Re: [gentoo-user] Re: {OT} Will ARM take over the world?

[Walter Dnes]

On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 05:05:30PM +0000, James wrote

> My most sincerest hope is that we take the embedded
> gentoo efforts from the the embedded gentoo handbook,
> and integrate them into the regular Gentoo handbook.
> The distro that does this will be king of the distros!
>
> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/embedded/handbook/

  Problems with using embedded kernels as a base...

* they use uclibc, which has some APIs that differ from glibc.  This
  could break Flash, proprietary video driver binary blobs, and who
  knows what else.

* they generally use busybox symlinks in place of most core utils.  The
  busybox versions don't always exactly match the standalone versions.
  You would have to tweak quite a few scripts to fix that.

  Alpine Linux is based on uclibc and busybox (including mdev).  From
http://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Alpine_Linux:Overview

> Note: As the About page says, Alpine is "designed for x86 Routers,
> Firewalls, VPNs, VoIP and servers." But it's a perfectly workable
> desktop system, too. The shortcomings just have to do with the small
> community, and that sometimes you may need to get your hands dirty
> modifying scripts written with more mainstream desktop distros in
> mind.  So you probably won't want to use Alpine if you're a newcomer
> to Linux.  If you're already comfortable with another distro, though,
> especially a power-user, less-hand-holding distro like ArchLinux or
> Gentoo, you should do fine.

  It would be interesting to see a "micro" port of Gentoo.  But you can
forget about bringing over KDE-OS, GNOME-OS, or CHROME-OS.  If/when
gnash is finally ready, or HTML replaces Flash, I could see Gentoo
running with ICEWM or a lightweight desktop like XFCE or LXDE.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@××××××××.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications