Slashdot Mirror
Bedrock Linux Combines Benefits of Other Linux Distros
First time accepted submitter Paradigm_Complex writes "From the distro's front page: 'Bedrock Linux is a Linux distribution created with the aim of making most of the (often seemingly mutually-exclusive) benefits of various other Linux distributions available simultaneously and transparently. If one would like a rock-solid stable base (for example, from Debian or a RHEL clone) yet still have easy access to cutting-edge packages (from, say, Arch Linux), automate compiling packages with Gentoo's portage, and ensure that software aimed only for the ever popular Ubuntu will run smoothly — all at the same time, in the same distribution — Bedrock Linux will provide a means to achieve this.' The timing of this release is particularly nice for those who were excited to hear that Valve was bringing Steam to Linux, but were disappointed that it was targeting Ubuntu as Ubuntu was not their distro of choice. If it works on Ubuntu, it should work fine on Bedrock Linux, while still ensuring the majority of the system feel very, very similar to Fedora or Slackware or whatever you prefer."
I'm sure the devs will have a gay old time.
Number of Linux Distributions Surpasses Number of Users
The tl;dr version is that this "distro" is just an installation manual for a linux-from-scratch style install of a kernel, busybox, and little else (think initrd-style minimal system) plus chroots under which you can install regular distros.
While a novel concept, this is clearly a niche idea. At best I could see it useful to the developer who wants to test his packages across multiple distros, but you can already do that with a standard "host" distro and chroots for "guest" distros. It also does nothing (at least yet) to deal with the fact that each "client" will want/expect its own daemons to be running, but lots of them will be system-exclusive (e.g. anything to do with devices or networking).
-1 RMS fanatic.
Some apps are WYSIWYG. Some others are WYSIWTF.
I apologize, I literally just learned HTML/CSS within the last week to create the website. I've had other people offer to create a website for me who actually know what they're doing with respect to website creation - once they're done I'll gladly switch it away from what I'm sure is a poor example of a proper website.
What I am knowledgeable about is the content discussed within the website. Don't judge the book by its cover here, as I'm reasonably confident there is something unique in there.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
You're not the first one to point to that xkcd in respect to this project. However, I don't think it is complete apt. If anything, Bedrock Linux benefits from the large variety of Linux distributions out there, rather than adding to the mess. If that issue noted in the xkcd comic didn't exist, this distro would not have any point. Think of it as bringing value from what is traditionally seen as a weakness.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
this is linux, not apple. not everyone focuses on marketing first.
At the moment, I don't yet have a package manager manager (not a typo), but it is on the TODO and will get there eventually. For the time being, just run the package manager from the client Linux distribution of your choice and install the packages as you normally would. "apt-get install wine" or "pacman -S wine" or "yum install wine" or whatever else you'd like - take your pick.
I've yet to try installing the nvidia drivers through a package manager, as I expect that might make assumptions about the kernel which won't be true. Thus far I've just installed it manually from the drivers provided on nvidia's website. Installing it via a package manager may be possible eventually, just isn't there quite yet.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
To be fair, it looked fine to me - until I tried it in IE.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Yes but this one finally covers everyone's use cases!
Huzzah!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I'd start the flames but my browser isn't fully compiled yet.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
That is the way it comes off in my description. That's really more a fault in my description than a fault in the design.
A more apt analogy would be thus: If you want a Prius 99% of the time for the gas mileage, but decide on the fly that you need to burn rubber, you don't need to get out of your car and into another - you just flip a switch and go. The beauty though really comes from the fact that you can get aspects of these things at the same time, without switching.
The best real-world example I can think of is the second item here. You really can't do that with any other distro nearly as cleanly - either I don't have working 3D acceleration, or I don't have a working compiz package. With Bedrock Linux, I had both at the same time without putting any effort into debugging.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Then you misunderstood the advantages outlined above. It might be my fault for explaining them.
I really, really like Debian. I like the fact that, once released, it really doesn't change for well over a year. Once I have it set up I can just let it run. However, it becomes out of date fast - if I want some new toy that just came out and isn't in Debian backports. With Bedrock Linux, I can have 95% of the system be Debian except for that one package I want from Arch, which I will get from Arch. Take a look here for what may be better examples.
If you still feel Wheezy covers this, reply again and I'll try to explain it differently. This is really nothing like Wheezy at all. Unless you want it to be, of course, then it is almost exactly like Wheezy.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Sadly, it really can't be considered user friendly at the moment. I don't expect to take any market share away from, say, Linux Mint. In fact, I should probably actively discourage it, at least for this release. However, this fit my use case, and I figure at least a few others had similar interests but were disappointed no one distro provided all of them at the same time.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
This distro will cover everyone's requirements.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Gentoo lets you do all of this....
If you truly feel that way, then I have failed to explain what it does properly.
The beauty of this is you can have the majority of the system be Gentoo if you want, except if you are in a rush and can't wait for something to compile, you can just grab it from the repository of another Linux distribution. Or the opposite - you can have the majority of the system be, say, Debian, except those two or three packages that you really don't like the Debian developer's compilation choices and just get them from Gentoo's portage.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
That would be debian stable (squeeze), not debian testing (wheezy).
Debian testing has packages which are much more up to date than ubuntu's.
You may also choose to use Debian unstable (sid).
Where do the release names come from?
All of the Bedrock Linux releases are named after characters from the Nickelodeon television program Avatar: The Last Air Bender.
This is definitely the main reason I'll be trying it out.
Luckily, there is no "-1 RMS fanatic", "-1 disagree" or "-1 your worldview sux mine rox" moderation option.
I really, really like Debian. If Debian could do what Bedrock Linux can, I would have never tried to make Bedrock Linux. The issue is, however, that you can't install an arbitrary program from testing/unstable into stable.. Many of those packages are dependent on specific libraries which aren't available in stable. With Bedrock Linux, you can install and use packages from both, at the same time. I can run Squeeze's newsbeuter in Sid's X11 and have it open a window in Wheezy's iceweasel. It's all transparent and feels like one cohesive OS.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Well, the issue then is that testing and unstable aren't quite stable enough for me. I want something which I can learn and set up, then leave running for years. Debian stable could do that, but neither testing nor unstable could.
.deb from Sid into Stable are non-issues with Bedrock Linux.
However, at times I also want to play with the newest goodie from Debian Sid. I don't want to reboot, I don't want to use a VM, I just want to run a program from Sid. With Bedrock Linux, I can do that: I can have a system which is almost entirely Debian Stable, except for the packages I want from Sid when I want them. Any library compatibility issues one would normally have trying to get a
Add on to that that I can use Gentoo's portage to relatively easily keep a specific package customized to my specific tastes. Say I don't like dbus, but I want firefox - Debian's iceweasel is dependent on dbus. I could just get it from Gentoo with the flag set to exclude dbus. Yet everything else would be Debian.
At the same time, I am 100% library-compatible with Ubuntu, so for projects like sage mathematics, which I know provides packages for Ubuntu, I can use those with absolutely no worry that they won't work. Debian Testing cannot do that.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
I really did not intend to be misleading in quite that way; if you truly feel that way, I apologize. I created something I feel is really neat and would like to share, and felt slashdot would be a great place to share it. You can check my UID - I'm not exactly new around these parts. I'm also not making any money on this - I'm not sure an advertisement is the best description of what this is.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Hopefully, I'll get them to work with me to show them HOW to do that.
"Hi Valve, it's me. You know, Anonymous Coward. I'd like you to pay me money to tell you what you're doing wrong... hello? Hello?"
Now that the day-job's slowing down, I'll be getting back in touch with them on the subject...
... "Hi Valve, Anonymous Coward again. We got cut off - are your phones working ok? Hello? That's odd, it's happened again."
On the subject of dependencies, from what I understand, because Bedrock essentially has pretty much full distro installs in chroots, each distro uses its own libraries, so it's possible to have different library versions coexisting as applications will only load the libraries they are linked against - the particular chroot/$PATH/bind mount magic that Bedrock does takes care of it. As packages are installed using individual "client" distros package management tools, they will pull in whatever dependencies they need and install them in that "client" distro's chroot.
It seems quite elegant to me, although I haven't the patience to set it up myself as I'd effectively be administering 5 distros instead of one. It might be quite nice for a combined CentOS/Rawhide system though, kind of super-stable but with easily added bleeding edge bling.
Not really.
Ubuntu has made a lot of changes (from the kernel and init system to the Unity desktop and notifications). If something depends on any of those changes it isn't going to be happy with debian.
I have had nearly complete success the other direction though. So I would say if it runs on debian it should run on Ubuntu.
there you go.
the nvidia-current package will use the ubuntu kernelheaders. So the module is built for a ubuntu kernel. Which is not, what bedrock is booting.
An ASCII Art logo? So it is a CLI distro?!
Gives the wrong impression right at the start.
Wait... we have Nvidia drivers with specific kernel headers built into them? Isn't that what DKMS is supposed to take care of? Just make sure you have headers for whatever reasonable kernel you want, let it handle the rest.
So far, on my Debian box with Liquorix kernels, it's worked perfectly. Kernels get installed, modules get autobuilt, system works.
Would you mind elaborating on what drove you to that conclusion? I feel all that fits the first alpha of just about any project, honestly, but it could very well be I'm simply not viewing it with the same mindset others are.
I am quite serious with this project, and in no way trolling - I just want to share something I created which I found useful. If you could explain what made you draw that conclusion, I'll try to remedy it if I can.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
So from what I can tell in the "Introduction" (haven't reald it all yet), it's sort of like FreeBSD's jails but without them getting their own IP addresses and being able to use a different distribution in each jail?
The other thing to consider is the many potential points of failure when a distro relies on other distros with dissimilar distribution methods, library tools, packaging tools, expected directory structure, etc. Just one little change can cause a huge ripple effect. Arch, last month changed directory structures followed by changing /lib to /usr/lib. It bricked a lot of machines requiring much manual messing around to get things back on track.
I'm doing my best to cover these issues as they arise. Before the /usr move, I was reasonably confident I had most of the major ones squashed, but the /usr move has caused some issues.
However, I actually consider this a relative strength of Bedrock. I am putting a high priority on ensuring that if a client is unexpected broken, the system continues to function. In some respects this makes Arch-on-Bedrock more reliable than straight Arch, although with the alpha-state Bedrock is in at the moment I can't drop the qualifier "in some respects".
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire