Here's an exercise in extreme masochism:
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I am not enough educated about this, but don't these kind of games unnecesarrily strain all the servers that host the packages for people that really need them for download and most of these people run these servers for free in good will and faith that they will serve meaningful needs with positive resulty? I know I am spoiling the fun, but I felt like I had to point this out.
As other commenters have said, its about as strenuous as doing two normal installs.
However, if you want to do this challenge but feel guilty about the consumed resources, consider donating to the two distros you are performing this with to cover any additional service costs. In all likelihood it'll be fractions of pennies, but any reason to donate to FOSS is always appreciated.
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The beauty of this exercise is you can make it as easy or challenging as you want just by changing the targets, and finding different combinations can keep things interesting.
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I once switched from Debian i386 to amd64 in-place. That was MUCH harder than you would expect, I guess somewhere between medium and hard in your list. That server is still running that install btw, so in the end it all worked out.
I had forgotten about doing that myself. I did that on a couple servers once the distros had full 64 bit builds. Does that technically count as an architecture swap in-place as well?
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The Linux Ship of Theseus
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pick any distro and install it.
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Then, without installing another distro over the top of it, slowly convert it into another distro by replacing package managers, installed packages, and configurations.
System must be usable and fully native to the new distro (all old packages replaced with new ones).
No flatpaks, avoid snaps where physically possible, native packages only.
Easy: pick two similar distros, such as Ubuntu and Debian or Manjaro and Arch and go from the base to the derivative.
Medium: Same as easy but go from the derivative to the base.
Hard: Pick two disparate distros like Debian and Artix and go from one to the other.
Nightmare: Make a self-compiled distro your target.
Theoretically one could also prohibit rebooting.
IIRC
kexecis pivot_root but for the kernel. -
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The Linux Ship of Theseus
-
pick any distro and install it.
-
Then, without installing another distro over the top of it, slowly convert it into another distro by replacing package managers, installed packages, and configurations.
System must be usable and fully native to the new distro (all old packages replaced with new ones).
No flatpaks, avoid snaps where physically possible, native packages only.
Easy: pick two similar distros, such as Ubuntu and Debian or Manjaro and Arch and go from the base to the derivative.
Medium: Same as easy but go from the derivative to the base.
Hard: Pick two disparate distros like Debian and Artix and go from one to the other.
Nightmare: Make a self-compiled distro your target.
Love the idea of the challenge, my issue would be lack of a validator tool to confirm I'd completed the challenge - any suggestions?
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I "broke" linux mint just by trying to pop KDE on, had to timeshift because it messed up my keyboard layout and a whole bunch of other things with my display.
I don't know how people do these crazy changes without pain, and have a feeling the answer is simply "there's pain"
-
The Linux Ship of Theseus
-
pick any distro and install it.
-
Then, without installing another distro over the top of it, slowly convert it into another distro by replacing package managers, installed packages, and configurations.
System must be usable and fully native to the new distro (all old packages replaced with new ones).
No flatpaks, avoid snaps where physically possible, native packages only.
Easy: pick two similar distros, such as Ubuntu and Debian or Manjaro and Arch and go from the base to the derivative.
Medium: Same as easy but go from the derivative to the base.
Hard: Pick two disparate distros like Debian and Artix and go from one to the other.
Nightmare: Make a self-compiled distro your target.
The compiled distros should be easy instead of nightmare tbh
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The Linux Ship of Theseus
-
pick any distro and install it.
-
Then, without installing another distro over the top of it, slowly convert it into another distro by replacing package managers, installed packages, and configurations.
System must be usable and fully native to the new distro (all old packages replaced with new ones).
No flatpaks, avoid snaps where physically possible, native packages only.
Easy: pick two similar distros, such as Ubuntu and Debian or Manjaro and Arch and go from the base to the derivative.
Medium: Same as easy but go from the derivative to the base.
Hard: Pick two disparate distros like Debian and Artix and go from one to the other.
Nightmare: Make a self-compiled distro your target.
This is what I was doing with my server. I've learned there's no better feeling than starting from scratch.
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The Linux Ship of Theseus
-
pick any distro and install it.
-
Then, without installing another distro over the top of it, slowly convert it into another distro by replacing package managers, installed packages, and configurations.
System must be usable and fully native to the new distro (all old packages replaced with new ones).
No flatpaks, avoid snaps where physically possible, native packages only.
Easy: pick two similar distros, such as Ubuntu and Debian or Manjaro and Arch and go from the base to the derivative.
Medium: Same as easy but go from the derivative to the base.
Hard: Pick two disparate distros like Debian and Artix and go from one to the other.
Nightmare: Make a self-compiled distro your target.
Ummm you go first.
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The Linux Ship of Theseus
-
pick any distro and install it.
-
Then, without installing another distro over the top of it, slowly convert it into another distro by replacing package managers, installed packages, and configurations.
System must be usable and fully native to the new distro (all old packages replaced with new ones).
No flatpaks, avoid snaps where physically possible, native packages only.
Easy: pick two similar distros, such as Ubuntu and Debian or Manjaro and Arch and go from the base to the derivative.
Medium: Same as easy but go from the derivative to the base.
Hard: Pick two disparate distros like Debian and Artix and go from one to the other.
Nightmare: Make a self-compiled distro your target.
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I had forgotten about doing that myself. I did that on a couple servers once the distros had full 64 bit builds. Does that technically count as an architecture swap in-place as well?
Absolutely, that's basically the same thing
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Love the idea of the challenge, my issue would be lack of a validator tool to confirm I'd completed the challenge - any suggestions?
You use the new franken system to do an update to the new version of that distro's flavour without bricking the system.
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The Linux Ship of Theseus
-
pick any distro and install it.
-
Then, without installing another distro over the top of it, slowly convert it into another distro by replacing package managers, installed packages, and configurations.
System must be usable and fully native to the new distro (all old packages replaced with new ones).
No flatpaks, avoid snaps where physically possible, native packages only.
Easy: pick two similar distros, such as Ubuntu and Debian or Manjaro and Arch and go from the base to the derivative.
Medium: Same as easy but go from the derivative to the base.
Hard: Pick two disparate distros like Debian and Artix and go from one to the other.
Nightmare: Make a self-compiled distro your target.
Okay i'll cheat with Guix then
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Love the idea of the challenge, my issue would be lack of a validator tool to confirm I'd completed the challenge - any suggestions?
After completing the challenge and making sure your system is usable and can survive a reboot:
If you've kept the old package manager, search for installed packages and make sure that the package manager itself is the only thing left. Then delete itm
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The Linux Ship of Theseus
-
pick any distro and install it.
-
Then, without installing another distro over the top of it, slowly convert it into another distro by replacing package managers, installed packages, and configurations.
System must be usable and fully native to the new distro (all old packages replaced with new ones).
No flatpaks, avoid snaps where physically possible, native packages only.
Easy: pick two similar distros, such as Ubuntu and Debian or Manjaro and Arch and go from the base to the derivative.
Medium: Same as easy but go from the derivative to the base.
Hard: Pick two disparate distros like Debian and Artix and go from one to the other.
Nightmare: Make a self-compiled distro your target.
without installing another distro over the top of it ... [replace] package managers
The package manager is the distro, though.
$ pacman -S apk-tools $ apk add alpine-base linux-ltsThen
kexecto alpine's kernel and theinitramfsgenerated by its installation (which would incidentally "replace" PID 1 with the new/sbin/init). For clean up you could take a diff of "tar -t" for all the installed packages from both distros then delete the files only in the old distro's packages.Make a self-compiled distro your target.
Replace the first step with a compilation of
apk,abuildeverything required byalpine-baseandlinux-lts(git clone aportsto bootstrap that work), then add the package directory to/etc/apk/repositoriesbefore the second step. Next, begin to worry that you haven't fully broken free yet, replaceabuildwith a bespokemybuildandapkwithtar -x, grapple with signed binaries, reflect on your own identity and authenticity, then take a tour throughgentooand find yourself missing the$HOMEyou left and its familiar comforts. -
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Reminds me of a recent post someone converted their system from Debian to OpenBSD via SSH only
Why does that sound familiar.
Did they load an OS into ram to run ssh then rebuild the machine, also some VPS that the provider was dragging their feet on remote hands.
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Why does that sound familiar.
Did they load an OS into ram to run ssh then rebuild the machine, also some VPS that the provider was dragging their feet on remote hands.
I can't find it now but basically something like that yeah. VPS provider only gave them SSH on linux so couldn't run the openbsd installer any normal way either
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I "broke" linux mint just by trying to pop KDE on, had to timeshift because it messed up my keyboard layout and a whole bunch of other things with my display.
I don't know how people do these crazy changes without pain, and have a feeling the answer is simply "there's pain"
wrote on last edited by [email protected].
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I once switched from Debian i386 to amd64 in-place. That was MUCH harder than you would expect, I guess somewhere between medium and hard in your list. That server is still running that install btw, so in the end it all worked out.
wrote on last edited by [email protected].
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The Linux Ship of Theseus
-
pick any distro and install it.
-
Then, without installing another distro over the top of it, slowly convert it into another distro by replacing package managers, installed packages, and configurations.
System must be usable and fully native to the new distro (all old packages replaced with new ones).
No flatpaks, avoid snaps where physically possible, native packages only.
Easy: pick two similar distros, such as Ubuntu and Debian or Manjaro and Arch and go from the base to the derivative.
Medium: Same as easy but go from the derivative to the base.
Hard: Pick two disparate distros like Debian and Artix and go from one to the other.
Nightmare: Make a self-compiled distro your target.
I've done the Arch to Artix. It wasn't hard, per se, but it took a while. I think that should be Medium, because Artix isn't just an Arch derivative.
In fact, might I suggest a different way of looking at the difficulties?
- Replacing the package manager: Hard.
- Replacing the package manager without a live USB: Extreme.
- Going from a basic systemd-based distro (init, log, cron) to anything else: Hard
- Going from a systemd distro that's bought into the entire systemd stack, including home and boot: Extreme
- Going from one init to another: Medium
- Changing boot systems: grub to UEFI, for example: Easy.
- Replacing all GNU tools with other things: Extreme (mainly because of script expectations).
And so on. You get 1 point for Easy, 2 for Medium, 4 for Hard, and 8 for Extreme. Add 'em up, go for a high score.
I don't think rolling your own is that hard, TBH, unless you're expected to also build a package manager. If maintaining it would be harder than building it.
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