Serpent OS Hopes To Ship Pre-Alpha ISOs In The Coming Weeks

[ehansin]

Also, Gnome is an interesting choice for "the most modern" of systems, given that it's the DE that's fallen behind the most in terms of implementing critical wayland protocol extensions.

I know I am becoming a bit of a "cheerleader" here on the issue (and hope not being too annoying doing so!), but if you get the chance and your distro of choice has COSMIC available in some capacity (had problems with an Arch AUR, but no issues at all with the Fedora Copr that is updated all the time), I'd say check it out. You can run as floating or tiling, and set these per-workspace, and their tiling mode is really slick. Again, I know I am pushing this thing some on this site, but have become an immediate fan.

[Daktyl198]

I know I am becoming a bit of a "cheerleader" here on the issue (and hope not being too annoying doing so!), but if you get the chance and your distro of choice has COSMIC available in some capacity (had problems with an Arch AUR, but no issues at all with the Fedora Copr that is updated all the time), I'd say check it out. You can run as floating or tiling, and set these per-workspace, and their tiling mode is really slick. Again, I know I am pushing this thing some on this site, but have become an immediate fan.

I'm also looking forward to COSMIC. I don't really stick with one DE/WM all the time and enjoy trying them all out. I don't hate Gnome, but KDE currently fits my workflow better especially since the Plasma 6 update and it's Wayland/HDR improvements. COSMIC seems like it'll hit that perfect middle ground between the two. I still wish somebody would make a usable DE out of a wlroots compositor like Wayfire.

[skeevy420]

So the question is "what is the supposed purpose of yet another Linux distribution?"

Looks like Doherty likes to code, but he hasn't the faintest idea what he should adding to the landscape. The use of web marketing/cryptocurrency language doesn't help.

Simplified, it offers a different way of doing atomic updates and package management. It would take someone who has used this and other atomic distributions to tell us what makes this one special compared to what else exists. As someone who has dabbled with some atomic distributions over the years, the last time I used it, one of Fedora Silverblue's shortcomings is that atomic updates/the system is managed with a Base OS and then the user adds packages to layers. Whenever you go to update you have to remove/uninstall the layered packages, update the Base OS, and then reinstall the layered packages. It's a real pain in the ass when you don't want to use Flatpak for non-free packages, you need to add ZFS or other kernel modules, and or you use other packages that the OS or root user need access to that just doesn't work well in a sandboxed environment. You're not supposed to use layers, but that doesn't work out so well in the real world. Making a special sandbox to load a kernel module, mount a disk, and then export the disk/mount points out of the sandbox for the system to access is just pants on head dumb.

If Serpent OS fixes that layer issue, it's already better than Fedora's solution. If it's doing that with a packaging and building solution that's as simple as using a PKGBUILD and working with an Arch Linux system, that can make Serpent OS a major player in the distribution landscape.

[Quackdoc]

Really hope serpent offers cosmic as soon as they can, it's honestly great how good it's been for an alpha. I haven't crashed at all in the last month (vs crashes every now and then on sway) OSD support was recently properly added (It works on sway too) provides polkit and volume (and other things) so it really is a mostly usable experience. Waydroid still doesn't play exactly right for some reason though. I've been using it for daily use, including gaming for a while now and it's been mostly great.

I know I am becoming a bit of a "cheerleader" here on the issue (and hope not being too annoying doing so!), but if you get the chance and your distro of choice has COSMIC available in some capacity (had problems with an Arch AUR, but no issues at all with the Fedora Copr that is updated all the time), I'd say check it out. You can run as floating or tiling, and set these per-workspace, and their tiling mode is really slick. Again, I know I am pushing this thing some on this site, but have become an immediate fan.

I've had loads of issues with the AUR too, I run my own pkgbuild scripts here https://github.com/Quackdoc/pkgbuild...r/cosmic-epoch and you may have better luck with them, at the very least I am trying to keep them as up to date as possible,

I don't find floating mode super usable since it doesn't have snapping and this isn't merged https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-comp/pull/389 for moving, also it doesnt look like the PR addresses resizing with super click.

[ehansin]

I'm also looking forward to COSMIC. I don't really stick with one DE/WM all the time and enjoy trying them all out. I don't hate Gnome, but KDE currently fits my workflow better especially since the Plasma 6 update and it's Wayland/HDR improvements. COSMIC seems like it'll hit that perfect middle ground between the two. I still wish somebody would make a usable DE out of a wlroots compositor like Wayfire.

You may already know this, but COSMIC uses Smithay as sort of the rust equivalent to wlroots. I also understand that System76 is contributing to this project. If I remember correctly, Way-Cooler tried to be a rust WM that used wlroots, but the author sort of had issues with "binding" his rust code with C code - with Smithay being rust-native, this must be a big plus for rust DEs and WMs. I am happy to be corrected on any of this, but what I remember from the top of my head.

As much as I have warmed up to tiling window mangers, I wanted something a little more that was also not too "heavy." Right now pretty happy with what Cosmic (okay, at some point I'm not doing all CAPS every time I type it ) Anyway, pretty cool stuff so far.

https://github.com/Smithay/smithay

[ehansin]

I've had loads of issues with the AUR too, I run my own pkgbuild scripts here https://github.com/Quackdoc/pkgbuild...r/cosmic-epoch and you may have better luck with them, at the very least I am trying to keep them as up to date as possible,

I don't find floating mode super usable since it doesn't have snapping and this isn't merged https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-comp/pull/389 for moving, also it doesnt look like the PR addresses resizing with super click.

Thanks for the AUR scripts link and heads up! I think I can window-snap using "Super + Shift + arrow-keys", but trying to remember muscle memory. Pretty sure I can mouse-click and drag to edges as well. Not sure about resizing, have not tried yet.

[ermo]

I just can't trust Ikey not to straight up abandon this distro like he has the last 3 he was involved in. He left his last one leaderless for multiple years before people had to step up and practically create an entirely new infrastructure because they couldn't contact him to get the details to the existing one.

Are you sure your information is correct here?

First of all Solus wasn't "leaderless for multiple years". I don't know where you got that information, but that's just plain wrong.

Second, I don't know if you are aware, but when Solus had a three month outage around this time last year (due to a confluence of very unfortunate circumstances), Ikey was the one who stepped in and made the proposal to get Solus back up and running on Serpent OS infrastructure initially (Solus now has its own infra separate from Serpent OS). He's also been actively supporting the current Solus efforts concurrently with building out Serpent OS.

[ermo]

Simplified, it offers a different way of doing atomic updates and package management. It would take someone who has used this and other atomic distributions to tell us what makes this one special compared to what else exists. As someone who has dabbled with some atomic distributions over the years, the last time I used it, one of Fedora Silverblue's shortcomings is that atomic updates/the system is managed with a Base OS and then the user adds packages to layers. Whenever you go to update you have to remove/uninstall the layered packages, update the Base OS, and then reinstall the layered packages. It's a real pain in the ass when you don't want to use Flatpak for non-free packages, you need to add ZFS or other kernel modules, and or you use other packages that the OS or root user need access to that just doesn't work well in a sandboxed environment. You're not supposed to use layers, but that doesn't work out so well in the real world. Making a special sandbox to load a kernel module, mount a disk, and then export the disk/mount points out of the sandbox for the system to access is just pants on head dumb.

If Serpent OS fixes that layer issue, it's already better than Fedora's solution. If it's doing that with a packaging and building solution that's as simple as using a PKGBUILD and working with an Arch Linux system, that can make Serpent OS a major player in the distribution landscape.

Nice summary.

[ermo]

It's a little weird to me that their first DE priority wasn't Budgie since I thought Joshua Stroble was one of the main people involved with this in addition to Ikey.

Budgie is already present in Solus, where it is maintained by a member of BoB (shout out to Evan Maddock, who is doing a great job in that regard IMHO).

For Serpent OS, this phase is about getting a DE going with the minimal amount of necessary packaging, in order to prove out the solutions. Right now, that DE is firmly GNOME due to how GNOME is pushing flatpaks.

This in turn implies that Serpent can get away with having a trivially rebuildable minimal DE stack + base OS, while initially having everything else covered by flatpaks while tools are being extended to support a better scaleout story than currently.

[Daktyl198]

Are you sure your information is correct here?

First of all Solus wasn't "leaderless for multiple years". I don't know where you got that information, but that's just plain wrong.

Second, I don't know if you are aware, but when Solus had a three month outage around this time last year (due to a confluence of very unfortunate circumstances), Ikey was the one who stepped in and made the proposal to get Solus back up and running on Serpent OS infrastructure initially (Solus now has its own infra separate from Serpent OS). He's also been actively supporting the current Solus efforts concurrently with building out Serpent OS.

My information was that I used Solus when he abandoned it. I admit the "multiple years" part was an exaggeration, but it took quite a while for the project to find it's feet again after he abandoned it with very little contact. Many of the distro's intended projects were abandoned purely to keep the existing infrastructure alive, and it was a good amount of time before they even had a fresh ISO available to download with updates to the distro. It may have had leadership, but the project never moved forward. I loved the distro, but it ultimately pushed me onto Arch where I've been ever since.

The way Ikey departed left an awful taste in my mouth. It's one thing to announce to your team you are leaving the project to persue other interests, and properly hand off everything. It's another to simply stop replying to your team and literally abandon them to the point where the project's website and repos go down because you didn't pay the server costs and didn't give the team time to move everything over to new servers. He did end up paying for one more month for them to do so, but only as an afterthought after the site had already been down for days.