On Wed, 2015-12-30 at 20:48 +0000, Sam Thursfield wrote: Hi Sam, First I should confess that I find Baserock to be much more interesting for embedded than for the Desktop, although that should be orthogonal to the analysis of what problems exist in modern GNU/Linux desktop solutions. I have a few comments, one is that I think that when considering the perceived problems with GNU/Linux desktop distributions, we should be taking into consideration other (non-Linux) desktop distributions for comparison, and then seeing how existing GNU/Linux distributions measure up to those. For instance:   o Microsoft Windows     - Historically great ABI compatibility, one can usually run a       binary for an old version of windows on a new windows system       without issue.     - Relatively reproducible, two systems with the same version and       service pack levels applied are fairly similar.     - Historically unstable, partly the downside of trying to support       the combinatorial explosion of every possible hardware       configuration of a PC or laptop   o OSX     - Relatively good ABI compatibility, frameworks and bundles allow       applications to carry ABI incompatible third party baggage with       them, effectively allowing the same application bundle to run on       a variety of OSX versions without issue.     - Great reproducibility for a desktop OS, two installations of the       same version and same patch level on the same Apple product       should arguably behave exactly the same.     - Great system stability, the benefit of limiting your target       platform to only a few well known hardware configurations,       and paying attention to only those. How do current GNU/Linux distributions measure up to these ? Some first impressions:   o Most (if not all) GNU/Linux distributions are making things more     difficult for themselves by assuming the responsibility for     packaging and distributing everything which is going to possibly     run on a user's desktop. I.e. there is no line drawn in the sand     where the OS stops and applications begin, everything is downloaded     and installed via the same package management system.   o Most (if not all) GNU/Linux desktop solutions take the windows     route and attempt to support every possible hardware configuration     known to man kind. Worse, we do this without any dedicated     engineering staff or QA department and expect that when users     encounter problems; solutions for those problems will eventually     trickle upstream.     Things are getting better: in the last couple of years my     installations have come with working networking interfaces out of     the box :)   o Not a great ABI compatibility story, most distributions require a     recompile of any application in order to run on the next major     release of the same OS/distribution. I think this line of questioning is required if we're going to start improving Linux on the Desktop in meaningful ways. That aside, I think we also have to take a step back and recognize that GNU/Linux desktop distributions are largely community maintained. Which means that what might be perceived as a problem may in fact be an advantage in this context. Taking atomic upgrades as an example, atomic system upgrades are important from a product standpoint. You need to have perfect reproducibility of all systems in the field in order to reproduce and fix issues in a sure and meaningful way. But can this strategy really apply to a community run distribution ? If you cannot define what exactly is the core system you are distributing, and you are distributing everything from the linux kernel, 2 alternative init systems, 2 windowing systems, 3 or more alternative desktop environments and also every application that someone may choose to have installed; you will already be hard pressed to find any 2 installations of the same distribution which are alike.  Maybe in this case it makes more sense to just distribute verified bug fixes as fast as possible and not pay too much attention to how similar one installation is to another ? Just some food for thought :) Best,     -Tristan

On 30/12/15 20:48, Sam Thursfield wrote: Maybe you should add Google Chrome OS to the list. Although it is Gentoo based, the way it is updated with complete images seems to me to make it the most 'Baserock like' of the desktop systems in the list. Although strictly speaking it isn't a 'desktop system' in the sense that it doesn't have lots of desktop apps like the others. I think that an interesting point for discussion might be 'what advantages/disadvantages would there be in building Chrome OS with Baserock instead of Gentoo?'.