Whatever Happened to Unity Linux and TinyMe?

As this blog turns eight years old I was reminiscing back to the first few articles and reviews. Initially this was started to only post reviews I for whatever reason couldn't publish on other web sites or if the wait would have been too long as you gotta get them out fresh. Back in the day as an ex-Mandrake/Mandriva user TinyMe and Unity Linux had caught my eye and seemed promising projects although it was clear they were a bit light on manpower.

The 2010 release of Unity Linux actually was my first mini review published here on this blog. Well, it turns out both are no more. The site for TinyMe which built on Unity and added only a few components, which might be viewed as unnecessary to justify a separate project, is unavailable and the project listed as discontinued on Distrowatch.com. Unity Linux shared a similar fate and is currently listed as dormant, with a last development release dated as far back as 2012, and its pages won't connect. It appears Distrowatch.com is pretty much the only record of them ever existing.

Both projects it appears did not gain enough momentum and even then I had concerns about their longer term viability and getting involved - it just didn't seem like they were bringing anything special to the table that would sustain another project besides all the other much bigger distributions spawned by Mandriva. And people who want to build their own systems up from a tiny base usually preferred more advanced distributions like Arch for the task. As we are still seeing new distributions popping up on an almost weekly basis, this perhaps holds a clue as to what to strive for - to offer something truly unique and be able to build a self-sustaining user base/ fan base, or at the very least a dedicated developer who doesn't flinch from carrying this on for many years if necessary all by him or herself. But a lot of people won't get involved if the longevity of the project is in question, and with that the value of their investment in time and effort.