This reminds me of Rob Pikes paper from the year 2000.
http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utah2000/utah2000.html

If we want to do something radically different, there’s always gopher and gemini browsers.

gnuplot surprisingly also has a strange license, containing “Permission to modify the software is granted, but not the right to distribute the complete modified source code.”

How do you decide what to archive, and what is the long term plan? If Annas goes down it can be pieced together again? Or is it served to users now too?

The archive team sounds interesting!

What can an ordinary user do at this point that would help?

It’s more that changes can be made with coordination across the OS, with a shared vision and goal. Linux distros are primarily integration projects, putting together the components from other peoples projects. BSDs are in control of the base OS project as one coherent project.

I see what you mean now. I thought you meant as in upstream/downstream.

Tumbleweed is not a derivative of Leap.

“The discussion continued for quite a while without making much headway.”

I think Debian is interesting, being such a large project of collaboration. I want this democratic, volunteer, non-corporate backed, free project to show that 10000 eyes make bugs shallow. I wish this model produced new ways of doing things, bringing people together in the spirit of creativity and playful productivity.
I’ve used Debian in different ways for around 15 years now, and I really want it to succeed.
Having said that, there is a “but…” looming in the back of my mind. But… it’s difficult to ignore that other distributions are the ones pushing Linux forward. The innovation from Fedora and the distributions still called OpenSuse explore new areas which become the standards.
This is not criticism of Debian, I just wonder if we humans are capable of collaborating freely at that level without some top-down force directing work forward, or if we are bound to being one step behind, always trying to catch up to what others have already done?

Are we actually converting people or is the desktop platform just less popular for other OSs in favor of phones etc?

Debian + Flatpaks has been very reliable to me.

The last time my grub was broken was around 2012 when I ran Arch. After that I have rarely thought about grub at all.

https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian#Don.27t_make_a_FrankenDebian

What about the proposal to just drop the name openSUSE with no replacement? And let each distro just be called Tumbleweed, Leap, Aeon, etc.

Fedora/Redhat is a good example. It could be argued that the Linux distro scene was different 23 years ago, making it harder to be seen today.

The thing I’m pondering is what the openSUSE community actually is. Does it exist as a group, or is it separate projects, each doing their own thing… for who? What is the overlap between people in the various distros, overlap in technology used in packaging and QA etc? Is it meaningful to talk about openSUSE as a distinct community separate from SUSE?

I’m not sure. A few years ago I remember that OpenBSD expected ASCII for files, but I think Linux expects utf-8. I could be wrong though.

Unicode in filenames can be a bad idea, since there are more than one way to achieve what looks like the same character. So matching patterns could fail if you think it’s one way, but it’s actually another representation in unicode.

When I hear openSUSE, I think of german engineering and resources from SUSE, with a history of innovating great infrastructure.
With a new name, distanced from the SUSE part, I’ll probably feel more like if this is yet another random derivative created by a small group who might soon lose interest.

They get an urge to install Linux on an old ThinkPad while wearing colourful long socks?