So, the latest happenings on my media center is I flashed a 512 MB SD card with OpenELEC, and I can get it to play almost all of my media files from the server without any special config. I realized, though, that my wireless network USB dongle is too slow to transfer full HD material, so I'll have to pull wired network into my room, install a switch, and maybe tinker a little with the setup. I am preparing to flash another 8 GB card with RaspBMC, though, so I get a full-featured Debian install instead of OpenELEC bare minimum. This is solely because I want to be able to have an MPD server on the Pi to play music with the TV turned off...
My current setup is as follows:
- Raspberry Pi: OpenELEC media center, connected to the TV.
- CuBox: file server, and that's pretty much it.
- Kerstin: My old P3 low-power desktop running Debian to play music via MPD.
This is not optimal, as Kerstin could be optional. However, Kerstin is housing a Creative Audigy 2 ZS sound card, and I don't want to sacrifice that if I can avoid it. If I can get my hands on an ARM box with PCIe support, I might be able to do something about that. It would probably be easier to get a USB sound card, though. In fact, I do have one already. That'll be it about the media center, now on to some other Linux related.
In the book "After The Software Wars", Keith Curtis is (among other things) presenting a theory that eventually, all Linux distributions will merge into one single distribution that is the ultimate one. His reasoning follows Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest. However, there's a fact that he doesn't count in.
In the animal kingdom, there is not one animal suited for every environment on the planet. In the domain of operating systems, there is not one OS suited for every task a computer could accomplish. The Linux kernel has shown that it is possible to make a kernel that suits pretty much every possible application, but that does not apply on whole operating systems. Let us look at some examples:
- Debian GNU/Linux is a distribution with a strong focus on stability and freedom. They simply do not allow unfree packages into their repositories, even Firefox is considered too "unfree" for Debian. Debian is also conservative, meaning they have a pretty old package database, compared to...
- Arch Linux, which is a bleeding-edge, rolling release distribution with a focus on simplicity in code, and the user's abiĺity and right to reconfigure pretty much everything in the system. Arch Linux allows pretty much anything stable enough into the repositories, and for unstable or proprietary software, there is the source-based unofficial Arch User Repository.
- OpenELEC is a distro aimed at providing a media-center solution. It is built from scratch, and includes neither a package manager nor build tools, so adding extra Linux packages is not easily done, though not impossible. The OpenELEC OS is under 100MB in size, making it ideal to run on a Raspberry Pi with a 512MB SD card, for example.
- Ubuntu is a distro aimed at new users. It's philosophy is simplicity for the user, and the slogan is "Linux for human beings". This philosophy is nearly the opposite of Arch Linux, and Ubuntu is also built so that users should not nee to configure their system if they do not desire to do so.
Is there an ultimate distro among these? One that is perfect for all tasks? No. Debian, Arch and Ubuntu may all work as media centers, but they won't run on a 128 MB SD card, and to get directly into the media center environment, non-trivial configuration is required. Both Debian and Ubuntu will work as server environments, but Arch Linux is not really a great choice for a web server, due to the natural unstability of a rolling release distribution compared to a fixed release cycle. OpenELEC is NOT a good server OS. For the desktop, Debian won't be a good choice for inexperienced users, as LibreOffice is not in the package repositories. Neither will Arch, as you get to a command line at first boot. For the tinkering developer who want an easy install of source code, Arch is perfect.
All of these different user cases may be seen as different environments. Of course, it is possible to make a distro, let's call it Z.org (X.org is used), that may be configured with a GUI at installation to be anything you want. To satisfy the tinkering user, it must be complex and allow for a complex setup. To satisfy the first-timer, it must be point-and-click installation. These two wills do conflict with each other. It's possible to take care of this, but it requires a lot of effort, and smart people thinking. And when it is finally implemented, the system will NEVER be able to fit on a 128MB SD card. It may be installed to an SD card from another computer, though.
But neverthless, there is a clear conflict between the experienced users, who still prefer the command line, and the new, inexperienced users, who will most likely want to stay away from the terminal. Z.org would have to take this into account, and it might just be easier to have several distributions to deal with this. Moore's law might be able to solve the issue of large install media for Z.org, but given the current 29% yearly increment of internet traffic (numbers provided by Cisco), that will take a little while.
One thing the Linux distros could really settle between them though is the packaging. Having RPM, .deb, .tar.xz, and many others doesn't make much sense. I'm not the right person to determine which format to use, though I prefer the Arch Linux package manager, pacman, which uses .tar.xz-packages.
