Systemd to Free BSDs, Mint 17.1, and Coolest Things
Today was another busy day in Linuxland. Linux Mint 17.1 was released over the weekend and a couple of reviews have emerged already. Katherine Noyes says some Linuxers are thinking of heading towards the free *BSDs and Shawn Powers has a list of some of the coolest things folks do with Linux. Jasper St. Pierre explains what's wrong with package managers and Dedoimedo.com is running a best distro of 2014 poll. Ian Sullivan explains how to "De-Chrome" laptops and Bryan Lunduke has a holiday shopping guide.
Linux Mint 17.1, in MATE and Cinnamon versions, was released Saturday. This is just an update and current users can upgrade through the Update Manager. New users can download fresh images from Linuxmint.com. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols posted a guide to setting up Mint "for the first time." Jamie Watson looks at the release and says it's typical Mint, "easy to install, easy to use, and solid as a rock." Jim Lynch covered the release and posted a few thoughts saying, "Cinnamon and MATE have both improved significantly, I don’t think you can go wrong with either."
Systemd continues to trouble many free and open software lovers and Katherine Noyes says the scuttlebutt is that some are considering not just moving to another distribution but all the way to a free BSD. While several sides of the issue are presented, Noyes quotes one blogger saying:
What amazes me is there is an angle nobody talks about. Namely, you have a boot system that frankly nobody was really complaining about, yet all of a sudden we are being told, 'oh the init is horrible, we MUST have Systemd, no question,' followed by voices silenced, threads erased, secret votes.
Does this sound like the normal way Linux does things? And who is it being pushed hard by? Red Hat. Okay, so where does Red Hat get THEIR finances from? Three-letter agencies: DoD, FBI, NSA, CIA.
Jasper St. Pierre, former Red Hat employee and developer, says dealing with package managers can be frustrating. He says sometimes systems get broke and package managers should never be able do that. Other times manual intervention is needed and that can be time consuming and, sometimes, beyond the user's ability. He then says that's because "package managers do not see the OS independently from the applications that make it up: all packages are just combined to create one giant filesystem tree. This scheme works great when you have a bunch of open-source apps you can rebuild at every ABI break, but it’s not great when trying to build a world-class OS."
In other news:
* The Linux holiday shopping guide
* De-Chroming the Acer c720 Chromebook
* Best Linux distribution of 2014 (poll)
* Coolest Things You've Done with Linux
* DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 587, 1 December 2014, Living free with Trisquel