____/ [H]omer on Thursday 15 November 2007 22:12 : \____
> Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
>
>> Spinning a New Kind of Distro
>
> I re-spun a custom Fedora 8 Live CD in about 20 minutes; they even
> provide a generic logos package. With an upcoming rawhide release of
> Anaconda, it may even finally boot on (previously unsupported) AMD-K6
> and VIA-C3 systems, at last. I'll be rebuilding the generic logos
> package with custom artwork, removing some of the encumbered junk like
> Mono, and re-spinning a Free(er) version of Fedora within a week.
>
> There's still further rebuilding to do, such as Firefox and Thunderbird
> into the trademark-free Iceweasel and Icedove. I'll need to examine the
> debs to see what modifications they've made, but since we're only
> talking about artwork and the name, I don't anticipate much difficulty.
> Specifying a "Provides: firefox" in the RPM spec, should be sufficient.
>
> I'm leaning towards dumping Gnome entirely, in favour of XFCE, since it
> is getting harder and harder to purge Microsoft IP from Gnome (Mono). I
> would have actually preferred Enlightenment E17, but it is BSD licensed,
> and I really want GPL software wherever possible. This will also solve
> the issue of rebuilding Yelp without libbeagle dependencies, since I
> just won't include Yelp at all. There are plenty of other desktop search
> technologies without resorting to Novell's encumbered Beagle.
>
> As for the kernel, I've yet to investigate what, if anything is tainted.
> Shuttleworth seems to think there's stuff worth purging, hence the
> Gobuntu project, but since their kernel work seems to be getting done
> behind closed doors, it's anyone's guess what exactly the supposedly
> contentious parts are. I'll need to investigate.
>
> Everything else is just minor tweaking, and an ongoing audit process.
> Eventually I'll move past just the Live CD and onto an install disc, but
> that may require providing a third-party repo to ensure the distro does
> not subsequently become tainted by encumbered dependencies. Users will
> be free to change repos of course, but if that's what they want then
> they probably shouldn't bother with this respin in the first place.
>
> I could be sneaky, and repackage with "Conflicts:" flags set to known
> encumbered components, thus making it difficult to taint without using
> the "--nodeps" switch, and thus essentially breaking the RPM db. In fact
> I might do *both* anyway if I want to do a full tree rebuild to optimise
> for VIA C3 with "-march=c3 -m3dnow -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer", then
> I'll have to host the C3 arch packages somewhere.
What will it be called? LibreDora (like MythDora)? It seems like a lot of
Fedora spins are born every day *and* gain presence. Remember that Kubuntu and
Xubuntu started as non-Canonical-associated projects, AFAIK, so every small
project can be the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Red Hat is also
supposed to enter (properly) the desktop market shortly. Vista has just opened
the door too widely for this. Everyone will capitalise on this opportunity and
Apple is not alone.
Microsoft tries to expand in other areas (e.g. portable media players, HPC),
but only if its goal is to grab a 1% market share after **huge** investments,
then it's 'successful'.
--
~~ Best of wishes
Beware the Windows box spewage (more commonly known as "spam")
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU is Not UNIX | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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