del

ttk, sounds like this guy would need YOUR helping hand:
so instead of complaining on the forums, roll up your sleeves and get going!

i don't know about once upon a time, but to me it goes something like this:

- there's already hundreds, maybe even over athousand, accepted (if not respected) distros out there, and probably a much larger number of not-fully-working, one man projects, etc.
- it is really easy to remaster an existing distro with a change in appearance and different default applications, call it a distro. this is called a vanity project.

so whenever there's a call for a new distro, i think:
if you were serious, you'd go participating in EXISTING projects instead of just adding to the noise.
a few have been mentioned already, i'm adding devuan.

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I am interested in contributing to an existing project. This thread is part of my search for existing projects so that people's efforts (mine included) might be consolidated.

Way to make me sound like a jerk, though. Adeptly done.

Closing this thread, since nobody has been even the slightest bit interested in contributing anything positive.

There's no such thing as "closing a thread" on LQ, unless you're a mod/admin. If you want to mean that you no longer want to contribute, fair enough.

I don't think that your use of the word "derision" in an earlier post was fair, or accurate on the whole, and I don't think you are accurate with the part of your quote in bold above.

One poster suggested Devuan, someone suggest you help the contact of yours who's looking into forking CentOS 6, another suggested PC Linux, yet another referred to a web page with non-SystemD choices, others have pointed out why for various reasons it looks unlikely that CentOS 6 will be forked.

All folk trying to help you, realistically, achieve what you are looking for. There was one off-topic comedic post but that's life, there are many different varieties of apples in the LQ basket.

2 members found this post helpful.

I have also been thinking in this direction for a long time now. I've used a lot of distros, and have explored many more, looking for one that has these features:

1) Init freedom (or, at very least, no systemd)
2) Fixed, long-term release for functional set (i.e., like EL, CentOS, etc)
3) packaging system with strict and reliable dependency checking

I've been using pacapt on all my systems because I like how pacman has all of its functionality under one roof; don't have to go looking everywhere for the particular function needed. When I say "functional set" I just mean that the basic functionality and design of the system doesn't change radically from one point release or update to the next, in the traditional EL manner. I'd prefer NOT to engage in the matter of init and runtime systems here because there is too much intellectual violence about it and I don't want to go there.

As you said, ttk, systemd and rolling releases are not a good fit for corporate environments. What companies usually need is a platform that doesn't have to be constantly updated because support is not provided for those who are less concerned wit the latest bells and whistles and more concerned with stability and, most of all, security. Stability and security fixes must be applied, but introducing the possiblity of new defects with new subsystems and upgrades of existing software for the sheer reason of having the "latest and greatest" is not a requirement for these installations.

I worked in a financial company for a number of years and other industries where a constantly moving target would have been a disaster for them. As it was, just keeping up with the bug and security patches we did have to apply was disruptive enough without having to retrain many teams for using newly-architected software and the numerous bugs those always brought. I think many people here work in environments where some amount of instability and intrigue is acceptable risk. Financial houses, for one, do not tolerate that as easily; the focus must always be on stability and security. I am guessing that other, sensitive environments probably desire a similar type of support in most cases.

Upgrades to newer architectures and feature sets are usually preceded by long and detailed evaluations before a decision to go forward is made, and that usually requires signoff by DC management and development projects around the company.

EDIT: Sorry, almost forgot to mention: One distro I looked at that is promising I think, is Alpine. It meets the requirements I listed. The main issue there was they have no support for hosting VirtualBox.

1 members found this post helpful.

Addendum:

ScientificLinux is another RHEL-alike, and unlike the CentOS community they support and encourage forks of their distribution.

Instructions to make a "respin" of ScientificLinux6:

https://www.scientificlinux.org/docu...for-your-site/

Nearly a year after the last post in this thread.

The original question didn't ask if it could be done. It asked:
The reply I made was suggesting it wasn't likely. The whole idea of RHEL is to create a version for stability so they use the upstream version of packages they chose at the time of the major release (RHEL5, RHEL6, RHEL7, RHEL8 etc...) and don't change those upstream versions through the life the major releases sub-versions (e.g. RHEL5.9, RHEL6.4, RHEL7.5). They do however backport bug and security fixes into the upstream versions they chose and put their own versioning on them.

CentOS major releases as well as ScientificLinux are compiled from RHEL major releases so inherit that same set of packages. This doesn't mean that one can't work on adding their own upstream packages with later versions but it does mean one has to be sure such additions are interoperable with the rest of the packages in the major release of the distro. In general if you're using RHEL or one of the derivations you should work with packages built for the major release (you can find many at the EPEL). Any paid support you may have however is only going to be for what is in the official repositories not for the things you build or pull from 3rd party repositories.

If one really wants a RedHat (not RHEL) style OS with the latest greatest then Fedora would be the way to go.

Since RHEL as of RHEL7 is using Systemd then CentOS7 and ScientificLinux7 would default to that. The OP was asking about NOT using Systemd. If you're using CentOS6 you don't have to use Systemd but then you will have the older upstream versions of packages (with backports) for the life of that major release. You'd have to add/build your own as discussed above.

By the way RHEL8 is in beta. When it goes general release RHEL6 won't be supported for long so CentOS6 and ScientificLinux6 won't be getting updated source for packages from that RHEL6 upstream distro. Presumably the folks maintaining those distros will opt not to do their own at that point because of the reasoning for those distros. This doesn't mean someone else, including the OP, can't choose to do their own fork of any distro they please. One can build their own Linux or use any other distro with more aggressive updates but expecting those RHEL based distros to do it for them is unreasonable.