New feature store at distrowatch.com

[rubyFeedback]

They do test things quickly over at distrowatch. :)

https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20250519#gobo

Some points can be taken from the test, in my opinion. For instance, this part:

"The Gobo distribution does not ship with many applications."

If I remember correctly, lucas reasoned in the past that it was easier to maintain
a smaller subset. While I do not disagree, I think we could automate a lot of
the installation as it is; and in the process expand the number of programs available
on GoboLinux by default. For instance, on my non-GoboLinux system here
(right now manjaro) I can update most of the KDE-related applications (konsole,
okular etc... all running on 25.04.1 right now, compiled from source), so this
should not be too difficult on GoboLinux. Of course the bigger question then
is: which applications to include by default? Perhaps this could be specified or
decided in a design-document. See the other user who wanted mc (midnight
commander); these use cases are IMO useful because these are real folks who
may use GoboLinux, so that is always very useful.

As I mentioned before in another thread, I think we should have at the least
one good program for specific tasks; image manipulation with gimp and
imagemagick, audio and video probably via ffmpeg+mpv, and perhaps even
two browsers by default (I am not too familiar with how difficult this is,
but, say, something like firefox + vivaldi or a chrome-based browser; not
sure about how easy it is to bundle it by default). Or perhaps offer two
.iso, one with a lean gobolinux and one that is more feature-rich. Anyway,
I digress, so for those who have not read the entry at distrowatch yet,
have a look if you feel so inclined to want to do so.

[rubyFeedback]

I also have to disagree on at the least one part Jesse wrote (though some of his other points made should be addressed).

He wrote:

"And, not to discourage developers from crafting their vision of an ideal operating system, but I wonder if GoboLinux and its unique filesystem still make sense? Around 20-25 years ago when it was common for users to work from the command line and it was common to hear beginners complain about Linux's filesystem layout and short directory names, something like Gobo felt like a breaht of fresh air. Gobo, in its early days, was solving a clear and present issues - confusing filesystem layout, confusing directory naming, and files scattered all over the filesystem."

I don't really see a difference here between a GUI-centric user, and a commandline-centric user. The hierarchy to have versioned AppDirectories (e. g. /Programs/GCC/14.2.0/) makes much more sense to me in either event, no matter whether I would be more inclined to use the commandline or not. The original rationale explained by hisham also was not necessarily to "make it all beginner-ready"; he explained that in the old "I am not clueless" article too. Although, not that I disagree per se, mind you - it just was not a primary design objective for GoboLinux.

The issue of having it all spread out at /usr/ is still one that I find less elegant compared to versioned appdirs. And, to also point out, NixOS does so too (though they use a hashed directory, which I find less elegant, but still), or other software and operating systems (see max homebrew using a similar versioned AppDir variant; I believe they use /usr/Cellar/ or something like that.)

[dbojan]

I like leany-ness of the void linux. No Gimp, no LibreOffice. Firefox is included, if nothing else, so people can look for howto-s on the net.

One 'base image' without gui, and one with xfce. If people want more, they can install using binary package installer. There is also src installer (xbps-src), but I have not used it much.

[nuc1eon]

All of this is planned:)