Where do you see Clear Linux in the next 5 years?

General Discussion
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Have started using Clear Linux and I think it’s a great OS that’s very powerful, but I’m interested in where other users see this distro going in the next few years and if you think it’s worth using it as your daily machine.

The biggest challenge I’ve found so far is in installing apps when they are not available via swupd or flatpak. I think a lot of creatives will find barriers to entry trying to get apps to work when they only have debian/ubuntu support. Do you seeing this improving and could community support turn this into a major distro?

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As someone who’s been around here from the very beginning, I can’t help but get excited about the potential Clear Linux has, especially when it comes to cloud computing, edge computing, and AI/ML workloads. Intel’s been putting in the work to fine-tune this distribution for their hardware, and that’s a smart move that could really pay off down the line.

The coming years could hold the prospect of Clear Linux teaming up with some of the big players in the container game. Containerization is huge these days, and Clear Linux’s lightweight nature and optimizations make it a prime candidate for these environments.

Just imagine if Clear Linux joined forces (further) with Docker, containerd, or the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), and the folks behind Kubernetes, Istio, Envoy, and Knative These collaborations could not only supercharge Clear Linux’s container performance but also seamlessly integrate it into the cloud-native ecosystem, opening up a whole new world of CL adoption.

The same goes for teaming up with AI/ML heavyweights like TensorFlow, PyTorch, and the ONNX consortium (Microsoft, Amazon, and others). As the demand for AI/ML workloads keeps increasing, a high-performance, optimized platform like Clear Linux could become a real asset for these companies, helping them deliver cutting-edge solutions to their customers more efficiently.

From a business standpoint, these collaborations could be a win-win. Clear Linux would get access to the expertise and resources of industry leaders, while the collaborating companies could tap into Intel’s hardware optimizations and Clear Linux’s performance capabilities to enhance their offerings.

But it’s not just about the big players…

These collaborations could also be a game-changer for individual Clear Linux users and startups. With increased adoption and integration into the cloud-native and AI/ML ecosystems, Clear Linux could become the go-to platform for developers and entrepreneurs looking to build high-performance, scalable applications.

Imagine being able to spin up containerized applications or AI/ML models on a platform that’s been optimized to the nines, giving you a serious edge over the competition. That’s the kind of advantage that could make all the difference for a new startup or an ambitious developer.

So, where is Clear going ? Good question… Let’s elaborate on that, together.

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Clears performance is well known, but large corporates want to decrease their patching requirements and costs overall.

Having yet another *nix with a unique patching and hygiene mechanism costs more to maintain and probably does not make up for the performance savings it can generate.

Therefore it will continue its roll as a niche offering.

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In using it so far I think it’s very stable and performant and in general easier to use as a beginner than I was expecting.

The thing it really needs imo is a focused community support as we don’t have much contact with devs. Requesting packages to install via swupd isn’t very user friendly, especially if the devs aren’t interested in adding them. I think it would take a strong community creating workarounds for other software to work on Clear Linux to turn it into a major distro. Or some software like Alien which converts between .deb and .rpm files but for the Clear Linux file system (I haven’t had any luck manually extracting .deb packages so far).

I think the swupd system is a hurdle for users to get over as well as looking up How To’s on Linux gets you terminal commands for other systems instead.

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I just discovered the High Performance Software Foundation (HPSF) and I think it could be a good match for Clear Linux. They’re all about optimizing software performance and sharing best practices. It’s a really good opportunity for Clear Linux to take things to the next level.

Check out their website:

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The HPSF provides a collaborative platform for developers to learn from each other and apply the best optimization techniques. By participating, Clear Linux devs can pick up new strategies, tools, and best practices from other high-performance projects. This knowledge sharing could make Clear Linux even faster and more efficient.

Another cool thing is that the HPSF can help promote Clear Linux to a wider audience of performance-minded users and contributors. When we showcase the optimizations, it’s going to attract a lot of attention and interest in the project. More eyeballs and more hands on deck is always a good thing… :wink:

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I don’t know of any direct involvement with Intel and the HPSF, but I’m not as involved as I used to be in that side of things. There may be some indirect involvement via the collaborations as I know Intel is heavily involved with the CNCF and OpenSSF. I’m not familiar with the technical projects the HPSF is sponsoring. But there are so many industry working groups and projects these days, it’s tough to know which are the ones that will become industry leaders…

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HPSF started 2 weeks ago…

“HPC has long been a unifying force in industry, breaking through vendor-locked barriers and driving standardization across all layers of the software stack. High Performance Software Foundation (HPSF) continues this de facto standardization by defining a set of open source software that runs on a diversity of hardware architectures. "Intel is proud to be a founding member and continue our long-standing contribution to the projects in HPSF.” — Sanjiv Shah, Vice President with Intel’s Software Engineering Group, General Manager of Developer Software Engineering.

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Well, there you go then :wink: