Is Clear Linux Just A Toy Distribution By Intel?

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Is Clear Linux Just A Toy Distribution By Intel?

A user experimenting with Clear Linux had an opinion to share on their mailing list and referred to it as a "toy" distribution and some of our readers have expressed similar opinions on it. Here is the response by one of the Intel developers central to Clear Linux's development...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Clear-Linux-Is-It-A-Toy

[vegabook]

If Intel were to send -ahem- Clear signals that this is not a playground for its devs, but a long term commitment, then others could build different flavours on it. I guess the problem though is that as soon as you become an upstream distro with dependents, your freedom aggressively to experiment becomes curtailed.

[milkylainen]

I don't understand the criticism towards Clear Linux. Can't say I'm a fan of it or that I use it much.
But did Intel claim all type of stuff hardware compatibility? Or any software working whatsoever? No?

I actually think Intel is doing a great job with their toy distribution with all their performance experiments and whatnot.
Seems to me, it's doing the intended job just fine.

[milkylainen]

If Intel were to send -ahem- Clear signals that this is not a playground for its devs, but a long term commitment, then others could build different flavours on it. I guess the problem though is that as soon as you become an upstream distro with dependents, your freedom aggressively to experiment becomes curtailed.

Why should they?
I think it's pretty clear (no pun intended) that Intel has no intention of becoming a long term stable distribution player with this platform.
At least not yet. Clear Linux screams "toy distro" from a mile away. So, for me, it really doesn't come as a surprise.
And that's perfectly fine.

[kpedersen]

"people expect, almost demand, that any obscure piece of hardware "just works" (often stuff we can't even buy anymore to test it etc)"

Well in the world of computing, you can barely buy something a year old anymore. Supporting older hardware is very important otherwise you will miss out on a large community of skilled developers and end up just appealing to consumers / gamers.

As it stands, I notice things like FreeBSD and OpenBSD which have a lot less manpower to write drivers sometimes end up with better hardware compatibility because they don't break things. Intel's Clear Linux obviously targets Intel's newer hardware in order to push their new products but unfortunately developers do not work that way; we care about code; not filling up landfills with perfectly good 1 year old hardware.

Clear Linux does not seem like a toy. However it does feel like a reference implementation that gives insight into what Linux hardware support will look like a few years from now. Personally I like Clear Linux for this purpose.

[Jabberwocky]

"clear limits"


Seriously: I really don't like the name, but I think Clear Linux serves a very valid purpose and it's awesome that they are implementing a 3rd party repo.
Also: Intel hardware sucks and I want my money back.

[Aryma]

and not easily supporting as much closed-source software.

Many of our customers nowadays have Linux distros of their own rather than using a "standard" distro as is.

this something i hate about linux why some app work only in some distros and there no default way to install anything

[ssokolow]

Now on Desktop... based on a lot of history (Moblin/Meego/...) we know that it is very hard to do a "general consumer desktop", and we tried something different, aim JUST at software developers (e.g. advanced technical users not afraid of a command line who write code but also generally have more modern, higher quality hardware) and do a very narrow thing that was hopefully more tractable.

Turns out that there is no such thing really, people expect, almost demand, that any obscure piece of hardware "just works" (often stuff we can't even buy anymore to test it etc) and... well we got asked for 15+ different desktop environments etc etc... an infinity of "weird stuff" that has nothing to do with "developer".

Makes sense. I'm a developer, but I consider GNOME a deal-breaker and I'm still on an Athlon II X2 270 because it still meets my needs and I'm reluctant to upgrade to something with a PSP.

If anything, I'd have considered developers to be a less viable candidate for a specialty distro because I'd expect that we are more demanding, having gotten used to leveraging our skills to get our way.

[zxy_thf]

IMO they really should focus on being the distro of choice for container images, rather than a generic desktop OS.
To switch the distro users need to reinstall, risk compatibility issues, and (likely) switch back again -- I think this is the main reason Clear Linux is called "toy". Serious users want a solid distro to work on, rather than a new (and little known) platform to play with.

On the other hand, it is far more cheaper to try a new distro as the base image of the next containerized app.

[c117152]

So it's more Arch less Debian. K. Good luck.