Any nifty new distros out there?

dhave · 2010-11-03 03:50:07

I'm wanting to wipe WinXP off of my second laptop and put a Linux distro on it. I'm loyal to Arch for my primary machine, of course, but I'm wondering if there are any newish distros out there that would be cool to fool around with on this other machine.

Are there any distros that are doing anything significantly different? I'm familiar with most of the DEs and WMs in use, so I guess I'm asking if there are any innovations in distro design, package management, etc. that lie below the GUI.

Thanks.

jasonwryan · 2010-11-03 03:52:19

I've been playing with FreeBSD on a virtual machine. It's well worth a look...

#edit And yes, I know that strictly speaking it isn't a distro

In FreeBSD, like Arch, decisions are delegated to you, the power user. This may be the most interesting comparison to Arch since it goes head-to-head in package modernity and has a somewhat sizable, smart, active, no-nonsense community. Both systems share many similarities and FreeBSD users will generally feel quite comfortable with most aspects of Arch.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ar … he_.2ABSDs

Allan · 2010-11-03 03:56:26

Kahel OS is breaking ground in the use of orange. \troll

dhave · 2010-11-03 03:58:52

jasonwryan wrote:

I've been playing with FreeBSD on a virtual machine. It's well worth a look...

Thanks for your reply. I ran FreeBSD for six months several years back. It's pretty seamless and snappy. I might give it a fresh look if I can't come across something innovative among the Linux distros.

I'm just looking for a little entertainment really. I haven't had a fresh OS fix in a good while.

One other option is to intentionally bork my Arch system badly enough that I'll have to spend a few days getting it working again.

dhave · 2010-11-03 04:11:49

Allan wrote:

Kahel OS is breaking ground in the use of orange. \troll

Ha. I think SuSE did the same with green at one point. I don't know that I could look at an orange screen for more than a few minutes, though.

If not a new distro, maybe there's a DE out there that has a round interface rather than this boring old rectangular one. Who decided that the interface has to be rectangular, anyway?

Or maybe something with hexagonal windows that fit together like a honeycomb. It would take some getting used to, but, if the honeybee propaganda is accurate, there'd be less wasted space that way.

Or a liquid display like some of the computers on those Cylon ships.

I'm ready for a change, guys.

jasonwryan · 2010-11-03 06:07:10

dhave wrote:

I'm ready for a change, guys.

Change? You want change? How's this for change?!

SanskritFritz · 2010-11-03 06:32:16

Haiku.
Or if you want to stay with Linux, then Gobolinux.

chimeracoder · 2010-11-03 06:46:51

SanskritFritz wrote:

Haiku.
Or if you want to stay with Linux, then Gobolinux.

Gobolinux's 'subdirectory tree' approach intrigues me, but I haven't had the time to try it out.

SanskritFritz, I take it you like it?

ngoonee · 2010-11-03 08:26:05

dhave wrote:

Allan wrote:
Kahel OS is breaking ground in the use of orange. \troll
Who decided that the interface has to be rectangular, anyway?

Well, you know, it just seemed the most efficient use of that RECTANGULAR screen you have there... =p

Cdh · 2010-11-03 08:29:48

http://sta.li/

SanskritFritz · 2010-11-03 08:32:47

chimeracoder wrote:

SanskritFritz wrote:
Haiku.
Or if you want to stay with Linux, then Gobolinux.
Gobolinux's 'subdirectory tree' approach intrigues me, but I haven't had the time to try it out.
SanskritFritz, I take it you like it?

Absolutely. It there were no Arch, I'd be with Gobolinux. Actually the main reason I'm not using Gobo, is that development slowed down a lot, and it is mostly source based packages, which means I have to compile nearly every package, like in Gentoo. But still, Gobolinux is the innovation I can very much agree with. My dream is Gobolinux with Archlinux user base and support. Dont take me wrong, Archlinux is the best distro out there, but as far as innovation goes, Gobo is the winner in my eyes.

bangkok_manouel · 2010-11-03 08:50:52

i really fail to see how having a "dumbed down" filesystem hierarchy is so great and innovative. if you know nothing about linux, maybe... but after you get used to it, I'd say it's more confusing than anything else... especially as this OS (linux+gnu) is not supposed to be designed this way so you're adding a layer of symlinks all over the place, which is... hum... questionable.
DISCLAIMER: i just had a very quick look at gobolinux's website. i know nothing about it and i won't search further. you can hate me now

sugardeath · 2010-11-03 09:38:01

bangkok_manouel wrote:

i really fail to see how having a "dumbed down" filesystem hierarchy is so great and innovative. if you know nothing about linux, maybe... but after you get used to it, I'd say it's more confusing than anything else... especially as this OS (linux+gnu) is not supposed to be designed this way so you're adding a layer of symlinks all over the place, which is... hum... questionable.
DISCLAIMER: i just had a very quick look at gobolinux's website. i know nothing about it and i won't search further. you can hate me now

You know.. I have to say the opposite after taking a quick look at their website. It seems like it'd be very easy to get used to, and it seems incredibly sane. All of the old directory structure is there if you want it, but you have this "nice" directory layout too. I imagine a directory structure like that would go over extremely well with Linux newbies and a fair portion of the less-techy Ubuntu crowd.

sand_man · 2010-11-03 10:31:43

Fedora 14 was just released. It's interesting to see SELinux implementation.

SanskritFritz · 2010-11-03 10:32:12

It is not so much about being more readable or convenient, but much more about the file system itself being the package manager. There is no package database at all, because the files that belong to a package, are in one folder (in Programs), symlinked if necessary to maintain compatibilty. Also this way you can have more versions of the same package installed at the same time, switching between them is a matter of changing one symlink. So if you make install using Gobo's Compile script, the program automatically becomes a package. Just read about the philosophy of Gobolinux on website: http://www.gobolinux.org/index.php?page=at_a_glance

karol · 2010-11-03 11:15:11

If you haven't tried a meta-distro, you may have some fun with http://www.t2-project.org/ - not exactly new, just offering a different approach on how do you get a distro ;P
DragonflyBSD is quite different, but I don't know if you have the hardware that can take advantage of it (it's for big big distributed systems).

Edit: And http://nixos.org/nixos/.

I haven't tried any of them, so I can't share experiences.

Last edited by karol (2010-11-03 11:17:18)

Dieter@be · 2010-11-03 11:32:30

nixos is interesting, when i tried it was pretty buggy, but that's a while ago

sugardeath · 2010-11-03 11:36:33

SanskritFritz wrote:

It is not so much about being more readable or convenient, but much more about the file system itself being the package manager. There is no package database at all, because the files that belong to a package, are in one folder (in Programs), symlinked if necessary to maintain compatibilty. Also this way you can have more versions of the same package installed at the same time, switching between them is a matter of changing one symlink. So if you make install using Gobo's Compile script, the program automatically becomes a package. Just read about the philosophy of Gobolinux on website: http://www.gobolinux.org/index.php?page=at_a_glance

Right. I think the multiple version thing intrigued the most, honestly. Or rather, I think I'd find the most use out of that feature.

Cyrusm · 2010-11-03 12:05:35

IDEA: distro roulette. just put the distrowatch top 100 into a bucket and pull out your new distro.

drcouzelis · 2010-11-03 12:30:25

SanskritFritz wrote:

Haiku

I installed Haiku on my second partition a while back. I'd recommend trying it. You can use the CD image is a live CD or install from it.

I learned a little about how I feel about Linux by using Haiku. Haiku feels extremely cohesive. Everything was made to fit and work together. It's pretty easy for me to see how Linux was made from little bits and pieces. Haiku has "a lot" of software, but Linux has an incredibly huge amount of software. Haiku has, in my opinion, a really great default setup. After the quick installation and boot process, I feel like I'm ready to get to work. Even though, as an operating system and user interface, Haiku is completely different from Linux, it was still easy to feel at home with the terminal window and bash prompt. The speed is amazing. Haiku somehow makes Arch Linux feel slow to me, and Windows and Mac OS X feel disgustingly slow.

So, it might be fun for you to try Haiku. Or, it might not boot on your computer.

SanskritFritz · 2010-11-03 15:39:59

Yup, Haiku is a gem.

dhave · 2010-11-03 16:03:07

Thanks for these great suggestions. I'd sort of forgotten about Haiku. I used BeOS for a while back in the 1990s as soon as an x86 version came out, and I thought it was pretty swift. I think I'll take Haiku for a spin just for kicks, then when I get tired of that, try Stali or Gobolinux, maybe both. I'll probably hold off on FreeBSD since I've used that more recently than BeOS.

I'm not looking for a production system, just something to explore.

Every now and then I wish I had my old installation disks (though I no longer have a floppy drive) for OS/2, but I've lost them along the way. I'm not willing to pay for eComStation or whatever it is. OS/2 was my first foray outside of the DOS/Windows world. I've never spent much time in the Apple orchard, but maybe one of these cold, rainy days I will. I probably would have tried a Mac at some point if my Mac-using friends weren't so annoyingly evangelistic. (I did manage to install a hacked version of OSX on an old Thinkpad, which was pretty neat for a few days, but that lost its thrill, too.)

Last edited by dhave (2010-11-03 16:04:43)

dhave · 2010-11-04 00:43:09

Haiku is nice. Seems pretty much unchanged since BeOS days, though I'm sure a lot of work has gone into it to make it work on modern machines.

The only real problem I encountered is that wmp support is still in the works. I don't want to reconfigure my wifi LAN just for Haiku.

Maybe I'll try it again in a few months. On to another OS ....

chimeracoder · 2010-11-04 00:46:51

dhave wrote:

Haiku is nice. Seems pretty much unchanged since BeOS days, though I'm sure a lot of work has gone into it to make it work on modern machines.
The only real problem I encountered is that wmp support is still in the works. I don't want to reconfigure my wifi LAN just for Haiku.
Maybe I'll try it again in a few months. On to another OS ....

Is it still just as difficult/impossible to theme? Not the biggest deal in the world, but I find the interface rather unappealing.

dhave · 2010-11-04 01:47:43

chimeracoder wrote:

Is it still just as difficult/impossible to theme? Not the biggest deal in the world, but I find the interface rather unappealing.

Dunno. Maybe somebody with more experience will know. I imagine the devs haven't put a priority on themes, though. My guess is most people trying Haiku are attracted to BeOS but want an open-source version that runs on modern machines. Changing the interface too much from the original BeOS would be like revamping a classic.

I've always thought BeOS was pretty cool, but I never really fell into adoration of it. Part of the devotion could be from the "only the good die young" syndrome.

But I stray from my own topic ....

Last edited by dhave (2010-11-04 01:48:07)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-11-03 03:50:07

Any nifty new distros out there?

#2 2010-11-03 03:52:19

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#3 2010-11-03 03:56:26

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#4 2010-11-03 03:58:52

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#5 2010-11-03 04:11:49

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#6 2010-11-03 06:07:10

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#7 2010-11-03 06:32:16

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#8 2010-11-03 06:46:51

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#9 2010-11-03 08:26:05

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#10 2010-11-03 08:29:48

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#11 2010-11-03 08:32:47

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#12 2010-11-03 08:50:52

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#13 2010-11-03 09:38:01

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#14 2010-11-03 10:31:43

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#15 2010-11-03 10:32:12

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#16 2010-11-03 11:15:11

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#17 2010-11-03 11:32:30

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#18 2010-11-03 11:36:33

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#19 2010-11-03 12:05:35

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#20 2010-11-03 12:30:25

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#21 2010-11-03 15:39:59

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#22 2010-11-03 16:03:07

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#23 2010-11-04 00:43:09

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#24 2010-11-04 00:46:51

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

#25 2010-11-04 01:47:43

Re: Any nifty new distros out there?

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