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New Community-Run RPM-based Distribution

Posted by timothy on from the whacking-at-a-gift-horse's-teeth dept.

KainX writes "As an alternative to the Red Hat-controlled Fedora project, the community-led cAos Foundation decided to create a fully community-built, community-controlled, RPM-based distribution whose foundation would be a self-hosting, self-sufficient core with a 3-5 year support lifetime. The first stable, production-worthy core has now been officially released! Download an ISO from a mirror and try it out."

7 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder how it will compare to... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Fedora Core 4 which should be coming out soon.

  2. 3-5 year lifecycle? by mlynx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What does the lifecycle determine? It sounds like the distro is built to be constantly maintained, similar to Gentoo. Or does it mean that in 3-5 years it will be so outdated, that you'll be thrilled to upgrade?

  3. I'm pretty amazed... by wolf31o2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They're claiming that they're going to support a 3-5 year support lifecycle. That is unheard of for a community-based distribution! I would love to see these guys do well, and hope they really can stick to their support lifecycle.

    I always enjoy hearing about new community-based distributions. It will be a bit strange having an RPM-based distribution out there, but now we have YUM that provides the required functionality that RPM lacks, such as automatic dependency resolution, ala portage or apt.

    1. Re:I'm pretty amazed... by tacocat · · Score: 2, Interesting
      It will be a bit strange having an RPM-based distribution out there, but now we have YUM that provides the required functionality that RPM lacks, such as automatic dependency resolution, ala portage or apt.

      I think you are missing the point.

      The question a lot of the initial posts are centered on is, "Why would you start yet another distro based on an already proven sub-standard packaging system?". It doesn't make any sense unless you plan on using the Chewbakka Defense.

      I would be a heck of a lot more thrilled if someone backed up a square and developed a new and improved packaging system that tries to account for the shortcomings of all the others.

  4. Re:Yet Another RPM Distro by slashkitty · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The reason is simple, because that's where the developers are. Look at some of the most active open source APPS and you'll see that they release their product in 2 or 3 forms... RPM, GZ source and maybe a binary. I'm all for a better package manager... but I think that developers have decided that RPM is better... at least easier to distribute their apps in.

    --
    -- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
  5. Why RPM Based? by ZephyrXero · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'd like to see a source based distro that relied on Autopackage for it's application myself... You'd let your libraries, the kernel, userland, X, Gnome/KDE, and low level OS type software be custom compiled ala Gentoo, and then for all your software like Firefox, Gimp, Mplayer, etc you would use Autopackages. It would be quite a challenge to create, but it would be well worth it...Here are a few further thoughts I've had on it.

    --
    "A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
  6. Re:And the point of this is? by m50d · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It won because a few big distros stacked the standards comittee. And LSB distros only need to provide a way to install RPMs, not use it as the primary package managment for the actual system. (RTFFootnote on the link you give)

    --
    I am trolling