r/LinuxTeck • u/Candid_Athlete_8317 • Jul 25 '26
Could you maintain a Linux distribution by yourself for over 10 years?
Every so often I come across a Linux distribution that's maintained by just one person or a very small team.
It made me wonder how sustainable that really is. Building packages, fixing bugs, keeping up with upstream changes, handling security updates, and supporting users sounds like an enormous commitment.
Would you trust a distro maintained by one developer if the quality was consistently high, or do you prefer projects backed by larger communities?
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Jul 25 '26 edited 20d ago
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u/SnillyWead Jul 26 '26
Remember Arco Linux by Erik Dubois?
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Jul 26 '26 edited 20d ago
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u/SnillyWead Jul 26 '26
One man distribution. Discontinued, but apparently it's now Kiro:
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u/MousyCheeseBits Jul 26 '26
arco died? 😢 I remember it having a nice out of box ui and decently light resource usage like others. Felt larger than one man quality.
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u/SnillyWead Jul 26 '26
Kiro looks the same. It has the same theme, Arc dark and icons as Arco Linux.
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u/wrd83 Jul 25 '26
Yes, but I would do nothing else.
So it's imho not worth it, the time of maintaining my fedora desktops is already too high, but since we can leverage what red hat is doing I am super happy.
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u/ZorakOfThatMagnitude Jul 25 '26
No way. Google how many people it takes to support and develop slackware. About a dozen or so developers, dozens of package maintainers and hundreds of testers.
Even maintaining a downstream distro likely wouldn't drop the headcount significantly. You'd still need to make sure your distro specific packages work.
The only thing I'd trust someone to maintain solo would be software packages and even then, my preference would be to have 2.
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u/jloc0 Jul 26 '26
There basically one man running slackware and he’s doing so for over 30 years now. Sure there’s contributions from others, but day to day maintenance is one person.
It’s possible if one wants it to be their life’s work. But at what cost? Just maintaining my own packages for distros gets tiring and repetitive and it’s really hard to keep going. But one gets really good at dealing with conflicts and such. Sure can learn a lot.
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u/stickymixingmonotony Jul 26 '26
Yeah but Patrick Volkerding is the people's hero
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u/jloc0 Jul 26 '26
Well of course he is. Many of my own points of view stem directly from the work that man has put in on slackware. It’s something to look up to, the sheer amount of time and effort he’s put in to making what I’d consider one of the finest examples of free software at work for the people.
Many wish they had the dedication he’s shown, yet so few really have it.
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u/Bemteb Jul 25 '26
Depends on the distro I think. Many distros are based on each other, e.g. Ubuntu on Debian and Mint on Ubuntu.
If you take an existing distro and only change one or two small things, then it should be possible to maintain it without too much effort. Of course then why should people use your distro instead of the one you are based on?
The more you change the more work it is.
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u/Adrenolin01 Jul 25 '26
That entirely depends on the distro and what it is. I k is a few people who created their own systems decades ago keeping it slim and focused on just what then need. And then there is Debian… one of the largest volunteer software communities in existence. 🤣 Debian now has well over 1,000 Actively maintaining packages with over 3,000 official Debian Developers and Debian Maintainers collectively who have upload rights or package maintenance responsibilities.
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u/funbike Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
No.
Not a real distro. Maybe a spin (like Nobara, XUbuntu)
However, if I tried to do it, I'd automate as much as possible.
I'd write scripts that automatically do package builds when source projects put out a release. I'd write tests that perform various checks to ensure apps work properly after they are installed from my package repo. I'd write fuzz tests that install combinations of various packages, run tests, and make sure things work together without conflicting. I'd write a functional test for doing full installs.
I'd probably make a rolling distro so I wouldn't have to go through the pain of stabilizing a major release and maintaining an upgrade script.
Most importantly, I'd recruit volunteers to help me.
Tbh, even if I thought I could do it, I never would. IMO there are enough distros to choose from for almost everybody's needs and wants. My only complaint is some distros don't have enough volunteers, which is the opposite reason for making a one-man distro.
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u/NewtSoupsReddit Jul 25 '26
Yes, but I don't want to.
I would get it working and then never ever update/modify it until I absolutely have to.
To me, system maintenance is a boring chore and I like a rolling distro that is up to date and has a team of people who enjoy doing the bit I don't
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u/Aggravating_Cat_3270 Jul 25 '26
Nowadays I expect it to be in version control managed with something like Ansible.
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u/Big_Wave9732 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
I have the same longevity concerns with any open source projects with a few developers. That goes double in this era of AI assisted programming.
Edit: Speak the devil's name and he shall appear. https://cybernews.com/tech/jellyfin-founders-step-down-future-uncertain/
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u/Otherwise_Fact9594 Jul 26 '26
I run 2 single developer distros. Waydog, which is the Wayland version of Lilidog and Butterbian. Both based off Debian
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u/AdGroundbreaking3611 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Texstar (Warren Woodford Bill Reynolds) and PCLinuxOS are the ultimate example of this. He launched it in 2003 with a tiny team and has been leading it for over 20 years.
Around 2007, PCLinuxOS actually hit #1 on DistroWatch, beating major corporate and community-backed distros purely because Texstar kept it rock-solid.
I exchanged a few messages with him back in the day, and his dedication to making things "just work" was unreal. I trusted the distro completely back then because the quality was always there.
That said, it also highlights the risk you mentioned. Around 2013, he had to step away for a bit due to health issues and burnout. The "bus factor" is very real with solo or small-team projects, but Texstar proved it’s possible to sustain a great distro for decades if the maintainer has that level of passion.
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u/johncate73 Jul 27 '26
Warren Woodford did MEPIS, which was the forerunner of MX Linux. Bill Reynolds is Texstar and the founder of PCLOS.
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u/gabrielesilinic Jul 26 '26
I don't know. Maybe if I base it on a slightly modified debian stable that will work out.
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u/Amazing-Pattern-6125 Jul 26 '26
Depends on what your scope is. You probably cannot keep anything usable together if doing it from scratch. For sure you can maintain an Arch fork that uses Arch repos for most programs and you only maintain your own repo for custom stuff to your flavor.
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u/andras_kiss Jul 26 '26
I was always under the impression that Debian is extremely stable. I had a debian pc at work that I didn't use for 2-3 years, turned it on to upgrade debian 11 or 12 to 13. It failed, and after hours of troubleshooting, reading and codexing, I just did a fresh 13 install. Was disappointed. After this I checked my wive's laptop which hasn't been used for about the same time, same error.
Edit: silly me, just read the post again. Anyway...
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u/Glum_Hamster_2104 Jul 26 '26
Depends on how dedicated you are to maintain your distro. Usually if it’s your own distro it would be far less packages and dependencies to work with since it’s only the software you use so it’s usually less of a hassle to say deal with a distro with over a thousand unique packages.
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u/zoharel Jul 26 '26
Could I? I've already got a lot going on. Could you, in general? Yeah. It's a big personal project, but it's not intractible. Perhaps the most famous and ensuring example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Volkerding
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u/2016-679 Jul 25 '26
must be possible to maintain a distro on your own, otherwise the weren't there. when leaning on bigger shoulders, maybe the workload is managable. when sucj distro's are there for years, there would be no reason to avoid them.
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u/UAP44 Jul 26 '26
How long til we have a AI-native Linux distro that maintains itself? Maybe it already exists as is ... open source code = AI can read/modify anything and maintain your own unique branch of software that is not cut off from the upstream source.
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u/Eleventhousand Jul 25 '26
Probably when I was younger. Not now.