Hi,
I recently looked up in Wikipedia the common Linux distributions which are currently out there and I asked my self if that will happen to Redox as well? Because as far as I understand is that you could do everything you want with the source code under the MIT License.
My question is, will that be appreciated for Redox? Or will be done something against it?
Hy,
It’s not completely clear for me what exactly you mean with Linux distribution mess (but I think I know what you roughly meant ;=) ). If I’m not wrong you assume/think that it is bad that there are so many different Linux distributions out there, as it unnecessary divides resources including developers and leads to unnecessary duplications and therefore hurts Linux.
While I agree with you that there is a big problem in the Linux environment with unnecessary duplications and division of resources I personally don’t think that this is because of the amount
of different distributions. I believe that the problem is based in which parts of a systems are actually seen as “the operation system”. In case of Linux this is only the kernel which I think is where the “duplication” problem stems from.
E.g. instead of having nearly one package manager per distribution, there could be one “standard” package manager, possible using different repos/configurations per distributions, but still only one manager.
Or there could be much more shared code between the different windows managers.
You could have one file manger with “just” different interfaces for KDE,Gnome etc.
One the other side the fact that I can chose between a number of diferent UX expiriences is, from my point of view, a strength of Linux. If they just could share more of the internal parts the User normally doesn’t care about…
To come back to the original topic:
No, there is nor way to prevent people from forking and making their own distributions and I thinks it is also not intended. But maybe the redox community could decide one some “standard” parts sharing the internals but possible providing different UX.
EDIT:
I also don’t think that there will be enough redox developers in the near future to actually enable any “distribution mess” but then, who know what the future brings.
Ok here’s my take on it. Jeremy Soller already has a direction for this Kernel, to avoid this “mess”, the community should treat Redox as a complete OS for Desktop and Server, with everything around it like Microsoft or Apple, except that it is complete open source. One main desktop Environment, one Packaging system etc distributions based on Redox, that are trying to do something different, should be called “experiments” or something, which might proof to be superior and can be implemented in the “main branch”. The art is to guide the community towards one goal, creating an awesome Desktop and Server OS together.