GoboLinux 0.12
Dude! Where's My Files?
In GoboLinux you don't need a package manager because the file system is the package manager: each program resides in its own directory, such as /Programs/Xorg/6.7.0/ and /Programs/KDE/3.2.2
and
GoboLinux is a Linux distribution that breaks with the historical Unix
directory hierarchy. Basically, this means that there are no
directories
such as /usr and /etc. The main idea of the alternative hierarchy is to
store all files belonging to an application in its own separate
subtree;
therefore we have directories such as /Programs/GCC/2.95.3/lib.
To allow the system to find these files, they are logically grouped in
directories such as /System/Links/Executables, which, you guessed it,
contains symbolic links to all executable files inside the Programs
hierarchy.To maintain backwards compatibility with
traditional Unix/Linux apps,
there are symbolic links that mimic the Unix tree, such as "/usr/bin
->
/System/Links/Executables", and "/sbin -> /System/Links/Executables"
(this example shows that arbitrary differentiations between files of
the
same category were also removed).
In short, you will need to figure out just what the heck happened to the program you just installed, it created a symlink to all the right places and it will work but if you are looking for /usr/share/newprogram, it isn't there. Instead you will find it in /Programs/newprogram. Odd indeed, but effective! Once you figure out where everything goes, it really does make a lot of sense. For instance, say you want to change your grub bootloader, you need to goto, /System/Kernel/Boot/grub, and there it is, you will find documentation in /Files, users in /Users and what appears to be a variety of other non-system stuff in /Depot. It kinda works for me.
Which I did.
First Boot:
The most notable aspect of booting up GoboLinux from the hard drive (for me at least) was the amount of time it took to get from the words "GRUB Loading stage1.5" to actually seeing Grub, I can honestly say it took an average of 40 seconds on an AMD Athlon 2500+. Once that wait was over, you are presented with a colorful Grub screen giving the option of commandline or gui logins, and than on to a rather quick boot to the login screen, or command line if that was your choice. KDE 3.4 is the standard and it is given a fairly standard setup, but one that looks good and works well. (A few screen shots here...)
What it has:
A quick look around shows a good variety of applications, K3b, Open Office, Firebird, Kmail, Mplayer, XMMS, The Gimp, running on Xorg 6.8.1 on kernel 2.6.11.9. A fair amount more is available on the mirrors in standard .tar formats as well as "recipes" which are described as:
This simply means that instead of having to "install" you "compile" the recipe which works more efficiently from what I can see, and appears to take care of the dependencies and issues that pop up. This brings me to the install process, which works very well for being a .tar based distro. Gone are the "configure", "make" and "make install" commands, in their place is a simple "CompileProgram" or "InstallProgram", which grabs the .tar in question and goes to town. No muss, no fuss, just a working program at the end. For someone who is make impaired (this includes me, I've never been good at configure, make and make install) this is a wonderful advancement. To take this to yet another level, there is also "Manager" which is a full GUI based update app. Manager shows you what is out of date, and than provides you with both recipes and .tar files to update with, you chose and start it up and watch it go, very nice.
What it has not:
At this time there is not a huge volume of applications available on the mirrors, but I should think with a bit of perseverance most any .tar should install. Most notably missing are the usual wide varieties of window managers including Gnome, but I did run across a to-do for the team to take care of this. This is a fairly young distro in it's development, and I am looking at the 0.12 release, so there is time to grow and work through these details.
Usage:
Clearly the biggest issue with this GoboLinux is getting past the file structure. Once you have figure that out (or if you really don't care cuz you just don't go there) it is a very usable and comfortable distro. Everything works well, and is solidly integrated. I love the install and configure scripts, they work well and easily. I found myself downloading apps just to install them (I know, I'm weird), I started with Thunderbird as that is my preferred e-mail application and just kept going. I did find the documentation on using the install and configure commands a bit limited causing me to have to try each and have the install fail a few times until I figured out I was trying too hard. The Manager does not have any links on the user desktop or menu, only as root, which in my mind encourages the user to run as root while updating, a process that can take some time. I also found that Manager is a work in progress, it's stability was just acceptable. It just stopped several times in the middle of working up an update, usually when downloading. The command prompt it opened to run from usually indicated a segmentation fault. While this never left me stranded or with a dead distro, I can see where it easily could, keep working guys, it looks good, and is easy to use, now it just needs to be stable.
Conclusions:
This one is unique to say the least, It's not for the Linux newbie, but it isn't as hard as it could be either, I'll leave that to Gentoo. The feel is quick, solid and reliable. With the exception of Manager, I had no stability issues of any sort, even after Manager crashed, I would re-start and be ready and happy to go on again. It may be a work in progress, but I can say it is one worth trying.
Look Ma, I can compile!
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