March QCLUG Meeting

---
date: 3/14/2017
topic: wierd ass distros
notes: >
  topic presentation notes:
      red star os: >
      - christian presented on red star os 3.0 which is north korea's linux operating system.
      - red star os is dubbed the most oppressive linux distribution and is locked down in various ways.
      - the current release of red star is 3.0 which appears to be based on rhel/centos 6 and has a 2.6 kernel
      - this release "appears" to have a kde 4 based desktop that looks nearly "identical" to max osx... ...
      - selinux is enabled by default
      - root is disabled out of the box and needs to be enabled manually...
      - the yum repositories appear to be broken as well as christian attempted to install the virtualbox guest additions which failed due to the inability to install gcc and make via yum...
      - travis the presented on red star os 2.0 (previous release)
      - this release uses a kde 3 desktop that looks like a mostly "stock" kde 3 experience
      - also appears to be centos based, and has a 2.6 kernel
     alpine linux: >
      - alex presented on alpine linux which is a security-oriented linux distribution with a focus on being light-weight
      - has no systemd
      - comes in a number of flavors, mini root, standard, virtual, etc.
      - after the quick presentation alex demonstrated the installation process for alpine linux.
      - basically you boot the iso, login as root (no password) and type setup-alpine which is a wizard-like script that interviews the user in a text based shell and eventually alpine gets installed.
      - alpine linux is mainly a busybox based distribution (aside from the package manager apk)
      - alex was able to get xfce working, however no applications are installed by default.
      - the packages in apk are mostly useful for non-desktop usage, however alex was able to install lynx with ease.
      - it appears to have cron, and boots from grub, and is mostly a usable linux distribution with obvious limitations around apk and busybox.
     guixsd: >
      - aaron presented guixsd and had to take notes since he is the secretary so you may not find many notes here on guix, however his presentation can be found here:
      - http://wiki.qclug.com/wiki/qclug_presentations/guix
      - correction, alex took notes in aaron's stead:
      - Has the Richard Stallman stamp of approval
      - Runs both Hurd or Linux Kernel
      - Guix is stolen from NixOS - "nix" package manager
      - Created with derivations (dumb shit people with too much time think)
      - Scheme or GNU Guile - functional programing language
      - no installer - Scheme script that accepts and answer file you must partition first
      - only USB Image
      - (Long winded discussion of using Partition Magic - Travis)
      - Does not use init or systemd uses GNU Daemon Shepherd - GNU project version of systemd
      - Herd kernel port!!!
      - Trying to be the GNU System
      - GUIX is special because it is a completely transactional package system
      - Package install is a "functional" aproach
      - Similiar to a python virtualenv but for your entire system.
      - Packages are per user - don't need to be root user to install software.
      - GUIX is the EMACs of distros
      - Travis: Oh, so its the shitty one!
      - Herd and Shepard are weird, run
      - herd start cow-store (funny stuff!)
      - Aaron is a true distro addict.  Guix came from Nix which somehow Aaron knew something about.
      - The GUIX website doc is confusing and many links are incorrect.  Who knows how Aaron got it installed.  Make sure you use the "one web page" don't use the page at a time instructions.
      - You can only install GUIX on ext4, don't try other OS's
      - GUIX has no cron.
      - GUIX installed comes with Gnome3 and a really new kernel.
      - GUIX prefers you use LibreSSH rather then OpenSSH
      - GUIX is definately a wierd ass distro.
      - guix is the package manager
      - guix is like gentoo, but more sucky - some packages are built from source.
      - stumbling discussion of what web browser to use - firefox, weird gnome browser blah.
     gobolinux: >
      - tom presented on gobolinux which is a distro that attempts to copy the M$ filesystem structure
      - it blatantly achieves this via symlinking and a kernel hack...
      - uses awesomevm for the desktop environment out of the box
      - has a virtualization tool called runner
      - packages are built from "receipes" which are package manifests which appear to be hosted from github
      - receipes result in a source package build
      - tom attempted to build a package, however it failed...
  side conversation notes:
    - alex has updated the qclug twitter page: https://twitter.com/qclug?lang=en
    - there appears to be a picture of an alcoholic penguin as a banner an lewd photos of unidentified individuals in the banner as well
    - also worth noting, a new Linux user showed up for the meeting and appeared to be equally obsessed with testing/installing various Linux distros as myself. His name was Gene and also he shared the same last name as yours truly.