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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Vinzenz Vietzke of TUXEDO Computers announced today that the German electronics manufacturer, which is known for selling laptops and desktop computers that ship pre-loaded with Linux, created their own distro.
The news comes just a week after System76 computer reseller announced Pop!_OS as their own GNU/Linux distribution based on Ubuntu and the GNOME desktop environment, and it now looks like TUXEDO Computers follow suit and announce TUXEDO Xubuntu, their own Xubuntu-based distro, which will power all of their computers in the near future.
"We have been working on this project for several months. We have been thinking about the usability of the desktop, have included user feedback in our considerations and made some surveys on desktop usage," says Vinzenz Vietzke. "The result of our research, surveys and countless tests is now that we have chosen Xfce based on Ubuntu."
(Score: 1) by zoward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @03:00PM (4 children)
This doesn't do wonders for my confidence that the major linux distros are going to work OOB with their hardware. I always thought that was the reason why people would pay extra for hardware from small linux specialty vendors, versus buying a windows-based machine known to work with linux hardware (e.g., thinkpads). Would linux geeks pay extra to buy a machine like this and actually leave the provided vendor-specific distro on it? I don't see it happening, for Tuxedo, System76 or any other vendor.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 05 2017, @03:26PM (1 child)
Buying a machine like this will *almost* certainly mean that you can run other distros on it. They're using Ubuntu. Just go to the Ubuntu repository and/or the special repository where the drivers are found and download. Swap out hard drive, install Suse, Deb, or whatever. You find that there is no driver for one bit of hardware or another, install the driver you already downloaded with Alien or such. If that doesn't work so well, look for source, and compile it on your own machine with -native flag.
Okay, there will probably be edge cases, depending on a metric ton of variables. So, contact the vendor directly, tell them you need a driver for Favorite Linux. They've already done all the work by making the driver work - all they need do is repackage it for Favorite.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 05 2017, @10:31PM
Exactly. The fact that SOMEBODY, anybody, SPEC'ed a machin that works with any curent distro makes it it a good choice for any other.
So other than THAT, I don't see anything they have to offer here.
I'm sure both of these two companies will hang a theme and a few web links on an otherwise stock ubuntu / gnome / xfce package and try to make it something unique.
Does the world need yet another Ubunto clone? Is there any point in yet another Gnome re-packaging? And Isn't XFCE pretty much out-slimmed by LXDE and soon LXQt?
(All else being equal, XFCE these days uses about 100 meg less memory than your typical KDE/Plasma5 install. Its not any faster in use, but it is faster to start up. Just install ANYBODY's LXDE to be astounded how fast Linux can be on modest hardware).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @04:07PM (1 child)
a custom distro effort is not really aimed at "linux geeks". you think only "linux geeks" use linux? every family member, friend, and customer that i help with computers runs various distros. not a damn one of them is a linux geek. i'm outnumbered 20:1 by non geeks.
I suspect a custom distro effort of a hardware vendor is to make their offering more attractive to their customers which are largely normal people who are after a little freedom/security but aren't trying to be the next rms/linus. That's why they are bothering to customize a desktop environment, the whole focus on what desktop environment they chose, etc. It's the DE they figured would be easiest to customize/deal with and would run the most efficiently on their hardware.
I've really been waiting on someone to do something with xfce for a long time. i've often wished i had the time to gain the skill to heavily customize xfce because i think it has a lot of potential for this type of situation. good luck to tuxedo and i hope they have success with this.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 05 2017, @10:34PM
2000 to one. FIFY.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @03:06PM (14 children)
The only thing OSS seems to really have gotten down to this day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @03:22PM (12 children)
For it is much more effective to have one systemdOS to rule them all, isn't it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @03:41PM (11 children)
Nobody is asking for it, what people are asking for is >compatibility between them. A coherent API that can be used across all different distros that allows something to be compiled in one place and ran everything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @03:43PM
No, not all Linux people are asking for what you say.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Wednesday July 05 2017, @04:01PM (3 children)
Great idea! It only needs a nice name... maybe something like 'Portable Operating System Interface'?
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday July 05 2017, @06:46PM (2 children)
What the dingbat you replied to wants is something entirely different - binary portability. So that he can compile some sort of malware into an opaque binary and then convince other people to run it on their machines. This is NOT a good thing - binary compatibility only empowers the vultures and hyenas that are afraid to show their work.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @07:06PM (1 child)
Felis catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,
An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature;
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses
Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
A singular development of cat communications
That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.
You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aid in locomotion,
It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 06 2017, @01:35AM
We need <U>, <CENTER> and <BIG> so posts like those above can have their freest, fullest, most glorious expression.
No god equals 4 corner
stages of metamorphic
rotating humanity - as a
baby, child, parent and
grandparent evolution.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 05 2017, @04:09PM (3 children)
Yeah, um, no. I distinctly do not want kitchen-sink packages installed on my machine. I most certainly do not want every library under the sun installed on my box just so I can install anything I feel like without having to also install that library. I actively do want any performance impacting binaries/libraries built with only the functionality I need in them. And I absolutely do not want Pottering or anyone like him deciding how my system should be laid out.
If you really just don't get the "you are not the boss of me" mentality of Linux, you should probably be on OSX.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @07:06PM
repo.
The current one has all sorts of crap the average user will never install/use, but meanwhile they keep removing/breaking packages that people *MIGHT* want/need to use (such as old gcc versions, old EABIs for upgrading gentoo installs that are more than a year or two out of date, glibc/g++ versions that have broken API/ABI compared to current versions, etc.)
Meanwhile they have FTL and a bunch of proprietary junk that isn't even necessarily following the latest version in the vanilla repos cluttering things up, but they have time to remove stuff that falls under 'core system utilities' and might actually be needed by someone SOMEWHERE trying to get a gentoo install built up without having to clean up the mess caused by unpacking a stage3 tarball over the top of their old system. Which depending on the arch you are running, might not actually work/be available in the first place, even if gentoo itself will still install/compile/run on top of it.
Following that would be generating rpm or dpkg configurations off the ebuilds so you can install a binary-style linux distro based off gentoo packages with whatever svelte build options you need to trim the fat and pre-requisites from the otherwise fatty binary distro packages.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @07:44PM (1 child)
What do you think they develop systemd on, osx and virtualization. They're not linux users.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 07 2017, @03:39PM
proof, please
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday July 05 2017, @05:57PM (1 child)
That's a truly awful idea.
What's your objection to me compiling my own binaries, huh?
Of course if you have a business model that relies on malware you want binary compatibility. No one else should want it. The minor inconvenience of local compilation is far better than the alternative.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @07:08PM
Felis catus! is your taxonomic nomenclature,
An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature;
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses
Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
A singular development of cat communications
That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.
You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aid in locomotion,
It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 05 2017, @10:37PM
There's no fragmentation here idiot.
Its Ubuntu with Gnome or Ubunto with XFCE. Both of which already exist.
They all use the same code.
The only fragmentation is in your windows loving mind.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @03:09PM (2 children)
So will it run FreeBSD?
Otherwise it seems not that attractive..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 06 2017, @02:19AM (1 child)
To those who don't care about freedom [wordpress.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 07 2017, @03:45PM
bsd/mit is a whore’s license.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Gaaark on Wednesday July 05 2017, @03:56PM (1 child)
...but is it a fork or a rebranding: making your own theme with your logo on the desktop?
Forking it would seem to be kind of silly and a lot of work they probably can't afford when you could have the Ubuntu people to do the work and you just stick in your theme.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday July 05 2017, @10:42PM
Exactly.
I bet they even point to Ubuntu repositories and hang their own tiny repository to hold the wall paper.
This adds nothing.
It might sell hardware. And hopefully that hardware would be speced to handle linux well
(which is easy, just avoid AMD and Nvidia GPUs and you are good to go).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Beau Slim on Wednesday July 05 2017, @04:15PM
Stop forking for forks sake!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Grishnakh on Wednesday July 05 2017, @04:49PM (2 children)
A distro that doesn't just jump on the Gnome3 bandwagon!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday July 05 2017, @05:52PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday July 05 2017, @07:25PM
PCLinuxOS [pclinuxos.com] rejected GNOME 3 as well, likely because it'd be a megabitch to free it from systemd's tentacles.
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Wednesday July 05 2017, @05:10PM (3 children)
I've bought three computers from System76 over the years. They all came with Ubuntu installed, plus some custom package that provided any drivers System76 needed to install for your hardware. That seemed like a pretty good compromise to me. Even still, I wiped them and installed the distros I wanted.
I can't imagine keeping some extremely niche distro on my machine. I'd almost certainly wipe it upon arrival, and install something I wanted - even FreeBSD.
I don't get this new trend of building new distros for the simple purpose of rebranding, custom graphics/icons/colors etc. Too much work and too many new points of failure introduced, and for too little benefit. For bonus points, all these new distros seem to have stupid names. (System 76's one does, for sure). I wonder if management is just letting geeks have their way in the office. Puttering around with custom distros must be a fun way to get paid while you spend the day at work.
Anyway, if I buy one of these machines, these custom distros can count on having a total longevity of under 60 seconds before they get wiped and replaced with something more interesting of my choice. Don't waste your time, hardware manufacturers. Spend your time more wisely on drivers, installation, customer service, choosing good hardware, and so on.
(Side note: Linux developers: please build better apps and give up trying to reinvent the desktop. The state of Linux desktop software is pitiful, and the desktop is a solved problem).
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Wednesday July 05 2017, @05:49PM
No thanks.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 05 2017, @07:42PM
For what it's worth, as someone who kept System76's original setup on a box I don't use for my heavy dev work, it's not terrible: They have a special kernel module for specific hardware they have, and a few other tweaks, but I think this is about more than just re-branding Ubuntu. It gives them the power to say "no" to Canonical, and that's not a bad thing.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 05 2017, @11:09PM
Exactly. I wouldn't trust a Linux pre-install any more than a windows pre-install.
I've bought server blades with linux pre-installed. Nuked em out of the box, after scoping out were to download any custom hardware drivers that I couldn't do without. (Mostly backplane controls for power/ups/intrusion crap.)
The only value in the pre-installed linux was that it proved the hardware worked.
Used to be, I had to get them with freedos installed just so the vendors could comply with their microsoft contract to never sell a machine without an operating system.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05 2017, @07:30PM
that its a preconfigured xfce with dotfiles, .menus and .desktops for the boatload of things that don't have them or don't have them 'done right' .. printers preinstalled.. synaptic at the ready .. then it would be a sweet value added deal for everyone i know who's never heard of the command-line and wouldnt know a bash from a dos.
i don't get that one person who's hating on the thread here. its just a new flower in the garden and xfce _is a sweet environment that doesn't need to proof anything and which doesnt get in your way. so let them customize for and care about their low-tech-comprehensions customers already. -- tl;dr /// experiments -- thumbs up !