The end of Quirky Linux

I have been thinking about closing down Quirky Linux for sometime. The fundamental problem is that my efforts get spread too thin. To do a "good job", I need to be focused, and something has to go. My baby now is EasyOS, which is where most of the development goes, and although I released new versions of Quirky recently, they had minimal testing.

There is a review of Quirky 8.6 on Distrowatch:

https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20181001#quirky

...to which I responded, see comment 101.

I know that there are many people who like Quirky, and will be unhappy that I am retiring it.

In future, I intend to develop EasyOS only, and with some restrictions:

Quirky and EasyOS are built with woofQ, which can use the binary packages of any distro -- for example Quirky 8.6 is built from Ubuntu DEBs. However, I am intending to stop all of that, and only build EasyOS from packages that I have compiled from source -- that is, the entire distro is compiled by me from source. Currently, this is the "Pyro" series of EasyOS.

So, Easy Beaver, EasyOS built with Ubuntu DEBs, will also be retired.

There will only be a x86_64 and aarch64 builds of EasyOS, no 32-bit.

Someone who wants a highly polished distro, with a huge repository, will have to go elsewhere. An offical Puppy Linux release may suit such a person.

Which brings me to another issue...

I may stop using the Puppy Linux Forum for discussion of Quirky and Easy. I will probably start another forum just for EasyOS, or someone might volunteer to undertake that responsibility.

The reason is, I am concerned about the confusion on the Puppy Forum. It is no longer clear what "Puppy Linux" is. I have been increasingly moving to the viewpoint that if a distribution is built with woof-CE (the Community Edition Puppy Linux builder), or a remaster of one, then it is OK to be on the Puppy Forum. All of the other offshoots should get off.

Or the forum be redesigned so that the offshoots are clearly distinct and cannot be mis-identified as a "Puppy Linux".

Of course, this is a decision for the administrators of the Puppy Forum. I have my doubts that there is enough motivation to make any significant changes, or any changes.

Finally, repeating what I posted a couple of days ago:

I retired from leading the Puppy Linux project in 2013, now just dabbling in some experimental distros, Quirky and EasyOS.

Furthermore, Quirky and EasyOS are very much just hobbies. I'm not really interested whether they become mainline or widely-adopted distributions. So, I am not trying to develop them toward suitability for a wide user-base. On the otherhand, if a wider user-base find them useful, that's OK also.

My interest is in the technology, just to play around with ideas, and have something usable for myself, and usable also for those involved in providing feedback and testing.

If you want to discuss this, I suggest start a thread on the Puppy Forum.

Tags: quirky