G.I.Josh

I'm very seriously considering making a Linux distro. I'd need a lot of help of course, but who doesn't? From what I've seen, all the 'easy' distrobutions are wieghd down with office software, all the fast distrobutions are geard toward techs, all the supposed windows clones are buggy and only seem to clone the negative parts of windows.

I'm trying to use my friend's as guinea pigs. Both are geeks, but not serious enough to want to get into technical Linux distros, or in need of a bunch of office tools. I want to make an easy distrobution that's realy fast. My ideas so far:

primary: pentium 4 optomised, and not much more preinstalled then xp sp1 has

1. Modified Mandrake installer with single click dual boot option. [details below]

2. pacmanagement would be a clone of windows, but with rpm support.

3. configuration would be done through a single, simple, intuitive gui.

4. KDE, optomised, clean times new roman font -anti aliased. [maybe xfce]

5. file manager - 'my computer' clone. firefox as web browser.

6. All standard unix tools, shells, interpreters, etc. [I don't wanna keep someone
from getting the hood. I just dont' want them to accidently stumble 'neath it.]

name possiblities: GNU/Linux Free XP, Linexp,

-possibility-
file hiearchy based upon typical unix, but a program files Windows style way of organising programs. [too icky?]

The single dual boot option thing would check to see if there is adaquet space for the distro, and if not, it'd carefully shrink ntfs down JUST enough. The p4 only thign seems a bit much, but ninety percent of the target audience probably has a p4.

I'd realy like this to work out. If anyoen else is interested, I sure as heck need the help. I'd hope the final product would end up being an operating system that is very intuitive for an xp user, and that they don't ever have to stop and say, well wtf do i do now, but is both faster and more secure then windows could ever hope to be. I'd also like to make it feel like more of a unified system then most distros do. A bit more like osx or bsd in that way. At least from the user's prospective.

__________________
http://exponentialab.blogspot.com/ - w00t, I've started a blog!

Mjordan2nd

Looks like a nice plan. What/how do you plan on making this?

__________________
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

G.I.Josh

I realy don't know as I have zilch experience with this kidna thing. But, I'd try to take it logically. First find at least a couple developers, get the plans more detaild, then start the actuall work as soon as possible. Start with the kernal, get it how it needs to be, move on up to the filesystem and package management. Get that working well. get the shells and interpreters and crap working well, then start working with kde and the config tool, and the installer. Probably start out with a more cathedral style at first, untill there's at least a working product, and slowly turn to the more bazaar-like route.

__________________
http://exponentialab.blogspot.com/ - w00t, I've started a blog!

Berto

I would help but i think its a bit above my level at the minute.

__________________
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity."

- Albert Einstein

kurifu

I on the other hand do not really have time, and I do not really see a need for the distribution--it honestly seems like you are just copying the idea that XandrOS and Linspire (formerly Lindows) came up with, only with those distros having years of development behind them could be a while to catch up.

You need to make your idea intuitive, most Linux distros (the ones that actually get used) have that in mind, for instance... UDF support for a Linux distro. You could also than release a light version of the distribution which is completely bostable from a UDF formatted CD or DVD, such that data remains consistent when written to the disk (since it can be written to disc). a UDF based distro was an idea I though of a long time ago, but never took it seriously since I know very well that I would never have to time to complete such a task.

Gentoo, for instance, made its mark by being on of the first distributions that support source based builds from the package installer. No manually trying to configure everything to fit in to your system, just emerge it.

RedHat made its mark for package simplicity, and Mandrake is a RedHat clone (originally this was true).

XandrOS and Lindows made their mark for WindowsXP look and feel, Lindows has one of the best package installation systems I have ever seen, compairable to that of Windows, great for people who do not understand how to use it very well.

__________________
Clifford Matthew Roche <geek@cliffordroche.com>
Web Hosting: http://www.crd-hosting.com
Consulting: http://www.crdev-consulting.com