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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."
I'm sure I've installed minimal gentoo and Debian systems that fit that description.
Nullius in verba
I'm sure I'm also wrong somehow. I haven't touched Slack in 10 years. What am I missing?
http://www.linuxfromscratch.or... Everything you need, nothing you want.
Pretty much fits the desc.. Supports docker & clustering but very very little else. Should probably shoe-horn a hypervisor onto that little OS.
I see this as a response to the systemd war, and a viable one at that. A server does not need systemd... "It boots faster." Why bother when post takes 20 minutes? "It is tied into udev and network manager." Servers generally don't dhcp or hotplug... Since "the desktop" is going full tilt boogie in one direction and damn everyone who disagrees, it makes sense for the server folks to say "See ya!" And soon after someone posts about how to get lxde running on the server. :)
All the major Linux distributions already do this. Ubuntu has a minimal and a Server spin, Fedora has a new Server only spin, CentOS and RHEL have Server only spins, Debian has a minimal install, etc etc etc. The only way the guy's arguement makes even a little sense is if he thinks a server distribution is somehow made better by it not being possible to add a desktop interface to it. In other words, a distribution that ships only server packages and refuses to ever include anything that features a GUI.
Even then the arguement doesn't make any sense because it would assume a distribution loses polish in one area if it also allows packages in another area. There is no reason to believe this is true.
Linux sucks. Windows isn't much better other than the support.
Computing is not where I thought it would be 25 years ago. Users have continually less power, not more.
Linux gives people power in the wrong places. Places people rather let the system do the work. And it's based on Unix and Unix frankly sucks.
Fuck. I wish Plan 9 or Lisp Machines or something else won other than this half-ass kludge.
Fuck it. I'm going to sell my house tomorrow and build a log cabin in Canadian woods before the winter arrives. Out of here, bitches.
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?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
To micro-manage such things Gentoo and its USE flags can be an option. Though, the time and kilowatt-hours needed to compile all of KDE probably make it not worth it (if you actually can compile a CUPS-less desktop environment).
I don't know if CUPS is actually used for what I do.. but I do like printing support on a computer without a printer. I can print to a pdf or ps file, and then carry that file by USB drive or another method to a print shop or a place I can use a printer. So for your particular example, it may be valuable.
We used to run linux in the server room because it was lean and easy to admin. Windows was slow, mousy, and dependencies were hellish.
Now we run Windows Server 2012 with no GUI, virtualized, and admin with powershell. We've ripped out tens of thousands of dollars of Red Hat; windows is cheaper.
Basically there aren't any linux server distros that are like Red Hat used to be before the Fedora fiasco. It seems like Red Hat today is doing a bad job of trying to be a GUI laptop distro running on server hardware. And they are letting mature stuff like PADL's LDAP modules go to seed while shipping raw, buggy stuff like SSSD, instead of maintaining the old stuff until the new is reliable enough for real world use.
Not just thin. The time has come for cluster-targetted distributions. Openstack, CoreOS and others are minimal linux meant to do mostly a supporting work for loading over them as VMs or container clouds the more bulky application linux servers/images/containers. All is about having a bunch of servers (real or virtual), installing something minimal that builds a cloud on them. It's linux all way down.
The linked article alone is reason to hate systemd a GUI admin tool. It goes on about .desktop file format again GUI garbage. I've never seen a server do anything with automount, it's frankly a security issue all mounts should be explicit and done by a sysadmin with root privs. Maybe some cheesy backup script? Servers do not need nor should they have a GUI, a VGA port is overkill but windows needs it. VM's again never need a VGA port it's just a waste of ram a serial port works fine for either. The base logic is all things need to be done via CLI first and done well (far to many CLI's were an afterthought to a GUI and it shows). D-Bus again it's mostly a GUI thing, it need not be on a server. DHCP on a server?
I really do not care much about systemd their is nothing not using it in a professional linux right now (something with all the big third party app support) and frankly it's not bothered me enough but I do see anything useful in it either.
No sir I dont like it.
I used to use Gentoo minimal installs but recently discovered Alpine Linux (http://alpinelinux.org/) which is even better.
With respect, the above poster is replying to someone that appears to be asserting that. I suggest reading other posts higher up in the thread before wasting time writing such long replies that miss the point.
With respect, the GP of my post never asserted that. For reference this is the entire post:
We used to run linux in the server room because it was lean and easy to admin. Windows was slow, mousy, and dependencies were hellish.
Now we run Windows Server 2012 with no GUI, virtualized, and admin with powershell. We've ripped out tens of thousands of dollars of Red Hat; windows is cheaper.
Basically there aren't any linux server distros that are like Red Hat used to be before the Fedora fiasco. It seems like Red Hat today is doing a bad job of trying to be a GUI laptop distro running on server hardware. And they are letting mature stuff like PADL's LDAP modules go to seed while shipping raw, buggy stuff like SSSD, instead of maintaining the old stuff until the new is reliable enough for real world use.
There is no assertion of "all those Windows sysadmin flunkies are declaring Server 2012 is the bestest ever because you can run in headless with a CLI" in that quote, is there?
There is a certain bias towards Server 2012, but no claim of it being the best ever server OS. Much less a claim that others think it is the best ever server OS.
I suggest reading other posts higher up in the thread before writing short post that you cannot even get right.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
What this guy is looking for is called BSD. In the past, base system was bit less than 30MB. Useless, but still less than base setup of most modern distros.
Among Linuxes, probably only Slackware stayed relatively close to the roots and still can be stripped to the bone. And Debian isn't that far off, really, if you are willing to go on rampage with the rm command (remove man pages, documentation, supplemental files, localizations, etc).
Othereise, this guy has probably missed completely that people are already for years building their own "lean and slim" special-purpose distros using the Gentoo as a factory distro. Because what he asks is really "special-purpose". In most real-world cases, the disk space is cheap and the users want to be able to install new software with just few clicks.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
This submission was made by snydeq who may or may not be Paul Venezia, but certainly appears to have a clear vested interest in frequently promoting Paul Venezia's column and other articles from Info World on a nearly weekly basis.
Considering the overwhelmingly poor quality of the vast majority of Info World's trade rag (slang trade magazine), where most of the better "articles" (i.e. aka "filler," the stuff between the ads) tend to be cribbed from vendor's white papers, don't seem to merit being frequently promoted at Slashdot unless there is a financial arrangement in place, in which case the ethics of journalism would indicate that such a financial arrangement should be disclosed to readers.
Not that I'm suggesting Slashdot considers itself involved in journalism, regardless of the usage of the terms such as: articles, submissions, and editors in the Slashdot vernacular. I will mention that the US FTC publishes March 2013 disclosure guidelines for sponsorship, marketing, and promotions.