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Title: The Relation of Carbs and KISS
**Date:** May 08 2020
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[Linux from Scratch]: https://linuxfromscratch.org
[r/unixporn]: https://reddit.com/r/unixporn
[comment]: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/ducd34/sowm_kiss_d/f7lua7x
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.
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.
What I'm working on now
-----------------------
Currently I have a few projects that I'm working on for Carbs.
These are,
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.
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.
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.
[package manager]: https://github.com/carbslinux/kiss
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`.
[repository]: https://github.com/carbslinux/repository
[init daemon]: https://github.com/cemkeylan/shinit
[service supervisor]: https://github.com/cemkeylan/sysmgr
Why I don't publicize Carbs
---------------------------
There are a couple of reasons I don't publicize Carbs a lot.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Cheers,
Cem
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