[clue-tech] Interesting sidux/smxi news

[Nate Duehr]

Collins Richey wrote:
> Any of you that have tried Sidux (a KDE distro based on Debian sid
> with locally developed kernels and other extras) have probably used
> the smxi maintenance utility. Smxi (and a few related utilities)
> provides a standard, automatic way of performing dist-upgrades, kernel
> upgrades, holding back packages with nasty dependency chains, relinki
> proprietary video (and other) modules, cleanup crud, etc.

I thought the packagers who make the packages and the regular package 
managers (and also which repository you choose to use and what goes in 
it -- garbage in, garbage out) -- could already do all that!?

> The smxi developer has now severed any ties with Sidux development and
> is continuing to develop  smxi as a general purpose utility for any
> Debian or Debian-derived distro. The really interesting news
> (especially for Dave Anselmi who is a known fan of aptitude)  is that
> you now have a choice to maintain your system with smxi + aptitude or
> with smxi + apt-get.

Oh goodie.  More "choice" in a problem that was already not a problem 
ten years ago.  Does it do anything NEW the others don't do, other than 
keep insane packages already in the repository (that shouldn't have been 
there in the first place) out of your local machine?

> The Sidux developers are strongly opposed to aptitude (apparently
> based on bad experiences with a less capable aptitude release from
> several years ago), but recent experimentation with smxi + aptitude
> have shown that there are few if any problems even on Sidux.

So they couldn't just fix aptitude, noooo... had to create "something 
new" and fork fork fork... as usual.  Linux... (rolls eyes...)!

> One side benefit of using smxi with a Debian stable, testing, or sid
> variant is that you can install a minimal Debian with no X support
> (using the "business card" iso) then use smxi to
> install a much less bloated kde, gnome, xfce, etc. desktop with only
> the desktop packages that most people really need.


Which you can also do with every other package manager on the planet for 
Debian.  Does it do something different than those when going for a 
small system?


> For those of you who have an interest in smxi, the forum for news,
> shared experiences, bugs, etc. is at
> http://techpatterns.com/forums/forum-33.html. Scroll to the bottom of
> the forum groupings for smixi topics.


I probably will only do that if someone shows that it does something 
better for end-users in the UI than the other tools do.

Not trying to always be so negative, but what a waste of some very 
talented people's time.  I guess they don't see it as a waste, but the 
fixes to aptitude (or something else) would have been just as easy for 
them, as talented as they are, and they could have moved on to other 
things quicker.  Instead, like all distros, they needed ways to 
"differentiate" themselves, instead of helping the upstream.

"Choice Bloat" in package managers, is not going to help average people 
adopt Linux.  It's also once again, not going to help those of us who 
try to help friends/community with answers to their questions about 
"Linux".  ("Sorry man, I've never seen smxi, I don't use Sidux"... "But 
I thought this was Linux!")

Standards and the discipline NOT to create more tools to do things that 
can already be done, is so badly needed these days... every new 
(confusing) "choice" further marginalizes Linux unless the new "thing" 
is so much better, all the distros switch to it.  Which is exceedingly rare.

Nate