[HN Gopher] Serpent OS Pre-Alpha-0 released
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Serpent OS Pre-Alpha-0 released
Author : ekTHEN
Score : 78 points
Date : 2024-08-25 01:10 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (serpentos.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (serpentos.com)
| silisili wrote:
| While I have a lot of respect for Ikey and think he's extremely
| talented, he tends to start a project and then either move to
| something else or disappear. Hey, life happens, and doing open
| source work for free is a grind, so it's not meant as an insult.
| But I'd see Serpent as a toy/POC rather than a long lived OS. I'm
| excited to try it, either way.
|
| I -believe- I read that a lot of this work will be going into
| Solus, a previous Ikey project, which has a new team and small
| community now. So hopefully this is kinda best of both worlds if
| true for both sides.
| keyle wrote:
| I don't know the author but it's worth keeping in mind that...
| Sometimes people end working on a project because
|
| - it has no future, ran its course, proved wrong somehow
|
| - cannot add more that others could do better
|
| - an alternative makes more sense long term
|
| It's true that many people end working on something because it
| gets too hard or they lack focus.
|
| But in this case, seeing the breath of the projects, this is
| not the case.
| silisili wrote:
| Absolutely, thanks for pointing that out. I really hope it
| didn't come across as condescending, as I didn't intend it to
| be - because I have the same habit. Do something until it's
| not exciting anymore and move on. Though unlike myself more
| often, he tends to actually finish what he's working on
| initially.
|
| I guess I was trying to paint a short historical picture and
| why I'm pretty excited about it as a Solus user - its package
| manager is a bit long in the tooth. I think could be a really
| great relationship having one team/person prototype and
| another adopt into something more stable.
| squarefoot wrote:
| I would add:
|
| - it accomplished the task of teaching some
| technology/language/practice to the author, so that it
| becomes subjectively useless after that knowledge is
| absorbed.
|
| Sometimes people start building a car because they need an
| incentive to practice making wheels.
| jorvi wrote:
| Sometimes you start a project, more and more people start to
| collaborate, and eventually most of the project's
| contributors want to move it in a direction that doesn't
| interest you.
|
| At that point you can either be a spoilsport, or step away
| amicably.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| I was a Solus user back when Ikey left. It was highly unusual,
| maintainer team had no insight, and frankly as a user it left a
| fairly bad taste.
|
| But, Ikey had his reasons, and as I've grown up a bit over the
| years, I realize it is okay. Other maintainers picked up the
| tab pretty well, and for all its worth, quite a few of those
| maintainers have joined Ikey on this new distro, which signals
| a reconciliation.
|
| Combined with other comments, I'd say what happened at Solus
| was imperfect, could have been communicated better, but
| probably still couldn't be avoided. Such is life.
| arccy wrote:
| prealpha is such a weird name, just call it a dev/nightly build
| or an actual alpha
| keyle wrote:
| Beta is typically close to feature complete.
|
| Alpha is basically not close to feature complete.
|
| Pre-alpha is check this out but here be dragons! For an OS it
| makes sense, seeing failure typically means a hard reboot.
| Lerc wrote:
| For the level of development I would consider preAlpha, I would
| count myself lucky if it built on any given night.
|
| I think of it as, "hey, this one doesn't immediately implode.
| Let's let people look at it"
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Had to click around to figure this out: it's yet another Linux
| distribution. Seems to be focused on quality-of-life for Rust
| developers.
| gigatexal wrote:
| It's ikey! I'll follow this and when it goes to beta really dive
| in.
| kragen wrote:
| did they implement the linux system call interface or come up
| with their own? how linux-compatible is it? it must be pretty
| complete if it can run firefox
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it _is_ a Linux distro, if slightly unusual
| userspace.
| kragen wrote:
| why are they calling it an os then? cosplaying arnold kling?
| akovaski wrote:
| Its fairly common to refer to Linux distros as an OS, or
| even include OS in the distro name (Pop!_OS, NixOS,
| CentOS). Linux is the kernel, and disros add stuff to make
| a functional operating system.
| randkyp wrote:
| It's a trademark thing; there are some prerequisites and
| manual approval involved before you get to officially name
| your distro "[Distro Name] Linux".
|
| https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/the-linux-mark
| gertop wrote:
| ChromeOS
|
| SteamOS
|
| PopOS
|
| ElementaryOS
|
| EndeavourOS
|
| ZorinOS
|
| CentOS
|
| SerpentOS
|
| Cosplayers, all of them!
| written-beyond wrote:
| MacOS
| dpassens wrote:
| MacOS is not a Linux distribution, though.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Well why are they calling it an OS then!
| samstave wrote:
| Because at Apple, everyone was under the _O_ ntological
| _S_ upposition that Jobs was the second coming.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Because it is one? Linux distros are a subset of OSs.
| kragen wrote:
| macos is an actual operating system, a variant of mach
| nequo wrote:
| It is true that macOS is a bad example here because it is
| not using a Linux kernel.
|
| But Apple also names operating systems that use the same
| kernel different "OSes": iOS and iPadOS share a kernel
| with macOS, and for all I can tell, so do watchOS and
| tvOS.
|
| An operating system consists of both a kernel and a
| userland. The Linux kernel by itself does not make an OS.
| I think this makes it legitimate to call CentOS, NixOS,
| SerpentOS, iOS, watchOS, etc., OSes.
| kragen wrote:
| i think the ios and centos people are putting on airs
| because they wish they were ken thompson
| written-beyond wrote:
| Without being too pedantic, MacOS was to Unix what
| ChromeOS/AndroidOS is to Linux so I stand by my comment.
| kragen wrote:
| unlike, say, illumos, macos doesn't contain anything
| genetically descended from the v6 unix kernel; the darwin
| kernel is mach, with chunks of freebsd grafted into it,
| chunks that carefully reimplemented without copying the
| functionality in original unix
|
| by contrast, 'chromeos' and android run on fairly normal
| linux. they even keep up with linus's tree, and though
| they do have their own patches, they try to get them
| merged back into linus's tree
| HeckFeck wrote:
| I'd like to interject for a moment...
| exe34 wrote:
| I love that you don't even need to write the rest of the
| comment! I bet even LLMs know where you were going :-)
| nolist_policy wrote:
| > We're creating Serpent OS, an independent Linux distribution
| built from the ground up to look after itself.
| kragen wrote:
| where did you get that text? the page linked doesn't say
| "linux" anywhere
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| ...there's an "about" link at the top...
| tkz1312 wrote:
| Looks very cool. Seems to have a very similar feature set to
| nixos, curious how they compare?
| pshirshov wrote:
| Nix is declarative, this one is imperative.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| It might be an "OS" but it has a Linux kernel. It's a self-
| acclaimed "pioneering Linux distribution". It has some features
| other distros/tools implement to some extent as well: rebootless
| atomic upgrades, rollback. See Fedora/rpm-os-tree, Nix etc.
| pshirshov wrote:
| Why someone would want an imperative distro over a declaratively
| configured one?
| kombine wrote:
| This is true, there are already a plenty of imperative distros
| to choose from and they offer more or less similar experience.
| If I ever want to switch to something else, this would be NixOS
| or another declarative one.
| pshirshov wrote:
| Plenty? I'm aware of only two.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| No idea. It seems to have gone off in the direction of "shiny
| and new" without deeply considering more practical
| architectural decisions like isolating system vs. userland,
| configuration management, or manageability. It's unfortunate
| because there are zillions of Linux distros, and most of them
| (numerically) are terrible, insanely impractical, user hostile,
| and/or poorly documented. If you're going to create a distro,
| at least have a use-case justification for it where other
| distros or other OSes ([wd]o|ca)n't meet the needs of them
| adequately.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| > It seems to have gone off in the direction of "shiny and
| new"
|
| Ikey's last foray into distro-building also left same
| impression on me.
|
| > without deeply considering more practical architectural
| decisions like isolating system vs. userland, configuration
| management, or manageability
|
| I dunno, FWIW, Solus was very well regarded in UX for a
| while. It had the best steam integration, and the whole thing
| felt fairly well thought out for something built and
| maintained by half dozen people.
|
| > If you're going to create a distro, at least have a use-
| case justification for it
|
| That is unfair. The developers felt there is a gap between
| fully imperative state-modifying mudball and fully
| declarative purity-land, which is true, and decided to try
| their hand at it. How well they did is yet to be seen.
| AnonCoward42 wrote:
| > Rebootless atomic updates - no more interruptions
|
| Does it mean the same as in all other distros when you install
| packages and they restart the services? Or does it actually
| replace the kernel as well? Maybe a stupid question, but the
| latter would be revolutionary, even if it is technically already
| possible, but very elaborated.
|
| If the latter is not true, you should still reboot after a kernel
| update and there is not much difference to most other
| distributions.
| Palomides wrote:
| linux (the kernel) supports "Kernel Live Patching" and several
| distros provide the updates to do it
| AnonCoward42 wrote:
| As I said. It is technically possible, but it is relatively
| elaborated (for the provider of these patches). As far as I
| know you don't get them without having an online account at
| the provider of these patches.
|
| But the questions was: Does SerpentOS have the ability to
| change the kernel without reboot?
|
| Edit:
|
| > This will mean that the /lib/modules tree may not have the
| current kernel version, but the OS will still be usable while
| having had a live atomic update. Of course, to use the new
| kernel you must reboot. Unlike other atomic OS
| implementations, it will be up to you when you do so: no more
| deferred updates!
|
| https://serpentos.com/blog/2024/04/30/calm-before-the-
| storm/...
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(page generated 2024-08-25 23:01 UTC)