Re: Current talk from gnomedesktop.org

[Daniel Farrell <daniel farrells org>]

Yeah, I lurked on this list a while back...  it was wanting to be a
community run, debian based, ximian...  or at least that was my
opinion...

I also am interested in a home user oriented distro...  and I think it
would have to be community run to just focus on the home user.

I've thought a lot about the lower levels of the OS...  I would like to
innovate some on RedHat or Debian, or whatever we base it on...  Things
like parralel service starting... and the zerconf stuff I mentioned
before...  *I have a Powerbook G4(besides my day job, I'm also a church
planter, and the church uses all Mac stuff, so I was given a Mac laptop)
and so I can test this stuff...*

Other stuff that has crossed my mind is keeping with the Gnome
versions...  Current stable would be 2.2...  and our unstable would be
2.3, and so on...  Then we would do a release shortly after each stable
Gnome release, and the lower layers would be just be kept up with what
Gnome uses...  I like the idea of letting Gnome set the course...  if
they pick a web browser(epiphany vs galeon), video player(Totem vs
gst-player), music player(rhythmbox, net-rhythmbox, lymric, etc), IM
client(Gossip seems favored over Gaim), etc, etc, etc... we should just
use what is chosen...

I currently use Debian... but will look into RedHat's base...  and I
don't think we can realistically do anything big before september
anyways besides plan and choice artwork(this might be something we
disagree on, which is fine, but I'm all about usablility and prefer a
Lighthouse-Blue setup) and such...  but let's keep communicating while
we can and keeping brainstorming...  And I would love to see what you've
done so far...

Daniel

On Fri, 2003-04-25 at 12:00, MArk Finlay wrote:
> Hey Daneil,
> 
> I was looking at the archives for this list and saw that the old
> gnome-os was going to be based on debian and be targeted at
> coprorate users.
> 
> I don't know about you but my personal interests would be to start
> off designing towards home users and then maybe make a server
> version too with stuff like NFS/NIS/NAT/Samba/X forwarding etc..
> 
> I still have to so some research but IMHO apt-rpm is probably the
> best system to base a gnome os on atm. But I still want to check out
> dropline and see if that could be made into a whole os. Also see what
> redcarpet and Ximain2 is like.
> 
> Redhat has come on so much in the last while I think that a good formula
> might be:
> Redhat + Extras from ximian - kde - most servers + loads of multimedia
> stuff + handpicked gtk2 applications- redhat artwork + a consistent gnome
> theme for desktop/gdm/boot/grub/lilo
> 
> Unfortunately I'm in hospital atm and have exams in a month and so am in
> no condition to start something like this. My plans mostly involved using
> the new kernel with redhat 9.1 because that's when I envisage being able
> to start something as big and exciting as this..
> 
> But our goals for a project like this seem very similar, i particularly like
> your zeroconf ideas. I'd love to make gnomeos (or Gnome Linux Desktop
> as I was calling it) as easy to use and configure as OsX.
> 
> I've already written some scripts that rebuild anaconda with some gnome
> artwork, and update the hdlists with new rpms added to the iso. If you want
> I could start up a sf project and commit the base layout to cvs. I also
> have a small readme on how to use the scripts.  Might be a bit
> premature yet. Have you got any strong opinons on how the whole thing
> might work? love to hear them...
> 
> Also I was thinking that I'd use an apt-get repository, that way you could
> cut a new iso, say every month or two, but in the meantime the users
> could still get the latest STABLE* software from the repository.
> Also the repository should always be kept fully compatible with the latest
> redhat release so that people can just upgrade from that if they don't want
> to bother doing a full os install, and it would aslo mean that we would be
> providing the much saught after rpms for redhat..
> 
> MArk
> 
> * some of the users of gnomesupport.org have already stepped up to run
> the unstable repository.
>