Part of the same project as Bazzite (Universal Blue) so it's just a static Fedora with some added programs and bash scripts.
"Aurora is a paradigm shift for Linux." "Dream about the stars" "Launch a space rocket" - everything about this, down to the choice of the crudely drawn desktop wallpaper, suggests to me that this was done by very young people. If a few kids want to make themselves a "distro" like this, go for it, just don't advertise it as anything more than a simple pet project, let alone a "paradigm shift".
I think the paradigm shift is/was Fedora Silverblue, OSTree/bootc. Using these immutable distro tools makes it really easy to build your own distributions.
Besides that, IIRC this is based on Fedora, so it stands on the shoulders of over two decades of work on Fedora.
The catch with immutable linux is that it can be hard or undesirable to install some core parts like window managers or docker.
So much better approach is to get most of what you prefer by picking right distro. On the other hand ublue makes it very upproachable to make such distros (even yourself). Thats why there are so many of them.
Maybe. The appeal of distros like these is lost on those who know linux well. If you are new to linux, the difference between Aurora/Bazzite/Bluefin and base fedora (silverblue, kinoite) can be like day and night.
This. In similar vein, buddy just converted few people to bazzite. I think the idea itself is neat ( we are only a step away now from combining that and qubes ). I am on kinoite myself for my ai dedicated box.
I wonder if the unspoken “paradigm” shift is the distribution was vibe coded.
There’s a lot of contradictions on the landing page that would easily be explained by either kids writing it, or someone vibecoding the site.
Such as their claim that updates are a “single iso”, and also their claim about a single App Store, and they then go on to discuss flatpak and homebrew package management.
Or their claim to have redesigned the desktop from the ground up, while boasting they run KDE/Plasma.
And there’s also the claims that it brings something totally new while then going on to describe core Linux features.
Also the scripts running “non intrusively” yet that’s just what you’d expect any seasoned admin to do. This isn’t a headline feature unless you’re new to the game.
Good luck to the guys. I hope they enjoy the exercise. But this is definitely a hobby project cosplaying as a serious distro
I'm not sure where some of these "contradictions" come from, as I e.g. can't find anything about them having "redesigned the desktop" on the page with those keywords. But for the rest, I don't see how they are contradictory - at least if you've spent a few seconds to understand them.
> Such as their claim that updates are a “single iso”
Updates literally are a "single image" (didn't see "iso" mentioned). Where is the contradiction?
> and also their claim about a single App Store, and they then go on to discuss flatpak and homebrew package management.
There literally is a single app store. Homebrew is not used to install apps, only for CLI tools. Flatpak is the single app store which users use to install apps (through Bazaar). Where is the contradiction?
> And there’s also the claims that it brings something totally new while then going on to describe core Linux features.
Can you explain what exactly you're referring to?
> Also the scripts running “non intrusively” yet that’s just what you’d expect any seasoned admin to do. This isn’t a headline feature unless you’re new to the game.
This distribution isn't targeted at "seasoned admins", so why wouldn't they mention something relevant to their target group? No contradiction here.
Yeah I was typing from memory on phone. So the citations aren’t going to be verbatim.
> Updates literally are a "single image" (didn't see "iso" mentioned). Where is the contradiction?
Because that’s not how homebrew works. And you can’t have a single image if you’re expecting people to install apps via their multiple different endorsed delivery mechanisms.
> There literally is a single app store. Homebrew is not used to install apps, only for CLI tools. Flatpak is the single app store which users use to install apps (through Bazaar). Where is the contradiction?
Because an App Store is ostensibly just a package manager. I get they’re making a distinction between desktop apps and CLI (homebrew does GUI apps too by the way), but when their emphasis is on “easy” and “one way to do things”, having two different ways to install apps contradicts their mission statement.
If they actually cared about this mission statement AND had half the competence they claim, they’d build a unified UI that supports all use cases rather than expect people to learn those different tools and why it matters that they’re different.
> Can you explain what exactly you're referring to?
“Aurora is a paradigm shift for Linux.
To rethink the Linux Desktop experience from the ground up, we built Aurora on new technology and principles.”
Bazaar, Plasma, homebrew, etc. none of this is unique to Thor distribution.
They also boast about being able to rollback updates. That isn’t new to Linux either. Though I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they’ve created a smoother default experience here.
> This distribution isn't targeted at "seasoned admins", so why wouldn't they mention something relevant to their target group? No contradiction here.
i didn’t say thy are targeting seasoned admins. I said seasoned admins would take for granted that’s how you’d write that code. So wouldn’t even consider it something to announce.
The only reason you’d announce it would be because you hadn’t worked in this space before and feel a sense of achievement doing the bloody obvious. (And to be clear, I have zero issue with people having projects like these to learn new skills)
Also, I clearly didn’t say “literally everything was a contradiction.”
I am interested who you think this is targeting. Because they do specifically say this is for developers (amongst other people). And the reason they give (VSCode) is a pretty noob argument. If you can’t figure out how to install an IDE then you’re clearly tech savvy enough to be a developer.
the updates being a single image has nothing to do with homebrew. The OS is a single image that gets updated, that 100% the same that every user will get daily or weekly (depending on what branch/stream you are on).
I get that. But my point is if you’ve got 100+ bits of software installed via homebrew and flatpak, then it’s a bit of a stretch to say updates are a single image.
I’m sure there is a reason for their design but the messaging is all over the place. They boast about things that you should expect to happen (like testing packages before releasing - even bleeding edge distros do this) and throw superlatives around with little substance to back them up while quoting pretty run-of-the-mill choices like KDE and VSCode. It leaves an overall impression that the people behind it can’t be taken to seriously.
If that’s unfair then I’m sorry. But it’s their job to convince me that I should trust them with something as important as an OS. It’s not my job to give them the benefit of the doubt.
If that distro is even just half as good as it claims, then they need to seriously redesign the entire landing page to be more focused on what those gains are. And I say this as someone who's ran several open source projects myself and has immense difficulties designing landing pages for them. I know it's a hard thing to get right. In fact I think it's actually harder than creating a new distro.
> Because that’s not how homebrew works. And you can’t have a single image if you’re expecting people to install apps via their multiple different endorsed delivery mechanisms.
As the other poster said, Homebrew has nothing to do with this. Please read up on how the technology works before declaring this a contradiction.
> Because an App Store is ostensibly just a package manager. I get they’re making a distinction between desktop apps and CLI (homebrew does GUI apps too by the way), but when their emphasis is on “easy” and “one way to do things”, having two different ways to install apps contradicts their mission statement.
You don't install the same things using Homebrew and Flatpak. You install apps through Flatpak, and non-apps through Homebrew etc. There aren't two ways to install apps.
Are you referring to "casks" when talking about GUI apps through Homebrew? Is that even supported on Linux?
> If they actually cared about this mission statement AND had half the competence they claim, they’d build a unified UI that supports all use cases rather than expect people to learn those different tools and why it matters that they’re different.
No, you're just arbitrarily asking for them to make changes based on your misunderstandings of the use cases of each tool.
> The only reason you’d announce it would be because you hadn’t worked in this space before and feel a sense of achievement doing the bloody obvious. (And to be clear, I have zero issue with people having projects like these to learn new skills)
No, that's not the only reason, but you're looking at the project with an extremely narrow lense while not spending any time actually looking into the technology and project, so I can understand that it's the only reason you see.
> I am interested who you think this is targeting. Because they do specifically say this is for developers (amongst other people). And the reason they give (VSCode) is a pretty noob argument. If you can’t figure out how to install an IDE then you’re clearly tech savvy enough to be a developer.
If you'd spend 5 seconds reading up on the technology, you could easily steelman a better argument.
> You don't install the same things using Homebrew and Flatpak. You install apps through Flatpak, and non-apps through Homebrew etc. There aren't two ways to install apps.
except from a user perspective there is. You have to first consider what type of app you want, and then search for it using the correct package manager.
As I said, if they had a single UI that managed both flatpak and homebrew, then it would be different. Users shouldn’t need to know which technology was used to download and install a particular package - that's a technical distinction that should be abstracted away by the "App Store".
Now I completely understand why they've taken the approach they have. But they've made a technical decision to fragment the UX while advertising the app store for its simplicity.
> No, you're just arbitrarily asking for them to make changes based on your misunderstandings of the use cases of each tool.
I'm not asking them to make any changes and I definitely do not misunderstand these tools (fun fact: I maintain a few open source projects -- so I'm probably more familiar than most with how brew et al actually work).
I'm simply pointing out how their advertising doesn't gel with the reality of the UX they're providing. It is feedback, not a request nor demand.
But for what it's worth, if they did decide they wanted to look into the possibility or a "single pane of glass" for all app management, then KDE already has a tool that might work here and which already supports pulling from different sources via extensions: Discover (https://apps.kde.org/discover). So it might be worth them taking a look at the viability of use that (again, just feedback, not a request).
> No, that's not the only reason
That’s not a rebuttal. It’s just a contradiction.
> you're looking at the project with an extremely narrow lense
I’m really not. I’m comparing it against my 30 years of professional experience with Linux (and UNIX as a whole) administration and highlighting areas where their docs are coming across as amateurish.
I’m open to being proven there there is more going on than appears, but your replies amount to “you’re wrong” without actually providing any detail why.
I run Linux workstations and because I don't get paid for keeping my workstation up to date, I do look for something that's as low-effort to maintain as possible. So it's quite possible I'm the target audience for Aurora. But the project does such a poor job of explaining why I should use this instead of any of the hundreds of other distros.
This isn't me being narrow-minded because, as I said elsewhere, it's their job to convince me that I can trust them with my hardware and my sensitive data. And their site, in it's current state, doesn't do a good job of that. In it's current state, it feels like it's being managed by people who don't have a whole lot of experience in this field.
But as I also said elsewhere, I know better than most just how hard it is to get a landing page right for a project as complex as an OS. So I'm being critical from a place of empathy rather than dismissiveness.
> If you'd spend 5 seconds reading up on the technology, you could easily steelman a better argument.
I was asking you a question. There’s no need to be confrontational with me.
Yes, another one for tor. You can restrict exit nodes to certain countries, if you need to read something only available locally. Works for most, but not all, sites.
On Reddit? It should...
These were historically almost always made up after people looked into it.
To be clear, the picture is likely real. The backstory to it probably not.
The people that actually feel like they've had the episode would almost certainly not go on social media with it.
The venn diagram of people sharing such content, having the money to buy such a gigantic smart fridge and suffering from schizophrenia is miniscule
Its not minuscule at all. Some studies have employment rates for schizophrenics approaching 50%. In any case the rate is not 0%. Apparently when you look at the literature you find conclusions such as:
Very low employment rates are not intrinsic to schizophrenia, but appear to reflect an interplay between the social and economic pressures that patients face, the labour market and psychological and social barriers to working.[0]
Barriers like you believing you can generalize all schizophrenics to be poor/unemployed and unable to earn.
I did now and am even more certain it's made up now.
I'm not sure how anyone can honestly think this is a person talking about their family. This is like a textbook made believe story people have been doing since Reddit got popular in early 2010s.
For this story to be real, you'll have to add a fourth and fifth circle to the diagram with a family member being close enough to the person suffering from the illness to be confided in and being so karma hungry to utilize their personal story which is likely shameful to them for going viral on Reddit.
> the schizophrenic sister's name happens to be Carol ...
Obviously made up.
Why? because no-ones' sister is ever called "Carol" ? Or because people of that name don't get schizophrenia?
I consider myself sane, but if I saw a billboard addressing me by name, I would do a double-take at least. I can easily understand how it would have an impact and look like a schizophrenic symptom.
The TV show advert with that text actually does exist, I've seen it.
Given that, what are the odds that some day a) it is seen, b) by someone called Carol, c) who is susceptible to being affected by it. I would say substantial.
Somehow it all happened just in time to coincide with the release of this big show: Samsung rolling out ads(a big story in its own), Pluberis (or whatever the name of the show) from the creator of the Breaking Bad on Apple TV, schizophrenic sister that is named Carol.
Totally NOT made up.
Not related at all, but I have this very exciting business idea – you can make billions, can you contact me via email in my bio? Not a scam, 100%.
Name matches will happen regardless of the name chosen for a fictional person. "named Carol" specifically vs other names is an irrelevance. You put too much on it.
> Totally NOT made up.
Once more for the hard of reading, I refer you to what I said earlier, "We don't know the truth of this at all."
> but I have this very exciting business idea – you can make billions,
It looks to me like you want to rant people you have invented, who hold positions that I do not. I'm sorry that you can't parse nuance, but I think I'll keep the sceptical lack of faith in your position that I used earlier.
Assuming that it's "so unlikely because Carol" seems to be the mistake.
No matter what name is picked for a fictional protagonist, some people will match it. If it's a real name, then people have it, pretty much by definition.
But, this doesn't really reflect one way or the other on this story being true or not. The mistake is in thinking that it does.
Carol is a very uncommon name, it was last popular in the 40s and 50s so almost every Carol you find today will be in an old folk's home. The odds of two truly independent instances of somebody named Carol appearing in this manner of circumstance is extremely small.
Also, it came from reddit therefore it is fake. Reddit is a dumpster fire, if we're being generous it's a website for playing around with creative writing exercises. The not so generous interpretation is that reddit users are deranged internet point addicts who habitually lie to get their fix.
There is a pattern of Asian immigrants to the US adopting such "old-fashioned" names for themselves or their kids.
I'm Gen-X, born and raised in California. I have a coworker whose Taiwanese American wife is Carol. And I've seen my fair share of people in my age cohort or their offspring with names like Ann, Karen, Katherine/Catherin, Susan, Mary, Lillian, etc.
Yes, these were the names of my grandparents' generation, but they didn't go away in my experience. They just branched out from their original userbase.
I asked some coworkers about this and they had all adopted names that sounded like their Chinese names. Except Xiaofong who didn't have anything to match. It was mid 90's so we gifted him Ronaldo (Brazilian version, best and full sized Ronaldo) and he loved it.
This level of simple assurance is for simpletons. You and I don't know the truth of it and can't be sure based on "it's from reddit". I'm sorry that not being sure is hard for you.
> The odds of two truly independent instances of somebody named Carol appearing in this manner of circumstance
What on earth are you talking about? There there are not "two people named Carol appearing in this manner." The first is the protagonist of a sci-fi show. You know, a fictional person. There is 1 - count them, one, supposed victim appearing in this manner. Which is possible regardless of the name chosen for the show and ad.
> "This level of simple assurance is for simpletons. You and I don't know the truth of it and can't be sure based on "it's from reddit". I'm sorry that not being sure is hard for you."
I respectfully disagree with your dismissal. Reasonable heuristics are necessary to get through life without getting lost in hours of deep dives into any random shit you hear. Anyway, the mere fact that the fridges have ads of any sort at all is reason enough to never buy one, I don't need to also believe some redditor's karma seeking tall tale.
> Reasonable heuristics are necessary to get through life without getting lost in hours of deep dives into any random shit you hear.
And I respectfully disagree with that.
Firstly, I have my own opinions on reddit and I don't find your simplistic ones persuasive. It's not monolithic.
But more importantly, you make a leap from "We don't know the truth of it and can't be sure" to "getting lost in hours of deep dives" (to establish certainty) which IMHO just does not follow.
You can decide that you don't know, that you do not need to have an authoritative opinion on the topic, and leave it at that. There are a lots of things that you and I don't have certainty on, and never will. Most of them are not important to us.
Deep dives might or might not be worth it, but you present choosing a side as the only alternative and it is not.
Again, I'm sorry that not being sure is hard for you. But it's a useful thing to do. It's a useful heuristic to me, better than false certainty.
> I don't need to also believe some redditor's karma seeking tall tale.
I don't think I ever said that I believe it as certainty. But if the only options that you understand are binary, then not picking one as a certainty seems to be misread as picking the other one. Which it is not.
The amount of "black or white", all or nothing, no-nuance, no doubt, no open mind, "if you say you're not convinced of x, then you must be trying to convince everyone of not-x" thinking here is frankly pathological.
FYI, I find the arguments that have come up that "Ads on Samsung fridges don't look like that" more substantive than "no one has that name" or "reddit always lies". Those last are opinions masquerading as information.
To go full schizo conspiracy theory: It may also not be a coincidence. There may be someone that dislikes that one Carol, knows she has schizophrenia and a smart fridge. They design this ad, or perhaps just plant the idea of it at the company they are working for with the intention of harming her.
If there really was a Carol I think police should look into this theory just to rule it out.
Nope, for the simple and trivial to check reason that it's not just an ad, or even just a whole ad campaign. It's the name of a protagonist of a drama, that the ad promotes, using a phrase that is said to that fictional character.
Honestly some of the posts defending "it could be true!!" when nearly any rational reading of it would deem it "fake beyond a reasonable doubt" are just tiresome at this point.
Like you say, it's easy to have a rational discussion that these adverts are dumb and annoying, and purporting this fan fiction as truth just weakens the case.
Yeah so this hypothetical sister doesn’t work, lives by themself, is severely disabled by schizophrenia but at the same time can afford a £2000 fridge. That’s a crazy amount of money to splash for someone who doesn’t work. Especially as amazing fridges are sold for £600-800. Oh, on top of all that, the persons name is Carol. It wouldn’t have worked with any other name.
I don’t think the story is real. But people who want it to be true are easily convinced.
It's also true that illness and disability can come to any of us. Carol could have been a software developer who made a good bit of money before being unable to work anymore.
> is severely disabled by schizophrenia but at the same time can afford a £2000 fridge.
The fridge has been on sale for a few years and schizophrenia can come on very suddenly. People's lives can change in a day because of it. You and I don't know the truth of it and can't reasonably jump to conclusions like that.
I recently had an obviously disturbed man come to the window of my Tesla asking for help. He did not specifically say money, but that's what he wanted. Long story short, he sees that the Tesla has identified a human standing next to the car, but the Tesla showed four people. The man asked how does the vehicle know there are people there, I told him that the Tesla has eight cameras around it. He then asked how does it know there were four people, I explained that the Tesla does not know there were four people, rather the Tesla has a hard time figuring out where something as small as a human is - it is designed to detect larger things like other vehicles. The man was obviously extremely affected, and walked away without another word.
Only later did I understand that the Tesla may have just confirmed what he had suspected all along - that there are in fact four people in the place where he is standing.
The ads for this TV show are real and do look like that.
Honestly, a trigger for paranoia in someone of the same name as the show's protagonist, or stealth marketing, are equally likely scenarios to me. We don't know.
I used to follow a few personal finance and FIRE subs. Pretty much all of them had surprising number of creative writing exercises too:
"I just inherited $10 million from a dead relative I never knew, what should I do?"
Or:
"I sold my online business for $37 million, is this enough to retire on?"
These daydreamers always create fresh throwaway accounts and usually never come back to answer clarifying questions. If they do, their answers are vague and unhelpful.
Because it's internet + social media. You should assume 60% of it is made up, every time. People are either saying things they know to be untrue, or things they think are true but or not.
When a million doomers post their predictions in response to something, a few are bound to be correct. Doesn't mean it's real, fake, or manifested by the hivemind. Just monkeys with typewriters.
When I first saw somebody complain about the Pluribus smart fridge ad I immediately knew something like this was going to happen. How did Apple/Samsung not think this through?
if you read the entire reddit thread, OPs sisters name actually was Carol. That's why it wigged her out so much and triggered her schizophrenia to kick in I suppose.
I see we're heading back to the days of MDI web browsers, slowly but surely. It's really strange to me how web browsers used to allow so much configuration (like the option to use MDI tab/window management or just generic tiling) but don't anymore. I've been hoping a browser comes out that is just Opera 8/9 but with the ability to browse the modern web so maybe with the advent of all these new browsers I should start taking a look.
To reply to a comment that was deleted by the time I finished writing:
"I've been experimenting with old UNIX systems recently and have come to somewhat similar conclusions. (Regarding software like window managers becoming more simplistic and some programs having to poorly attempt to pick up the slack themselves)
It feels like open source software projects shifted from making 'program' and instead tried to make "alternative version of windows program". Looking at these old systems I see all these options and intuitive ideas, even down the metaphors used to describe actions. Last time I used a modern UNIX desktop environment it felt like everything was just trying to be a simplistic Windows alternative instead of a good operating system."
I've spent decades being unclear about what the WindowMaker value proposition is.
Is there something deeper here? Because on the surface it primarily looks like some desktop widgets/dock-apps. Which isn't bad, it's more than the irrelevancy of the desktop today! widgets are great!
But I always feel like there was something more weird & implied with WindowMaker. Maybe just that it was taken as heir apparent to NeXTSTEP. But did it actually have interesting data systems, could apps talk? Or was it still lots of isolated micro-apps/desktop widgets?
To me I always assumed it was heir apparent to NeXTSTEP. I feel like there was a lot of missed opportunities back in the day. Imagine all the manpower going into Gnome and/or KDE going into GNUStep and keeping up with Apple APIs + embrace/extend of Apple APIs.
Precisely. Gnome, KDE, XFCE, and literally any other Free Software DE implement the Windows kind of desktop organisation. While WindowMaker/GNUStep show what the unexplored future could've been.
People seem to be forgetting how clunky and resource intensive XUL was, and how many times they had to kill xulrunner.exe just to keep their desktop running.
Opera 10 was getting into some wild stuff. 9 was obviously just winning. But I loved how 10 literally gave you the user your own endpoints on the web. The browser is the server (by way of proxy)! Massively inspirational decentralization. https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/opera-unite.html
* They came with a mail and chat (IRC) clients, a download manager, a set of browser dev tools, and in the age of limited internet traffic all of that was smaller than a single download of Firefox.
* Their dev tools were the first that allowed remote debugging. You could run Opera on your phone (Symbian, Windows Mobile, early Android) and debug your website from a computer.
* They were the first browser to sync your bookmarks, settings, history, extensions across devices.
* They were the first to add process isolation, albeit initially on Linux only. If an extension crashed your page it didn't take the whole browser down with it. This was later added first by Microsoft in IE8 and then by Google in Chrome.
Their browser was a brilliant piece of tech and a brilliant product. Too bad that the product couldn't survive under pressure.
It's a joint effort between Kevin Rose (Digg founder) and Alexis Ohanian (Reddit co-founder).
There is definitely some Reddit influence, but Reddit was also heavily influenced by Digg to start with. Listening to the users, it's hard to know which way it's going to go. There are a lot of people who don't want it to be the new Reddit and want to make sure the same problems aren't repeated. At the same time, some Reddit culture is coming over (with a bit of push back) and some people seem to want Digg to have all the stuff they liked from Reddit, which would end up as a Reddit clone.
I'm hoping it will be successful, as there needs to be a better Reddit alternative than what exists now and the Fediverse isn't getting the job done. Only time will tell.
My point is that they're related. People who take pride in their work generally do better work and make more money. People who don't take pride in their work and often try to see how little work they can get away with while still remaining employed generally make less money.
reply