Why was AV3_LINUX created?

AV3_LINUX was a simple but brave idea: Create a (as much as possible) gnu-free, user-respecting system with a source-based package manager, without overcomplicating things too much.

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1. Why GNU-free? (By default)

Richard Stallman has done some not very good things in the past, I am not going to mention those things here but you can research that yourself.

A userland relying on one thing is (in my opinion) not a good thing because if something loses support, you can simply swap it for a new one, or the developer can, or the community can fork it. When a massive project gets discontinued, your entire core system can lose support suddenly, which is obviously horrible.

Another thing, a lot of the parts that make up the GNU core linux utilities are simply too bloated. Glibc, for example, provides various interesting compatibility mechanisms which most people may not need, which makes it rather big. It also contains a lot of obsolete code.

2. Why a user-respecting system?

By “user-respecting system” I mean a system which the user is free to modify into whatever they want the system to be. They can have anything as the defaults, provided they have the knowledge to do so.

I believe the user should have full control over the defaults of their system, whether it be what usually comes with AV3_LINUX or something different.

3. Why source-based?

So the user can review if anything is wrong and so they know exactly what they’re installing on their system.

CONCLUSION

The point of AV3_LINUX is not to concentrate on a niche or try and be different from any other distribution, the point is to provide a minimal, GNU-free environment the user can grow themselves.