Exherbo: Gentoo with more attitude? [LWN.net]

A new distribution called Exherbo has announced its existence. Exherbo is somewhat based on Gentoo, but with a lot of differences. It's not quite clear why they announced it, though... "[W]e don't particularly want you to try it because we don't want to deal with you whining when you find that absolutely nothing works. Exherbo isn't in a fit state for users. We might get there one day, but it's not a priority. Right now, all we care about is getting it into a fit state for a small number of developers."

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Exherbo: Gentoo with more attitude?

Posted May 19, 2008 21:54 UTC (Mon) by kloeri (guest, #52158) [Link]

We announced it so that other interested developers could take a peek at some of our ideas and
hopefully benefit from them. I've talked to several gentoo developers that thinks several of
our ideas are quite interesting already.

I plan to blog about several of the things that seperate Exherbo from Gentoo and other
distributions in the coming months and believe that will prove quite interesting to a number
of developers.

The (extremely) experimental nature of Exherbo atm means it's definitely not interesting or
suited for users but open source isn't just about users and sharing ideas and concepts is very
important. Even if the code isn't anywhere near a state where users can start testing it.

Exherbo: Gentoo with more attitude?

Posted May 20, 2008 17:38 UTC (Tue) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link]

I would completely agree with that sentiment and used similar disclaimers and warnings on the
FOLK project, which sought to make people aware of lesser-known kernel projects and features.
Ultimately, the limit on development comes from communication, and communication is itself
limited by awareness.

Experimental ideas, new ways of approaching problems, concepts that seem right even if there's
uncertainty about implementation - this is where Open Source gets fun for the experimenter.
The safest code is stale code, because only with zero changes can you accurately predict
behaviour and interaction. In turn, that's not very interesting to developers with an itch to
scratch.

Exherbo: Gentoo with more attitude?

Posted May 20, 2008 14:51 UTC (Tue) by skasal (subscriber, #40230) [Link]

Why they announced it?

It's well known that luxury shops do attract people by creating artificial obstacles, instead
of inviting people.

The announcement saying "it does not work, you cannot just install it" attracts me much more
than mere "hey, look, yet another shiny distro". And it attracts exactly the right type of
people which they want to attract.

The announcement seems to be the right move for the project, supposing they have at least some
interesting code, just not yet fully working.

Exherbo: Gentoo with more attitude?

Posted May 20, 2008 15:08 UTC (Tue) by jengelh (subscriber, #33263) [Link]

Then I tell you what an Average Bughuntingjoe like me has to say: if it does not install, I am
impossibly going to report bugs in what would have been a running system, and that is
factually more than just the boot sequence.

Exherbo: Gentoo with more attitude?

Posted May 20, 2008 18:46 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

What they seem to be saying is: It does not install. Yet.

Bughuntingjoes should probably wait a few months before testing it.

Exherbo: Gentoo with more attitude?

Posted May 21, 2008 9:01 UTC (Wed) by kloeri (guest, #52158) [Link]

You won't get that far at all with the current state of Exherbo. Trust me when I say that it's
not ready for users and that you definitely don't want to install Exherbo :)