Trident OS Developers on the migration of the project to Linux. The Trident project develops a ready-to-use graphical user distribution reminiscent of older PC-BSD and TrueOS releases. Initially, Trident was built on FreeBSD and TrueOS technologies, utilizing the ZFS file system and OpenRC initialization system. The project was founded by developers involved in TrueOS and positioned as an adjacent project (TrueOS is a platform for creating distributions, while Trident is a distribution for end users based on this platform).
Next year, the releases of Trident are set to be moved to the distribution's developments . The reason for migrating from BSD to Linux was the inability to address certain issues limiting users of the distribution in any other way. These problematic areas include hardware compatibility, support for modern communication standards, and package availability. Issues in these areas hinder the achievement of the project's main goal — preparing a user-friendly graphical environment.
When choosing a new base, the following requirements were defined:
- The ability to use unmodified (without recompilation) and regularly updated packages from the parent distribution;
- A predictable product development model (the environment should be conservative and maintain a familiar structure for many years);
- Simplicity in system organization (a set of small, easily updated, and fast components in the style of BSD systems rather than monolithic and complex solutions);
- Acceptance of changes from third parties and the presence of a continuous integration system for testing and building;
- A working graphical subsystem, but without dependence on already established communities developing desktop environments (Trident plans to collaborate with the developers of the base distribution and work together on desktop development and the creation of specific utilities to enhance usability);
- Quality support for current hardware and regular updates for hardware-related components of the distribution (drivers, kernel);
The distribution that most closely fits the stated requirements is , adhering to a rolling release model with continuous version updates (rolling updates, without separate distribution releases). Void Linux utilizes a simple system manager for initializing and managing services , using its own package manager and a package build system . As its standard library, it uses , and replaces OpenSSL with LibreSSL. Void Linux does not support installation on a ZFS partition, but the Trident developers do not see a problem implementing such a feature independently via the module . Interaction with Void Linux is also simplified due to its contributions under the BSD license.
. It is expected that after transitioning to Void Linux, Trident will expand support for graphics cards and provide users with more modern graphics drivers, as well as improve support for sound cards, audio streaming, support for audio transmission over HDMI, enhance support for wireless network adapters and Bluetooth interface devices. Additionally, users will be offered more up-to-date versions of programs, a speedier boot process, and support for hybrid installations on UEFI systems.
Among the downsides of migration is the loss of the familiar environment and utilities developed by the TrueOS project for system configuration, such as sysadm. To address this issue, plans are in place to create universal replacements for such utilities, independent of the OS type. The first release of the new edition of Trident is scheduled for January 2020. Before the release, the formation of test alpha and beta builds is not ruled out. Migration to the new system will require manually transferring the contents of the /home partition.
Support for BSD builds will be immediately after the new edition release, and the stable package repository based on FreeBSD 12 will be removed in April 2020 (the experimental repository based on FreeBSD 13-Current will be removed in January).
Of the current distributions based on TrueOS, the project remains
, offering the MATE desktop. Like Trident, GhostBSD uses the OpenRC initialization system and the ZFS file system by default, but additionally supports live mode operation. After the migration of Trident to Linux, the GhostBSD developers , maintaining their commitment to BSD systems and will continue to use the stable branch. as the foundation for their distribution.
Source: opennet.ru
