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I’m quitting relinux

20 Comments Posted by on September 14, 2014

I will start this off by saying: I’m very (and honestly) sorry for, well, everything.

To give a bit of history, I started relinux as a side-project for my CosmOS project (cloud-based distribution … which failed), in order to build the ISO’s. The only reasonable alternative at the time was remastersys, and I realized I would have to patch it anyways, so I thought that I might as well make a reusable tool for other distributions to use too.

Then came a rather large amount of friction between me and the author of remastersys, of which I will not go into any detail of. I acted very immaturely then, and wronged him several times. I had defamed him, made quite a few people very angry at him, and even managed to get some of his supporters against him. True, age and maturity had something to do with it (I was 12 at the time), but that still doesn’t excuse my actions at all.

So my first apology is to Tony Brijeski, the author of remastersys, for all the trouble and possible pain I had put him through. I’m truly sorry for all of this.

However, though the dynamics with Tony and remastersys are definitely a large part of why I’m quitting relinux, that is not all. The main reason, actually, is lack of interest. I have rewritten relinux a total of 7 times (including the original fork of remastersys), and I really hate the debugging process (takes 15-20 minutes to create an ISO, so that I can debug it). I have also lost interest in creating linux distributions, so not only am I very tired of working on it, I also don’t really care about what it does.

On this note, my second apologies (and thanks) have to go those who have helped me so much through the process, especially those who have tried to encourage me to finish relinux. Those listed are in no particular order, and if I forgot you, then let me know (and I apologize for that!):

  • Ko Ko Ye
  • Raja Genupula
  • Navdeep Sidhu
  • Members of the TSS Web Dev Club
  • Ali Hallahi
  • Gert van Spijker
  • Aritra Das
  • Diptarka Das
  • Alejandro Fernandez
  • Kendall Weaver

Thank you very much for everything you’ve done!

Lastly, I would like to explain my plans for it, in case anyone wants to continue it (by no means do I want to enforce these, these are just ideas).

My plan for the next release of relinux was to actually make a very generic and scriptable CLI ISO creation tool, and then make relinux as a specific set of “profiles” for that tool (plus an interface). The tool would basically contain a few libraries for the chosen scripting language, for things like storing the filesystem (SquashFS or other), ISO creation, and general utilities for editing files while keeping permissions, mutli-threading/processing, etc… The “profiles” would then copy, edit, and delete files as needed, set up the tool wanted for running the live system (in ubuntu’s case, this’d be casper), setup the installer/bootloader, and such.

I would like to apologize to you all, the people who have used relinux and have waited for a stable version for 3 years, for not doing this. Thank you very much for your support, and I’m very sorry for having constantly pushed releases back and having never made a stable or well working version of relinux. Though I do have some excuses as to why the releases didn’t work, or why I didn’t test them well enough, none of them can cover why I didn’t fix them or work on it more. And for that, I am very sorry.

I know that this is a very large post for something so simple, but I feel that it would not be right if I didn’t apologize to those I have done wrong to, and thanked those who have helped me along the way.

So to summarize, thank you, sorry, and relinux is now dead.

– Anonymous Meerkat

linux, open source, relinux, update , , , ,

20 responses to “I’m quitting relinux”

  1. Pingback: I’m quitting relinux | relinux

  2. Christopher September 16, 2014 at 1:35 am

    You gave it a good whirl. For those of us who liked both Relinux and Remastersys, what alternative would you recommend?

    Reply
  3. Kendall Weaver September 16, 2014 at 2:21 pm

    Yo, good luck in your future endeavors. I understand the burnout and the lack of desire. Nobody can blame you for wanting to move on. Cheers. Hit me up on GChat sometime.

    Reply
  4. Stephen Osenegg November 16, 2014 at 4:45 am

    Hey, we all make mistakes man. I’m sorry to hear that your project died, but I hope you continue to move forward. I don’t know you, nor do you know me, but I can tell a lot about your character just by what you wrote in this post. It takes a lot of courage to own up, and recognize your mistakes. It takes even more personal courage to step up to the plate, and (publicly) admit to those mistakes.

    I wish you good luck in all of your future endeavors, and I hope that in the very end everything works out very well for you!

    Reply
  6. Linux User October 26, 2015 at 9:12 pm

    Son of a bitch! We need your help motherfucker!

    Reply
    • Anonymous Meerkat October 26, 2015 at 11:13 pm

      I’m sorry, but there is interest in developing a fork (though afaik, there is no progress on it yet :( )

      But the older versions of relinux should still work :) Let me know if you need any help though!

      Reply
  7. chris January 25, 2016 at 3:10 am

    And just when you think all hope is lost ….

    http://www.respins.org/

    Nothing is dead 4ever ;-)

    Reply
  8. wilkgr June 3, 2016 at 7:38 pm

    I am truly sorry. I respect your choice to quit relinux. I understand you have better things to do now. But who knows? Perhaps in a couple of years, you’ll go through your old computer, and dust it off. Get it working for more distros. Who knows? There is always light at the end of the tunnel.

    This doesn’t only apply to this. I wish you all the best for the future. :)

    Reply
    • Anonymous Meerkat June 3, 2016 at 11:50 pm

      Thank you for your kind words!! There is actually interest in developing a fork, but we haven’t had time to work on it too much yet :)

      Reply
      • wilkgr June 4, 2016 at 5:37 pm

        I’ll admit, that was an anecdote. I found an old project the other day in my old computer, and have begun blowing the dust off and breathing new life into it :]

        I wish you all the best for the future, for whatever you plan or wherever life’s highway takes you.

        I know to you this is just words on a screen, from someone you don’t know at all. But I really do mean this sincerely. I wish you the best for the future.

        And also, thank you for your quick reply. It shows you still care enough to reply to everyone. Even if they were far from polite (I won’t mention “Linux User” by name here…ooops!)

        Reply

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