[manjaro-dev] Manjaro Driver Support

[Philip Müller]

Hi James,

let me answer you in sections.

Am 04.10.2015 um 08:42 schrieb James Stortz:
> Philip,
> 
> Great to hear all the helpful advice! I meant that *my* distro was similar
> to a pre-configured environment in that regard. Anyway, would love to learn
> more about DesertBit when it makes its way. Sonar I never heard about
> either. Seems there are a lot of crossing paths/ideas.

Yeah, Most of the ideas cross paths. Sonar is Manjaro with enhanced
accessibility. They based of from Ubuntu in the past but needed newer
packages to get the latest and greatest into their distro. With
Netrunner on the other hand we made the stable release yesterday.
DesertBit will come. There we have the layer stuff already managed for
webpages. Each part is a service and if some is broken all the other
will go on. It has automatic snapshots and all integrated in one piece.
Really easy to maintain and to extend.

> So, the distro I'm setting up has 4 main tenets it brings to the party.
> Nothing too complicated. It will feature some new software, however, but
> mostly it's just combining what's already available. I'd rather wait to
> share about it when it's closer to the release. :)

Sure, tell me when ready :P

> Still trying to get my feet wet with figuring out what exactly it's going
> to take, especially in terms of security/stability. I have never maintained
> a distro before. Seems you've got it figured out already! Your layering
> approach sounds a lot like mine too! I have no idea what to expect, how
> much time it might take, etc. I think the layers/ROMs will make it all
> easier to establish. And it looks like we both already know layering is the
> future (we hope!)

It will be the future. See snappy approach by Ubuntu. However we already
began 4 years ago to develop our way. Similar with Manjaro 0.8 we
develop in a small circle of developers and testers before we go public.
What worked with Manjaro will work with our other software too.

> Actually, one step for me is to install distros (like yours) and get a list
> of packages. I need to do some auditing to learn the ins/outs of the
> system. Mainly, for right now, compatability is the aim. The key to this
> kind of work it seems is to figure out how to manage your roadmap and
> steadily progress your releases.

The packages are key. Take a look at Linux from Scratch and Beyond LFS.
It will give you a quite good look for how to begin with Linux.

> ArchBang considers switching to Alpine as their base. I might Parabola, but
> I don't need to stick to all GNU. And there's the possibility of going
> OpenRC instead of systemd. That's one of their reasons. That and Alpine's a
> lot lighter weight. That would sound good to me but I don't know what all
> I'd be missing. I still want to get the full effect of the modern desktop.

Alpine Linux uses OpenRC and just ships with the basic server packages.
There is no Xorg, no drivers, no UI. Great concept but without any UI
you will have just a small group which might even take a look at it.

Parabola is just Arch Linux with extra packages on top. Seems they have
a similar approach than we do with Manjaro. However they have to be real
fast in packaging their stuff against the toolchain Arch ships.

If you want to have something based on Arch, go for Manjaro. Then you
have at least in the stable branch a slower speed to catch up.
Everything else makes no sense. Already two other distros based of from
us, which might you get thinking why. Also we have two init systems.
SystemD and OpenRC.

> You think if I went with Arch/Alpine/Parabola/Linux From Scratch, I could
> still get it stable using ROMs? How would you keep up with audits?

What do you mean with Audits? Security in Linux is a hot topic. You
can't please everybody. See the big discussion we had about it in the
past: https://forum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=8533.0

However when we have DesertBit launched we will have a payed team which
is checking for security matters. This might happen with the new layered
Distro we still have behind closed doors.

> Anyway, you've been more than a big help so far!
> Thanks; with me on this adventure!

Yah, sure. Have a nice one.