GoboLinux

Talk about other linux distributions, or even other OSes.
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marcxjo
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Joined: 1. Apr 2014, 18:56

GoboLinux

Post by marcxjo »

Has anybody tried this one? Reading about it on Distrowatch, I thought it sounded like a cool concept, but then reading about it on its own website... there are just

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Soooooooooo
                                    maaaaaannnnyyyyyyyyyy
                                                                                  ssssyyyyymmmmmmllllliiiiinnnnnnkkkkkkkssssssss...
.................
..............
.......
I feel like dealing with that alone (even just when running "ls" or whathaveyou) would be enough to defeat the value of this kind of layout.
Have I got the wrong idea? Is the novelty worth the apparent headache? It is as helpful and interesting as it seems like it would be to get a setup that essentially eliminates the need for package management? Better yet, are all the ugly details like library symlinks and build-prefixing sufficiently automated so as to minimize user intervention beyond business-as-usual compiling?
seoneal7
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Joined: 11. Apr 2014, 00:12

Re: GoboLinux

Post by seoneal7 »

It does sound intriguing, but KDE.... blurgh.
marcxjo
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Joined: 1. Apr 2014, 18:56

Re: GoboLinux

Post by marcxjo »

seoneal7 wrote:It does sound intriguing, but KDE.... blurgh.
I had the same thought. I go for Xfce and MATE... LXDE in a pinch. KDE just has way too many features I'll never use (with resource consumption to boot).

I suppose the beauty of a distro like this is how relatively easy it is to switch DEs? :|
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mimosa
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Re: GoboLinux

Post by mimosa »

I'm not sure how great the practical advantages are of redesigning the internals like that. To a considerable extent, the normal unix way is the product of accident as well as evolution, but it has lasted well. I haven't tried this, but my question would be: what actual problem does it solve?

Here's something really radical:

http://www.nixos.org

Unlike gobolinux, it isn't intended to be a usable everyday system, but it is an experiment around the very real issue of one package breaking another. The Slackware solution to that is to reduce exposure to it by keeping version bumps to once per release cycle wherever possible.

Regarding switching DEs, yes, Salix has quite a good selection (WIP). It's a question of the necessary packages being in the repositories, and having been tested together. It also has a number of niche WMs, such as spectrwm or pekwm.
marcxjo
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Joined: 1. Apr 2014, 18:56

Re: GoboLinux

Post by marcxjo »

mimosa wrote:I haven't tried this, but my question would be: what actual problem does it solve?
The main touted advantage seems to be to preclude the need for any package manager. A person can compile any program at all, and (again, assuming either the right flags are set or that that the adapted build process is already automated by the system, etc. etc.), and the entire program will install into its own directory, giving a transparent view of what's actually installed, and reducing the task of uninstalling to deleting a directory (if for some reason e.g. make uninstall fails to delete all installed targets).
mimosa wrote:Here's something really radical:

http://www.nixos.org

Unlike gobolinux, it isn't intended to be a usable everyday system, but it is an experiment around the very real issue of one package breaking another. The Slackware solution to that is to reduce exposure to it by keeping version bumps to once per release cycle wherever possible.
Interesting. It also seems perfectly capable of handling multiple versions of packages, which is something I've wanted to see now and again in the major distros.

That said, I've only ever had a package upgrade cause me any major glitches once that I can recall; the newer version of libsecret (0.16) in the Salix repos doesn't play well with any SlackBuild for seahorse 3.8.x; trying to build 3.9 resulted in outdated versions of other libraries. Luckily, the repo still has 0.15, which solved the problem.
mimosa wrote:Regarding switching DEs, yes, Salix has quite a good selection (WIP). It's a question of the necessary packages being in the repositories, and having been tested together. It also has a number of niche WMs, such as spectrwm or pekwm.
Most of the major ones are, which is definitely a boon. Part of the beauty of the Slack way, though, is that it usually also isn't hard to build a package that *isn't* available (unless, for some God-awful reason, you want, say, libindicate :lol:). This is why I'm so adamant about mentioning slkbuilds to new posters; it's pretty hard to say you lack for anything in Slack or Salix once you know what you're doing. I have updated versions of some of my favorite packages and a music player that's not even available in the repos thanks to the very simple build process of slkbuilds, and those packages work just as well as those avaiable from the repos.

Clearly I'm of the opinion that the Slack setup is perfectly good as it is. I was more or less just curious to see if Gobo offers anything paricularly helpful of its own that's worth giving a look. I imagine I'll try it eventually, but at this point, I'm accustomed enough to the Unix filesystem that it would be mostly just an exercise of curiosity. I can appreciate the intuition that inspired GoboLinux.
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mimosa
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Re: GoboLinux

Post by mimosa »

By the way - not sure if I said this previously elsewhere - please feel free to post your packages on the contributed packages board. Contact the team if you need space to upload them.
marcxjo
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Re: GoboLinux

Post by marcxjo »

mimosa wrote:By the way - not sure if I said this previously elsewhere - please feel free to post your packages on the contributed packages board. Contact the team if you need space to upload them.
Ah! You just reminded me! *off to the XMPP MUC*
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