I agree with that statement. There are positive things that can come from such an endeavor. But, let's also agree that you can get the same results by focusing the positive energy with an existing project. A group of people that have a cache of newbie energy can be invaluable to an existing project. The only positive AND PROFITIBLE CONTRIBUTION TO THE COMMUNITY that can come from starting from scratch is R&D. And, I doubt this is the motivation behind this initiative.

The guys at Ubuntu had a clear business plan with R&D and plenty of funding to go with it. Furthermore, they are filling a market niche that RedHat abandoned a couple years ago, and they are improving on the release cycle of Debian, which is one of the most proven distributions, with actual long-term support. Of course, Ubuntu feeds back (attempts) changes to Debian. So, even this distro can be seen as a contributor to an already existing Linux initiative.

Two good points. However, only a couple distributions have come close to fulfilling #2

It depends on how you look at it. Sure, can another choice and the R&D that comes from another distro help the community? Absolutely. But, your last statement shows the flaw. You are going to devote a teams time and efforts to a new project that, from what I see, has no clear defined goal other than self-satisfaction. If that's the case, then go create the project in the eyes of the team for your personal satisfaction. However, if you want to create something that is intended to be usable by everyone else, place that time, energy, effort, and money into something existing that can use it. God knows there are plenty to choose from.

I'm not beating you up. Far from it. I'm an Infrastructure Director that runs large, distributed Linux systems. And, I am trying to be critical and skeptical as to what you will do for the Linux community and how that will, in fact, profit for the community. I have been using Linux for several years and am a huge proponent for it in industry. But, Linux has much more limited applications than its main opponent(s).

Oh, and guys, when we start talking about "look at all the distributions," on the other hand we only have one Linux kernel. There has been talk for a long time now about forking to specialized kernels for different applications, but hasn't happened yet.

Think about all the features you'd like to see implemented in each distro and consider those that are best implemented in another. A lot of new distros are based on Slackware, but they in turn provide a real package management mechanism (with dependency tracking and so on). I think that the most sensitive issue is that of package management and Debian's apt truly stands out. But I'd prefer if it were easier for me to compile the whole thing from source. I suggest you to look at NetBSD's pkgsrc. (There are about 3 pkgsrc-based distros that are in turn based on Slackware).

Far from it, put it this way, if I did not start this project we may have never contributed to the Linux community. We have many goals, the website will be up soon and I'll let you have a read. We know what we want to do and it has little to do with self satisfaction, it has more to do with our passion for Linux and the areas we believe we can improve on. However you would be correct if you where implying we did not want to help another distro because we do not want to, directly. All those guys will know far more than us about what they are doing and it would take us a while to get up to scratch, however this way we know what is going on, where we are and what is to be done, as I see it the production cycle is going to be a lot faster because and there will be less/no piddling around with working things out or fighting about views/ethics. DO NOT GET ME WRONG (heavy emphasis) we are going to give everything back to Debian or Slackware, any improvements we find we will freely report and try to patch, so essentially we will be working with them but on a separate yet similar project

The reason this project started was because I feel in love with Linux one day and I want the world to know about it. Now many people do but the Mac and PC's are too busy to notice or assume it's too hard. In no way are we pulling of a Linspire and making Lin-Dows... that is the last thing we want to do. We are making a distro that is Linux, Desktop Linux, Multimedia Linux, Eye Candy Linux, Secure Linux, Network Linux, Home Linux... It will be something everyone can use keeping in mind traditional Linux fans. This basically means its going to be easy to use, but not everything is going to be done for you, you will be free to do, to change, to recreate, the boundaries will be endless. Now making a distro that is easy to use seems pointless as other claim to do that any way, but we are also going to focus on a few other things... As soon as the site goes up I'll post and let you guys know.

Well, I'm voting for Slackware for the simple fact that 1) it has more frequent releases (but not too many), 2) it is quite simple and therefore offers more room for building (keeping development much less arcane), and 3) is proven extremely reliable for over a decade now.

Agreed. we have too many of those based of this distro or that distro. But creating an entirely new one now that is the way to go.

And, there is something called "not reinventing the wheel." Slack and Debian have their roots, also.

This is a tough one. To reinvent the wheel or not to reinvent the wheel? Personally I don't see a need for it. Look at Gentoo for example. Its Debian based, but I can't really tell. I see very little Debian left in it. The package manager has obviously changed, but even subtle thing have changed as well. The init scripts in Gentoo are totally different. There seems to be no need to reinvent the wheel when given enough time the projects seem to separate so much the similarities fade and the differences emerge.

I agree. It is hard to tell Gentoo is Debian, I was actually amazed when I first found that out. When we make this distro it is not going to just be a face plate for Debian, we plan on changing a large amount of it, even more than Gentoo is the aim.

Another thing to remember is we are not 'reinventing' the wheel, we are trying to improve on it. That is a process that works, if it where not for people trying to make things better we still may be using Fords original Quadricycle. But history shows each time something good is invented people improve on it. That's what we want to do. Reinventing the wheel is pointless, making improvements to it works.

I'd actually really consider going hard into LFS and once you've got that down pat write some sort of a package manager (perhaps base it on Gentoo's Portage).

Just my not like I'm a linux-god or anything, in fact I'm just basically starting out in the F/OSS world...

It's always something with Ubuntu. It won't find USB, or It won't find the soundcard. Always something. It won't boot all the way on AMD but will on my Celeron. I'd rather see a Debian distro. They work everywhere.

I don't want to burst your bubble but Ubuntu is Debain based.

You should post that comment in the Ubuntu fanboy annex...oops I meant the Digg Linux/Unix zone. They'd take it like calling their mothers ugly . [As one of the only other Xandros users here I just needed an excuse to say hi.]

But to stay with the topic it's cool to see samcal still getting input/feedback and glad he's sticking with such an ambitious project. Has a name for the new distro been chosen yet? You could start another topic - "vote for the coolest name for my new disto". Best wishes.

An update - working with Debian as I type… It’s all going quite well at the moment, have run into a few problems but other than software issues all seems quite well. At most right now it is just a customized Debian, I have not actually started to modify things in detail, well besides configs.

The website (besides some major PHP sections) is almost complete so I can paste a URL back here within the next week or so, right now I’m just trying to fix some exploits I know exist in SMF Forums.

I’ll be posting again soon with those updates so make sure you check back, the website will contain a lot more information

Oh sorry forgot to say - Thanks for all the support + feedback, it's great to know that people are still viewing!! I must head off, the new laptops battery is about to die

Glad to see things are actually getting off the ground. Don't let the momentum stop. From what I've seen alot of projects die right about at this phase, so don't let your project become a statistic. Please do post the site I'm interested to see what your goals are for the distro and what you've done so far!

Everything is starting to pick up now which is great!

We have someone coding some heavy PHP for a program backend
Got a member working on sounds + graphics
Me working on the visuals – (themes and configuration)
And a basic programmer who is working on an installer

However even with this team that is working well together we will need more (this is not an AD) so I might post in the LQ Job Marketplace within the next few months.

What’s great is the actual OS is only phase one of the project