I am making a new Ubuntu based distribution, Crimson Swarm OS, and I am wondering what people want. Currently it has a heavily modified GNOME 2.32 interface, Faenza icons, Epiphany, and was originally built atop Lubuntu.

Despite it's Lubuntu roots, it looks more like Ubuntu 10.10 now as no longer does it have LXDE. Instead, it has Equinox theme, docky at the bottom, a single Ubuntu button in the top right, and only Bluetooth and WiFi buttons in the top right.

As it is mainly for people who develop, I am trying to get the boot time within 10 seconds, have an IDE or two, and other features. What do developers want most?

people want generally different things. :P

what developers most want, they tend to get by themselves, specific to their own needs.

kinda looks like you're trying to aim narrowly/specifically, at a broad and diverse scatter of targets.

if aiming mainly at those who develop, and considering they may develop using very different editors, ides, languages etc, perhaps you could offer an installation/post-installation script which offers selections of groups of packages, and/or individual apps, aimed at their various needs.

for example, one of the options might be for those who want to develop software with haskell, and selecting it would pull in all the haskell stuff.
another option might be mono, another for C, another for Qt4, and so on.
then another section for which ide or text editor they prefer...
or maybe, if you really want... you could make the ultimate dev distro, and include eeeeeeverything. ...but good luck doing that and still keeping the boot time down.

all the best with your new distro (i've had a few distro projects myself).

So I could have icons or options which when selected install what is required for that sort of project, so C might pull in GCC, Vim, and possily a larger IDE, PHP might set up a web server, etc. Nice idea.