The Canterbury Project

Pierre · 2011-04-01 01:02:02

We are pleased to announce the birth of the Canterbury distribution. Canterbury is a merge of the efforts of the community distributions formerly known as Arch Linux, Debian, Gentoo, Grml and openSUSE to produce a really unified effort and be able to stand up in a combined effort against proprietary operating systems, to show off that the Free Software community is actually able to work together for a common goal instead of creating more diversity.

Canterbury will be as technologically simple as Arch, as stable as Debian, malleable as Gentoo, have a solid Live framework as Grml, and be as open minded as openSUSE.

Joining the Canterbury Project Arch Linux developer Pierre Schmitz explained: "Arch Linux has always been about keeping its technology as simple as possible. Combining efforts into one single distribution will dramatically reduce complexity for developers, users and of course upstream projects. Canterbury will be the next evolutionary step of Linux distributions."

Gerfried Fuchs, who gave a talk about Debian at last year's openSUSE conference, said: "While DEX (Debian Derivatives Exchange) might have been a good idea in principle, its point of view is too limited. We need to reach out further for true success."

Robin H. Johnson, lead of the Gentoo Infrastructure team, in a panel of core Gentoo developers at SCALE9x: "I really hate compiling-induced downtime. I've been looking forward to installing packages with just a couple of keystrokes. By building on the efforts of other successful distributions, we can take the drudgery out of system maintenance."
Michael Prokop, founder of the Grml live CD, can be quoted on the effort that "we managed to create a universal live build framework with grml-live. Our vision was always that it will be universally usable to further the spreading of Free Software."

Last year's openSUSE conference had the topic of "Collaboration Across Borders". Klaas Freitag, a respected member of the community, mentioned that "the conference motto was set intentional and actually this is what I had in mind as a positive outcome for the conference."

Stefano Zacchiroli, Debian Project Leader, comments on the Canterbury distribution: "during the last year, Debian has worked a lot on the topic of collaboration with other distributions. Some initiatives have been targeted to Debian Derivatives Distribution (e.g. the Derivatives Front Desk, DEX, etc.), but we have also been happy to participate in conferences and panels with other distributions such as openSUSE and Fedora. We are proud of our recent work on collaboration and we are now ready, with Canterbury, to push these initiatives to the next, natural, step: uniting together in the next generation community distribution. Canterbury shall live long and prosper."

Please be notified that this announce is just the starting point, the necessary changes will happen in the upcoming days. You can use the #cbproject hashtag to give us your feedback on twitter or identi.ca.

denisfalqueto · 2011-04-01 01:08:26

to show off that the Free Software community is actually able to work together for a common goal instead of creating more diversity

Yeah, one can dream....

foutrelis · 2011-04-01 01:11:52

I'm really saddened by this development. Collaboration between different distributions is welcome and all, but I strongly feel Arch will lose its edge and independence due this decision.

I like the name though.

ngoonee · 2011-04-01 01:15:11

foutrelis wrote:

I'm really saddened by this development. Collaboration between different distributions is welcome and all, but I strongly feel Arch will lose its edge and independence due this decision.
I like the name though.

What's the worth of independence when your market share is <0.1%? This development should be welcomed by everyone who's eager to see Linux actually catch on. Imagine having 0-day drivers rather than waiting till some random employee in the big corp feels like releasing one.

stlarch · 2011-04-01 01:16:13

Tell me this is an April Fools joke.

spunkiie · 2011-04-01 01:23:27

April fools FTW

Last edited by spunkiie (2011-04-01 01:47:52)

sdl_init · 2011-04-01 01:24:26

I think Microsoft will have interesting too.

eldragon · 2011-04-01 01:25:24

someone might have proven how important signed packages are ...

heh.. i wouldnt update my systems for a while just in case

santodelaespada · 2011-04-01 01:25:40

I just wanted an update

Jumped of my chair when I saw no Archlinux homepage

egroeg · 2011-04-01 01:27:50

Definitely April Fools. Awesome.

Barrucadu · 2011-04-01 01:28:36

I, for one, welcome our new Canterbury overlords.

eldragon · 2011-04-01 01:29:17

egroeg wrote:

Definitely April Fools. Awesome.

hah, its still march the 31st here :S that might be why i missed the joke :S

good one

Cerebral · 2011-04-01 01:29:45

Way to become everything I don't need in a distro.

stlarch · 2011-04-01 01:33:48

It's on the Debian home page too. Holy crap! If it is a joke, it's brilliant. I mean, it's epic. It will go down as one of the all time classics. If not, well,....maybe not so much

Last edited by stlarch (2011-04-01 01:56:11)

jasonwryan · 2011-04-01 01:44:38

Single packaging format FTW!

Hyugga · 2011-04-01 01:46:03

I think i'll wait some time to be sad or happy...

DustinCasler · 2011-04-01 01:49:55

..................... Damn it. If this isn't an April Fools Day joke i'm going to be pretty upset about not switching distros to Arch until a few weeks before it goes away............

nstoyanov · 2011-04-01 01:50:46

Happy April 1st!

DustinCasler · 2011-04-01 01:52:01

Also the Canterbury page has taken over the main page for each of the distros except for Gentoo.

denisfalqueto · 2011-04-01 01:52:32

eldragon wrote:

someone might have proven how important signed packages are ...

Haha, it's quite funny as signed packages can be thrown in any discussion around here Maybe it's the new Godwin law for the Arch Forums

skottish · 2011-04-01 02:00:43

This is great news!!!! Way to go team!!!!!!!!!!

[/sarcasm]

I was hoping that when I resigned as a member of the Arch team that things would actually get better; That I could come back to a refreshed vision of what was intended. Obviously I was wrong. What a waste of time and effort.

ngoonee · 2011-04-01 02:02:13

skottish wrote:

This is great news!!!! Way to go team!!!!!!!!!!
[/sarcasm]
I was hoping that when I resigned as a member of the Arch team that things would actually get better; That I could come back to a refreshed vision of what was intended. Obviously I was wrong. What a waste of time and effort.

So skottish, were you the last impediment removed to enable this to happen?

wsims · 2011-04-01 02:03:07

Well played sir, well played

skottish · 2011-04-01 02:04:01

ngoonee wrote:

skottish wrote:
This is great news!!!! Way to go team!!!!!!!!!!
[/sarcasm]
I was hoping that when I resigned as a member of the Arch team that things would actually get better; That I could come back to a refreshed vision of what was intended. Obviously I was wrong. What a waste of time and effort.
So skottish, were you the last impediment removed to enable this to happen?

No, I was just an idiot with a dream.

mann138 · 2011-04-01 02:04:23

At first I went all WTF, then I realized Aprils Fool and then I went to "what if?"...

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