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linuxPCplus 02-15-2013 09:43 PM

While I do agree it will be alot of work, I have to say that this would not be the first distro to successfully mix repos. Look at Manjaro,Bodhi, & even the early versions of Chakra. All mix(ed) repos belonging to their parent distro with their own repos. These are not the only ones doing it either.

All that being said, I do take your thoughts seriously & yes, I am looking at ther "parent distro" options. Let me try to be more clear about what I am trying to accomplish here, maybe this will allow folks to give even more advice & thoughts.

Reality is that I do not truly care what the parent distro is. Hell, for all I care it could be it's very own independent distro. But the things that absolutely MUST be true are these: First, the distro MUST be as user friendly (or more so) as Ubuntu. Second, the distro must be at least as stable (by default) as Ubuntu (but users should be able to easily enable less stable "testing" repos if they wish). Next, package management MUST be as easy or easier than Ubuntu. The distro MUST be rolling. One of the primary goals is to create a distro users can install, and keep up to date without EVER needing to manual upgrade as they must with standar releases such as Ubuntu.

There are other features I would LIKE to have, but these are the absolute musts (at least that I have determined so far)! A nice software center that works & looks as well as say Ubuntu Software center or Deepin Software center would be the ideal. Highly configurable auto-upgrade options would be important. For example, lets say the repos are updated daily (hypothetically). A user should be able to decide if they want to manually upgrade when they are ready or auto-upgrade daily, weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, so on.

Free choice is another essential. Users should be able to choose ANY DE they want. What would be cool is to have sort of a build it yourself setup for the initial distro download that lets the user create an ISO (in an easy GUI way) with the packages they want pre-installed. Of course, they could always choose from a variety of pre-built iso's too.

As I have pointed out in my earlier posts, this is the earliest stages here. It is literally just an idea in my head that I wanted feedback on. Do not misunderstand me, I am committed to this project! I have given alot of thought to this (& still do) &I fully intend to make this a reality. The dialog I am getting in these forums is helping me to determine more specifcally what I hope to create here. So thanks all for the feedback! Keep it coming!

Fuduntu IS user-friendly, but not Ubuntu friendly. I feel it is missing some key features that I want for this distro. Have any of you ever used Zorin? It is an Ubuntu based distro designed to make the transition from Windows to Linux "seamless". THAT is what I want for this distro, but in a rolling relase format. I want a Windows or Mac user to be able to pick this distro up & be able to use it almost immediately. It needs to be THAT friendly.

Randicus Draco Albus 02-15-2013 10:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by linuxPCplus (Post 4892724)
I want a Windows or Mac user to be able to pick this distro up & be able to use it almost immediately. It needs to be THAT friendly.

The default installation of most distros can be used by by Windows and Mac users without difficulty. It is when people want to modify something it becomes necessary to become familiar with the system and learn a little. Essentially, what you are suggesting is a rolling release where the developers do all the work, so the users do not need to do any. That is fine, as long as you have enough people who can do all that work.


I also cannot help getting the impression that you want to create a one size fits all distro.
Quote:

What would be cool is to have sort of a build it yourself setup for the initial distro download that lets the user create an ISO (in an easy GUI way) with the packages they want pre-installed. Of course, they could always choose from a variety of pre-built iso's too.
User-friendly enough to use without learning anything -point and click in pretty GUIs; and with advanced options for customisation. Of vital importance to remember is that Windows and Mac achieve "friendliness" by taking away choice. As I stated above, you would try to create a system where the developers would have a huge amount of work.

Personally, I think such a project is over-ambitious, but if you have enough determination and people to help you, go for it and good luck.:)

k3lt01 02-15-2013 11:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randicus Draco Albus (Post 4892743)
as long as you have enough people who can do all that work.

This, to me, is the clincher. It is a huge task and much more than 1 person can achieve.
Quote:

Originally Posted by Randicus Draco Albus (Post 4892743)
Personally, I think such a project is over-ambitious, but if you have enough determination and people to help you, go for it and good luck.:)

I agree to an extent. I had similar thoughts with Cobber but I realise it can't happen when it's just me doing Cobber so I changed my thinking to creating a stable release along with various levels of testing/unstable all using Debians native repositories with a small repository that is native to Cobber. To me anything more is to much work for one person.

Randicus Draco Albus 02-16-2013 12:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randicus Draco Albus (Post 4892743)
Personally, I think such a project is over-ambitious,

I probably should clarify what I mean by over-ambitious. I do not mean a project that is too big, but rather, a project that encompasses too much. That is why I made reference to MS and Mac in connection with user friendliness. So-called "user friendliness" in terms of the ease of using Mac and Windows is achieved by limiting freedom. Creating a system that has the perceived ease of use of MS and Mac without locking the system down and allowing user freedom would be a daunting task. Others might disagree, but in my opinion, it would be trying to merge conflicting goals. If it is possible, it would require a lot of work.

TobiSGD 02-16-2013 04:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by linuxPCplus (Post 4892724)
While I do agree it will be alot of work, I have to say that this would not be the first distro to successfully mix repos. Look at Manjaro,Bodhi, & even the early versions of Chakra. All mix(ed) repos belonging to their parent distro with their own repos. These are not the only ones doing it either.

Mixing repos is not a bad thing per se. The problem starts when you try to mix distros that are bleeding edge with stable repos. This will inevitable lead to problems with different versions.

Quote:

Highly configurable auto-upgrade options would be important. For example, lets say the repos are updated daily (hypothetically). A user should be able to decide if they want to manually upgrade when they are ready or auto-upgrade daily, weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, so on.
In a rolling release distribution auto-upgrades are something that should be avoided at all costs. Have a look at the most successful rolling release distro, Arch: It is highly recommended to check their website everytime before doing an upgrade so that you can work around caveats that may be existent. The software world moves fast and you won't be able to intercept all possible problems, especially if one of your goals is to have a highly configurable system.

Quote:

I want a Windows or Mac user to be able to pick this distro up & be able to use it almost immediately. It needs to be THAT friendly.
My personal opinion: For those users, usually with low knowledge level and the absence of motivation to learn or doing anything on the command line, a true rolling release is very difficult to bring to a level that will be accepted.
That is why distros like LMDE are not using a true rolling release scheme.

snowday 02-16-2013 10:44 AM

Windows is not rolling-release (look how many are still using XP!) and Mac OS in not rolling-release. Windows and Mac users are much more comfortable with a nice stable system that doesn't constantly change under their feet; this is why Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Fedora, Slackware, Red Hat, etc. are the most popular distros.

DavidMcCann 02-16-2013 10:50 AM

The question of work also arises with the goal of offering all the desktop environments. I've used 7 desktops and 12 window managers, and there are still ones I haven't encountered yet!

Even if you keep to the most popular, the extras are often inferior to the flagship one. For OpenSUSE, KDE is better than Gnome which is better than Xfce. Why? Because they have more KDE users, since it's the only one on the live disk, and few Xfce testers because it's not in the beta-test releases. Similarly, Mint is not so good when it comes to KDE or Xfce. Supporting everything needs a lot of work, and it's also difficult to get it tested.

Over the years I've come to the conclusion that you need to have a very clear vision of what a distro is supposed to do and whom you expect to use it. That's one reason why Slackers are happy: Slackware is very focused on their needs and preferences, even if it's caviare to the general.

linuxPCplus 02-17-2013 05:04 PM

So I have actually done some more research & thinking. It seems to me that making a Ubuntu based rolling release should (in theory) not be as hard as most seem to think.
I mean Ubuntu has testing repos. You can download the next version any time you want. I have already been playing with 13.04 for example.

I may be totally wrong in the assumptions/theories I am about to propose, I will admit that up front. But lets think about this. Keep in mind, its all theoretical.

So, what if you created a distro that can access the exact same repos that are used for the Ubuntu version in development? Of course, you would want to make it easy for a user to decide how often the system updates. In other words, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.

You would also need to find a way to make the updates automatic. or at least partly automatic. One of the points of a rolling release is to eliminate the need to reinstall every time a new version comes out. So you would have to find a way to get the system to update from the Ubuntu testing repos without having to reinstall.

I do not intend to imply that this would be an easy task. Alot of challenges would face us in developing this distro. For one thing, we may need to have direct help from Canonical (to get the needed level of access to the repos). Extra steps would need to be implemented to increase stability of the distro since the Ubuntu testing repos are obviously not totally stable by nature.

Perhaps the distro could have it's own repos that pull from both the testing & stable Ubuntu repos, but instead of including EVERYTHING in the testing repo, we (well, the development team) include only those items that are tested & known to be relatively stable. In addition, the maintainers could add additional packages that are stable.

For those more brave users, they could enable another set of repos that include the full Ubuntu testing repos packages.
(BTW, sorry if I am confusing anyone here, I am thinking out loud. I am hoping that sharing my thoughts will help create a dialog that may some day lead to this idea becoming a reality).

So essentially, this distro would have it's own repos which are built from the Ubuntu repos, rather than actually using the Ubuntu repos directly. It would have a "Stable" repo built from both the main Ubuntu repos & APPROVED packages within Ubuntu's testing repos. The second repos would be the "Testing" repo, built from the main Ubuntu repos and a wider range of "testing" packages. Finally, there would be a third repo modeled around the Arch User Repos concept. This repo would be made up of packages that may or may not be approved by this distro's team, but are contributed by the distro's users.

So I have alot more going through my crazy head about thiss, but I think I have given some good food for thought & discussion. Like I said, this these ideas are primarily theoretical,and as such, may not be workable. But I wanted to share it & see where it leads!

TobiSGD 02-17-2013 05:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by linuxPCplus (Post 4893962)
It would have a "Stable" repo built from both the main Ubuntu repos & APPROVED packages within Ubuntu's testing repos. The second repos would be the "Testing" repo, built from the main Ubuntu repos and a wider range of "testing" packages.

And at this point you would have a semi rolling release, like LMDE, not a true rolling release. I still think you shouldn't limit your base to an existing distro with a stable release cycle, and I still think that you don't get the implications of what you propose. True rolling release distros are not compatible to distros with a stable release cycle, alone due to software versions.

Make your distro an independent distro, you can still port Ubuntu's (or whichever distro's) tools to it, but you will get rid of the problems that inevitably will occur when you mix older packages into a rolling release distro.

linuxPCplus 02-17-2013 05:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD (Post 4893980)
And at this point you would have a semi rolling release, like LMDE, not a true rolling release. I still think you shouldn't limit your base to an existing distro with a stable release cycle, and I still think that you don't get the implications of what you propose. True rolling release distros are not compatible to distros with a stable release cycle, alone due to software versions.

Make your distro an independent distro, you can still port Ubuntu's (or whichever distro's) tools to it, but you will get rid of the problems that inevitably will occur when you mix older packages into a rolling release distro.

Agreed, it would be a semi-rolling release. And I did in fact state that I do not know all of the implications, a fact I admitted from the start. That is the point of this discussion.

I am one of those who is on the fence about LMDE's status as a rolling release. I mean the current LMDE iso comes with GIMP 2.6 and 2.8 has been out for more than a year!

I admit I am leaning towards an independent distro, with Ubuntu's best tools/features ported over. The end goal is a rolling release that is as user friendly as Ubuntu, but more up to date. And perhaps, this is the best way to accomplish this.
(Do you relaize that kdenlive is on 0.9.4, but Ubuntu repos still have 0.8.2? That release is over 2 years old & 0.9.2 is the most recent "official" release!)

Randicus Draco Albus 02-17-2013 06:01 PM

Quote:

One of the points of a rolling release is to eliminate the need to reinstall every time a new version comes out. So you would have to find a way to get the system to update from the Ubuntu testing repos without having to reinstall.
Why is it necessary to re-install? Back in the days of yore when I used Ubuntu, I upgraded with the update manager. Granted, and this may be applicable to this theoretical system, I did not have any packages from outside the main repositories.;)


Quote:

we may need to have direct help from Canonical
the Ubuntu testing repos are obviously not totally stable by nature.
have it's own repos that pull from both the testing & stable Ubuntu repos
Why must Ubuntu's repos be used? The stated goal is a system that is as "easy" to use as Ubuntu. How many "user friendly" or "beginner" distros are tweaked versions of Debian? There is also a beginner distro that is a tweaked version of Slackware. Remember that almost all of Ubuntu's packages are slightly modified Debian packages. Which is probably why others who have posted in this thread recommend using Debian as the base. Personally, Ubuntu is that last system I would use as the base of another. I am reminded of the proverb; garbage in, garbage out.

It seems to me that the real objective is a distro that looks and feels like Buntu, but is better. Is that not what Mint is supposed to be?

Quote:

It would have a "Stable" repo built from both the main Ubuntu repos & APPROVED packages within Ubuntu's testing repos. The second repos would be the "Testing" repo, built from the main Ubuntu repos and a wider range of "testing" packages. Finally, there would be a third repo modeled around the Arch User Repos concept. This repo would be made up of packages that may or may not be approved by this distro's team, but are contributed by the distro's users.
And how would that make the system as easy to use as Mac and Windows? That would require users to read the system's documentation and learn how to administrate their systems, which is contrary to to the Microsoft/Apple/Ubuntu philosophy of keeping the users ignorant. As I eluded to in an earlier post, you want to make the system both complex and easy. If you want to create a system as easy to use as you described earlier, it would offer packages from one repository. Offering stable, unstable and experimental packages, and leaving it to the users to decide how to mix and match them, requires a level of knowledge well beyond point and click. It is like wanting an engine that has 500 horse power and gets 50 miles per gallon. The best advice I can give is to focus on what is most important: ease of use or a remarkably complex system. You need to decide which demographic of users the system would cater to.

k3lt01 02-17-2013 08:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by linuxPCplus (Post 4893962)
So I have actually done some more research & thinking. It seems to me that making a Ubuntu based rolling release should (in theory) not be as hard as most seem to think.
I mean Ubuntu has testing repos. You can download the next version any time you want. I have already been playing with 13.04 for example.

At the end of every development cycle everything stops totally for a period of a couple of weeks. I was an Ubuntu Development tester for a couple of years, actually there are a few of us in LQ that were Ubuntu Dev testers, and can tell you with certainty you do not want to base your rolling release on Ubuntu's development release. Debian Sid (which most Ubuntu development cycles are based on) is infinately more stable than, even stable, Ubuntu releases. As an example, there is a reason why Squeeze and Ubuntu 10.04 have the same specs and that is because 10.04 is based on Squeeze yet it was released 12 months ahead of Squeeze.

linuxPCplus 02-18-2013 01:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randicus Draco Albus (Post 4893994)
Why is it necessary to re-install? Back in the days of yore when I used Ubuntu, I upgraded with the update manager. Granted, and this may be applicable to this theoretical system, I did not have any packages from outside the main repositories.;)


Why must Ubuntu's repos be used? The stated goal is a system that is as "easy" to use as Ubuntu. How many "user friendly" or "beginner" distros are tweaked versions of Debian? There is also a beginner distro that is a tweaked version of Slackware. Remember that almost all of Ubuntu's packages are slightly modified Debian packages. Which is probably why others who have posted in this thread recommend using Debian as the base. Personally, Ubuntu is that last system I would use as the base of another. I am reminded of the proverb; garbage in, garbage out.

It seems to me that the real objective is a distro that looks and feels like Buntu, but is better. Is that not what Mint is supposed to be?


And how would that make the system as easy to use as Mac and Windows? That would require users to read the system's documentation and learn how to administrate their systems, which is contrary to to the Microsoft/Apple/Ubuntu philosophy of keeping the users ignorant. As I eluded to in an earlier post, you want to make the system both complex and easy. If you want to create a system as easy to use as you described earlier, it would offer packages from one repository. Offering stable, unstable and experimental packages, and leaving it to the users to decide how to mix and match them, requires a level of knowledge well beyond point and click. It is like wanting an engine that has 500 horse power and gets 50 miles per gallon. The best advice I can give is to focus on what is most important: ease of use or a remarkably complex system. You need to decide which demographic of users the system would cater to.

Quite simply, because reinstalling is MUCH faster. Running a ditribution upgrade from update manager takes (in my experiences) 2 hours or more, and often causes alot of breakages or other problems. Reinstalling takes about 30-45 minutes.

The next comments have been answered in previous posts where I mentioned the distro having it's own repos.

The repos would not make it as easy as Mac or Windows to use. That would be accomplished through other GUI tools. For example, I already have a look changer simialr to the one found in Zorin (actually based on it) to make the system look like Windows or Mac. There would be several other tools that would make the distro look & feel enough like Windows or Mac to make it comfortable or familiar to Windows/Mac users.

"Offering stable, unstable and experimental packages, and leaving it to the users to decide how to mix and match them, requires a level of knowledge well beyond point and click."
Other distros have managed to do exactly this quite successfully: Bodhi, Manjaro, & Vector for example. The big difference here would be that where as in these distro's you have to manually change the source lists, in this new distro it would be done via a nice little gui.

Try to think of it as a scalable system. When a new user picks it up with little or no Linux experience, they get a fast, stable, & up to date system. As they become more familiar with Linux, they can "tweak" it to get more advanced features, package updates, & bleeding edge software.

I will repeat once again since some don't seem to be getting it: this is an idea, a concept in my overactive imagination. The more this discussion progresses, the more I am able to "tweak" or "sharpen" the image of what I hope to create. The open source community is one of the most creative communities in the world! Opensource developers are well know for doing things that "can't be done" or that are "too complicated". I hope I am carrying on that tradition!

Randicus Draco Albus 02-18-2013 02:26 AM

Quote:

The big difference here would be that where as in these distro's you have to manually change the source lists, in this new distro it would be done via a nice little gui.
Like Synaptic?

Quote:

Try to think of it as a scalable system. When a new user picks it up with little or no Linux experience, they get a fast, stable, & up to date system. As they become more familiar with Linux, they can "tweak" it to get more advanced features, package updates, & bleeding edge software.
Instead of a singe, scalable system, perhaps Debian's division of Stable, Testing, Unstable is a model to consider?

Quote:

Running a ditribution upgrade from update manager takes (in my experiences) 2 hours or more
You are blessed with a quick connection. My upgrades took several hours.:( Upgrade time is the price paid for stability.


Quote:

There would be several other tools that would make the distro look & feel enough like Windows or Mac to make it comfortable or familiar to Windows/Mac users.
There are two schools of thought concerning that issue. Some believe a Linux system that looks just like Windows will be appealing, because it offers a familiar, and comfortable, environment. Others believe more people will be attracted by something different. Why switch to something that is the same as I already have? No right or wrong answer there.


Quote:

this is an idea, a concept in my overactive imagination. The more this discussion progresses, the more I am able to "tweak" or "sharpen" the image of what I hope to create.
Then it is necessary to consider all ideas and criticisms offered. Both good and bad. You can be almost guaranteed that as ideas and information unfold, your vision will metamorphose. Possibly into something you did not expect. Such is the journey of creativity.


Edit
Another idea to consider that would require more work, but would have a better chance of bearing fruit, would be to have two separate releases. A stable beginner's system that only has stable older packages, upgraded at regular intervals; and a rolling release with cutting edge packages for advanced users. Upgraded packages would move from the rolling release to the stable release after the bugs have been worked out.

A stable rolling release is improbable, but a dual-release distro would offer both. The distro's web site should have copious documentation and/or links to it, encouraging users of the stable release to read documentation. The immediate goal being to help new users move up to the rolling release, but also with the long-term objective of helping them become knowledgeable Linux users.

TobiSGD 02-18-2013 05:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by linuxPCplus (Post 4894175)
"Offering stable, unstable and experimental packages, and leaving it to the users to decide how to mix and match them, requires a level of knowledge well beyond point and click."
Other distros have managed to do exactly this quite successfully: Bodhi, Manjaro, & Vector for example. The big difference here would be that where as in these distro's you have to manually change the source lists, in this new distro it would be done via a nice little gui.

No, other distros do it not that way. All the distros you mentioned build their packages on the same stable base. If you have a stable and a rolling release branch of your distro (or, as you mentioned earlier, for example Ubuntu's current release and the future version) you have two different base systems, with different versions of software. Mixing those two repos will break the system and using a GUI instead of editing a text file will not prevent that.

Quote:

I will repeat once again since some don't seem to be getting it: this is an idea, a concept in my overactive imagination. The more this discussion progresses, the more I am able to "tweak" or "sharpen" the image of what I hope to create. The open source community is one of the most creative communities in the world! Opensource developers are well know for doing things that "can't be done" or that are "too complicated". I hope I am carrying on that tradition!
I don't want to discourage you and this may be sound hard, but I think that your project in the current state is doomed. While you can imagine how your distro should be, you seem to lack the knowledge to filter out which parts of your imagination are viable and which not, especially with limited manpower. Open source developers may be able to do great things, but the problem here is that you are not a developer, you are a manager. You can imagine things, but if they are viable is beyond your current knowledge.
Before going further I would recommend to get more knowledge about this topic. Try to go through LFS one time, so that you can see what actually happens under the hood of a Linux system. Go ahead and mix some packages of the Ubuntu testing branch into the current stable branch and see what happens and where the difficulties with that really are. Then go through your vision again and test it against your new knowledge. Become at least a little bit of a developer, planning a distro is a job for developers, not managers.


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