Customized and derived distributions

Not too long ago I ran across the GNU/Linux distro timeline version 7.6 (updated November 2007). Looking at the graphic it seems like most Linux distributions today have their roots in Slackware, Debian and Red Hat Linux. Slackware, of course, sprang from SLS which died out years ago. Debian and Red Hat were originals, not based on some other existing distribution.

A long time ago while studying computer science, many of my professors would repeat the old adage, "Don't reinvent the wheel". It's generally good advice, but some programmers would prefer to produce a cleaner implementation that doesn't have the cruft leftover from a previous implementation. Working with free software gives one the choice to reuse existing code or to start from scratch and maybe make a better wheel.

Some original distributions that are alive today are EnGarde, Puppy, SmoothWall and Yoper. None of these were around before 2000, though. There are only four distributions with origins in the early 1990s that are still alive today; Slackware, SUSE (a Slackware derivative), Debian and Red Hat Linux. Of those only Red Hat Linux and Debian succeeded in reinventing the wheel. What those four have in common is they evolved and remained relevant in an ever changing world of technology.

Red Hat Linux and SUSE (once S.u.S.E and then SuSE) have changed the most. Both have forked into dual Enterprise Linux with a community distribution base (Fedora and openSUSE). In the days of Red Hat Linux 5.2 through 7.3, RHL was the most common base for a derived distribution. The combined appeal of Fedora and RHEL, while substantial, do not match the popularity of the old RHL Many of the distributions inspired by RHL have taken their own path, forked the code, and remain popular distributions today. Mandrake and Conectiva were both based on RHL. Now combined and renamed, Mandriva is a notable example.

SUSE has never inspired many derivatives. Some of this may have been the proprietary nature of YaST, which is now free software. openSUSE would seem to be a good base, but it's also quite new. Perhaps we will see more openSUSE based distributions in the future.

Slackware has, perhaps, changed the least over the years. The packages change and Slackware evolves to use newer kernels and newer userspace applications, but otherwise remains much the same. Slackware derived distributions include Vector Linux, Zenwalk, SLAX, BlueWhite64, and several others.

Debian is now the most popular base for derived distributions. This is especially true when you consider that Knoppix and Ubuntu (both Debian based) have spawned many more distributions on their own. Debian's enormous package repository probably helps with that. Those who want to make a customized distribution have plenty of packages to chose from.

Making a customized Linux distribution has always been a popular pastime, at least among a subset of geeks. Linux From Scratch was developed to "scratch that itch". Source based distributions such as Rock Linux, Source Mage and Gentoo have always been about building the distribution of your dreams.

These days the tools that are available have become much more sophisticated. Fedora has an ever-growing suite of tools for creating custom spins. Ubuntu's Launchpad wraps up version control, bug tracking, translation tools and more, so that customizing and maintaining spin-offs is as easy as possible.

Open source/free software being what it is, the source code is out there. If you can build a better wheel then by all means do so. If not, start with a wheel you like and then customize to fit.

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One of the goals of the recent Fedora releases (first 7, now 8), has been to enable the
creation of custom "spins" of the distribution but still let the spins rely on upstream Fedora
for most package updates.

In the past, once you forked a distribution, you then had to do a lot of work yourself to keep
it up to date and basically once forked, most derived distros slowly went their own way.

This new spins concept in Fedora allows somebody who has a narrow focus to direct their energy
on those packages of interest to them rather than having to take over maintenance of an entire
distro. So, for example, "Mythdora" spin can focus on making really good 'mythtv' packages,
and not worry so much about kernel updates.

 In the context of this article's analogy "the wheel" represents the Linux
 distribution.  MCC-Interim, SLS (SoftLanding Systems), Jurix, TAMU and
 their ilk were different incarnations of a new concept --- different
 operating systems, independently created from a common collection of
 free software sources.

 Working within this analogy Debian was another incarnation (a re-invention
 of this concept).  What they invented (their package management) is
 perhaps analogous to an axle and/or differential.  Their package manager
 by itself is not substantively different than Red Hat's RPM (they both
 "package" a set of precompiled binaries, libraries, man pages, and
 other resources along with {pre,post},{install,remove} scripts, and
 metadata (including dependencies).  If we think of those as the
 "axle" then perhaps one could extend the analogy to the breaking point
 by likening the dependency structure -- parts of the Debian policy --- 
 or perhaps the ''dselect'' utility would be the differential.

JimD

It would be fun to see a graph of distributions in which edges showed "derived from"
relationship and size of nodes showed approximate number of users.  Should be doable with
graphviz!

I know that approximate number of users is a hard number to measure.  Maybe just have a few
sizes of nodes depending on base-10 order of magnitude: 10,000 users, 100,000 users, 1,000,000
users.  Are there any Linux distributions that have one million users?  Not very many.  Are
there are any Linux distributions that have 10,000,000 users?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gldt.svg

While the first few years, S.u.S.E. Linux was indeed based on Slackware,
the distribution was really switched to Florian LaRoche's jurix with him
being hired and the adoption of rpm by S.u.S.E. in the mid-90s. S.u.S.E.
Linux since then is much more a jurix derivative than a slackware one.

I don't think its call Redmond anymore: http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8090847085.html

Actually, I don't think the distributions really exists anymore:
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=lycoris

Redmond Linux was so named because its founder Joesph Cheek lived in Redmond, Washington.  The
distribution was later named Lycoris as the distribution tried to become more commercial.
Lycoris was acquired by Mandriva in June of 2005.  By then Joseph Cheek was the sole employee
of Lycoris and starting working for Mandriva.