Comment by roger_
4 days ago
Is there a mainstream distro that disregards all the legacy cruft? Gobo, but that’s not really mainstream.
Mac OS?
4 days ago
Is there a mainstream distro that disregards all the legacy cruft? Gobo, but that’s not really mainstream.
Mac OS?
NixOS and Guix are fairly established in this regard.
macOS is certified Unix, and necessarily implements the "legacy" cruft.
I had written a similar comment here asking for people's opinion but I would like to add something that I know about which I didn't see in your list
Tinycorelinux
I know that it doesn't follow the best user practices etc. but I did find its tcz package format fascinating because they kind of work similar to mountable drives and I am not exactly sure but I am fairly certain that a modern package management system where two or more packages with conflicts etc. can run on the same system.
I really enjoyed the idea of gobolinux as well. I haven't played with that but it would be good if some more mainstream os could also implement it. Nix and Guix are more mainstream but they also require to learn a new language and I think that we might need something in the middle like gobo but perhaps more mainstream or adding more ideas / additions perhaps? I would love it if someone can tell me about some projects we are missing to talk about and what they add on the table etc.
I haven't tried Gobo though so I am not sure but I really wish more distros could add features like gobo, perhaps even having a gobofied debian/fedora eh?
Tinycore's package format sounds a lot like containers, except I imagine containers can do a whole lot more, what with namespaces and all. Can't say for sure, but it sounds like snap and flatpak are its spiritual successors.
I liked Tinycorelinux once upon a time but isn't it unmaintained now?
at some point we gotta let go of legacy stuff tho, and Apple has shown in the past that they're not afraid of doing that.
It was partial, but IIRC Arch Linux made the switch to get rid of at least some of the directories previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5944594
I think most of them have started simplifying somewhat (/bin vs /usr/bin): https://systemd.io/THE_CASE_FOR_THE_USR_MERGE/
(FWIW, Fedora 17 was released in 2012.)
Plan 9 is definitely not mainstream but readers of your comment's replies may find it interesting when looking into Unix/Linux cruft.
macOS has all of that (mostly inherited from NeXTSTEP which was significantly based on 4.3/4.4BSD). It's hidden by default in the GUI, visible in Terminal.
Nowadays most end users just use /usr/local or /opt/local or whatever is managed by Homebrew or Macports.
Not really. I wish we had a new OS based on the Linux kernel - the legacy (shared files, r/w mounted OS, etc). I think Google's Fuchsia has some interesting ideas.