ago here[08].  Advantages for both Devuan and Void Linux 
> are that they have _multiplatform_ installation releases for 
> architectures _other than_ just the current "gold standard" 
> x86-64/amd64 (see [09] and [10] respectively), e.g., for 32bit x86 and 
> RPi3's ARM. This newfangled, systemd-free, and gentoo-based Funtoo 
> Linux [11], OTOH, currently lists _only_ 64bit, non-ARM installation 
> releases[12]. To me, that fact of being stuck in "Betahood" seems to 
> be a decided deficiency, and calls into question how successfull this 
> systemd-free distro will be.
>
> All this is my opinion only.
> Please feel free to contribute your own.
>
> -A
>
> References
> ===================
>
> [01]http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2017q3/012765.html 
> [02]https://devuan.org/ [03]http://www.beowulf.org/overview/
> [04]https://linuxbbq.org
> [05]https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bork
> [06]https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20170915.031152.4fddbada.en.html 
>
> [07]https://www.voidlinux.eu/ 
> [08]http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2017q2/012645.html
> [09]https://mirror.leaseweb.com/devuan/devuan_jessie/README.txt 
> [10]https://www.voidlinux.eu/download/ [11] 
> http://www.funtoo.org/Welcome [12]http://www.funtoo.org/Subarches 
> ===================
>
     My 2 cents worth is that PCLinuxOS64 is committed to systemd free 
operation,
which accounts for the slogan "Radically Simple".

     You can get it stripped down or quite enhanced and in multiple DE 
flavors.
KDE is the main line, followed by Mate, XFCE and for those with long 
memories
Trinity DE which is quite a hodgepodge of stuff from KDE 3.5 and stuff that
is updated since then which seemed to fit in for the people in the PCLinux
community involved in this.  We may see a later release of
Community-PCLinuxOS64-tde later this month.

PCLinux is an excellent rolling release.  IF you want to see the support 
offered you can
browse <http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum>

     I have Community PCLinuxOS64 -tde-2017.06 installed on the Dell and 
if I make it to the meeting
I will of course be happy to show it off.

     Bobbie Sellers
>
>
> acohen36 at sdf.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.org
>