Over the decades the number of Linux distributions has effectively exploded, from a handful in the late ’90s to quite literally hundreds today, not counting minor variations. There lately seems to be a counter-movement brewing in response to this fragmentation, with Project Bluefin’s Distroless project being the latest addition here. Also notable are KDE’s efforts, with KDE Linux as its own top-down KDE-based distro, but now with a switch to BuildStream from Arch likely as a distroless move.
It should be clear that there is no obvious course here yet, and that opinions are very much divided. The idea of ‘Linux’ becoming a more singular OS appeals to some, while to others it’s the antithesis of what ‘Linux’ is about. This much becomes clear in [Brodie Robertson]’s exploration of this topic as well.
The way to think about ‘distroless’ is that there is a common base using the Freedesktop SDK on which the customization layer is applied, such as Bluefin, KDE or Gnome’s environments. You could think of this base as the common runtime, using the Freedesktop standards for interoperability for a user-selected layer that’s installed on top. This way the idea of basing a distro on a specific distro is tossed out in favor of something that’s vaguely reminiscent of the Linux Standard Base attempt at standardization.
It’ll be fascinating to see how things will move from here, as there are definite arguments to be made in favor of less fragmentation and resultingly less duplicated effort. In many ways this would bring Linux closer to for example FreeBSD, which avoids the Linux Chaos Vortex problem by having a singular codebase. FreeBSD ‘distros’ like GhostBSD and NomadBSD are therefore essentially just specialized customizations that target a sub-group of FreeBSD users.
Of course, when we start talking about package managers and other base-distro specific features, we may very well risk igniting the same problems that tore apart the LSB so many years ago. Will we also standardize on RPM over DEB package files and kin, or something else?
This articles is written by : Fady Askharoun Samy Askharoun
All Rights Reserved to Amznusa www.amznusa.com
Why Amznusa?
AMZNUSA is a dynamic website that focuses on three primary categories: Technology, e-commerce and cryptocurrency news. It provides users with the latest updates and insights into online retail trends and the rapidly evolving world of digital currencies, helping visitors stay informed about both markets.
