Re: Progress on a "spiritual" derivation of GoboLinux

On 27 April 2013 05:17, 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.

But there already is such a thing - the hidden system of symlinks.

I would either say stick with the existing system *completely*
unmodified - it survived 14 releases and is the end result of a lot of
consideration and work - or, and this is I would say a *much* less
desirable version - adopt Apple's layout, as that is familiar to
hundreds of millions and also exhaustively tried and tested.

Obviously, it's your project and I can't tell you what to do, but I
would say, *DO NOT* reinvent the wheel yet again.


> 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.

Neither of them makes any sense to me, both involve huge amounts of
pointless duplication, and TBH, with no offence intended, neither is
anything I would have any interest in using.

> 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.

It's 2013. Rescue systems boot off USB or CD at a push. Again, this
seems like pointless duplication to me.

Sorry to be so negative, but since I read your post I've been thinking
about a more "positive" way to put my reply but I couldn't think of
one.

--
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