Published at LXer:

On various women's mailing lists, a subscriber has raised the idea of a distribution developed "for and by women." So far, the idea has met with a cool reception. It might even be a troll. However, if such a distro ever gets underway, it would be very much in the spirit of the community, and might give more women the background and confidence to reduce the gender gap in free software.

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Weird question...how exactly would this be different? To my knowledge, you can't get a mirror program for your screen, you could make everything pink, purple, and red...but what exactly would make Linux "gender specific"? I mean, I don't use a male distro cause it was made for guys, I've never felt like I use a masculine or feminine distro...

I, personally, can't imagine what a "distro for women" would look like or even feature to make it so. As we all know, all women (and men) had different wants: one woman may wish to see quotes from Germaine Greer on startup and another may want design tips. That, by the way, was a wee bit tongue in cheek.

Women's groups are prevalent and necessary - at least until we get over the whole "women on my internet?" attitude. But a distro? It would either be so specific that only 10 people would use it or so general that it would be indistinguishable from the rest.

Bring more women into the development circles and a certain feminisation would follow naturally. Forcing the issue seems very gimmicky and will ultimately fail.

All distros are Unisex. Slackware, for example - GrapefruitGirl uses it, and knows a damn sight more than me (who doesn't?) about it. Mind you, Ubuntu will probably bring out a Women's edition (Fembuntu?), they already cater for different religions.

I doubt it'll even fly that well. For example, just cause I'm Christian doesn't mean I used Ubuntu CE. Its even more bloated than regular Ubuntu, and I just don't like it. Period. Look at Zenwalk, I wouldn't use it because of the religion it is based off of, but that doesn't mean its a bad OS. Why doesn't the community just stick to unisex, non-religion based OS's?

What? Zen Buddhism? Or, since it's based on Slackware, Church Of The SubGenius?

I have no problem with Slackware, but I'm no Zen, and won't be associated with it, don't know why its a surprise...

I was surprised to find that you believe Zenwalk has anything to do with Zen Buddhism.

A "made by and for women" distro? Nice! Are you gonna put barbie screensavers and gonna make an app that gives the user some "Cosmo" advises? Gimme a break!

I am sorry my friend. I wonder why you said that? In what meaning? I am using Zenwalk for very long period. I never seen it aiming at particular religion? Nor none of its developers do talk about religion. In what way you saying tat?