Clear Linux closest relative distribution?

Developer Discussion
1

As a Clear Linux user and Linux beginner, I often have to piece together a working command set from various 3rd party sources, including open source software projects that give install instructions.

Information and instruction on these 3rd party sources such as blogs, previously asked questions at places like superuser.com, serverfault.com unix.stackexchange.com etc, target specific distributions, none, which i’ve seen yet include Clear Linux.

In situations where there isn’t a Clear Linux document, guide or tutorial, can anyone from the Clear Linux Development team advise as to what distribution is closest to Clear Linux to be used as reference that will be the most accurate for use on Clear Linux?

From the Linux Distribution Timeline on Wiki, I make the assumption Clear Linux is derived from Evolve OS Solus, which is derived from Solus OS and ultimately from Debian, is this correct?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg

Looking at this reference I can see the main Distributions and their major break off branches:
Debian/Ubuntu/Knoppix
Slackware/Suse
Redhat/RHEL/Centos/Fedora
Enoch/Gentoo
Arch

So if I see a tutorial with instructions for RHEL, Ubuntu, SUSE and ArchLinux,
which would be the reference best suited to Clear Linux?

There seems much inconsistency between distributions and it take too much time configuring some things based on tutorial of other distributions and I don’t like the ‘trial and error’ procedure until something works, often is the case it is forgotten why something worked as it deviated so far from
actual instruction reference.

Here’s a practical real world situation I dealt with the other day, for where accurate specific information would have saved time:

Take the Slowloris DOS attack and mitigation on nginx web server guide:

System open file limit:
sysctl -w fs.file-max=500000 error at command line
enter fs.file-max = 500000 in
/etc/sysctl.conf failed to retain on reboot, after hours reading other tutorials I see some distributions have sysctl.conf inside:
/etc/sysctl.d/

I created the sysctl.d directory inside /etc and placed sysctl.conf inside it, reboot and finally Clear Linux retained the setting. That shouldn’t have taken 6 hours but it did with trial and error.

If there’s some knowledge as to Clear Linux close distribution relation, I could target google searches to “sysctl.conf” “ArchLinux”, maybe this would return more specific accurate info to be used for Clear Linux :wink:

2

Nope, completely wrong. There is no ancestor - ClearLinux was not derived from any other OS. Any statement saying otherwise is incorrect.

1 Like
3

This is a bug in systemd-sysctl. It decided to abandon the convention that /etc/sysctl.conf is read on startup. I personally strongly disagree with this and think it was a mistake.

This further is made into a larger problem because man sysctl still refers to the file. Which is the one place that you should be able to rely on.

4

I took a quick look at this SVG, and, you have to zoom in really far to see it, but, there’s no relationship line between Clear Linux and other OSs. In the section that it sits, there are largely all non-related distros. The image is huge, so, it’s easy to miss.

5

In Clear Linux default:
fs.file-max = 4096

Why so low?

In Debian default:
fs.file-max = 9223372036854775807

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6

From the SVG, I see a turquoise dotted line that leads into Evolve OS Solus and terminates. Evolve has a thicker a dotted gun metal grey that runs back to Solus OS, and from there back to Debian, this was the basis of my speculation and the motivation for asking if this was accurate and if not what is the official story.

That Evolve OS horizontal line is confusing anyway. The large dot should be Solus traced from Debian.

There should have been a separate entry for Evolve OS to represent a different OS not derived from Debian, and there should be a smaller Dot on the line to indicate the name change.

I hadn’t read much other that some guy left Intel’s Clear Linux to start Solus which was Debian derived. Then it name changed to Evolve which was a Linux written from scratch. Then some UK company disputed the ownership name Evolve so the developer guy change name back to Solus.

From this info, wiki I think, it made it sound like Clear Linux was already in development before the guy started Solus OS, but still nothing out there about Clear Linux.

Why is Clear Linux historical info almost non existent?

Mysterious Clear Linux, strange it is confusing because of some other distro named Clear OS.

I like the name but think they should have considered creating some unique non dictionary name to make it easier for searching because some guys post thread with the word ‘clearlinux’, come just ‘clear’ some ‘c linux’ or ‘clr’, and when ppl do this we miss out on many potential results.

In contrast, Manjaro, Knoppix, Debian etc, unmistakable.

InteLinux
Intelix

Screen Shot 2020-03-04 at 17.06.37
Screen Shot 2020-03-04 at 17.06.372306×1011 205 KB

7

Well that is plain wrong. You can’t get a more authoritative statement than from me. Wikipedia can quote me on the correction for that.

1 Like
8

We’ve always been very transparent about this and never made statements otherwise. The problem is that people take online comments for the wrong value and don’t ask us. You did so I’m stating it here now. I’m not surprised, even within Intel people get it wrong, they simply don’t have the information and make up something to fill in the blanks.

1 Like
9

Distrowatch.com says that the this linux distribution (Clear Linux) is independent which means is not based on nothing but Linux. If you talk about the GUI I guess Zorin OS GNOME version is much similar to it. I guess this might be different on other websites as this is not verified by the developers I think so