Re: Progress on a "spiritual" derivation of GoboLinux

Interesting. I don't really know exactly what to make of it.



On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 12:17 AM, Trans <[email protected]> wrote:

> Thought you all might be interested in hearing about my progress in
> creating a spiritual derivative of GoboLinux. In turn I use any feedback
> you have to offer.
>
> Originally I had planed to use GoboLinux's file hierarchy with only some
> minor modifications, but I have given it a great deal of contemplation and
> I am thinking now of taking things an additional step forward in one
> respect while taking a step back in another.
>
> Taking the later point first, I am thinking it might be better to use the
> more traditional FHS directory names with some minor modifications, not
> because I think that's better --Gobo's full names are a definite
> improvement. But it occurs to me that it may be easier for others to accept
> in transitioning away from FHS. In other words, by providing a "migration"
> path away from FHS toward something more sane might be better received then
> immediately jumping to a radical departure from current standards.
>
> On the former point, I've come up with a concept of division of the file
> system into a set of user/groups. Each of these would have the exact same
> file layout. Users can belong to groups which grants them access to all
> that groups files. System, in Gobo terms, is just one of these user/groups
> with some special files in its layout (e.g. the Kernel entries). Another
> special group would be the "Common" group which is always shared by all
> users.
>
> As for the exact layout I am torn between two overarching patterns. The
> more traditional pattern would keep toplevel "categorical" directories,
> e.g. app, etc, home (or Programs, Settings, User in Gobo terms), but under
> each of these would be a subdivision of user/group. For example:
>
>     app/
>       system/
>       common/
>       joe/
>     etc/
>       system/
>       common/
>       joe/
>     home/
>       system/
>       common/
>       joe/
>
> This has the downside of separating a users file across different toplevel
> directories, but its not so bad given how distinct the types of files are.
> This layout also syncs well with the current FHS.
>
> The alternative is put the user/groups on top.
>
>     system/
>       app/
>       etc/
>       home/
>     common/
>       app/
>       etc/
>       home/
>     joe/
>       app/
>       etc/
>       home/
>
> While radical is a certain sense, this later design strikes me a very
> compelling. It turns the whole layout on it's head. It's almost like having
> Rootless in every subdirectory of the root file system. I am very curious
> to learn what other think of this.
>
> Finally I want to mention that I came up with, what I think might be good
> strategy for getting a distro up and running fairly quickly while also
> creating a way around a number of painful boot issues, as well as a way to
> have a solid rescue system. Basically the idea is to have two distros in
> one. The first is a minimal install that goes in a small primary partition.
> It acts as the boot system and takes care of the initial setup of the
> system after which it does a chroot over the to the main distro and goes
> from there. Generally once the boot distro is setup it rarely needs to be
> changed so its a perfect fallback if the main system gets hosed for some
> reason. It also doesn't even have to be the exact same distro --which
> allows me to start out with a minimal install of an off-the-shelf distro to
> get thinks rolling. I am using Debian right now and will probably set it up
> something like Damn Small Linux. (Note, I've also been considering TinyCore
> but I am not sure that is mature enough to make a very helpful jumping off
> point although it has more similarities with Gobo's design. I am also
> considering Gentoo.) Eventually this "kickstart" OS can be the same as the
> main distro once its mature enough. Why not do that right away? Well, I
> suspect that setting up the init system and implementing good hardware
> detection is one of the harder aspects of creating a good distro. This
> would allow me to worry about those things later, and focus on the package
> system and improved file hierarchy first. Please correct me if I am wrong
> about this though. Maybe booting and hardware detection is easier then I
> think it will be?
>
> Okay, that's a good rundown thus far. I have few other notions, but those
> can wait. Would love to hear what other think about all this.
>
>
>
>
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>

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