Why Evolve OS could win you over to Linux and me away from Ubuntu

Starting from nothing is a super daunting task. You need a pretty sizable team to even package up just the known/popular FOSS applications most people expect, not to mention all of the niche/less popular applications more mature repositories contain. Even Ubuntu leans on Debian for a lot of this work.

I know just working with the upstream Enlightenment folks to keep Bodhi up to date can be a lot of work. I wish the best to the folks behind Evolve OS, but I hope they haven't bitten off more than they can chew, building their own desktop, Linux core, and packaging piles of software.

~Jeff

I think Evolve looks great, similar in some ways to what's happening with elementary OS.

Beware of one-man distributions that haven't been around for at least twenty years.

:o)

> Beware of one-man distributions that haven't been around for at least twenty years.

Remember Solus OS? That was Ikey Doherty's last OS, before he ended it and started working on Evolve OS. Before Solus OS, he contributed to Linux Mint Debian Edition. Ikey is a very smart guy with a lot of great ideas. But he is also young and perhaps prone to dropping things and moving on when he gets bored.

@seatex: That's exactly what I thought. Only two days ago there was an article about CrunchBang Linux being ended because its sole developer decided to quit. I'm maintaining a package repository for Slackware (http://www.microlinux.fr/slackware/) with currently more than 400 packages in it, so I know a bit about the work and the commitment that is involved. One guy for a whole OS, from scratch? Like they say in France: hell is paved with good intentions.

from what i remember solus os was stopped because ikey was not able to achieve what he wanted to, due to problems with the chosen base distribution.

so i see evolve os as a new approach to ikeys goals, where i expect him to use the lessons learned from solus os and maybe this time achieve what he wants.

as for crunchbag, my understanding is that what it does can now be achieved with vanilla debian: http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=416517#p41651... , so it's not like switching over would be a big problem.

greetings, eMBee. (edit: typo)

> from what i remember solus os was stopped because ikey was not able to achieve what he wanted to, due to problems with the chosen base distribution.

Yes, he did have problems with the Gnome 3 update changes (as did Linux Mint, when they created Cinnamon). So, maybe he dropped Solus OS out of frustration rather than boredom. But, he could also have rebased Solus OS on something else and attempted to maintain some continuity with the project. Instead, a lot of users felt abandoned.

And, will he not possibly face similar conflicts and challenges in the future, with his new Budgie desktop? Also, Kiki made a great point about the sheer amount of work involved. And one person can easily burn himself out trying to keep up with all the work involved.

@kikinovak - I actually used your MicroLinux Slackware setup for a dentist client of mine. He prefers Slackware, but also realizes the pains I go through to set it up for him every time he needs a new workstation. Your scripts and packages helped us tremendously, and really saves a lot of time in setting up a "useable" Slackware system. Thank you for the great work!

I've been using Salix as a shortcut to Slackware on the desktop recently. Salix Fluxbox brings back memories of when I used Slackware on every system with Fluxbox and additional packages compiled on my own, but without so much extra time spent.

@CFWhitman - I have also used Salix as a shortcut for Slackware. And I think it's great. But some people just want to have Slackware, even when I tell them that Salix is 100% based on and compatible with Slackware.

I've tried Salix, but I didn't see any significant improvement over Slackware with slackpkg and sbopkg installed.