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The developers that make Calculate Linux have a release announcement for us. The list of changes is significant and this release, coming half a year or so after the last rather than two years as the previous one did, looks like it may mark a change in how much work is going into this interesting distro.
For those of you unfamiliar with it, Calculate Linux is Gentoo-based with optional binary packages*, a distinct lack of all things systemd by default, an intriguing templating system** for conf files of all sorts, and an installer that is not even remotely like the typical Gentoo install procedure***.
Being Gentoo-based, it is of course rolling release. Its update system is Portage based with the standard tools but it does come with a couple wrapper scripts to make your life easier like 'cl-update' which is a single-command utility to update the system, 'cl-setup-video' for picking which video driver you prefer to use, and 'cl-kernel' for building customized kernels.
I found this distro about nine months ago and it took me about a month to decide that every bloody Linux box in the place needed to be running it. They have been ever since. I've no complaints and heartily recommend it over any systemd distro (yes, even Arch), over Slackware, over Devuan, and even over vanilla (if there is such a thing) Gentoo.
To be clear, this is a personal endorsement not a SoylentNews endorsement. If you have the room to spare, I highly recommend giving it a try in a VM for a while and seeing if it tickles your fancy. Installer images for it are available in the usual place.
*Using the BINHOST feature of Portage and automatic or manual mirror selection. If you don't customize a package away from the default build options, you'll get a binary version for most packages. If you do or find a package without a binary build, it's typical Gentoo.
**I've used it a few times but haven't remotely scratched the surface of what it's capable of, so I can't really go into detail on it.
***It has a noob-usable GUI and takes maybe five minutes of your attention and half an hour with a decent network connection to download any updated packages instead of installing the ones from the image and then updating them.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday July 02 2017, @11:19AM (4 children)
Primarily this: Neither its Gentoo base nor the Calculate distro are new. I value this extremely highly in a server OS and moderately in a Desktop OS.
Secondarily this: You get every bit of the minute customizability of a Gentoo system where you want it and binary packages with the common build options where you don't care.
Also this: Gentoo has a hell of a lot more developers than Devuan and Calculate only uses non-Gentoo packages for its own utilities/kernel sources which you're under no obligation to even use.
Also also this: OpenRC is technically superior to SysV without any of the insanity of systemd. Or, if you dislike OpenRC for some obscure technical reason, uninstall it; by default, it lives with SysV instead of replacing it.
In another ten years Devuan may be a well-tested, well-supported, well-maintained distro with a proven track record. Today it's not though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02 2017, @01:14PM (3 children)
I will say that BOTH of them come with caveats, but both of them also work excellently, outside of some gotchas around package dependencies, and configuration files (both of them have inconsistencies in their package configurations, don't always cleanup or prompt for cleanup when configuration file locations change between package versions, which while rare, can lead to you pulling hair out for a few hours if you didn't catch where the configuration changes happened and didn't double check 'qlist ' for where it moved on gentoo, or whatever the dpkg equivalent is on devuan.
Both ARE usable in production, but upgrading/migrating/etc may cause you issues in cornercases with certain packages. Having said all that, use devuan if you don't want to have to deal with time/configuration to build packages and gentoo if you are going to need to install packages considered 'off the beaten path' for normal linux distros. Gentoo's layman is comparable to ubuntu's launchpad for third party packages, but also tends to be a moving target for what packages are available (gentoo is on EABI version 6 and it dropped support/broke packages before EABI 3 or 4, leading to a huge number of 'old' packages people might want being dropped from both the stock gentoo repos and layman. Nothing that would affect 'mainstream' users, but those of us using unusual software may have a hard time finding ebuilds which did non-trivial amounts of work to get a package configured/installed.)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday July 02 2017, @02:19PM (2 children)
Which is why I dig on Calculate. You get the best of both worlds. I have maybe a dozen or two packages on my local systems that needed any customization at all, the rest all come from binary builds from the Calculate BINHOST mirror that's most up to date.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02 2017, @10:00PM (1 child)
I was with you, TMB, until you wanted me to look at your boobies. No thanks, I'm fine.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 03 2017, @01:19AM
Oh they're not my boobies, except in the sense that all boobies rightfully belong to me. I'm just a generous realist and allow the rest of you the use of the ones not currently occupying my attention.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.