Outlining Thin Linux

snydeq writes: Deep End's Paul Venezia follows up his call for splitting Linux distros in two by arguing that the new shape of the Linux server is thin, light, and fine-tuned to a single purpose. "Those of us who build and maintain large-scale Linux infrastructures would be happy to see a highly specific, highly stable mainstream distro that had no desktop package or dependency support whatsoever, so was not beholden to architectural changes made due to desktop package requirements. When you're rolling out a few hundred Linux VMs locally, in the cloud, or both, you won't manually log into them, much less need any type of graphical support. Frankly, you could lose the framebuffer too; it wouldn't matter unless you were running certain tests," Venezia writes. "It's only a matter of time before a Linux distribution that caters solely to these considerations becomes mainstream and is offered alongside more traditional distributions."

Comments

What about BSD derivatives

[theshowmecanuck]

Not trolling... I don't use BSD really, but my understanding is that some of the BSD distros are more server focused. I don't mind being corrected but my understanding is this could be a legit alternative if the idea of splitting Linux is a no go. I don't know why BSD isn't seen or heard of more (I do know it is used and has a strong following, but doesn't seem as prevalent as Linux... Mac doesn't count here). For BSD adherents, maybe this is the break they are looking for?

Re:What about BSD derivatives

[Anonymous Coward]

While the world is fanboying Linux, the BSD's have kept on plodding along doing what they do BEST, giving you...
- A single point of distribution and *authorship* of the entire base system. BSD provides all of kernel, base utils, networking, and port/package bootstraps and makefiles from one single consistant shop. They also generally include a C compiler.
- A rock solid platform you can depend on. Linux is too bloated and over the course of history has crashed many many times. BSD's you can compile and run the stable branch without fear. I've only had two times an issue with FreeBSD stable and the were fixed within *days*.
- A stripped down, layerless (no layer upon layer of gui management tools for the idiots amoung you), configuration. It's your favorite editor like VI, and your config files.
- It literally is just the base system plus the limited things you want to add.

Provided you are competent enough to actually learn manual system administration, FreeBSD is pure simplicity and bliss.

Most Linux MAC and Windows users are too feeble to grow into that.
It's true and unfortunate. And it's the reason they prevail in market share, they are made to be dumb and easy.

Re:min install

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah i think this is a response to recent bloat -- from my POV after testing RHEL 7 I am testing out FreeBSD for something more straightforward - not sure it will work out but definitely don't like stuff like systemd for example.

Re:min install

[MikeBabcock]

As a frequent user of the CentOS-6.5-x86_64-minimal.iso install image, I can see that its still not *as* thin as the author describes but none of the unnecessary bits are included and its super-easy to customize.

Re:Sounds like Slackware to me.

[Orgasmatron]

Slackware indeed. You'll never know it has a GUI if you don't go looking for it, and architecture decisions are made based on Patrick's desire to keep it stable and sane.

Re: min install

[staalmannen]

A nice alternative is Alpine linux which feels a lot like Arch but uses openrc init, grsec kernel and musl libc. To make it even lighter, busybox is the default userland ( but coreutils is an option). It is apparently well suited as a minimal secute Xen host.