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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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I know I know, another "help me choose a distro" thread (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm wondering if a distro like the one I'm looking for even exists:

simple as in KISS and vanilla. This excludes Debian where the package manager is too complex and packages deviate from upstream too much, as well as OpenSUSE, where systems administration relies on GUI tools too much and the package manager is even more complex.
fixed release (excludes everything Arch-based)

So from the major distros, only Fedora is left as an option, where I really don't know enough about it. Is it possible to do a minimal install of it? Is it built around a GUI app store? Does it rely on Flatpak like Ubuntu does with Snap?

Or are there other distros out there that I'm not aware of? Basically everything from the past 5 years I have no experience with. I've heard good things about NixOS, but it sounds weird as a daily driver.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Talking for myself and not OP: What's complex about apt and yum is the package format per se. The cli is very straightforward and "just works", but whenever you want something that's not packaged and need to package it yourself, you gotta fasten your seatbelt and prepare for the complex task of creating an RPM or a DEB package.

I know there are tools to help with that, but I've created packages for many distros (Debian, CentOS, Alpine, Arch, Void and Crux), and rpm/deb are just way more complex to create than the alternatives.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This guy gets it.

[+] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

% pm -i | wc -l
55

That's how many software I packaged myself. They are installed to /usr/local using an alternative package manager because I couldn't be bothered with making an appropriate .deb.

And as to explain how this alternate workflow is less complex, here's how I go about installing a program:

% git clone git://git.z3bra.org/human ~/code/human
Cloning into '/home/z3bra/code/human'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 53, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (53/53), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (53/53), done.
remote: Total 53 (delta 28), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
Receiving objects: 100% (53/53), 9.35 KiB | 195.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (28/28), done.
% cd $_
% pack
CC human.c
LD human
install -D -m 0755 human /tmp/tmp.rfnbLyIQOz/usr/local/bin/human
install -D -m 0644 human.1 /tmp/tmp.rfnbLyIQOz/usr/local/man/man1/human.1

        > /tmp/[email protected]

installed human (0.3)
% pm -i human
usr/
usr/local/
usr/local/bin/
usr/local/bin/human
usr/local/man/
usr/local/man/man1/
usr/local/man/man1/human.1