Comment by Imustaskforhelp
7 hours ago
I am wondering what linux distro/iso comes up with a liveboot gui desktop environment but without a web browser (I only know of tinycorelinux but that is too barebones and I wanted to build my own iso on top of it but it was a little hard to install packages when I tried following its remastering guide etc.)
I even tried to search it on distrowatch with the negate option in their search but it seemed to be broken.
I needed it once to build my own "studyOs" , and in the process I went down a deep rabbit hole on about the hobby-ist distros of linux and their importance.
I then settled on MXLinux because of what I wrote below
People recommend cubic etc. but personally I recommend MXLinux. Its default linux snapshot feature was exactly what I was looking for and it just worked.
I glanced over this and I was excited thinking oh great this could be a linux iso with no browser and similar to tiny core but I found out through the comments that its focus on LLM's etc. is very vague and weird for what I am reading.
I just feel like its seriously not getting the idea. I want to effectively dissect this post's tenants from a Linux user for just a few years.
My first experiences was positive, then negative and now its mixed really.
I feel like this is intending on become so hardware focused that I am not even sure what they mean by this. From my limited knowledge, Linux tries to do a lot of things simply to boot up into a predictable environment on every computer device most likely to the point that there are now things like nix that can arise your system in a determinist system.
I still think that there is a point in making something completely new instead of Yet another Unix from what I can tell, but my hopes aren't very high, sorry. You would have to convince me from why the world would be better off with this instead of Linux aside and their notes on why not linux is still absolutely mixed thoughts in my opinion
> Linux is a monolithic kernel. All drivers, filesystems, and core services share the same privilege space. A single bug, eg. a bad pointer dereference in a GPU driver can corrupt kernel memory and take down the entire system.
Can't drivers be loaded at runtime and there are ways to isolate the taking down of entire system imo. I think this is just how a monolithic kernel should work, no?
I read more discussions on mono-lithic kernel and micro-kernel on Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate wiki [1] and here is something that I think to be apt here
> Torvalds, aware of GNU's efforts to create a kernel, stated "If the GNU kernel had been ready last spring, I'd not have bothered to even start my project: the fact is that it wasn't and still isn't."
Some other person on the usenet group also called gnu hurd a vaporware and well I think there is some factuality to it and gnu hurd team was working on hurd far longer than linux was working at linus (an excerpt? from the same wikipage)
Another line I want to share is this from the wiki: Different design goals get you different designs
I think I was going to criticize the radiant computer but hey, its open source,nobody's stopping you from doing work on it. And this line was said defending linux earlier, so it sure can defend this
But at the same time, my concerns regarding this or any project is regarding it becoming vapor-ware. Linux is way too big and actually good enough for most users. I don't think that the world can have a perfect os. It can have a good enough tho and from the end user, Linux is exactly that. The fact that its open source and is genuinely good at what it does, and there is absolutely no denying about it. You could live your whole life using linux Imo. Its beautiful.
I used to defend NetBsd etc. or hate systemd etc. but the truth of the matter is that nobody's forcing you to use systemd or netbsd, you damn well could use a server without it but I have found that the mass adoption does make me convince that a sys-admin level, linux, maybe even debian or systemd in general would have its gains.
I think linux is really really really good, its just the best imo but I will still try out things like the freebsd,openbsd etc. . I genuinely love it so much. Its honestly wild / even a fever dream when you think about it that something like linux even actually exists. Its so brilliant and the ecosystem around it is just chef's kiss.
One can try and these are your developer hours but I just don't want to see things turn into vaporware, so I will just ask you a question on how do you prevent this project from becoming a vaporware. I am sure this isn't the first time someone has proposed the ideal system and it wouldn't be the last either.
Edits: Sorry this got long. I got a little carried reading the wiki article, its so good.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_deb...
Thanks for your comment.
I do think Linux is good enough (it's what I use daily), but I'm a software person. I don't think linux is good enough for the average person or for kids learning how to use computers. It's hard to use and quite unfriendly, even distros like Ubuntu.
The second point is simply that I think we can do better. Progress does not stop here, but most people are afraid to take on big problems, so they never try.
> It's hard to use and quite unfriendly, even distros like Ubuntu.
I am no fan of Ubuntu. But I'd wish to know. more in detail what you mean by this stuff if possible.
Regarding the point on how linux isn't good enough, I think that the reason its not being used is because of the power of defaults
Chromebooks technically ship linux iirc and nobody's complaining about linux there. Android is also technically linux and the same goes there
Theoretically I feel like Modern Linux is still the same, but there are still some problems which might require going into a terminal
The problem with the terminal is that I think people fear it. maybe because its the unknown, people usually don't interact with terminal and as such it becomes 2nd nature, heck for some 1st nature, to interact with terminal when they embrace it
It's a very blurry chaotic line between making a full hardcore linux or switching back to windows and being a "normie" in this sense.
I don't know if there is something that linux could measurably do without affecting one set of users with another.
I'd say the person born during times of terminal wouldn't feel very uncomfortable with terminals simply because that was what was familiar to them
The Key concept is the sense of unknown and familiar which stresses to even us right now
I am familiar with linux and so I feel a little resistive to the unknown, in the same way that minix creator might've felt towards the creation of linux at the time as from the previous comment
We have tried creating movements to gather attention but it seems that maybe selling a message could be hard when eyes are being gathered and taken away by algorithms which scroll. Some meme like 67 would get more attention than linux in mainstream media by a huge margin lol
I personally feel like more eyeballs need to be on linux and a place to actually summarize the benefits of linux but to each their own and there are many ways that people explore the unchartered territory of unknown for the first time
> The second point is simply that I think we can do better. Progress does not stop here, but most people are afraid to take on big problems, so they never try.
I do think that maybe we can do better but also that maybe modern linux might be an idea similar to stable equilibra. I am not competent enough right now to comment on that
> but most people are afraid to take on big problems, so they never try.
I would say even after all this, go for it, Linus himself might have felt the same way towards GNU hurd not doing any job and decided to take things in his own hands to make our squishy penguin boy known as Linux. This is your developer time and effort and the best we can do is give feedback, I hope you take both negative and positive feedback in positive ways since the only thing in our hands is the intepretation.
Maybe there can be some fair critiques too in the process where you get the process of improving the things so that is always something that is really nice.
I personally feel like we can do nothing and everything to change our society at the same time in a weird super-position state and the only way to find out our change in the society is to actually try it but one can try to look as far as he could something similar to what robert frost said in "the road not taken"
Good luck.