[HN Gopher] Adelie Linux
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Adelie Linux
Author : BSDobelix
Score : 72 points
Date : 2024-01-06 14:33 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.adelielinux.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.adelielinux.org)
| 8organicbits wrote:
| I see Linux + musl, aiming for POSIX certification, not a Gentoo
| fork, APK package manager, with openrc and s6 for init and
| process management.
|
| I panicked at the first screenshot, which shows Windows 10(?) in
| a VM. Maybe not the best choice.
| packetlost wrote:
| > I panicked at the first screenshot, which shows Windows 10(?)
| in a VM. Maybe not the best choice.
|
| That's clearly KDE Plasma, not Windows. I won't fault you for
| confusing them based on a glance because Plasma is somewhat
| intentionally similar in style and appearance to Windows.
|
| Edit: oh, you don't mean the screenshot on the front page, but
| in the screenshot section... that looks like Windows 8(.1) in a
| VNC session. Yeah, that's maybe not the best choice...
| rany_ wrote:
| He's referring to the screenshots on this page:
| https://www.adelielinux.org/screenshots/
| packetlost wrote:
| Yeah, see my edit. I realized that like a minute after
| responding haha
| agubelu wrote:
| I also found it a bit confusing that the first screenshot they
| choose to present is literally a screenshot of Windows.
| glitchc wrote:
| That threw me off too. I thought it was just a launcher, so I
| zoomed in. Saw the Windows apps and was confused for a
| second.
| madspindel wrote:
| > Security updates are nearly instant.
|
| Are they installed automatically? Or what do they mean?
| zv-io wrote:
| No; at the moment we are in beta and this not yet available. We
| have been experimenting with various strategies to ensure rapid
| turnaround on security-related issues.
| KomoD wrote:
| Then don't say that on the page, now I don't believe anything
| else on the site
| glitchc wrote:
| Then I suggest not making this claim unless you solve the
| problem. Security patches are notoriously difficult to
| implement and test, one needs to recreate the attacking
| environment.
|
| But if you do solve it, kudos to you. Your solution will have
| companies come knocking at your door day and night. It's
| going to be worth a lot more than the distro.
| peter_d_sherman wrote:
| Adelie vs other musl distros:
|
| https://oldwww.adelielinux.org/about/compare.html
|
| Non-BusyBox Userland (for me, and me alone!) is a slight minus;
| OpenRC is a strong plus...
|
| The individual Linux user's "mileage" -- will of course vary.
|
| Anyway, welcome Adelie Linux, to the potpourri of Linux
| distributions!
|
| (Hey, that's a good idea incidentally -- maybe in the future I'll
| create a Linux distro called _" Potpourri Linux"_ -- it'll
| _borrow something from every other Linux distribution!_ <g> :-)
| <g>)
| arittr wrote:
| > Your needs are complex--and that's music to our ears because
| we're constantly looking for new ways to further refine Adelie.
| Please note that we do not support inherently broken designs.
|
| Idk i probably wouldn't use this simply because of this text, but
| that's just me.
| ForkMeOnTinder wrote:
| Yeah I hate this spammy marketing speak.
|
| > Whether you've taken a few photos with your phone's camera or
| you're a professional photographer with terabytes of digital
| negatives, Adelie gives you the tools you need to manage and
| view all your photos.
|
| Translation:
|
| > Adelie installs digiKam by default
| timw4mail wrote:
| But I like digiKam.
| Retr0id wrote:
| It seems like they're targeting low-end systems (384MB RAM for
| the desktop version), but also talk about supercomputers? If they
| can pull that off, it would make it uniquely versatile. Musl is
| very lightweight, but it's also not especially _fast_ (for
| example, compare allocator benchmarks). But maybe supercomputer
| workloads don 't really care about libc performance in the first
| place? I'd be curious to know what aspects they think make this
| distro suited to supercomputing.
| zv-io wrote:
| Our aim is to offer a non-glibc Linux platform for
| supercomputing environments. This involves a tremendous amount
| of work to be taken seriously and we are currently in the
| earliest stage of this. Follow our blog
| (https://blog.adelielinux.org/) for updates in this space.
| Retr0id wrote:
| What are the benefits of a non-glibc supercomputing
| environment?
| zv-io wrote:
| Diversity in the ecosystem, possible reduction in memory
| footprint, ability to discover and fix issues in upstream
| projects that musl-based distros don't currently package,
| motivation to support CUDA (and other) runtimes that
| explicitly target glibc, unlock possible sources of funding
| to pay developers to work on these areas.
|
| The ability to audit a smaller codebase could be compelling
| for some sensitive environments.
|
| There is not an urgent or immediate problem with glibc in
| the HPC space, per se.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Do you have any benchmarks etc. that compare performance
| of HPC workloads on glibc vs musl?
| zv-io wrote:
| In progress. We have access to an ARM-based supercomputer
| and are actively collaborating with scientists who have
| access to x86_64 systems. It will be a while before we
| have results to publish. We need to be diligent in our
| testing methodologies.
| bitwize wrote:
| I dunno if allocation speed is that critical to HPC...
| presumably in that environment, you're allocating big arrays up
| front and then reusing them. Maybe someone can set me straight
| on this?
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| That's handy, because I am looking for a fast Linux with small
| memory footprint, but reliable. I've been using Linux Mint
| Cinnamon for almost a year, in order to play Minecraft on my old
| computer (i5 3gen but lots of ram) and I managed to achieve
| +(10-14) FPS for the game Vs Windows. Also I have a spyware
| detector installed (a noisy fan) and it goes off constantly on my
| windows 10, while Linux leaving it mostly silent. Lifetime is
| also twice. I wonder what does the Windows 10 do to make my
| computer so noisy and slow. However Linux Mint Cinnamon is
| failing on standard tasks like configuring WiFi, built-in modem
| or changing system settings
| rmsaksida wrote:
| > That's handy, because I am looking for a fast Linux with
| small memory footprint, but reliable.
|
| You might want to look into MX Linux. It's a Debian-based
| distro that offers a good balance of performance, package
| selection, administration tools etc. I'm running it on my 10yo
| Thinkpad right now and it's very speedy without relying on
| ancient software versions.
| brewdad wrote:
| I put MX Linux on my Surface tablet and keyboard cover. Works
| great.
| omgmajk wrote:
| +1 for MX. Been using it for a while and I love it.
| hd4 wrote:
| Because there was a real shortage of Linux distros
| palata wrote:
| Diversity is good. Not everybody wants systemd with snaps and
| ElectronJS.
| agilob wrote:
| >We don't attempt to solve every Linux Desktop problem. Because
| of this, we've already solved 99% of them.
|
| What are some distro specific problems? All problems with Linux
| in the last years I had were related to: HP
| printer/scanner (I upgraded to Brother) Xorg vs Wayland
| migration (some manual steps required to get things working
| OKish) systemctl not working well with recent bluetoothd
|
| I can't think of any distro-specific problems that anyone
| actually would suffer from, unless it's snapd, but that's self
| inflicted, so doesn't count.
| klysm wrote:
| What does this mean? > systemctl not working well with recent
| bluetoothd
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| Why do i use this instead of alpine linux? I wish this used
| systemd, because thats what i am missing when i use alpine linux.
| dijit wrote:
| SystemD was a topic the author talked about in a previous
| thread yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38889156
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I was under the impression that systemd doesn't mix with musl,
| so that's not really an option
| jasoneckert wrote:
| The ease at which anyone could create a new Linux distribution is
| both a good and bad aspect of the operating system in general.
| There are dozens of larger mainstream distributions in widespread
| use, as well as dozens of smaller distributions that serve a
| niche purpose well (e.g., Alpine). Unfortunately, there's also
| dozens of other distributions that claim to serve a purpose but
| don't actually do so, or overlap with other distributions that do
| so better. My initial impression from reading their website is
| that Adelie falls into the latter category. In other words, it
| isn't particular clear what niche or purpose Adelie is aimed at
| solving that other distributions don't already solve.
| palata wrote:
| If there is a community contributing to a distro and those
| people can daily-drive it, it's perfectly fine for me. A small
| community is very nice to learn: I tried Adelie in the past and
| I had to do stuff I never even conceived was necessary on
| another distro, and the community was helpful. In the meantime,
| Ubuntu is busy helping newbies run their terminal.
|
| Bonus if the distro does not use systemd or is not a copy of
| Ubuntu. Diversity is good.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Are there other distros with first class support for 32-bit
| powerpc? That's the (biggest current) driver for my interest in
| it
| sidkshatriya wrote:
| If you're interested in something like Adelie Linux, you might be
| interested in Chimera Linux. Both are musl libc based and both
| use Alpine's apk.
|
| * Chimera Linux uses BSD userland while Adelie uses GNU coreutils
|
| * Chimera has the dinit init system / service manager while
| Adelie uses OpenRC
|
| * Adelie uses gcc as far as I can tell while Chimera uses clang
| as the default system compiler
|
| * Chimera uses the scudo memory allocator rather than musl's
| default memory allocator. Scudo is apparently faster than musl's
| default allocator. Not aware of what Adelie does.
|
| In general, it is not clear to me why Adelie should be preferred
| over, say, Alpine. The differences don't seem that significant to
| me to make a switch from Alpine, if you currently use it.
|
| Full disclosure: I use Chimera and I like it. In particular, I
| like (a) clang/llvm usage as default compiler (b) the lovely and
| elegant cbuild package build system
|
| A recent Chimera Linux article:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38667503
|
| P.S. It would be great if they listed Chimera on:
| https://oldwww.adelielinux.org/about/compare.html
| donkeybeer wrote:
| What are your reasons for preferring clang over gcc?
| sidkshatriya wrote:
| Clang/LLVM allows a lot of tinkering and compiler software
| development that is more difficult with gcc.
|
| Clang/LLVM is just an easier platform for code
| instrumentation, cross compilation, code sanitizers, building
| your own compiler tool/language, understanding the codebase,
| good documentation to build your own LLVM based tools...
|
| It's a bonus that any tools/languages etc. you build using
| the LLVM infrastructure does not virally become GPL also.
|
| Aparently Clang is ~5% faster than GCC (at least on intel's
| latest chip) -- See https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-
| meteorlake-gcc-clang . Though this is not a big deal for me
| -- it is just nice to know.
| donkeybeer wrote:
| GPL is a positive for me. I am not sure if there is an llvm
| equivalent in gcc that would pose a "risk" anyways if you
| embark on such a project. I'll look into the
| instrumentation and llvm stuff, thanks.
| awilfox wrote:
| We started a separate BSD userland project before Chimera even
| existed, but we didn't feel the port was up to our standards of
| quality, so we shelved it. Removing our dependence on GNU
| software is a definite goal of mine, though it is relatively
| low priority and likely far off.
|
| Scudo can be faster in some workloads. However, I recall Scudo
| is woefully underperforming on 32-bit systems (it may not even
| work?). Replacing the memory allocator is definitely something
| you can do, but it introduces another variable into the mix,
| and I personally feel that would also compromise our goal of
| reliability.
|
| Differences between Alpine also include: NLS enabled
| everywhere, so translations work and are functional. No use of
| GNU gettext, only musl's gettext. A focus on providing a more
| "full" experience to users over optimising for smaller binary
| sizes. There are more differences obviously. For some uses
| Alpine would be better, and for some uses Adelie would be
| better.
|
| Also: that comparison page is on the oldwww. domain, which
| means it isn't a part of the current site, which is why it
| hasn't been updated.
| imiric wrote:
| They mention focusing on reliability several times, but I don't
| see what they're specifically doing to make the system reliable.
| Is the process supervisor (s6) the main thing? If so, how is s6
| more reliable than systemd and other process supervisors?
|
| When I think of reliability, my main requirement is for my system
| to not break after an update, which is so common on Linux,
| unfortunately. This is a solved problem with Nix/Guix or
| filesystem snapshots, so any new distro that doesn't address this
| major concern is not worth switching to IMO. We already have a
| plethora of distros that don't do this right.
|
| I'm also not convinced why musl is specifically a selling point.
| IME some software breaks in strange ways with musl, and the glibc
| compatibility layer doesn't help. If I want a reliable system,
| I'd choose one with glibc over musl any day.
| amelius wrote:
| Process supervisors are inherently problematic because they are
| at the heart of a microservices model.
| awilfox wrote:
| Disclosure: Founded the project, still have a somewhat active
| role in package maintenance.
|
| Updates/upgrades are a major area of focus and everyone I know
| who has tried it out was always impressed that they could just
| `apk upgrade`, reboot, and it'd all still be working fine.
|
| That shouldn't be such a high bar, but there it is, and we
| manage to clear it.
|
| Reliability is not just about updates. Reliability means
| shipping stable versions of packages, not betas or unmaintained
| patches/forks. Reliability means testing on physical hardware
| of different types, and virtual machines/hypervisors of
| different types, and seeing all packages working across all of
| them.
|
| During beta4, me and two others sat at a desk with a PowerBook
| G4, Power Mac G5, Pentium 4, Core i5, and RPi4, and beat the
| living ** out of all available packages. We found seven bugs,
| four of which were reported upstream, the other three being
| packaging issues we fixed.
|
| That's what reliability means to me.
| Muromec wrote:
| Finally something to install on Toshiba AC100 that is collecting
| dust in the bin of arm laptops.
| mgaunard wrote:
| Can't claim to have solved the desktop when your text rendering
| looks so blurry even in screenshots.
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