Re: [orca-list] new linux distro, with apology to Robert Cole

[Kyle <kyle4jesus gmail com>]

Future releases of Sonar will be based on Manjaro, which is a derivative
of Arch. This is being done to better keep up with releases of the
accessibility stack and desktop environments. Well that and Manjaro's
iso build system is awesome! The plan for the foreseeable future is to
keep an LTS release around that is based on Ubuntu LTS in addition to
the rolling release based on Manjaro, but the main goal is to provide
the latest accessibility stack and the latest desktop environments,
GNOME and LXDE for now, shortly after their official releases upstream,
without mixing and matching packages from prior releases in the way that
Debian and Ubuntu generally do. We also aim to provide a command line
only version of Sonar for users who either don't want to use a graphical
environment at all, or who would choose to only use a graphical
environment parttime and would install their chosen desktop later. This
is best achieved by using an Arch derivative, as it does exactly this.
Additionally, Manjaro has its own repositories divided into 3 branches:
unstable, which syncs with Arch and where packages are tested by
developers and users who want to be as close to Arch as possible,
testing, where packages are tested by users who are interested in
reporting any bugs or instability they find, and stable, which picks up
fixes from testing and unstable, and is considered ready for use by
anyone who just needs a stable environment with few issues. It is
possible to move freely between branches at any time, i.e. to move from
stable to unstable and then downgrade back to testing or all the way
back to stable.

We intend to provide live images that will be based on GNOME shortly
after its release, and we will continue experimenting with LXDE,
providing live images shortly after it is released. These live images
are to be based on Manjaro's stable branch. However, because Manjaro is
a rolling release, it will not be necessary to download a new iso every
6 months, as stable packages are updated weekly. It's kinda like running
Debian Unstable or Arch, but minimizing the breakage that sometimes occurs.

Additionally, using Manjaro as a base will make it easier for the
development team to keep Sonar updated. Using Ubuntu to provide GNOME
3.10 would have required repackaging most of the GNOME desktop in a PPA,
which seemed a bit like having to reinvent the wheel, especially since
Ubuntu GNOME will apparently still be using mostly GNOME 3.8 with some
3.6 packages once 13.10 is released. Manjaro, on the other hand, will be
receiving a complete GNOME 3.10 desktop from Arch, which will hit the
stable branch very shortly afterward, so it will be ready for Sonar much
more quickly. Once 3.10 is available in Manjaro's repos, building its
Sonar iso will be a very simple matter of running a single command that
builds it based on our specifications and then uploading it to the
website. We also have much more fine-grained control over what we want
on the live image and the installed system than we did with the Ubuntu
build system. Yes, we can actually take out Empathy and Evolution, which
are having issues with Orca, without losing metapackages and causing
other packaging issues. We can remove some of those games that  Orca
can't help us play as well. We can even replace the display manager at
will, offering whatever will provide the best talking login screen.

And I'm sure people have started seeing the word "we" a lot in this
message and are probably wondering what that's all about. Well,I'll come
right out and say it, I'm officially on the Sonar team, although it
wasn't me who drove the project to migrate to Manjaro. I was all ready
to try my hand at helping to repackage GNOME for a PPA that would have
been used to make the 13.10 Sonar release. We just heard about Manjaro
and found out just how easy it is to build it into exactly the iso we
want it to be, and we started working closely with the Manjaro team, and
were very pleasantly surprised by how far we were able to go with it in
just 4 days. So yeah, I'm very excited to be on the team, and I'm very
excited to be working with an amazing Arch derivative for the foundation
of Sonar's future releases. I hope this clears up any confusion about
where the Sonar project is going and why. Any other questions can be
directed to the Sonar team or the Accessible Freedom support list, or
sent in response to this message.
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"