New Linux Distribution — Exherbo, Announced

An anonymous reader writes "Former Gentoo developer Bryan Østergaard recently announced a new linux distribution aptly named Exherbo. The distribution, which has been underway for a couple of months and is based on ideas and experiences from his long work with Gentoo, features a new packaging format and several subprojects, such as a redesigned init system. Currently no installation medium is available but their package tree is public for the daring ones who want to play with the upcoming distribution. The developers strongly discourage any serious use though, as it's still highly experimental."

Comments

Re:Missing some subtle pun?

[Thornburg]

I guess that was supposed to be funny, but "exherbo" apparently means to weed (as in to remove the weeds from a garden). At least, that was the only definition I could come up with using a short google search, and it certainly makes sense.

Re:Rationale for new packaging system?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exherbo is a source-based distribution like Gentoo. Gentoo uses ebuilds for managing packages. But Gentoo is too tied to their stale package manager (Portage) which means the ebuild format hasn't been updated for a long time. As a result of that, many features aren't implemented and probably never will be. This is what calls for another way of handling source-based installs. The list of involved people contains several current and former gentoo devs, that have fought for changes in gentoo and now, it seems, finally given up on ever seeing those changes implemented in gentoo.