Funtoo Linux is shutting down

For those that don't understand the differences between Funtoo and Gentoo, this is a good summary:

https://www.funtoo.org/Wolf_Pack_Philosophy

My understanding is that it was created after the founder of Gentoo had some disagreements about the direction of the distro and forked. Many of the big distinctions (like git instead of rsync for updates; gentoo supports both now) have eroded over time.

I've never used funtoo but I like their tool keychain.

> Keychain helps you to manage SSH and GPG keys in a convenient and secure manner. It acts as a frontend to ssh-agent and ssh-add, but allows you to easily have one long running ssh-agent process per system, rather than the norm of one ssh-agent per login session.

> This dramatically reduces the number of times you need to enter your passphrase. With keychain, you only need to enter a passphrase once every time your local machine is rebooted.

https://www.funtoo.org/Funtoo:Keychain

It's sad to see Funtoo go, especially with so little of an explanation. I used it for a while, it was quite interesting! Without knowing too much about Gentoo it clearly had influence from there, you compiled your software locally almost always, safe some binary packages for the browser (optional, but they'd take too long). A good system to apply patches, fitting for the suckless terminal for example. And a powerful set of tools to manage the system.

It then worked as a very configurable, but stable distribution. Mostly current packages, just despite the rolling release model not necessarily bleeding edge, which is a good compromise. And Funtoo kept out systemd, which was great. Even if you like systemd you might respect the thought that monocultures are not a good thing, alternative efforts always need to exist and should be fostered. Like Funtoo.

Flaws for me were the slowness of the package manager when calculating dependencies and that compiling everything is in the end just an unreasonable effort, especially on aging hardware.

Was an early Gentoo user, before moving to other distros. Learned so so much from Robbins' incredible build system work and then just tremendous documentation. With all respect to those who continued the project, I see that as his legacy. He started and drove an incredible piece of work.

Without opinionating on the latter Gentoo dispute- which I didn't follow but superficially from what I saw was sympathetic to Robbins- my sense was that Funtoo was literally just a rebound project. Surprised it lasted this long...but maybe it took this long for all of the spirit that drove Gentoo to reach its natural conclusion. Just factless psychological speculation, but things like that happen when project breaks occur.

This sort of situation is why I've been hesitant to try smaller Linux distros in the past, especially for daily drivers or any sort of long term use. The allure of innovative features and modernity tends to be weighed against the long-term prospects and likelihood of longevity.

That being said, I did think funtoo would be around longer. I totally get the motivation; if a volunteer hobby isn't doing it for you, you ought to be free to let it go. I'm sure that the remaining dev/user base is perfectly free to fork off and rename to maintain the spirit of the distro too.

End of an era. I remember installing funtoo before I went through the handbook to install Gentoo itself

It would be unfortunate to find out your distro of choice will stop existing within a month. I used to run Gentoo but haven't heard of this until today -- do many people use it?

There seems to be rather good documentation, e.g.

https://www.funtoo.org/Support_Matrix

But excluding systemd it wouldn't have been for me. While I am not a fan of all aspects of the project, it's technically superior to the older/simpler systems.

Been using Linux since 2003, distro hopped like the best of them, and I’ve never heard of this distribution.

I haven't heard of this distro before. What made it unique?

Did MocaccinoOS ever become anything complete and usable? Is that project still related to Funtoo?

Never heard of it. The tone in the announcement makes me guess that I did not miss anything

> nor am I interested in trying to find one, or hand the project off to someone else.

Of course if it's all open source anyone can take over the code base. But why saying "not interested to hand it off"?