Re: getting the ball rolling

[Mikael Hallendal <micke codefactory se>]

tis 2002-06-11 klockan 07.05 skrev Seth Nickell:
> See: http://beauty.stanford.edu/gnome/

> *  GnomeOS is not a GNU/Linux distribution

I think it's important to _try_ to be Linux compliant. That doesn't say
I disagree with what's here. I think it's just as important to early
state that this is not a project to create yet another Linux
distribution but instead trying to create a great desktop OS.

What I mean is that we should not break Linux compatibility just for the
sake of it. Only where it really makes sense (Seth already said this,
just wanted to emphasis it).

> * Avoid duplication of functionality over trivial differences

I very much agree with this. I think it's important to try our hardest
to find _one_ good choice instead of several. If developers either want
to use other packages themselves or make the available to others that
user can distribute those packages from there own homepage (or some
repository of non-supported/beta packages).

> * Understand and define your audience

I think this is very important. There are lots of distributions that try
to cover all users needs, I think this is the wrong way to go here. 

I see two target groups:

1) Users that just don't care about having to tweak everything and spend
   hours in config files just to get there desktops working.

2) Application level developers (these also is part of group 1) that
   wants to develop applications for the desktop. And gets a nice 
   desktop with all the development tools they will need to get there 
   work done.

I think the second group is very important to support since they are the
ones that will help us develop this.

> * Assess user goals, provide features to match

Agreed, to go to this point we first have to fully establish our user
group. And I think that is the first step we need to take. Write down
who our main users will be and _why_ we aim to reach those groups.

> * Technical Considerations

I agree that we should choose an already existing
package-format/distribution to start of from so that we don't have to
deal with those things later on.

I don't see it as important to keep full compatibility with that
distribution once we are started. Just following commit logs from that
distribution and copy what we need will probably do.

I've extracted the packages from Gentoo Linux that is needed to build
GNOME 2 (currently 266 packages), this is however without any
applications. Keeping them up to date with CVS on Gentoo is not that
hard work and can probably be done by 1-2 persons.

> * People Considerations

I don't think that our developers will come from current distributions
mainly (though I know of two-three persons from Gentoo that are very
interested in this). In the long run I think most of our developers will
come from GNOME (at least I hope that we will attract the interest of
other developers). I think this because once we are set up the least of
the job will be packaging and most of the time will be spent on making
the UI nice and user friendly.

Regards,
  Mikael Hallendal

-- 
Mikael Hallendal                micke codefactory se
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