The Relation of Carbs and KISS

posted on 2020-05-08

-Since I have forked KISS, I have received many questions that can be summarized -as "Why?". I have realized that I never truly answered this question. That's the -reason I am writing this post, to give some background on Carbs, and some -differences between KISS Linux and Carbs Linux for anyone who may be wondering. -Perhaps I could make this a "FAQ" page later on. -

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History

-I had the idea of creating my own Linux distribution since the May of 2019. Back -then, I had my own Linux from Scratch build, and I wanted to slim it down my -own way and replace the software (with musl,sbase,etc.). The name Carbs Linux -was in my mind since then. I wanted to write my own package manager, but I -wasn't satisfied with anything I had built. -

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-I had written some incomplete package managers (all named fat) and I quickly -threw them into the trash can, where they honestly belonged. I would want to -share them with you for laughs, but my hard-drive got wiped and I have a problem -of not doing an "initial commit" until a program I write is in a usable state. -

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-I have obtained the 'carbslinux.org' domain name in September 2019, but then -life got on the way, and I stopped for a long time. -

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-One day on Reddit, I saw Dylan's post on r/unixporn about KISS, and I really -thought that it was interesting. Here is my comment to Dylan on that post. I -checked out the package manager and the repository. The packaging system was -extremely clean and well-thought. I decided to give it a go and fork KISS. -

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Differences between KISS and Carbs

-Now, I still baffle when people ask me this question. My intention was never to -create a distribution with specific differences between KISS. My intention was -being my own BDFL of a distribution I maintain. There are lots of differences -between the main repositories, but they are subtle and not worth talking about. -I personally never even installed KISS Linux on my system. So Carbs, isn't -something like a downstream fork of KISS, it is just a distribution that was -initially based on KISS. -

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-I try to contribute as much as I can to KISS Linux. I think that it is a -brilliant distribution, and it was a great starting point for Carbs. I am really -grateful to Dylan and all the other contributors. -

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What I'm working on now

-Currently I have a few projects that I'm working on for Carbs. These are, -

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-A BSD port for Carbs. For a while, I have been working on BSD compatibility on -my fork of the [package manager]. I have tested, without any more issues, on -OpenBSD and FreeBSD. The biggest issues remaining are choosing a vendor for BSD, -packaging the BSD source, and providing a minimal base (like busybox for BSD). -If you aren't familiar with BSD, it has a single source code for all of the -utilities (kernel, command line programs, etc.). Contributions (even chipping in -ideas) are very welcome. -

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-Adding binary package distribution support natively to the package manager. -Biggest issue in small/old computers are compile times. This feature is for the -bigger packages such as webkit, clang, llvm that take a considerable amount of -time. Some computers with low memories cannot even compile firefox/webkit. -

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-Adding rsync repository support to the package manager. This is not a current -issue, but rather a futureproofing. As time passes, distribution repositories -grow larger. KISS and Carbs are young distributions without this problem right -now. But in something like 5 years, this size will presumably increase to -hundreds of megabytes. At that point it will be pointless to have the repository -sources unless you specifically need them. -

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What's up with all the init/service daemons?

-If you have ever checked the repository, you may have noticed that there are -lots of init/service related packages. I have had my fair share of time with all -of them, and it is an area that I am really interested in. I have even written -my own init daemon and service supervisor. I maintain all those packages on KISS -Community Repository as well with the exception of busybox. Those are, busybox -init/runit, runit, sinit, and sysmgr. I would definitely recommend -checking out shinit and sysmgr. -

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Why I don't publicize Carbs

-There are a couple of reasons I don't publicize Carbs a lot. -

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-KISS is the better alternative in terms of support and community. I work on -maintaining this distribution just as hard as Dylan, but in the end, Carbs is -based on his original hard work, and I believe that he deserves the recognition -more than I do. -

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-Since I cannot answer questions like "What is the difference?", I prefer staying -as the silent sibling project of KISS Linux. Plus, there is no point in dividing -the newly-emerging community in half. -

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-That's not because I don't have ideas for the future of Carbs, I do. I just -think that I will deserve the recognition once those above lists are checked. -

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-I think that's about it, if you have questions you can send me a mail, ping me -on IRC (my handle is merakor), and I will be happy to answer. Maybe your -question fits this post, and I can update it to thoroughly give an explanation. -