Discussion
I realized something today: I have been using Linux for 30 years this December, but I have never assembled a distribution from scratch. I have built tiny images for tiny embedded devices, using binaries from other distributions.
But I never built one from scratch. Maybe I should.
Except it will not be a Linux distribution.
While poking around my NetBSD install, I discovered I accidentally installed 10.0 instead of 11.0 on Carota. That explains a lot of silly issues I ran into.
(andreaeaceae and carota-sativa are NetBSD 11.0)
The flip side of this is that I have performed my first NetBSD upgrade in 20 years, and it went fine.
Circling back to actually building a distribution... there will be tricky bits.
I will need a ramdisk for sure, because my distribution will use a tmpfs root, and impermanence.
I'll also have a home-manager-like thing built in, the "manage $HOME from the OS configuration" kind, because that's what I use.
I'll also have to figure something out about secrets management, because I want that to be a first class citizen too.
Yet, all of these are distant ideas, because first, I need a bit of a roadmap for myself, mostly to stop myself from overthinking.
@algernon if you haven't seen this already: guile now rejects code authored or co-authored by llm 👍
@pho4cexa I did! That was a big reason why Guile remained on my list of options. :)
@algernon @pho4cexa The other reasons for Guile are then you can use Hoot to compile to wasm https://spritely.institute/hoot/
Not to mention Goblins being pretty cool 😉 https://spritely.institute/goblins/
Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
So, the first few steps will be: reading Linux From Scratch, peeking under NetBSD's hood, and reading up on the theory behind Nix & Guix.
I will not be using neither Nix, nor Guix (the package manager), but I do plan to use a Lisp for the configuration language. Which Lisp? I don't know yet. Probably not Common Lisp (slop), not Clojure (Java is heavy).I'm considering Guile and Fennel at the moment, or - if I'm writing the package manager anyway - then one of the Schemes I can embed in Rust.
I have my reservations about Fennel... I love it, but... I do not love Lua and the Lua ecosystem all that much.
Guile is okay, I guess. I haven't worked with it much, I will have to tinker a little, and see if I like it, and if I can bend it to my will1.
It's a Lisp. Of course I can bend it to my will. ↩︎