From d672052e9485d108d50335212ea06623ddb907a0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Nathan Fisher Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2022 19:56:40 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] New post --- .gitignore | 2 + content/news/development-restarted.md | 59 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 61 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/news/development-restarted.md diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore index 364fdec..b1aa779 100644 --- a/.gitignore +++ b/.gitignore @@ -1 +1,3 @@ public/ +tags +tags.* diff --git a/content/news/development-restarted.md b/content/news/development-restarted.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..212c3cf --- /dev/null +++ b/content/news/development-restarted.md @@ -0,0 +1,59 @@ ++++ +title = "Development Restarted" +date = 2022-09-04 +[taxonomies] +tags = ["Site News"] +categories = ["Site News"] ++++ +Development on HitchHiker Linux had slowed quite a bit over the past year and a half. +It had not entirely stopped, as the base was staying in sync with new versions of the +base packages such as gcc, glibc and the kernel, but no real new development had taken +place. At the point that it was left, hhl was at a state of being *almost* bootable on +x86_64 and Raspberry Pi. It is now officially booting and running on x86_64. + +Some of the reasons for the hiatus were personal, having been spending too much time on +this project and not enough with family. Others were due to being stalled on a few +(mostly) simple problems. The most daunting seemed at first to be figuring out s6-rc. +This turned out to be not all that complicated in the end, but was complicated by the +documentation leaving out a number of key pieces of information. This often happens in +open source, of course. + +While there is no automatic mechanism in place for handling changes to the boot process +and which processes are to be started and shut down, it is happily running on a dual +boot with Arch on one of my laptops and I am happy with s6. It is fast and light. You +don't really notice that it's there, actually. + +## Some other changes +I've given up on using The One True Awk and have gone with Gawk instead, due to changes +in Pkgsrc not recognizing that we have a valid Awk installed. This get's frustrating, +but as Gawk is already required to build some of the base packages it also created a +bootstrapping problem and had to be built as part of the temporary toolchain when +building the base system from source. If I can track down the Pkgsrc issue I reserve the +right to go back. We'll see. + +The kernel config that will ship with binary sets on x86 is based off of Slackware's +Huge_S kernel. This will allow HitcHiker to boot on most hardware without an initrd, +greatly simplifying development. Users are encouraged to build a kernel suited to their +own hardware. + +## Packages, or what is the system like? +On my machine I've currently got both Xfce4 and Mate desktops installed. There are a +large number of WindowManagers also compiled as packages. My only persistent issue at +the moment is that my touchpad is not recognized as such, and is instead treated as a +ps2 mouse. This isn't high on my list of priorities as I'm not a big mouse user to +begin with, but I'd like to track it down and provide a fix. + +Other than that issue the system is pretty nice. There are areas where pkgsrc lags +behind Arch and you don't get as up to date libraries, so a few of my other projects +aren't able to compile on HitchHiker yet. But out of curiosity I tried to manually +compile and install Flatpak and was surprised to get it working quite easily. As I'm +in the process of migrating some of my graphical applications to target Gnome +specifically, a couple of them are already almost ready to upload to FlatHub at this +point. Now, I have mixed feelings about Flatpak and containerized anything, but it +does provide a path forward to use HitchHiker as a daily driver and still be able +to do the other development work that I have been engaged in. + +I have two machines running periodically compiling packages from Pkgsrc. Currently, +the number of packages that are ready to go is up to 2261. Pkgin seems to be quite +a nice package manager, and the command line is easy to understand compared with, +say, Pacman.