FAQ
Why another distro?
It is an operating system, and while it does not have its own kernel at the moment (even then, it's not necessarily tied to any either), it does have a lot of tools developed and being developed for it.
What is Eltanin/Glacies?
- Eltanin = The operating system.
- Glacies = An Eltanin's distribution.
The distinction exists to make its identity clear and that it has no attachment to any kernel. Other distributions may appear and our own solution may appear sooner than later (join the communities to receive news).
Why not help project X?
You can read about the project goals in the main page, while there are other projects with similar goals the differences are too significant to consider uniting with another project of the same niche.
For instance all the project tools uses the libC tertium instead of the standard libC (see comparison) and redo instead of make, which (following the principle of interoperability) is used to build arbor and venus.
It also uses third-party tools that are aligned with the project's goals: execline for scripting, s6 and s6-rc as init-system, arcan as display server.
So it's more sensical to benefit tools aligned with the project's goals (with the testing and extra attention) instead of "uniting" with project of different views.
Why not software X?
If you wonder the reason for a software to be absent or replaced by another, in general, it will always be because it goes against the project's principles or another serves it better.
PulseAudio
The main problem, ignoring the already well-known issues (instability, latency, crackling/corrupted sound, etc.), is that it only exists, in the way it does, because the underlying audio system sucks. Ideally, the solution is never to add an layer to fix what is essentially broken. Layers are meant to interoperate different levels of abstraction, not to "fix" things.
SystemD
It has a reasonable, perhaps even good, design for service management and makes writing and handling them easier; however, there are several caveats: it's too large to audit (half a million lines of code), binary logs (easy to corrupt and hard to interoperate), lacks modularity (which is different from unnecessary fragmentation), tries to achieve too much (unrelated things), is difficult to port, etc.
Wayland
The official protocols are either too lacking (core) or too restrictive (i.e xdg-shell imposing CSD). The desktop is not a kiosk environment, so providing custom extensions to support porting of applications harms portability (we still have no common grounds in this aspect).
Furthermore, the approach to security seems to disregard the level of abstraction at which it operates. A desktop is seen as an unified entity; users expect the ability to copy and paste text, drag content from one window to another, record audio/video, etc. Thus, usability is compromised by isolation. The means to work around this (isolation) creates dependencies on specific softwares (i.e dbus and pipewire), increasing the attack surface and weakening security promises. This dialogue is crucial, where a security model should be applied (which doesn’t exist in this case), and it highlights that isolation cannot be an end in itself.
About Simia
It's a POSIX compatibility layer (akin to glibc or musl) for tertium. While not in use at the moment, it will take place as default POSIX libC for all the Eltanin distributions (until then it's likely that a merged version will be put to use). It exists for portability reasons and to interoperate with the non-POSIX libC tertium.