Re: [dev] which minimal os

One of the first things I learned many years ago watching the flame wars
on Slashdot is that there are two types of people...(roughly)

1) People who learn to love things for what they can do, and appreciate them
for what they are. These people tend to write nice things, that help do what
they already wanted to do. Their advice is very weighted and judiciously
given.

2) People who think that they look smart by saying other things suck. These
people tend to write wrong, but strongly worded opinions that assume
everyone should have the same goals as they do. Their advice comes with a
lot of weight and is judgementally given.

Suckless is a great philosophy to help people understand the security of
simplicity. Things that are presented simply, kept simple, usually are
easier to use.

Dmenu is a classic example of a utility that is done so simply it becomes
more than a feature to an already bloated program, its a tool you can use on
your own. It perfectly justifies the suckless mentality in my mind.

After trying many operating systems, I appreciate Gentoo as the easiest,
suckless way, to do what I want to do. I want an environment that I can
compile to my liking. Currently my laptop runs evilvm, uzbl, st, a kernel of
my own choosing (compiled with only the options I want). I like how emerge
prunes, revdep-rebuild heals, and how I can compile everything I want --
without gnome. I like how its source mentality keeps me from many of the
archane "no non-libra for you" attitude that Debianistas inflict on their
own distro (though I like it and think it is a good stable straightforward
distro).

Tiny-Core is a great idea which I think will have its day. Its philosophy of
being the same thing every time you boot it, and then adds from there, is a
time honored admin philosophy. I've not personally tried to maintain it from
day to day, I don't know how well it persists changes between reboots (GRML
has a persist option, for instance).

But to be honest, I'm just too old to do anything but turn off when someone
starts a rant where their own philosophy is the center of the universe, and
everything else sucks.

Except in this thread, because, well, the original post was inviting a
distro war, wasn't it?
Received on Thu Feb 17 2011 - 04:30:03 CET