[olug] Distro X?

[Daniel J Griffiths (Ghost1227)]

I have used Gentoo, and Arch follows a similar method as well. However,
neither is exactly what I'm looking for.
Perhaps the so-called 'ideal' distro is my unicorn - a mythical creature
that is impossible to truly catch. Either
way, the purpose in creating Distro X isn't just to create what I believe to
be the perfect distro, it's also intended
to be a learning experience. I have plenty of experience with Linux
development, but thus far it just hasn't been
enough. I want more. Besides, I need a new project to work on and this seems
an ideal (and constructive) way
to spend my time. If I'm the only one that uses it in the long run, then so
be it. If not, then I'll be happy with having
contributed to the open source community.

Several people, both here and on other forums that I've posted to, have
mentioned that there are various other
distros that seem to fit into this niche. I'll agree that some are similar
(mainly Gentoo and Arch), but I would
argue that none give the level of choice I envision while still maintaining
a level of simplicity that makes it
trivial for a novice user to pick it up. I dislike most of the 'mainstream'
distros for one reason or another (all
too frequently for deviating from the upstream codebase for no apparent
reason), and there are innumerable
other problems I have with most distros as well.

Someone asked what package management system I intend on using. I envision a
system similar to the
pacman system employed by Arch and its derivatives. It's remarkably simple
while still being quite extensible.
I dislike the pacman binary itself though, so we would likely be using a
proprietary package manager. I would
very much like to see some level of cross-compatibility such that users
could easily install an RPM or DEB on
Distro X if a native package isn't available and they are not comfortable
writing one themselves.

Regardless, thanks all for your (hopefully continued) comments. I will
certainly be checking out the resources
you have all referenced, and look forward to more thoughts and suggestions
from you all.

On Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 12:40 AM, Kevin D. Snodgrass
<kdsnodgrass at yahoo.com>wrote:

> --- On Sun, 3/27/11, T. J. Brumfield <enderandrew at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Gentoo may be for you. With USE flags
> > you can decide what dependencies and
> > features you want your system to have. You want to remove
> > mono, or samba, or
> > whatever? You want in compiled support for various codecs?
>
> Yes, I started working with gentoo not long ago.  Needed a specific itch
> scratched.  Found another way and have left the gentoo install sitting after
> getting X compiled and going no further...
>
> It was nice going through the kernel config and NOT compiling bazillions of
> things I don't need. :-)
>
> Kevin D. Snodgrass
>
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