• @rtxn@lemmy.worldM
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    2313 months ago

    Cybersecurity engineers and pentesters don’t need Kali or Parrot. You don’t need Proxmox to use LXC and KVM. You don’t need OpenMediaVault to have Samba and NFS shares. You don’t need Clonezilla to make use of the OCS toolkit. You don’t need LMDE to have a Debian OS with Cinnamon and nonfree drivers installed, or Endeavour to have Arch with KDE Plasma.

    But it’s sure as shit good to have everything packed together and preconfigured by professionals.

  • slazer2au
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    693 months ago

    Or do, that guy isn’t your boss. If he is, what are you doing listening to him about non work stuff he seems like a gatekeeper kina guy.

  • @HStone32@lemmy.world
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    673 months ago

    But what if… I took Debian, and disguised it as my own distro? Ho ho ho! Delightfuly devilish, Seymore!

      • @BlueSquid0741@lemmy.sdf.org
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        43 months ago

        Ubuntu, Knoppix and MEPIS? I first used Ubuntu in 2006, but it was still very immature then. I didn’t really know much about any other Debian derivatives.

        The other big one that was popular was Mandrake but that was rpm based, and a bit later PClinuxOS which was Mandrake based. I didn’t think Debian derivatives were much of a thing then aside from Ubuntu.

        • @blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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          23 months ago

          There are at least a couple of distros that are based on Ubuntu. Mint is a popular example. I’d say that based on Ubuntu means it is also a Debian derivative.

          • @BlueSquid0741@lemmy.sdf.org
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            33 months ago

            Mint didn’t really see any sort of popularity until around 2010 as I remember.

            I’m aware it’s initial release was earlier (surprised it was exist in 06!), but the reality of those times is that Ubuntu was still building itself up let alone Mint getting traction yet.

  • @MehBlah@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    They can go ahead and create all they want. I just wont use any of them unless they give me a reason.

    • Trip
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      143 months ago

      Exactly! Nobody has to listen to OP and change plans because OP doesn’t approve! Like you, OP is free to NOT use the product!

  • @Zacryon@feddit.org
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    393 months ago

    Nah. Push them out like rabbits do with their babies. Let them fight and see which ones prevail!

  • Realitätsverlust
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    373 months ago

    Idk, it’s a hobby. There’s no problem with new distros. If they’re good, they take off, if not, it’s going to be a niche project. No issue at all.

  • @Peasley@lemmy.world
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    263 months ago

    New distros get a lot of crap, but often they are solving a need for someone.

    Take Windowmaker Live: ostensibly it’s just Debian + Windowmaker. I have seen comments saying why not just install WM on Debian? By asking that question, it’s clear the asker hasnt tried recently. There is a lot to configure, and there are lots of usability papercuts.

    A custom distro allows someone to fix those problems for themself, and share those fixes with others. It’s not fragmentation, it’s just FOSS.

    • emergencycall
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      173 months ago

      It would help more people to improve the installer for difficult-to-install software rather than creating an entire operating system around that software. Using the entire operating system as an installer is over the top

      • @Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Yeah I’m reading what they said and that kind of solution wouldn’t be acceptable in any industry…

        Imagine if you wanted to add AC to your central heating system and they told you they need to add a second furnace in parallel to the one you already have because it’s possible to add AC to your current setup, but it’s very complicated to do so…

        • Jess
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          33 months ago

          Maybe one you could just download and pipe to bash. /s

            • Jess
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              33 months ago

              I figured, I was playing on the number of github repos with instructions for curl pipe bash combos.

        • @iopq@lemmy.world
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          23 months ago

          You’re re-inventing the Nix tool which is exactly a script that sets up all the programs and services you want to install

          • Possibly linux
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            13 months ago

            Except no one really uses Nix outside of Nix OS. It is slow and complicated for little reason.

            Just use Ansible and an answers file

            • @iopq@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Then how come we have more packages than the AUR?

              And don’t say it’s because we packaged Python and Haskell stuff since we have more non-unique packages too

      • Cassa
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        33 months ago

        Don’t know the case for this - but there are absolutely cases where the merger is blocked for some reason, and why not just fix it yourself with a distro? It hurts nobody.

      • @iopq@lemmy.world
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        13 months ago

        If you improve the installer to the point it can install any combination of software together (including incompatible versions of deps) you end up with NixOS again

        • @Peasley@lemmy.world
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          23 months ago

          Much like how crustaceans have repeatedly evolved into pseudo-crabs, Linux distros tend to evolve into pseudo-nix

  • Avid Amoeba
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    223 months ago

    Cat on a table.jpg says:

    “I’m going to create a new distro by changing the name of Debian”

  • @jj4211@lemmy.world
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    213 months ago

    I’d say actually a bit of the opposite. Generally speaking we don’t need a new package manager or init system, and better hardware support is almost entirely a kernel concern (one might make an argument that the loose bits of key management and tpm2 tools and authentication agents could be better integrated for “Windows Hello” type function I suppose, but I doubt that’s what the meme had in mind.

    Not really needing to reinvent the wheel on those, we got a variety of wheels, sometimes serving different sensibilities, sometimes any difference in capability went away long ago (rpm/dnf v. deb/apt).

    The best motivation I can think of at this point is to make specialty distribution that is ‘canned’ toward a specific use case. Even then it’s probably best to be an existing distribution under the covers. I think Proxmox is a good example, it’s just Debian but installer made to just do Proxmox. You want to do automated installation? Just use Debian and then add Proxmox (the official recommendation), because they have no particular insight on automated deployment, so why not just defer to an existing facility?

    The biggest conceptual change in packaging has been “waste as much disk as you like duplicating dependencies to avoid conflicting dependencies”, maybe with “use namespace and cgroup isolation to better control app interactions” and we have snap, flatpak, appimage, and nix very well covering the gamut for that concept.

    For init, we have the easy to modify sysv init, or the more capable but more inscrutable systemd. I don’t see a whole lot of opportunity between those two sorts of options already.

    • @gamer@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      It’s usually easier to criticize something than to go through the effort of understanding it. Posts like the OP are an example of that.

      … And ironically, your post is doing the same thing here with software packaging:

      The biggest conceptual change in packaging has been “waste as much disk as you like duplicating dependencies to avoid conflicting dependencies”,

      Nobody is perfect, so it’s important to keep an open mind about things, especially when one don’t understand them, and especially² when one thinks they understand them as it’s always possible to be wrong (unless they don’t care about going through life as an ignorant asshole. Plenty of people thrive like that.)

      • @jj4211@lemmy.world
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        13 months ago

        I understand it fine, and it’s not just a packaging phenomonon, all sorts of software developers have stopped trying to have consensus on platform and instead ‘just ship the box’. 99% of the time a python application will demand at least virtualenv. Golang, well, you are just going to staticly build (at least LTO means less unrelated stuff comes along for the ride). Of course docker style packaging is bring the whole distro. I’ll give credit to snap and flatpak that at least allow packaging to have external dependency packages to mitigate it somewhat.

  • oshu
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    183 months ago

    Every project eventually makes their own package manager. Its pretty insane if you stop and think about how routinely the package manager is re-invented.

    • Cyborganism
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      73 months ago

      For real. I don’t mind the million distributions, but can we agree on one single package manager?

      • @MrAlternateTape@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        Where is that comic about standards now that we need it? The one where they create a new standard that is going to solve all the problems, except for now there is just one more standard??

        Edit: https://xkcd.com/927

      • wander1236
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        133 months ago

        Every time someone complains, another package manager is created

        • Cyborganism
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          13 months ago

          Back in 2000 I started using Linux with RedHat (That’s what they were teaching us in college then.) and got to know RPMs before the automatic package dependency resolution tools. Then I moved to Ubuntu in 2004 and have been using that since, and even had a job where I built custom Linux distros based on Debian where I had to build DEB packages, so I got to know that system pretty well.

          But, honestly, if there are better package managers out there I wouldn’t mind changing if it means we all use the same thing.

          • @iopq@lemmy.world
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            13 months ago

            I’ve broken both Fedora and Ubuntu already, so I had to find better solutions. With NixOS I can roll back to a previous revision easily on boot

              • @iopq@lemmy.world
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                13 months ago

                Upgrade 22 LTS upgrade to Ubuntu 24 LTS failed and I forgot the upgrade didn’t succeed when I rebooted. Unlike NixOS, it doesn’t roll all the changes back when the upgrade is unsuccessful

                • Cyborganism
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                  23 months ago

                  Aaah I see. Ok. I can see why Nix appeals so much to you.

                  As I said, I need to try it out. I’m gonna download it right now and try it in a VM.

        • Cyborganism
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          43 months ago

          I don’t know if Flatpak can cover all the scenarios. It seems to be mostly for Desktop apps. I know Ubuntu was able to have system tools installed with Snaps though. However, having apps installed with their dependencies in one package is neat, but it takes a ton more in storage.

          Flatpak is a great extra layer to have on top of a regular package manager, but I wouldn’t use it as a sole package management system.

          • @iopq@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            I think an immutable system package manager like Nix is perfect to supplement Flatpak.

    • Possibly linux
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      33 months ago

      Not really

      There are only a few mainstream package formats and ultimately you are going to probably be using distro packages or portable formats like Flatpak.