SolusOS Sunsets as Ikey Doherty Rises

by Dietrich Schmitz

+Ikey Doherty, founder of SolusOS (image: right), wrote on his website the other day:

“It is with a heavy heart that I must announce the closure of SolusOS. Simply put, there is no longer enough manpower to fulfill [sic] the vision. What began as a Debian derivative evolved into an independent distribution, without the large development team required to back such an effort.”

However difficult that decision may have been, I know that Ikey has broken through to the other side.  You see, it's been a long, long, terribly difficult life struggle for him as I gauged his progress over the last year.  Finding work, keeping his dreams alive, was almost impossible, and, at times, desperate.

Yet, somehow, he kept going and one day not long ago landed a really good full-time paying job that put his exceptional talents to good use.  If you think about it, the struggles, the frustration, all were not for naught.  Everything happens for a reason.

Ikey had to do what he 'had to do' and SolusOS was his mountain to climb, his intellectual struggle, to reach the mountain top.  It was that he maintained the struggle, fought hard for what he believes in, that kept him going and ultimately led him to his destiny.

No, I am not sad.  I am exceedingly happy for Ikey and know that he'll be taking on life's challenges and changes as he has always done -- with zest and an unparalleled joie de vivre -- straight on, dukes up and swinging -- fighting the good fight.   

This is a Man with integrity, ethics, and exceptional capability on his way up.  Step aside.  Best of Luck my Friend.

-- Dietrich

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Top Ten Sleeper Distros

by Dietrich Schmitz

With all of the recent stories I've written and my obvious bias toward one particular Linux community Distribution, you'd think there is nothing else to talk about.

Well, there is.  When I was young and had nothing better to do than ride around in a rag-top 70 Mustang consuming fossil fuel, we coined the term 'sleeper' for those cars which looked innocuous but under the hood had some major performance value going on.  In other words, they'd blow the doors off of other so-called 'hot rods' but didn't give the tell-tale signs of being souped up.

I tend to think of only a few Distributions which have a lot of potential under the hood and are categorized as 'sleepers'.  They perform when called upon and do it well and mostly go unnoticed.  Today, I give you my subjective list of top ten sleeper Distributions.  Okay, here we go.

SolusOS

Do you long for the days when Ubuntu sported a simple Gnome2 interface--you know--when you could actually figure out where to go to do things?  Well then SolusOS is for you.  Based on the Debian stable branch, this nimble powerhouse Distro gives everything needed for the beginner, intermediate and advanced user.  Founder +Ikey Doherty is working on a new project, Consort, a fork of a few Gnome3.x components, i.e. panel, which will allow him to continue providing a GUI based on a more traditional Gnome2-like interface.   Consort will be included in an as of yet to be released version 2.0 of SolusOS.

PCLinuxOS

PCLinuxOS has some really loyal, passionate users behind it and for good reason.  In fact it's so cool, ice cubes are jealous.  Founder +Bill Reynolds aka "Texstar" has much to be proud of in this rpm-based Mandrake fork (now Mandriva Linux).  It's almost like the second amendment and gun ownership as I am reminded of that famous line that Charleston Heston (may he rest in peace) uttered at an NRA convention: "From my cold dead hands" in reference to the right to bear arms.  Such loyalty I have not found stronger than in Distro users the likes of +Alessandro Ebersol who show the respect that PCLinuxOS has earned. The default GUI in PCLinuxOS 2012 is KDE Plasma Workspace.  Other installable GUIs include Enlightenment, Fluxbox, Gnome, IceWM, KDE, LXDE, OpenBox and Xfce.

Chakra

Chakra Linux, originally based on Arch Linux, employs a KDE Plasma Workspace GUI. Chakra maintains its own separate repository system and while its intention is to be a pure KDE implementation, employs a unique package 'bundle' method for applications which are GTk based, such as GIMP.  Of all the KDE-based Distros, I find Chakra's 2013.2 implementation easy to use, polished and professional.

Sabayon

Unlike Gentoo, upon which it is based, Sabayon Linux has a much more user-friendly 'out of the box' experience, .  Gentoo has a reputation of being the most difficult Distro to install and use, employing Portage package management system, only it ratchets up the difficulty with the requirement to compile 'everything' before use, including the kernel.  Sabayon attempts to bridge that technology chasm and succeeds with Entropy, a pre-compiled binary package manager, but also supports Portage for installing Gentoo repo 'ebuild' files.  It is one of the more leading-edge technology Distros in that it supports a non-root ZFS filesystem as does Gentoo.  Sabayon 13.04 installs with a choice of  Gnome3, KDE, Xfce, LXDE and Enlightenment GUIs.

Manjaro

At last check, Manjaro Linux, an Arch derivative, was ranked ninth just behind eighth place Arch Linux on Distrowatch.com, when viewed over the last 6-month period of activity.  Arch Linux users are among the most loyal following I have encountered.  Using Arch Linux is like wearing a red badge of courage, as its level of difficultly is only exceeded by Gentoo.  Manjaro, while based on Arch, maintains its own repository, but retains and uses the powerful Pacman package management system.  Manjaro 0.8.5.2, like Sabayon, succeeds in bridging Arch's difficulty gap by providing a graphical installer for Xfce, Cinnamon and KDE Plasma Workspace GUIs.

Rosa

Rosa Desktop Fresh 2012 is developed by Russian concern Rosa Labs and is a fork of Mandriva Linux.  Rosa Desktop's KDE Plasma Workspace GUI has been enhanced with improved workspace design and user-friendliness.  The company also provides long-term support (LTS) Desktop and Enterprise Server versions of the operating system.  According to their website, and of all the Distros reviewed in this story, ROSA Marathon 2012 LTS is the only Distro which is Linux Standard Base (LSB) compliant.

#! CrunchBang

I spent time last summer ranging over the Distro landscape in search of a home seeking refuge from Ubuntu (I loath Unity), and came across !#.  Let me tell you, this has been for me the fastest lightweight Debian-stable Distro, bar none.  At the time CrunchBang 11 Waldorf was still in beta, but you wouldn't know it based on its great stability.  Developer +Philip Newborough has done a superb job with CrunchBang--it is easy to install, and has a nice post-install shell script which allows the user to configure additional settings and add-on applications to suit their needs.  #! sports an OpenBox GUI, which is a minimal super lightweight Stacking Window Manager using a right-click pop-up menu interface.  Spartan as it may be, the memory footprint weighs in at around 70MB ram usage as measured with 'free' when reaching the Desktop from boot.  If you are Developer, and/or hooked on speed, #! is for you.  Newcomers may be less inclined to like the OpenBox interface as compared to others, e.g., Xfce or Gnome or KDE.  This lightweight Distro truly is a 'sleeper'.

Bodhi

Bodhi Linux 2.3.0 is perhaps the most unusual Distro I have ever encountered.  It stands as being both a contradiction and mystery.  I mean, it's an Ubuntu derivative for all intents and purposes, but what sets this Distro apart in a crowd is it's GUI: Enlightenment, version E17.  Hat's off to +Jeff Hoogland for putting together a super lightweight Distro that while having a memory footprint of about 120MB ram as measured with 'free', the Compositing Window Manager is amazingly feature rich approaching KDE quality.  That's totally unique as far as I am concerned and you can spend a long time drilling down into Desktop configuration and find an almost infinite number of ways to tweak the Desktop to your liking.  It's a mystery to me how the Enlightenment Team got that much functionality with so little ram use.  This Distro ranks high on the lightweight 'sleeper' list.  You get speed, low ram use, and the Ubuntu repo and that is a major value proposition.

Xubuntu

If I had to chose which Distro in the Ubuntu derivatives to return to, I think my most favorite is Xubuntu.  Simply because you avoid all of the GUI contentiousness of Unity and Gnome3 yet can enjoy all of the Ubuntu repository goodness without hassle.  I actually spent a lot of time using Xubuntu for that very reasoning until I decided to make the switch to Fuduntu then Fedora.  Xfce is the GUI and because it's written with GTk2 has no dependencies on any of the Gnome libraries.  Combine Xfce with compiz and it harkens back to the pre-Unity days of Ubuntu.  The very idea that the Ubuntu classic menu should be eliminated in favor of having the user search for a given app to me is beyond ridiculous.  Be that as it may, Xubuntu really is a good Distro.  Xubuntu 13.04 is quite practical and so I have given it the 'sleeper' Distro designation.  Of course, Xfce is light on resources so your machine will appreciate that and it will be quite snappy as a result.

Slackware

Now, don't let the Ncurses character-based installer fool you into to thinking this is an ancient Distro.  Wait. It is an ancient Distro.  Never mind. In fact, it is the oldest Distro having been created back in 1993. Seriously, when you get by the installer, you'll discover that really Slackware gives you most everything all the other Distros have and in some cases newer software.  For those who hold systemd in disfavor, know that Slackware is still sysvinit BSD-style init based.  How much longer +Patrick Volkerding keeps it that way remains to be seen.  Slackware packages are tarballs in compressed LZMA format and in addition to a suite of local package tools, slackpkg is the network package manager.  Support for Gnome was dropped and replaced by KDE Plasma Workspaces as the default GUI.  Slackware gets the most Unix-like Distro designation for achieving simplicity. For pure speed and stability, Slackware gets a 'sleeper' designation.

And that is it for the Top Ten Sleeper Distros.  What are your thoughts?  Any other sleepers you like?

-- Dietrich

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The Road Not Well Traveled: Two Developers Think Outside the Box

by Dietrich Schmitz

Prevailing wisdom has it that the road well traveled is safest.  That may pertain when traveling cross-country in your car, but, it may not necessarily yield benefits in the computer industry.

You see, we have several forks in the road that are presenting as choices and very quickly developers are want to choose the path well-traveled thinking that such a path will offer the least amount of effort and resistance.  That might make sense initially when short-sighted objectives are being met, as in reduced cost of labor input, but ignoring good design practices by taking shortcuts with direct hard coupling of apis can produce long-term inflexibilities that will make future coding brittle and prone to breakage.  (Image credit: Wikipedia.org)

Adding abstractions for apis is a good way to isolate hard coded system dependencies and using object encapsulation with abstract methods can allow polymorphic behaviors to be applied at a later date and thereby offering extensibility.

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.  Simply coupling an api (systemd) to a gui (Gnome) is an invitation for future disaster and in-built limitations.  A GUI framework should be loosely coupled to the underlying system and choosing to included hard-coded system dependencies is a recipe for disaster.

But that is the current situation faced by developers who need to make a choice for how to deal with the newest Linux infrastructure changes now being phased in with systemd.

CinnArch is no more as the work necessary to move to systemd was simply prohibitive and an announcement was made to close their doors.

[Edit 4/16/2013 9:00am I stand corrected.  I misunderstood the dynamic with CinnArch and good fellow pointed the error of my ways out here:

Michael Dinon • 43 minutes ago

• −

Dietrich what is your source that supports that Cinnarch is no more because of systemd? Cinnarch is no more because of how Cinnamon lags GNOME development. Since Cinnarch was based on Arch and Arch has shipped systemd for sometime I don't think that was the factor.

]

Today, in similar fashion, Fuduntu announced they would also be closing their doors due to their inability to allocate needed resources to address refactoring their code in Gnome 2.34.

Others seeing the writing on the wall include Ikey Doherty, founder of SolusOS, who had his own issues with upstream developers, very recently made the decision to rebase his Distro on a new PiSi package management system in conjunction with a decision to fork Gnome3 to a new GUI called 'Consort'.

Today, +Aaron Seigo  and +Ikey Doherty had a 'public' chat on Google Plus about the latest happenings.  It was in response to +Katherine Noyes  PCWorld story Fuduntu Linux is Closing its Doors.  I have taken to calling Aaron 'The Thinker' lately and I find most of what he says intriguing and quite insightful.  Here's his starting thread in reply to the Noyes story:

The Thinker
A comment +Aaron Seigo wrote on +Dietrich Schmitz's reshare of the original post:
It is interesting that two of the reasons stated were Gtk+ 2 maintenance and systemd dependencies. It demonstrates two things: a) how important it is to pick the horse you bet on carefully (in this case Gtk+ 2) with a good understanding of its future (which mainly lies with the developers who maintain it .. or don't) and b) the impact that Linux middleware churn has on smaller shops.
Personally, I think that if a few of these smaller distributions set aside differences and worked together, they would stand a better chance of creating something with a solid future. Diversity is great, but there's a limit to what the ecosystem can sustain.

The above is the starting comment from Aaron and here is what followed:

Ikey Doherty5:23 PM

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OK but different projects have different aims. What interest is there in all of these individuals dropping their goals to satisfy a dream that isn't theirs? That's quite a selfish viewpoint, as it takes the joy out of it for the developers

Aaron Seigo5:52 PM

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+Ikey Doherty In my experience being part of as well as managing projects and teams of wildly, wonderfully independent and brilliant people ... the idea that "we have wildly different goals" is often overstated. Moreover, the idea that "we have different goals, and therefore need to work separately" is often also unfounded.

What I find is that many engineers / software developers struggle to identify issues that don't really matter and spend a lot of time focusing on differences rather than commonalities.

This results in a lot of discussion and division over matters of little consequence and a lot of missed opportunities due to massive duplication of effort and lack of coordination on the common 95% to spare the perceived purity of the 5% in differences.

It's one of the things that drew me to Mer. They understood this pretty deeply, and when we got involved with it we were able to help broaden that mindset even further .. because they were open to it.

Jolla, Nemo and Plasma Active all have unique and divergent goals. We've identified those and marked them out as "not to be tread upon" ground and gotten to work on sharing the remaining 95%. Turns out, we keep finding new opportunities to share now that these doors are open: libhybris, maliit, device adaptations ...

It's one of the things that has drawn me to SDDM. The main developer of SDDM also groks this, and SDDM is now used by a small handful of projects .. with Plasma likely to join when we release Plasma Workspaces 2. This will mean dropping "our own" KDM and even letting go of significant work done with LightDM, but it will ultimately be worth it if it lets us share the 95% that is common so we can all focus on the 5% we care about.

So I'd suggest that the idea that one must either hold onto their dreams and goals or cooperate is a false dichotomy. You can almost always find a group with goals similar enough to your own that you can share the 95% with them. The 5% is yours.

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Ikey Doherty5:55 PM

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I don't disagree with people sharing, just when there is room to share something. Sometimes projects differ too much. Take SolusOS 2 for example. Its totally independent and using the PiSi package manager, there's not an awful lot of room for sharing there, and no sense in us joining forces with other projects. However with the Consort Desktop, we intend to bring as many projects together as we can to collaborate, especially in light of the recent dropping of Cinnamon from various projects. It'd be nice for cross-project collaboration on that front.

BTW, SDDM is hot.

Collapse this comment

Aaron Seigo6:26 PM

+Ikey Doherty Ultimately, you're The Source(tm) for where the 95%-5% line is drawn for SolusOS.

I do find it's always good to require a non-self-flattering defense to one's self (or one's team) as to where the value in a project's differences are. As developers, we're often able to sell ourselves on our own ideas very well ... sometimes a little too well ... and are often really bad at playing devil's advocate. Cost/benefit is not always easy to map out, and at times we're not even clear as to which of our plans hold the true value for us. Anyways ...

Bringing people together around Consort Desktop sounds like a very good idea. Desktop environments are a huge amount of work to maintain, and Linux middleware churn does not make that any easier.

To be utterly blunt, I honestly don't think any of the newer desktop env projects have any realistic long term prospects unless they pull together a greater developer audience. Even XFCE is suffering from developer retention right now. Unity has a well-funded and stubborn company backing it which is its possible saving grace. Even if none of them succeed, however, I do expect that at least some of them will push the envelope and in doing so advance the state of the art for Free software desktops.

Compiz is a great example of a star that shone brightly and pushed things forward in important ways even if it eventually has subsided in its importance.

p.s. I don't want to hijack this thread to go off on desktop environment design, but I think there's a strong case to be made for why KDE's Plasma is the best available starting point for a "GNOME 2 like env". If that's at all intriguing to you as a topic of conversation, you know where to find me :)

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Ikey Doherty6:33 PM

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Jumping ship to Plasma/Qt + co would cause more problems for me than I'm willing to deal with if I'm perfectly honest. I'll start a PM with you about it if thats ok ?

Aaron Seigo6:38 PM

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+Ikey Doherty absolutely cool with me; looking forward to the discussion ..

Gonzalo Velasco C.6:48 PM

SystemD I don't know, but from GTK2 to 3 is a smaller change, isn't it? Is it the same to say changing everything related to Gnome 2 for something related to Gnome 3, or is there more?

So, while this road well-traveled may appear to be a good choice beware of major roadwork, detours, and potholes going down that road.  It may be a seemingly good ride right now but alternate routes may be advised. ;)

-- Dietrich

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Of Standards, Trends, and Shiny Things

by Dietrich Schmitz

I've been challenging the status quo of late--testing ideas--questioning assumptions--all to satisfy myself that things are the way they seem to appear.

The fact is, the Linux Desktop has been a failure.  Of all the diversity we see, only a few exemplars surface as noteworthy examples of state of the art technology with a high level of innovation.

I've used words like speedbump for Debian and cookie cutter for my dissatisfaction with the confusion that so many Distros engender.  There's nothing innovative about being a copy cat Distro.

We have Android and ChromeOS both to be proud of as a measure of what innovating is really all about.  Even Canonical's Ubuntu hasn't really gained traction in all the years it has been under development.

Both Android and ChromeOS got off the ground and to market production in a matter of only two years.  Both are truly unique.  Most users of both don't know they are using Linux.

I see another prospect emerging, SolusOS, which has garnered much interest and grown in popularity because it has succeeded in doing the fundamentals and putting aside being fancy like Gnome3 or Unity.  This is no cookie cutter Distro.

Still, the struggles of SolusOS founder, developer, +Ikey Doherty have been evident.  He realized that he was on a slippery slope, totally disadvantaged in getting things done in the normal community cooperative way of doing things.  For various reasons, the cooperation wasn't there by virtue of intransigence, political skirmishes, conflicts of interest and so he reached a turning point and summoned a new found resolve.  That resolve and commitment includes taking SolusOS in a new direction away from its Debian roots.  Specifically, he is writing a new GUI Consortium and integrating PiSi Package Manager on a new toolchain base independent of any other Distro or repository.  He is being pragmatic, carefully working through the technical issues and has succeeded in a workable viable product which is in its early stages of pre-beta development.

So, it is out of his adversity new opportunity has come, an amalgam of conviction, determination and courage as new innovative ideas form to challenge the status quo, the resistance.  Occasionally, something really good is born out of adversity.  I believe that to be the case for SolusOS 2.

I will bide my time to try it when it reaches solid footing.  In the meantime, I've asked Ikey to write and he agreed to share this story:

Standards, Trends, And Shiny Things

by Ikey Doherty

Not being a blogger, I'm not privy to the standard protocols. So I'll start the old fashioned way with an introduction. I'm Ikey Doherty, founder of the SolusOS Linux Distribution, and primarily a software developer. (Image right: Ikey Doherty)

Trends

Trends are powered by people. In terms of software, we find something that's either relatively unknown or met with a lot of competition. That said, once enough people jump on the bandwagon, the trend is born. People flock to this new software, spreading the news through the internet.
We can look at it the same way market businesses operate: Word of mouth. A friend of yours may have found a great stall at the local market, and you visit. If happy, you tell your friends. So on, and so forth.
Now apply this to say, Ubuntu PPA's. Would people be using Grive if not for trends ? Of course not :) Lets take OMG!Ubuntu for example, we could say it's a trend-setter in the Ubuntu world. Over time a project gains enough following through the Internet's equivalent of the real-world word of mouth. People flock to these projects and soon they become big enough to be part of everyday Linux life. Note the “Shiny Things” rule is also applicable here.

Standards

In my most honest point of view, I do not think that Linux standards can be planned. I personally believe that standards will emerge from working implementations. It's pretty fair to say now that the majority of Linux distributions ship with PulseAudio, despite so much resistance. In it's early days it was dubbed “the software that currently breaks your audio” . Now, a few years down the line, it is practically the standard audio server within Linux distributions.
PulseAudio has proven itself over the last few years, and has become standard by its own merit. This is an example of a working implementation becomes standard.

Planned Standards

Planning standards is much harder. Unfortunately many people make the automatic comparison with proprietary solutions. One I've often seen pop up on forums has been the comparison to DirectX. Let's remember that this is a proprietary solution by Microsoft put forth as their own standard for their own operating system. This is the standard given to vendors, and creators of games, etc, and there is no need for another.



Within Linux, we do not have a single vendor or The Distribution. We have our own ways of doing things, and thrive on variety. If one API doesn't shape up, another one is born. We have an ever changing and evolving set of API's available to us. They're not always designed as standards, which many do seem to forget. I have often seen on my own forums and IRC channel and assumption that because something has been created, it is an attempt by the developer to force software on people.
We can just say no. If the software doesn't prove itself? It dies. Or looses interest. A new alternative soon appears :) Before you know it, we have a working implementation of something that gains popularity, becoming a trend. Eventually the big distributions adopt it, and we have a standard. Despite the differences between distributions, we can actually already see many standards in place.
Polkit, dbus, udev, bash are some of the many already in place. For the majority of distributions we can expect these to be in place. Although GTK and Qt are indeed different toolkits entirely, its safe to say the majority of distributions still ship with these. So, as an application developer, I know I can choose either of these major toolkits and know my application can still be used.



Sometimes, however, the world reacts badly to change. A perfect example of this is systemd. This is literally the system daemon, offering far superior service management and integration of boot services, i.e. integration with dbus and now udev is part of systemd. Some distributions did not want to rely on or use systemd, and now udev exists in some distributions as eudev, or completely ripped from the source of systemd to stand freely. This is an example of where fragmentation really happens. This now has two directions in which it can go: Either systemd eventually becomes adopted by more Linux distributions and becomes a standard (through the trend/proving period) or we end up with many forks and implementations and complain about fragmentation :)

VHS & Betamax

I think one of the most relevant concepts to Linux now would be the video format wars. Betamax offered high-quality video recordings, allowing customers to play back their recordings at will. So did VHS though. Two competing products, essentially offering the same thing. Yet only one could win this war. VHS won for a variety of reasons, the most important ones being two factors: Longer recording times and cheaper units. Essentially: value for money.



So, given that most of the software we encounter in the Linux world is free, how is this at all applicable? Because the user chose it. You, the user, have the power to shape the world around you. If nobody uses the new software it dies away. Developers may create something through true inspiration, but eventually someone will be using it. And if it makes it past the trend phase? You've got that software to that point. And now we're at the mercy of the user. If our software is no longer doing its job, you won't use it. The word will not spread.

My market stall will be very lonely :)

So, in my closing remark, I say this now: Actively support the variety of Linux and open source. Think of each developer as a card in your hand. It's up to you the hand you play. Just as you wouldn't limit yourself to one card in a game, do not limit the developers and inspiration available to the world you are shaping.  -- Ikey Doherty

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Linux Distro Survey Results: SolusOS Ranked #1

SolusOS wins in LA Survey

Okay, Here are the Linux Distro Survey (results).  Incidentally SolusOS ranks number 1.  Talk amongst yourselves. --Dietrich

Read More

A Tale of Two Distros: Back to the Future with Fuduntu and SolusOS

By Katherine Noyes

Katherine Noyes,
aka Linux Girl

It would be difficult to find a better illustration of the power and beauty of free software than the current state of Linux Desktops.

Exhibit A:

After years of comfortable service to Linux users far and wide, the GNOME 2 desktop was effectively retired, replaced instead by the mobile-inspired GNOME 3 alternative. Ubuntu, meanwhile, launched its like-minded Unity.

Many Linux users balked, not enjoying the mobile paradigm on the desktop.

Instead, they turned to any one of countless alternative desktops or distros. Eventually, the GNOME project relented. Meanwhile, brand-new desktops and distros were born to serve this base of users who yearned for the classic experience.  Life went on, and users were happy again.

Read More

There's an Elephant in the Room

Elephant Eyes (Photo credit: ricklibrarian)

By Dietrich T. Schmitz

That metaphorical expression comes to mind--you know--the Elephant in the Room that nobody will admit is there?

He's getting really hard not to notice, and as he grows, the room gets smaller.  Every day, there is yet more technology news which validates the strong presence and pervasiveness of Linux that simply cannot be ignored.

Read More