Is It Time To Split Linux Distros In Two?

snydeq writes Desktop workloads and server workloads have different needs, and it's high time Linux consider a split to more adequately address them, writes Deep End's Paul Venezia. You can take a Linux installation of nearly any distribution and turn it into a server, then back into a workstation by installing and uninstalling various packages. The OS core remains the same, and the stability and performance will be roughly the same, assuming you tune they system along the way. Those two workloads are very different, however, and as computing power continues to increase, the workloads are diverging even more. Maybe it's time Linux is split in two. I suggested this possibility last week when discussing systemd (or that FreeBSD could see higher server adoption), but it's more than systemd coming into play here. It's from the bootloader all the way up. The more we see Linux distributions trying to offer chimera-like operating systems that can be a server or a desktop at a whim, the more we tend to see the dilution of both. You can run stock Debian Jessie on your laptop or on a 64-way server. Does it not make sense to concentrate all efforts on one or the other?"

Comments

A Betteridge No.

[TechyImmigrant]

The issues that brought systemd into existence (coordinated handling of a frequently reconfigured hardware as things are plugged in and out and connections go up and down) is not different to hardware that reconfigures frequently due to power saving, with things turning on and off. This just isn't a big issue in server chips right now, but it will be in the future as advanced power saving techniques move from mobile to desktop to server. Then the split will look silly.

I think this is a good idea.

[JustShootMe]

I am a linux sysadmin, and many of the packages required for desktop use not only don't apply to me, but are pretty well useless. I would love to see a distribution where any dependency on X11 was not only stripped out - but *compiled* out. I would love to see a distribution where systemd was not getting its mitts into everything.

But it's not only that, it's tuning. I discovered that Ubuntu's default scheduler settings on a Dell R620 with 384G of RAM and a nice beefy RAID 10 array are actually the *worst* settings for this kind of system. Everything else I tried - other schedulers, tuning CFQ, etc., they all led to better write throughput. Which leads me to wonder how many processor and other cycles are wasted because sysadmins just install with the default settings and hope for the best?

There needs to be a distro where the adults are in charge. I'd even build it if I had time, and I most certainly would be willing to put some time into working on one.