Speaking for myself, this is why COSMIC is appealing:
I also love that it is driving Smithay and Iced which matures the foundations of other great projects like Niri and even RedoxOS.
For System76, the choice is to keep shipping their now very long in the tooth previous version or a beta of their new one. I have no doubt the beta is the better experience.
And they are obviously stabilizing the beta rapidly now.
MIT and Apache are free software licenses. They provide all of the “4 freedoms” defined by the Free Software Foundation.
I hope those things will come but no need to hold off if the performance is there. UEFI, ACPI, etc. are really about the boot process. For SBC class hardware, having a device tree in the kernel works fine. Even Apple Silicon Macs use device trees (no ACPI).
On Apple Silicon, there is a project to add ACPi in software (firmware) so that they can boot operating systems that expect ACPi (like Windows). You do not need it for Linux.
Of course, dynamic device discovery and power management would be nice. Bit it is not a deal-breaker for me.
I hope you had the time of your life.
Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu LTS. LMDE is based on Debian Stable. Different kernels. So yes, drivers may be different.
I have a 2013 MacBook Air running EndeavourOS. Works perfectly out of the box.
You are probably joking but he has mentioned this
Well, I think some fully remote is fine. However, I do think hybrid is the best model. Just my opinion.
One of the “dangers” of fully remote is that they become fully global. The amount a company will pay becomes disconnected from the cost-of-living. That creates inequity. Not just that employees in richer areas may be underpaid but also that remote employees for rich companies may be paid far more than their countrymen in their home market.
I don’t really like the idea of running decades of income lottery while the global order works this all out.
Even within a single country it can be fairly extreme.
The same thing happens with Intel and AMD. A Linux distribution has to pick a hardware profile when they build all their code.
On x86-64, you are running code which is not completely optimized if you are running super modern hardware. That said, the performance penalty is not very big and the benefit is that the binaries are compatible with processors released years ago.
For RISC-V though, the capability difference between the stuff in the market today and the next gen is going to be significant. As a distro, you have to decide what hardware to build for. If you choose older processors, you will be leaving a lot of the next-gen capability on the table when using newer chips. If you require the new architecture, existing hardware will not make the cut.
It is just an ecosystem maturity thing. The RISC-V standard that Ubuntu is demanding reaches feature parity with AMD chips from 10 years ago (about the generation that most x86-64 distros target). So even as RISC-V advances, this new profile will probably remain a decent build target for Ubuntu. I can see why they would want to make it the standard for their distro at this point.
There are server chips appearing with these RISC-V features. This will position Ubuntu as a go-to distro for those systems. And Ubuntu will be ready in the SBC and desktop space when capable chips begin to appear there.
In my opinion, if they want this to work, they need to create a shared infrastructure for delivery that they can all use. This infrastructure needs to be a paid service for users with published pricing sorted into service tiers.
The base tier can be free with no support or “community” support. This tier can have a generous but finite usage ceiling. For higher volume users, there is a cost but also some level of “support”. That is, you can call somebody if the infrastructure is not working, performance sucks, there has been a security issue, accounts need to be segmented or merged, etc. You could also charge for performance. Why not both?
This service would operate as an independent company. It would be a service provider to the “foundations” or projects that use it. This means having payroll, legal, accounts receivable, support, and operations (eg. vetting the material they host). It would be a real company (non-profit ideally). However, instead of costing money, the service would distribute some of the fees it collects back to the projects it serves. At the very least, it would make the cost of distribution zero.
The most important part of the above is that there is definitive pricing for high-volume and/or high-need consumers. This can be budgeted and funded just like any other software or service purchase.
Problem solved.
You need a price. If you say, we need this infrastructure or technology and it costs x dollars, that can be justified, approved, and budgeted.
In most places I have worked, “my department uses something we get for free but they really want us to contribute what we can” would go exactly nowhere. Pushing too hard may actually even lead up a directive to switch to something less problematic, maybe even something commercial (that has a definitive price).
You are right.
This is all going to backfire on the detractors when it turns out the Rust versions are fast, secure, and rock solid.
Streisand Effect.
Agreed. Also, some of these “bugs” will just be differences in interpretation.
For example, the dd problem that prompted all this noise is that uutils was enforcing the full block parameter in slow pipe writes while GNU was not.
So, now uutils matches GNU and the “bug” is gone.
There will only be a limited number of these kinds of issues and they will be quickly harmonized. Mountains out of mole hills.
So what you are saying is that a lot gets done on those days.
Anyway, I agree that hybrid is the best model.
The founder of the Ladybird project is quite good at getting attention for his projects. He used it first to build community around his SerenityOS project. He is using it now to build awareness around Ladybird and, in particular, to attract financial sponsors.
My assumption is that the level of promotion triggers distrust in the commenter.
In my view, it should be a model for Open Source projects in general. He managed to get enough Patreon support to go full-time on SerenityOS. Many devs provide absolutely crucial software used by everyone while struggling to also work ful-time and pay the bills. He was able to use that full-time freedom to start something as ambitious as a ground-up browser project within SerenityOS. And he attracted many collaborators to his cause. Progress was rapid enough that he split off into the dedicated Ladybird browser project for which he now has an impressive list of financial sponsors. This has allowed his to hire full-time staff. There are still volunteers.
If every Open Source project followed his lead, the world would be a difference place.
It is worth noting how much more slowly SerenityOS is evolving now that he is gone. And what is happening is largely invisible to the wider world.
In my mind, the effective community engagement has allowed the Ladybird project to advance with less corporate oversight, not more. There is less risk of this becoming Google or Mozilla. Of course, time will tell.
Look at everyday things that occasionally improve. We have probably not found the optimal way for almost anything.
Most of us just are not smart enough to find a better way.
Linux Mint is a derivative of Ubuntu Linux. They start with a recent Ubuntu LTS and sprinkle their magic on it to create a release of Linux Mint.
Ubuntu itself is a derivative of Debian Linux though obviously they have diverged significantly.
Some people have become concerned about the direction of Ubuntu.
As a hedge over having to possibly switch away from Ubuntu as their base, the Linux Mint project provides LMDE. For LMDE, they start with a recent version of Debian Stable and then sprinkle the same Linux Mint magic on it as they do for Ubuntu.
LMDE is not the “main” Linux Mint distro but some people prefer it and, as the comment above, many people see cutting out the Ubuntu middle-man as a good thing.
Linux Mint just had a major release recently. This brings the same “Mint” bits featured there to the Debian edition.
KDE has vastly improved in my view and is a really great option these days. That said…
It is huge, monolithic, and difficult to modularize.
It is complex.
It occasionally has runaway resource use (eg. Indexing).