A few days ago, the developers of Trident OS announced the project's migration to Linux. The Trident project is developing a ready-to-use graphical user interface that resembles earlier versions of PC-BSD and TrueOS.
Initially, Trident was built using FreeBSD and TrueOS technologies , and it also utilizes the ZFS file system and the OpenRC initialization system. The project was founded by developers involved in the TrueOS project and positioned itself as an adjacent project (TrueOS is a platform for creating distributions, and Trident is a distribution based on this platform for end users).
The following year, it was decided to transfer the Trident issues to the Void Linux distribution's development. The reason for migrating from BSD to Linux was the inability to resolve certain problems that limited users of the distribution.
Areas of concern include hardware compatibility, support for modern communication standards, and packet availability. The presence of problems in these areas prevents the achievement of the main objective of the project: the preparation of an easy-to-use graphical environment.
When choosing a new framework, the following requirements were identified:
- The ability to use unmodified packages (no rebuild) and regularly updated from the main distribution.
- Predictable product development model (the environment must be conservative and maintain the usual way of life for many years).
- Simplicity in the organization of the system (a set of small, easy-to-upgrade, and fast-paced components in the style of BSD systems, rather than monolithic and complicated solutions)
- Acceptance of changes from third parties and the availability of a continuous integration system for testing and assembly.
- The presence of a working graphics subsystem, but without depending on the already formed communities that develop desktops (Trident plans to collaborate with the developers of the base distribution and work together to develop the desktop and create specific utilities to increase usability)
- High-quality support for up-to-date hardware and regular updates of equipment-related distribution components (drivers, kernel)
The closest to the established requirements was the Void Linux distribution, which adhered to the continuous cycle model of program version updates (continuous updates, without separate distribution releases).
Void Linux uses a simple runit system manager to initialize and manage services, using its own xbps package manager and the xbps-src package build system.
Instead of Glibc, Musl is used as a standard library and LibreSSL instead of OpenSSL. Void Linux does not support installing on a partition with ZFS, but Trident developers see no problem with standalone implementation of this feature using the ZFSonLinux module.
The interaction with Void Linux also simplifies the fact that its developments are distributed under the BSD license.
It is expected that after switching to Void Linux in Trident, it will be possible to expand support for graphics cards and provide users with more modern graphics drivers, as well as improve support for sound cards, audio streaming , add support for audio streaming via HDMI, improve support for wireless network adapters and devices with a Bluetooth interface.
In addition, users will be offered newer versions of the programs , the download process will be accelerated, and support for hybrid installations on UEFI systems will be added.
One of the drawbacks of the migration is the loss of the familiar environment and the utilities developed by the TrueOS project for the system configuration, such as sysadm.
To solve this problem, universal replacements for these utilities are planned, regardless of the operating system. The first release of the new edition of Trident is scheduled for January 2020.
Before launch, the formation of alpha and beta test builds is not ruled out. Migration to a new system will require manual transfer of the contents of the / home partition.
Support for BSD will be discontinued immediately after the release of the new edition and a stable package repository based on FreeBSD 12 will be removed in April 2020 (an experimental repository based on FreeBSD 13-Current will be removed in January).