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View Poll Results: Best for distro base?
Debian 50 40.98%
Slackware 41 33.61%
Gentoo 11 9.02%
LFS 8 6.56%
Other 12 9.84%
Voters: 122. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 10-12-2006, 03:19 AM   #1
samcal
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Distro Base - Debian vs Gentoo


If you have read any of my previous posts you would know that i am building a distro with a team. The distro will be for desktop users, both noobies and more advanced. We want to make something as simple as Linspire but keep a lot open for advanced people (give them the options).

We have just gathered everything we need but are stuck on a little problem... the base for the distro.

We think that the best would be debian or gentoo... but would like some opinions. IF you want to have a say please post if you think that deb or gen are the wrong way to go you can also post an alternative.

(We did like the idea of remastering Mandriva but that seems like cheating as its already put together and ironed out...) :P

Thanks!
 
Old 10-12-2006, 05:05 AM   #2
trickykid
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Be orginal, don't base it off anything if you want to stand out. What your actually implying to me is there's just going to be another damn distro to choose from. Make it stand out, make it different from the others. Do this by building it truly from scratch, or it's just going to be another cloned distro..
 
Old 10-12-2006, 05:45 AM   #3
tcort
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Please don't start another distro unless you do something completely different, new, or innovative. There are hundreds that exist already and almost all of them are looking for people to help out. It is a lot of work to maintain a full desktop distribution and unless you have a dedicated team of at least 10 really talented people, the distro will likely fade unto obscurity.
 
Old 10-12-2006, 05:54 AM   #4
trickykid
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tcort
Please don't start another distro unless you do something completely different, new, or innovative. There are hundreds that exist already and almost all of them are looking for people to help out. It is a lot of work to maintain a full desktop distribution and unless you have a dedicated team of at least 10 really talented people, the distro will likely fade unto obscurity.
But but... Slackware is pretty much a one man team..

I'd agree, like I said before, don't build it from another distro, everyone's done that before, it's called.. LFS..
 
Old 10-12-2006, 07:29 AM   #5
rickh
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Quote:
something as simple as Linspire
Does that mean you're going to put proprietary drivers in it? If so, I hope it fails miserably.
 
Old 10-12-2006, 11:03 AM   #6
cs-cam
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rickh
Does that mean you're going to put proprietary drivers in it? If so, I hope it fails miserably.
Well now that's not very nice, I thought I was the rude guy around here

I'm with the others, I wouldn't base it off another distro. I would definitely suggest using another distro as a guide though. Use a package manager from another distro if you like but don't steal packages from other distros, trust me it'll only end up causing problems that are hard to trace because you didn't write the original scripts/code/whatever yourself.
 
Old 10-12-2006, 01:34 PM   #7
introuble
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Yes, basing it off another distro is horrible, just look how it turned out for Ubuntu

What people are most likely saying is that you have to wander if you're not trying to reinvent the wheel.

There are tons and tons of Linux distros. So go BSD
 
Old 10-12-2006, 04:04 PM   #8
crashmeister
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Help out the sourcemage guys.Real cool distro in dire need for maintenance.
 
Old 10-13-2006, 12:42 AM   #9
samcal
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I'd like to say this doesn't sound anything like the true spirit of open source development. Who cares if there is a billion distros, it means that there is another for someone to chose from... this can be bad, but I think its more of a good thing (from my experiences). I like being able to say "no I don't like debian ill look at openSUSE, ok openSUSE is not for me lets see what dreamlinux has..." etc

I have been told "don't build another one" by so many people and that is not an option. Not to sound rude but that's stupid. If everyone didn't follow a dream and try to improve on something where would we be today? Another distro means another to chose from, more funding/research for the OS community as a whole... PCLinuxOS is based on mandriva, now I can see how people think that's a bit stupid as mandriva is pretty much an ironed out distro, but look where it go them! Distrowatch.com rates it as the #6 distro, that is amazing considering how young it is. It was all based on a dream and it has helped Linux greatly, it has made something even Mac + PC users are able to work their way around.

I am looking into using LFS but not yet. As you said I can just help another distro, but we don't want to do that directly. By basing it on debian, gentoo, slackware etc we can essentially help them by giving them our updates etc so they can see what we have done. Its like what Ubuntu does (#1 on distrowatch.com) they give debian their updates but essentially they are a different distro. I could go on for hours but I think I will stop with that.

Another point is about proprietary software. Now I know open source RULES, it is much better than closed software for a number of reasons, but people can battle both ways. I understand that people need to put food on their plates and that is 100% fine by me, I am happy to pay for software, drivers, games as long as they are fairly priced. Now even if I don't fully agree with closing source code I would still like to offer support for that, I mean what is wrong with it? Some people like to play wma, MP3 files, some people need those drivers for their network cards... This is holding Linux back, the community is saying "NO!" to supporting proprietary software while others are complaining about companies not giving Linux ports of anything? I mean come on, it can't be that bad to use proprietary software, I'm sure everyone uses Google, where is the full source code to that? I have seen on this forum hundreds of times stuff like 'Google is a Linux users friend', 'Just Google it'... THEY EARN BILLIONS, not open source BUT they fund open source projects so I believe that makes it OK (still to me seem a bit greedy). Essentially that is proprietary software but Linux users still like it (I like and use it)I know this is a bit out of there but I would rather pay a one time fee for software (a reasonable fee) and have no ad's etc. This is the trade of with proprietary software, you pay or you gets ad's and in my position I believe a small fee is more than fine. Once again people need to eat, it's the way to world works. Many Linux programmers have jobs, they will essentially produce some kind of 'proprietary' item for a company. Linus uses proprietary software and I believe he once said something similar to me about people needing to put food on their plates. He uses a Mac, isn't that a proprietary machine? Most the software on a Mac (Like a PC) is proprietary, if he can use it why is everyone else so against it?

Its sort of like Quake... (ill get onto that later) I personally would like to see more of it ported to Linux. I love The GIMP but how good would it be to have Photoshop running natively in Linux! Before I start a flame war I would once again like to say some companies are greedy and refuse to release source code to earn billions of dollars for self gain - THIS IS WRONG! but some just try to earn there expenses back - I SUPPORT THIS, everyone needs to eat, you cant program 24/7 and expect to be able to pay for food.

Would the community be in favour of a Quake style approach to software... The company releases close software that you purchase, once they have made all programming expense (etc) back they release the source code to the community? Cedega was meant to do something like this but has yet to which makes me very angry about that, I do not support that project now that they have failed to live up to a promise made... but once again back to Quake they did release the source code for the games engine, they made there money back so decided to 'give it up'... Agree or disagree?

Last edited by samcal; 10-13-2006 at 01:06 AM.
 
Old 10-13-2006, 01:20 AM   #10
vharishankar
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Ok, then go out and build a distro and not talk about it.

People here are naturally sceptical because you haven't anything to show them. Show them something and then we'll all be suitably impressed

The fact is we've seen plenty of people who post here wanting to "create their own distro" and to be honest 99% of them don't ever follow up on that.

At least show your project site on how far you've progressed with your initial idea and then we can maybe contribute something positive towards it instead of appearing critical or sceptical.

Last edited by vharishankar; 10-13-2006 at 01:22 AM.
 
Old 10-13-2006, 02:27 AM   #11
samcal
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Oh sorry if it came across that I was trying to recruit people for the development team... that is not what I was after at all (though help is welcome). I was just actually after honest options on distros. I simply would like a broader view on the strengths and weaknesses of these. I mention slackware, debian and gentoo as thats what my team has come up with and we know of successful distros based on them.

If you would like to see the current site (heavily emphasizing) that is UNDER MAJOR CONSTRUCTION you can visit it at http://media-linux.ath.cx (Just taken down to start moving)

If that URL does not work please post a reply, I only just set up the VHosts and am not sure how well its working...

Not much information has been provided on that site as I am in the middle of transfer servers. I have got to test a few things on this debian box and then it should all be placed on that. Still even after moving it to the debain server it will not be done as the "My Linux" is a whole heap of custom designed PHP scripts that will interact with modfieid and custom designed programs. That will take a while to complete but the other sections should be done.

Last edited by samcal; 10-13-2006 at 05:41 AM.
 
Old 10-13-2006, 03:23 AM   #12
vharishankar
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Quote:
Originally Posted by samcal
Oh sorry if it came across that I was trying to recruit people for the development team... that is not what I was after at all (though help is welcome). I was just actually after honest options on distros. I simply would like a broader view on the strengths and weaknesses of these. I mention slackware, debian and gentoo as thats what my team has come up with and we know of successful distros based on them.

If you would like to see the current site (heavily emphasizing) that is UNDER MAJOR CONSTRUCTION you can visit it at http://linuxcore.ath.cx

If that URL does not work please post a reply, I only just set up the VHosts and am not sure how well its working...

Not much information has been provided on that site as I am in the middle of transfer servers. I have got to test a few things on this debian box and then it should all be placed on that. Still even after moving it to the debain server it will not be done as the "My Linux" is a whole heap of custom designed PHP scripts that will interact with modfieid and custom designed programs. That will take a while to complete but the other sections should be done.
No, that's not how I meant it. I meant that you need something concrete to develop upon before talking about it. In other words, you should probably have approached us telling us what all you've done so far in concrete terms towards building your distro.

Also the fact that there are plenty of distro debates, so you'll never find the "ideal" one. After all, as you said before, the fact that so many distros exist is because everybody has their own idea of what is good and what is not.

So my suggestion is that you get your own ideas on what you're passionate about and build upon that and your audience will find you on their own. This kind of looking for feedback will leave more confusion amidst all the scepticism. Because the relative strengths and weaknesses of existing distros have been debated to death both on this forum and all over the internet on newsgroups, mailing lists and so on.

Your distro should be what you're standing for (or your values) -- not based on a popularity contest. You can never be all things to all people. That's what makes the community so full of flavour because each distro tries and address a particular idea or ideology and ultimately there's a Linux flavour for everybody.

Last edited by vharishankar; 10-13-2006 at 03:28 AM.
 
Old 10-13-2006, 03:27 AM   #13
samcal
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Ok once again I will rephrase the question to make it a bit more basic.

In your personal opinion/s do you believe that Debian, Slackware or Gentoo would perform better as the base of a distro? What are your reasons for thinking this way?
 
Old 10-13-2006, 03:29 AM   #14
vharishankar
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I voted Debian because I love Debian, but then again, it's only an opinion and somebody else will say Slackware and somebody else will vote for Gentoo.

There was once some God who posted along these lines:
Real distribution developers do not post on forums asking for advise

(jus kidding)

Last edited by vharishankar; 10-13-2006 at 03:31 AM.
 
Old 10-13-2006, 03:31 AM   #15
samcal
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Thanks for the reply! Thats the feedback I need, it does not matter if it's only a personal opinion every opinion I get will help!

Development will start on Monday, so if you can please post an opinion before then! thanks

Last edited by samcal; 10-13-2006 at 03:32 AM.
 
  


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