Starch Linux: OpenBSD Atop Arch's Linux Kernel

[staalmannen]

i see everybody including Michael missed the point so il' put it bold


ITS A PROJECT FOR A STATIC VERSION OF ARCH LINUX !!


its not about BSD or linux or what libc it uses, its just a project for making a statically linked userspace

musl is chosen cuz glibc dosent fully support static linking
bsd tools are chosen cuz GNU are made with glibc in mind
etc etc


y'all should at least check their web site before ranting nonsense

For fairness sake, it says already at the front page that it is a Suckless/OpenBSD/Linux-based distro.

But indeed, it is its 100% static nature that makes me very interested in it. I am considering installing some of its packages on my "standard" dynamic Arch system - especially a shell and Pacman. I have been hit by a broken glibc before, and having the core static would make that much less risky.

EDIT: By the way. If you are interested specifically in OpenBSD "core utilities" port to Linux, you might want to check out obase:

https://github.com/chneukirchen/obase

[tvall]

Wrong, RHEL and other Linux distros contribute fixes that often also effect the current development version of KDE as they do not lag very much behind.

BSD ports tree lacks so far behind that the bug fixes made to them were already done in Linux. And even more, they do not contribute back to KDE, they keep the fixes to themselves.

Thus they are holding KDE (and for that matter, all open-source projects) back. But luckily, GNOME has taken the smart decision to ignore BSD and focus on linux instead. This gave them the choice of implementing linux-specific features which give superior performance and characteristics like udev and systemd.

it's interesting cos the majority of BSD desktop users are gnome users so they be forced to switch to linux which is good.

I also strongly think that all other open-source projects should forget about BSD and should implement feature which require the linux kernel so that would make it hard or impossible to port them to BSD. So BSD with have no apps and thus can die quicker. If they don't like it, I'll give them a noose.

It should serve them right for holding back linux and at the same time spreading anti-Linux FUD.

Well, I think all open source developers should forget about GNOME and implement some feature that breaks GNOME compatibility, because I don't like GNOME. Once everyone realizes I am right, actually... I have never thought this far ahead? what will gnome disappearing add to my life? well... IT NEEDS TO DIE ANYWAY!

/sarcasm-like rant thingy

[gens]

EDIT: By the way. If you are interested specifically in OpenBSD "core utilities" port to Linux, you might want to check out obase:

https://github.com/chneukirchen/obase

thx but nah, out of userspace i use only a few programs
il check if they are simple, i like simple code

speaking of simple code check plan9 from userspace
its a port of.. well plan9 userspace

http://swtch.com/plan9port/

simple programs as they should be, easy to read too


edit: BSD tools look readable and simple too, probably the reason they chose 'em
plan9 is simpler still

[Ibidem]

gens has it right, I think.

Regarding the claim that glibc is lightweight:
1: see http://www.etalabs.net/compare_libcs.html
2: if that doesn't convince you, get back to me when you have booted a Linux/busybox system in 4 MB (mem=4096) and have 2 MB used after boot.

For those who are saying BSD should die:
Could you please check what you can build if you remove all glibc headers containing the BSD license notice?
Also, please remove sudo, ssh, mandoc, the groff mandoc, me, ms, and other BSD-derived macros, mdoc, tcl & tk, ldap, libtirpc, and any other permissively-licensed packages containing code copyright by "the Regents of the University of California"

[staalmannen]

thx but nah, out of userspace i use only a few programs
il check if they are simple, i like simple code

speaking of simple code check plan9 from userspace
its a port of.. well plan9 userspace

http://swtch.com/plan9port/

simple programs as they should be, easy to read too


edit: BSD tools look readable and simple too, probably the reason they chose 'em
plan9 is simpler still

Plan9 is indeed cool and is in fact my favourite hobby OS. It utilities are unix-like but often not-quite-unix and I have had to build a few utilities from sbase and Heirloom for APE to be able to run configure scripts etc. Starch contains 9base (plan9port without X11 progs). If it is simple utilities that you want, you should look at the sbase ones.

https://github.com/StarchLinux/sbase

[Vim_User]

Because they're too smart to use Unix or Unix like OS while there's Linux.

So there are to smart to use an Unix-like OS because of the existence of another Unix-like OS?
Wow, your logic is so fucked up, it hurts.

[Ibidem]

Oh, and another comment:
FreeBSD != OpenBSD.


From what I've seen, OpenBSD is much better than FreeBSD in terms of having clean, bugless code.

[ncopa]

It's exactly opposite.

I know for sure that there are various known ways to break out of a chroot - if you are root that is. Those are intentionally not fixed in Linux because security never was chroots' main purpose.

If you blindly trust your Linux chroots youre gonna be burned.

Even Linux chroot is more secure than bsd jails.

I never claimed that bsd jails are more secure, because I don't know those.

Not to mention containers.

Linux containers (lxc) are not really safe either. There are several known ways to break out from lxcontainers. They are slowly working on fixing those, but again, the main purpose of LXC is not security.

There's also many more options on Linux that are more secure.

True. Grsecurity patch adds various (at least 13) chroot restrictions so that chroot acutallly can be used for security.

There is also a "container" project that is known to do containers/jails safely: Linux Vserver.

My point is that you should be really careful how you use chroots and LXC - if it safer than BSD or not I don't know - or care. There are many other good reasons to stick with Linux.

[ncopa]

Don't make us laugh mentioning thing that are something common.

Feel free to laugh. As I said, OpenBSD was early with those features. Linux only got it the latest few years. Also, NX bit support in Linux is a bit limited. OpenBSD implemented similar feature as NX for i386, early, even if the hardware does not support it. The other BSD didnt have those features.

You can actually get those feature on Linux too, with PaX patches.

I know those things because I was around when propolice patches entered gcc. (gcc-3.3 -> gcc-4). Both OpenBSD and Gentoo Hardened did lot of good work there.

[ncopa]

ITS A PROJECT FOR A STATIC VERSION OF ARCH LINUX !!

Static linking is generally a bad idea. You'll end up with multiple copies of same code in memory -> bloat. You'll probably end up using more memory than with glibc.

Check out Alpine Linux. Uses uclibc and busybox and shared libs.