Describing itself as “Debian without systemd”, Devuan is another distribution targeting users dissatisfied with the software suite originally developed by Lennart Poettering that would replace SysV as the most popular init system for Linux distributions. With the initial announcement of forking Debian dating back to late-2014, the team behind Devuan believes that GNU/Linux is becoming more homogenized not just as a result of the rising popularity of systemd but also the GNOME Project providing the GNOME desktop environment:
We believe this situation is also the result of a longer process leading to the take-over of Debian by the GNOME project agenda. Considering how far this has propagated today and the importance of Debian as a universal OS and base system in the distribution panorama, what is at stake is the future of GNU/Linux in a scenario of complete homogeneization (sic!) and lock-in of all base distributions.
In short, this means that Devuan is supposed to be a “less-restricted” variant of Debian with free choice over init system and desktop environment. As this is more of a political justification rather than fears born out of potential technical implications, testing the OS myself was... rather boring, despite conducting this test in a badly-configured virtual machine.
Artix, calling itself “Arch Linux without systemd”, is a project I've had my eyes on since I got into Linux two years ago and gave a quick spin myself before eventually settling with EndeavourOS for over half a year. Back then, I would let its s6 variant run within a virtual environment and was pleasantly surprised that it would work very smoothly even with little hardware resources provided. My test, however, came to a sudden stop when pacman stopped fetching updates out of the blue and repeatedly stated that the system was up to date, despite being at least three kernels behind.
And because two years have passed since that incident, I decided to give Artix another shot.
Certainly a niche within a niche, ArchLabs is supposed to be a homage to the Debian-based BunsenLabs, which is regarded by few users as being an unofficial successor to CrunchBang. As a very tiny project led by two developers, ArchLabs is not widely known among Linux users, currently holding the 80th spot on DistroWatch's Page Hit Ranking, also due to targeting intermediate and advanced users that already are familiar with Arch Linux.
After my quarrels with Archcraft, which also promises to be a minimal distribution, I decided to give ArchLabs another chance, after encountering some issues with its installer back in 2020.
Despite initially planning on not wanting to test any new version of Archcraft due to Adi, its sole developer, never providing a solid reason why users should get rid of the old version of his distribution and install “New Archcraft”, I had to download a new ISO to be able to chroot into my installed version, as “old Archcraft” does not tolerate chrooting from another Arch-based distribution such as EndeavourOS, warning me that the live user is not allowed to gain access to passwd. Never having encountered such incompatibilities between two Arch-based distributions, I was wondering if “New Archcraft” suffers from the same issues I would encounter within a year of using this distribution.
But not only were my low expectations proven to be justified, the project's main community channel on Discord is largely being used by its developer to beg for money and to be arrogant towards other Linux distributions.
Some distributions gain a small, yet quite vocal fan following for reasons users tend to barely address or explain in such a way that makes those interested feel... quite stupid about themselves. NixOS is described as “a Linux distribution with a special approach to package and configuration management”, meaning its sole selling point is its unique package management called Nix and thus largely aimed at developers. Still, even more specialized distributions with the look-and-feel of a regular Desktop distribution for personal usage should be able to handle passive users just wanting to browse the web.
It is more than fair to criticize Google and its services for violating data privacy en masse and it is also fair to mock Apple Maps for plain wrong entries, so it might come as a surprise to those using the free “alternative”, OpenStreetMaps (OSM), is a confusing a badly-maintained mess.
OSM behaves similar to Wikipedia, though with two significant differences:
The latter is the most important point, which explains the lack of adaptation among sole users and those wanting to contribute to it. Especially smaller villages will take the short end of the stick, should interested inhabitants decide to contribute themselves.
Last year, I published a brief review of the Arch-based distribution Archcrafton Medium. Shortly afterwards, its sole developer released a new version dubbed “New Archcraft”, which would break with all previous releases and thus require a fresh install. At that time, I was unaware how deep some issues of the original Archcraft ran, as I currently am finding out.
Cassidy James announced his resignation from the entire project in a blog post on 1st of April, 2022, after internal disputes with Danielle Foré. Internal conflicts did not spare the distribution from significant regressions with the release of elementary OS 6 “Odin”.
The Major Linux Problems on the Desktop... or sort of
It should not be surprising to easily come across an article written by a longterm user about the apparent failure of Linux for Desktop PC's, so it is somewhat of a breath of fresh air to find someone going out of their way to make a list of the shortcomings of both Windows AND Linux. Still, comparing both operating systems to each other is, at least from a technical standpoint, a rather difficult task, which did not prevent Artem S. Tashkinov from doing it anyway. In his text Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, Tashkinov provides a detailed list of the potential negative aspects of the kernel and major projects associated with it. Potential, as some points can be interpreted as mere subjective preferences or appear to be plain wrong conclusions, which can already be encountered in the preface.
