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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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What could your distro learn from another distro? (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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For example, I'm using Debian, and I think we could learn a thing or two from Mint about how to make it "friendlier" for new users. I often see Mint recommended to new users, but rarely Debian, which has a goal to be "the universal operating system".
I also think we could learn website design from.. looks at notes ..everyone else.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (14 children)

Fedora Atomic Desktop, mainly KDE.

Fedora adds their pretty useless Fedora Flatpak repo, that is more secure but has unofficial packages, an additional runtime in RAM and a very small set of apps (they need it due to "legal problems" when preinstalling apps. Like... just dont preinstall them but add a startup page to install them manually?)
There is no good way to use NVIDIA as it needs proprietary drivers and some tweaks. Ublue fixes that. Same with other out-of-tree stuff. Not really their fault, but be aware that atomic Fedora has basically no proprietary NVIDIA driver support.
i think their kernel is extremely bloated, I would prefer having separate ones for only intel, amd, nouveau and also removing all the legacy hardware drivers nobody uses
an x86_64-v4 (or at least v3) variant would be really necessary (my 2012 Thinkpad is v3)
they will likely prefer to use flatpak firefox, just like ublue does, ignoring the inability to sandbox processes at all. This is the list of issues that need solving until Firefox "can be shipped as flatpak"
they use toolbx (with that silly rename from "toolbox") instead of distrobox. Distrobox has way more critical features like a separate home, which prevents breakages through conflicting dotfiles. Toolbx is the worse product.

Also, their traditional KDE variant is very bloated, which is why I updated this guide

But overall its still my favourite distro. Has a nice community, all the desktops you want, SELinux (which is btw required to make Waydroid somewhat secure) and their atomic stuff is an awesome base thanks to ublue.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (6 children)

You mention that their kernel is bloated, would you mind sharing how you measure it compared to other kernels. Such as their kernel vs something more trimmed down. Is it a storage space savings or memory? I've never really considered the weight of a kernel when considering different distros so if you have some method I'd love to try and compare what I'm running.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

I have no comparisons as I think all distros ship the complete monolithic kernel. Of course specific IOT devices or Android ship a very much smaller kernel.

Building the kernel is not that hard, as you have kernel-devel which has all the sources.

You can use make menuconfig and see what all is enabled (as far as I understood this) and change stuff before compiling.

Monolithic kernels are pretty bad, see this excerpt of the interview with Jeremy Soller on RedoxOS.

So I dont mind memory or even less storage space, as the kernel poorly is not relevant at all here. I just care about keeping the root binary with access to all my stuff as small as possible.

I would love a system that detects the used hardware and then builds the correct small kernel for it. There are experiments making the CentOS LTS kernel work on Fedora, which would prevent many recompilations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If you don't mind me asking, then how do you know the kernel they use is bloated compared to any other kernel? A vast majority of the device-list stuff is loaded only when that device is detected with kernel modules. You aren't actually running everything from the entire kernel, it just has support for the devices if it does detect them. which is basically the functionality you are asking for, ad-hoc device modules.

Monolithic kernels aren't "bad". That's subjective. Monolithic kernels have measurable and significant performance benefits, over micro kernels. You also gain a massive complexity reduction. Micro kernels, historically, have not been very successful, e.g. Hurd, because that complexity management is extremely difficult. Not impossible, but so far kernel development has favored monolithic kernels not without reason.

If what you say is actually that easy, why wouldn't all distro's just do that during the install, and during updates with their package managers? I believe you could do this in Gentoo, but I don't know if it has measurable benefits beyond what performance tuning for your specific CPU arch would give you. Since none of those devices you aren't running are consuming any resources beyond the storage space of the kernel.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

"Their kernel is bloated" :D I dont compare with anything, as a linux distros job is pretty much to make me forget other ways to get "the linux stuff" because they are so good.

(Imagine how good Linux support would be if everyone would be on the same distro family like Fedora rawhide/stable/oldstable/centos-stream/almalinux;rockylinux;rhel.)

it just has support for the devices if it does detect them. which is basically the functionality you are asking for, ad-hoc device modules.

If that is true, and if the kernel will never load anything not needed for my device, then I am fine with it.

I see how monolithic is less complex and also a huge performance benefit over having the handshake between userspace and kernel space all the time (a meta dev on #techovertea talked about that).

But I would still want to debloat the kernel from unused code, as it is there somewhere and may get activated and used (why would you blocklist kernel modules otherwise?)

Also compiling for x86_64-v4 would probably improve speed, and it is rediculous to have the entire distro built for 20 years old hardware, neglecting all the improvements from over a decade.

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