#jolix — Public Fediverse posts

Backports

A couple kids from Berkeley and a dream. That’s where it started."

Her utterance there, well that might be the understatement of the year.

"By porting it to the X86 processor, a proprietary academic testbed system only accessible to institutions and government became, in a moment, the means for any talented programmer to implement their ideas and expand their horizons."

~Lynne Jolitz, 14 July 2025

And there you are reading this, sitting there on your Android, or laptop running BSD or Linux, and what a feat that is. How wonderful it is to take all of that for granted, yet 33 years ago it was merely a vision of what could be, until Bill and Lynne smashed all doubt and a wonderful revolution exploded, unfolding into everyone's home, and indeed, even their hip pockets!

She offers some perspective on that HERE.

#tallship #FOSS #UNIX #Jolix #CSRC #80386

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#NetBSD 11 Beta 1 has been released (#BSD / #BerkeleySoftwareDistribution / #386BSD / #Jolix / #Net2 / #43BSD / #Unix) https://netbsd.org/

#DragonFlyBSD 6.4.2 has been released (#DragonFly / #FreeBSD / #BSD / #BerkeleySoftwareDistribution / #386BSD / #Jolix / #Net2 / #43BSD / #Unix) https://dragonflybsd.org/

#DragonFlyBSD 6.4.1 has been released (#DragonFly / #FreeBSD / #BSD / #BerkeleySoftwareDistribution / #386BSD / #Jolix / #Net2 / #43BSD / #Unix) https://dragonflybsd.org/

#NetBSD 10.1 has been released (#BSD / #BerkeleySoftwareDistribution / #386BSD / #Jolix / #Net2 / #43BSD / #Unix) https://netbsd.org/

#NetBSD 9.4 has been released (#BSD / #BerkeleySoftwareDistribution / #386BSD / #Jolix / #Net2 / #43BSD / #Unix) https://netbsd.org/

Yes source based distro's have been around since the very beginning - in fact, MCC Interim Linux and #SLS weren't far from that mark, except that they merely tried to make it a bit more convenient by packaging up tarballs to be exploded during installation. And there's always #LFS.

If you think about Slackpkg - and you consider that you can actually re-install the entire system by compiling every single component of the default (full) install with the evocation of a single command, followed by the customization of your entire system by installing every kind of software imaginable through the use of #sbopkg or some other automated, dependency resolving package manager that uses #SlackBuilds (which are downloaded, then exectuted, and subsequently download the latest release of he software package desired, which is in turn compiled, packaged, and exploded) - you actually have a fully source based distro installed on your box.

That's right - Slackware is (can be forced to be) an entirely source based distro installed on your device.

And choosing to convert from a point release to Slackware -current switches you from a point release to a #Rolling_Release distro.

*Debian Testing, aka at this time, Trixie is a rolling release. #Arch_Linux is a rolling release, SourceMage and Lunar Linux are source based distros based on #Sorcerer_Linux, the original fully source based Linux distro released when Linux was only about 8yrs old in 2000, and the #Gentoo or #Funtoo source based Linux distros.

SystemD my ass. That has nothing to do with nothing in that conversation - it's completely non-sequitur and truth be told, most source based distros (Arch, Gentoo) support the type of init system that *YOU CHOOSE. For Debiantards such as myself, well..... There's #Devuan - and that's very refreshing to actually have control over your system again with true init scripts. But I rarely use Devuan, even though I've been associated with the initiative since its inception, after leaving the #Mageia team several years ago.

As I state in almost all of my profiles, I'm a Slacker, since 1993 (Slackware Linux), and I'm also a bit of a #Debiantard. On the BSD side, after leaving #Jolix (386BSD) for Slackware, I've pretty much settled on either #OpenBSD or #Dragonfly_BSD, w/the awesome #HAMMER2 FS. I still have a lot of love for #FreeBSD and of course #NetBSD - where I spend a lot of time in my proper #Korn Shell....

But what the heck does any of this have to do with a comparison of using Gentoo Linux being akin to using SystemD?

I don't like SystemD - but if you're a realist, that doesn't mean you forgo using distros that only have that init tooling. You just roll with the punches and keep following the innovations that support you - NO ONE STILL RUNS WINDOWS XP in production - at least, no one outside of state mental hospitals, that's just insane to do in a forward facing business environment.

But a lot of companies do leverage OpenRC, SysVinit, etc., instead of SystemD - that's not going away, and SystemD itself and Poetering have their own up and coming challengers.

SystemD is (supposed to be, originally) a way to boot your box. Yes, it's indeed encroached upon other landscapes since, but not all of those constructs are even considered by many mainstream distros - it's not a fact of life. Other init systems thrive in the UNIX world to this day and will continue to do so.

Likewise, Source based Linux distros are just one among many distros that exist, and may or may not leverage SystemD as their init systems - to really get a good grasp of this, I recommend doing a few Arch Linux installs - with and without SystemD as the base init system. Heck, even Debian still supports your regular, good old #syslog, and at every turn during your updates, reminds you how to keep it enabled since the whole journalctl crap just isn't as elegant, IMO.

Personally, I think more concurrent options are usually better - space is cheap. Storage no longer costs a dollar a meg. or worse, like it was when I was a kid, a few thousand dollars a meg. That's right... MegaByte - Not TB for penny's!

Okay so now I'm waiting to hear back from the OP and see just what the heck they meant when I got triggered. In the meantime....

Enjoy installing and using #Sorcerer_Linux, or the subesquent forks of it's surviving lineage like #SourceMage and #Lunar_Linux - you're now a part of mainstream source-basedLinux History once you do 🤘 💀 🤘

#tallship #Linux #FOSS #distros #Sorcerer

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RE: https://social.sdf.org/users/tallship/statuses/111957857148746923

@tallship

#NetBSD 10.0 RC3 has been released (#BSD / #BerkeleySoftwareDistribution / #386BSD / #Jolix / #Net2 / #43BSD / #Unix) https://netbsd.org/

#NetBSD 10.0 RC2 has been released (#BSD / #BerkeleySoftwareDistribution / #386BSD / #Jolix / #Net2 / #43BSD / #Unix) https://netbsd.org/

You’re very welcome Ade!

Yes #Kate is rather indispensable to me (in the GUI, or via remote SSH sessions with X-Forwarding), as a fast and accessible advanced editor and with split window for a shell right there that synchronizes with the directories as I move between them if I wish.

Slackware ships with KDE and Xfce, but years ago stopped supporting Gnome out of the box. It was just too much work for such a small team (in many ways, one person), not to mention all of the extra space that would have exceeded what would be able to ship as a complete distro on a single CD/DVD.

There were, or rather, still are, a few external support efforts including gnome-slack, Dropline, and also a build at #Slackbuilds that can install all of gnome at once on a fresh install at least, and though I don’t follow them due to concerns over how practical keeping them updated might be (I typically run Slackware-current as a rolling distro that stays always current and bleeding edge).

I actually did really like, and prefer Gnome back when it was part of the distro.

Nowadays, There’s some other really solid, maintained desktops like #Mate and/or #Cinnamon, but again, I don’t follow them, yet they’re very popular. I tend to stick with and such between #KDE Plasma and #Xfce which both work extremely well for me.

But then again, like I mentioned before, there are a few Gnome based tools that i really enjoy enough to always install too, like Shutter (for screenies) and #Geany - and when I do it seems like I’m also installing half of #Gnome too, lolz…. The list of deps that are compiled are seemingly endless lol, so it’s one of those tasks I just get right out of the way as soon as I do a fresh install of Slackware-current.

After that, it’s easy to keep everything up to date for years to come as it just continues to roll right through the versions of Slackware releases, much the same as Debian Testing or even moreso, the way that #Arch Linux does.

I’ve been running Slackware Linux for about 30 years now, since 93 when I settled on it inn earnest after hopping around a bit from #Jolix (#386BSD) to #SLS, to my own spin of that, and then discovering the Slackware FTP archive. It is still, so refreshingly #UNIX in so many respects, including it’s BSD-esque #SysV style init scripts, and Pam support was finally added in just a few years back which made a huge difference in the rate of people ‘re-adopting’ it for enterprise server roles again.

I must admit that I did get off track for a bit there, but only for a short while, around the days of #Redhat 4 through 5.2, and certainly never want to revisit those days of “RPM Hell”, as it was affectionately known, due to a distro that really didn’t age well without really getting in under the hood with wrenches and screwdrivers and chewing gum lolz.

Because of Slackware’s commitment to retaining such a UNIX-like experience, it’s really second nature to feel right at home, with some minor accommodations for differences, with the four major #BSD flavors; namely, #NetBSD, #FreeBSD, #OpenBSD, and #Dragonfly_BSD.

Although for a longtime I encouraged beginners to use #Slackware as their second distro after getting their feet wet on say, #SuSE (which always will be affectionately known as, “The German fork of Slackware) or #Debian, I nowadays tend to usually recommend #Arch_Linux for that, after graduating from Debian or #Linux_Mint, like I did after enlightening my nephew and getting him to completely disavow any proprietary garbage that is the devil’s spawn out of Redmond, Washington (Microsoft, lolz).

I guess I did good too, because he’s now working on his Cisco certifications in addition to his full stack development development track at his college. When he was just a little tyke, I would show him pictures of things like the #ENIAC and #Colossus even the #System_360/370 families, and he wouldn’t even believe me when I explained that computers used to take up entire warehouses of space 😂

Okay… I’ve rambled on long enough I think. You have a fantastic day my friend!

#tallship #FOSS #Linux

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