Bedrock Linux now supports Exherbo (Beta channel right now!)

Due to the attempts of an Exherbo user to get it supported in Bedrock Linux, I got curious about it myself. So, what’s Bedrock?

“Bedrock Linux is a meta Linux distribution which allows users to utilize features from other, typically mutually exclusive distributions. Essentially, users can mix-and-match components as desired.”
(Source: https://bedrocklinux.org/)

To me, that was immediately interesting as I simply cannot spend as much time on Exherbo as I used to (which was a whole damn lot). Bedrock looked like a potential solution to basically run two (or even more!) distributions at once – and, thus, be able to actually run a binary distribution but to use (and maintain!) some Exherbo packages (or a subset of those).

Thus, I took a closer look, found it pretty easy to add “fetching” support (which means you can actually run a command that fetches our stage and adds it as a Bedrock “stratum”) for Exherbo. My first attempt wasn’t ideal but lead to a very constructive and pleasant discussion with Bedrock’s lead developer, Daniel “paradigm” Thau.

Ultimately, we figured out caching support in order to not overly tax our, Exherbo’s, ancient server, mucked around with user support and lots of other stuff which boils down to one simple fact:

Exherbo is now both “hijackable” (i. e. it can be Bedrock-ised (sorry but it’s one heck of a film!), converted into Bedrock) and “fetchable” (i. e. installed as a part of a Bedrock installation) in Bedrock’s new beta channel, starting with version 0.7.8beta1.

Of course, this works in a virtual machine as well so you can try it out yourself without any risk.

For me, I’ve converted my current Fedora installation into Bedrock and, of course, fetched me an Exherbo stratum. To be completely honest, if that actually means I’ll be able (or willing) to put some real time into Exherbo again remains to be seen but at least I now have some way to try.

For Exherbo this means some more exposure to the world and for Bedrock, well, it’s one more in the impressive list of supported Linux distributions.