The core of any distribution is very akin to what you could draw from an LFS book, with some reasonable extras like those with Gentoo/Funtoo to create not just a basic core system, but a working base model. Yes, it could be very easy to maintain, and keep tools stable for long periods.

However, when you think about creating possibly universal build scripts that can work with FreeBSD, Illumos, and GNU/Linux equally, you can support various systems easily, in theory.

Devuan not only could build a great GNU/Linux base, but create a UNIXwide framework as well. Now, I don't know how well it would work, truly, but instead of creating rifts between UNIX and UNIXlike systems, like systemd wants to do, create a unified UNIX cross platform framework to bring BSD, Linux, Illumos, and others back together, and do things right.

Sent from my Windows Phone
________________________________
From: Stephanie Daugherty<mailto:sdaugherty@gmail.com>
Sent: ‎7/‎17/‎2015 2:25 AM
To: dng@???<mailto:dng@lists.dyne.org>
Subject: Re: [DNG] devuan LTS

On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 1:50 AM James Powell <james4591@???> wrote:

> There is one thing I would recommend different that the standard Debian
> model. Release only the right amount of packages to create a working
> operating system under a complete installation, and dedicate the rest of
> all packages to Debian friendly build scripts for packages of the
> non-sequitur ranks to keep anything and everything optional, as that,
> optional.
>
> This might help other non-Linux distributions like kfreebsd and killumos
> (Dyson) formulate strategies for packages.
>
> Any thoughts on this?
>
>
>
This is a model that I've had thoughts about for a while, originally
spurred on by the old Fedora Core/Extras division and refined by Ubuntu's
PPA model - although for different reasons entirely.

What'd I'd be interested in seeing is this:

- A "core distribution" consisting of the kernel, base system, openssh(d)
and enough of the development toolchain to build packages - and nothing
else - basically a stable set of core libraries, ABI, and userland
utilities that could go untouched for a long period of time.

- A modular system of self-contained repositories with their own much
faster lifecycles for everything else, with an emphasis on encouraging
upstream vendors to provide their own repositories.

The advantages:
- a leaner "core distribution" would be maintainable for a longer period
of time
- modular repositories for everything else would keep it from being stale -
a different kind of balance between long term stability and rolling
releases.
- any LTS for each of the modular components could align strictly with the
upstream maintainer's LTS strategy, rather than the distribution's release
schedule, so the distribution would bear much less burden for supporting
these packages and the "blame your distribution" game would be lessened.
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