Creating new distro. How new distros teams arise?
 

I have a lot of ideas and conceptions how desktop environment and operating system should look and work.

It's required to create new DE. And I think about new Linux distro or a system based on FreeBSD.

The new DE will not be huge and expanded project like Gnome or Kde.

I think about simple DE like LXDE or IceWM with taskbar. All written in QT, but with nice look & fell like Panteon from eOS or Deepin DE.

The new Linux distro or system BSD based, should be fully made for extra total novice home user.

So it will not be 99999 distro with icons, theme and wallpaper changed only.

Now I have an important questions.

How Linux distro teams has arised? Linux Mint, ElementaryOS, Antergos etc. and smaller projects?

From where they got money for devolopment and salary for programmers? CEO and devs are often very young people under 30.

FreeBSD is NOT Linux and as such, the term "distro" has no meaning in the context of FreeBSD. There are a few BSD operating systems that do a full install with a desktop, etc. Not to say you can't make one yourself.

I am not sure how a Linux distro comes into being, except maybe someone has an idea and it grows from there. My guess is making a new desktop environment is much more complex than creating a new Linux distro though.

Yeah, but first versions of new DE are simple and limited. It's really hard and complex to create a simple window manager with few options like one simple animation and one type of window shadow?

I think the same about tasbkar and file manager. Only few useful options in first versions.

I am pretty sure window managers are much, much simpler than a full desktop environment. KDE and Gnome are both tremendously complex. In contrast, the DWM window manager has less than 2000 lines of source code. DE's have file managers, network connectivity, notifications, and a ton of functionality built in, windows managers only manage windows so are far simpler. Just my opinion.

Thanks for the grin. Posted by a team member.

Hope you got some online friends. Small one man distros sometimes fail because life steps in. I experienced that scenario when I was a Macpup team member.

You are probably on your own at the beginning. People like me show up when you fill their needs. If you build a good system. They will come.

Unless you're are trust fund baby. Then a entourage can be bought.

Some number of possible ways:

1. People develop a proposal and raise money from investors, a'la start-up model.
2. People start their own development on their own time and resources, and produce a result that is of great enough merit, or one they can promote successfully to a larger audience and then they can grow their team either using investment money or by convincing people to contribute to their project.
3. Or you do it all yourself.

I'm sure there are plenty of varieties, much like your final statement about CEOs and devs is not 100% accurate.

Further, you can research the history of some distributions and find out how they got started. Many of them are fairly open to describing how they got it all started, and in fact typically include that in their documentation.

+100

I share the grin.

Be they online or in person, I've found (self included) that people have a phenomenal amount of initiative and enthusiasm out of the gate. Give them a few weeks, put a deliverable against them, and then you'll see just how enthusiastic they are. Heck, I've run into that for college projects. And at the end of it all where we had to deliver it via presentation, we did it, then the instructor reflected about how it went. Not asking, just offering reflections. Where he said stuff like, "some of you did it all, and in some cases people on your team did nothing, in fact disappeared, until today where they're here now. That's life." He added a lot more, like those life experiences that people go through, where you may be working at a company and someone lost a family member, or is caring for a terminally ill family member, or they're getting married, or divorced, or buying/building a house. Great positive, negative, and important life things take up people's time, and however honest and committed they sound to you each time you converse, isn't necessarily truthful.

Best you can and should do is start it yourself. Find some way to measure how successful you are being, and determine if you need to alter your targets, or if you are not up to the task. No crime if you can't or won't because you have other priorities, just life sometimes.

You know, the LXQt spin of Manjaro is pretty much what you've described.

https://manjaro.org/downloads/community/lxqt/

Check out how Linus got started.... :D

Personally I wouldn't trust any distro that has a splash screen flash up between every page on its site AND can't display its homepage without JavaScript. :/

In other words - both of these started as modifications of an existing distro, before evolving into separate distributions, and I'm fairly sure that's how the vast majority of distributions started.

I agree with you that just changing icon/theme/wallpaper is not a real distro, but - if you've got a clear idea and direction of where you want to go - it's an acceptable first step through which you can begin to communicate your ideas, and you can't build an effective team without that communication.

By Jove, you weren't exaggerating! :banghead: