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HydroSan
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Joined: 04 Mar 2004
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Location: The Kremlin (aka Canada)
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 Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 1:08 am Post subject: Gentoo Idea: Zero Effort Desktop |
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I got the crazy idea of making my own distribution based on technologies of RedHat, Ubuntu, VidaLinux and Gentoo. My dream was to make a distribution which you pop in the CD, press enter, and it installs. And when you boot up, it works, without screwing with it or touching it. Based on GNOME with clean themes, plugins installed and configured, etc.
Every Linux distribution has always had some horrible flaw which takes a lot of effort (and time) to overcome. RedHat disables proprietary video codecs and hacks the kernel beyond recognition, SuSE disables DVD and Win32Codecs support, Gentoo takes forever to get up and going, Ubuntu is good but still takes a fair bit of work to get all the multimedia and accelerated drivers going. And with them all, short of Ubuntu, they install many different applications all for the same purpose, which is confusing.
I was going to make a distribution called "ZerOS", as in Zero Effort Linux. Linux for the End User who just wants stuff to work without thinking about it.
Zero Effort Linux was going to be a distribution in which everything worked, looked pretty and was straight forward to use. However, I have spent two days messing with getting a LiveCD going with VidaLinux's Anaconda hacks and realize that I will never be able to do this alone.
So then I though, hey, why not just ask the Gentoo devs for advice, or maybe I could save the trouble of essentially would just be a Gentoo LiveCD with X and Anaconda and start packaging GConf defaults and different GTK+ themes to make it more asthetically pleasing, so when the person turns it on, it works. It could be done through a gentoo-gnome ebuild with a vanilla-gnome ebuild for the non-edited versions.
The objective is to be able to turn on the computer and everything works without screwing around at all. For people who just want stuff to work.
Is this a good idea, or am I just being an idealistic idiot (again)? Would it put too much strain on the Gentoo devs? Should I try to get some more people involved for my own project and let Gentoo be, or contribute to Gentoo and try make it a good desktop operating system?
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fangorn
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Joined: 31 Jul 2004
Posts: 1886
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| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 6:31 am Post subject: |
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Gentoo IS a good desktop system 
If I wanted do a fire and forget Linux installation I would do a spinoff of knoppix (take the DVD version, get rid of 99 % of the software and edit the install script). Great Hardware detection, enough spinoffs to get ideas, possible to get under 500 MB ISO's. |
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Ctrl+Alt+Del
Guru
Joined: 04 Jul 2004
Posts: 326
Location: .de
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| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 10:20 am Post subject: |
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i have thougt about remixing ubuntu with unfree codecs and drivers, universe and multiverse enabled, and spread it to friends and family. Once that issue is resolved ubuntu is pretty cool 
Why reinvent the wheel? |
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Earthwings
Bodhisattva
Joined: 14 Apr 2003
Posts: 7753
Location: Germany
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| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 10:39 am Post subject: Re: Gentoo Idea: Zero Effort Desktop |
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| HydroSan wrote: | | Is this a good idea, or am I just being an idealistic idiot (again)? Would it put too much strain on the Gentoo devs? Should I try to get some more people involved for my own project and let Gentoo be, or contribute to Gentoo and try make it a good desktop operating system? |
Please don't waste your time starting just another project, but contribute to an existing one. It does not have to be Gentoo necessarily, but contribute to an existing one.
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Carlo
Developer
Joined: 12 Aug 2002
Posts: 3356
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| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 1:20 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo Idea: Zero Effort Desktop |
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| HydroSan wrote: | | SuSE disables DVD and Win32Codecs support |
They could be held liable, violating copyright shipping these libs (or others like e.g. mp3 codecs) without a license. Even if software is given away freely, there's most often a paragraph noting that the software is only allowed to be copied as a whole, not in parts of it. It's one thing to ignore this privately, but another being the supplier. Depends on the law of your country (and if you ever intend to travel elsewhere), though. Even worse is the status of libdvdcss... You should take into account that you could get sued, even if you don't have commercial intents.
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HydroSan
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Joined: 04 Mar 2004
Posts: 764
Location: The Kremlin (aka Canada)
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| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 1:53 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo Idea: Zero Effort Desktop |
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| Carlo wrote: | | HydroSan wrote: | | SuSE disables DVD and Win32Codecs support |
They could be held liable, violating copyright shipping these libs (or others like e.g. mp3 codecs) without a license. Even if software is given away freely, there's most often a paragraph noting that the software is only allowed to be copied as a whole, not in parts of it. It's one thing to ignore this privately, but another being the supplier. Depends on the law of your country (and if you ever intend to travel elsewhere), though. Even worse is the status of libdvdcss... You should take into account that you could get sued, even if you don't have commercial intents. |
I'm Canadian and thus the DMCA does not apply to me. And SuSE is German (right?), so the DMCA doesn't apply to them either, so permanently disabiling DVD-CSS and Win32codecs support seems stupid to me.
I'm probably wrong, though. I do understand the legal issues, but it'd be nice if there was a graphical installer for Win32codecs, at least.
| Quote: | | Please don't waste your time starting just another project, but contribute to an existing one. It does not have to be Gentoo necessarily, but contribute to an existing one. |
That's the idea. I'm just worried any efforts I make will just go under the radar via this forum or bugzilla. All it really would be is a custom ebuild/make.conf with a patch to GConf to give it the "Original Gentoo Feel".
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Genone
Retired Dev
Joined: 14 Mar 2003
Posts: 9554
Location: beyond the rim
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| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 2:58 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo Idea: Zero Effort Desktop |
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| HydroSan wrote: | | Carlo wrote: | | HydroSan wrote: | | SuSE disables DVD and Win32Codecs support |
They could be held liable, violating copyright shipping these libs (or others like e.g. mp3 codecs) without a license. Even if software is given away freely, there's most often a paragraph noting that the software is only allowed to be copied as a whole, not in parts of it. It's one thing to ignore this privately, but another being the supplier. Depends on the law of your country (and if you ever intend to travel elsewhere), though. Even worse is the status of libdvdcss... You should take into account that you could get sued, even if you don't have commercial intents. |
I'm Canadian and thus the DMCA does not apply to me. And SuSE is German (right?), so the DMCA doesn't apply to them either, so permanently disabiling DVD-CSS and Win32codecs support seems stupid to me. |
The DMCA is not the only copyright law, most EU countries have similar regulations by now, same with Australia for example. Also Suse belongs to Novell these days and they have US customers, so that's not an argument in any way.
Back to the original topic, I assume this is only going to work on systems without any installed OS then?
Also you won't get much help from Gentoo with Anaconda, as that's a Redhat thing, so probably no dev has a clue about it |
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HydroSan
l33t
Joined: 04 Mar 2004
Posts: 764
Location: The Kremlin (aka Canada)
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| Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 5:46 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo Idea: Zero Effort Desktop |
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| Genone wrote: | Back to the original topic, I assume this is only going to work on systems without any installed OS then?
Also you won't get much help from Gentoo with Anaconda, as that's a Redhat thing, so probably no dev has a clue about it |
The VidaLinux developers have hacked Anaconda and made it work with portage. Automated scripts, as well, could be put in place to install it beside Windows or another *nix.
I'm more thinking along the lines of trying to start a "Gentoo-GNOME Desktop" thing, where a custom ebuild downloads a hacked /etc/gconf directory with "customizations" to make the desktop instantly usable with media players/extensions/configurations/etc. The same could also be done for KDE, however I don't use KDE on a regular basis, so someone else might have to help me with anything KDE-related.
This is just a simple project to make getting a fully-featured desktop as simple as possible without unnecessary hassle.
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thechris
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Joined: 12 Oct 2003
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| Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2005 8:06 pm Post subject: |
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the idea seems perfectly suited to gnome...
So far in my experience gnome is "easy due to limited options".
its definatley not a bad idea, but keep in mind that it is very limited. any user who does not like gnome or the apps you like will need to do some install work. further, any user who wants specifics with the HDD (maybe they have 2 HDDs) will need something more.
limiting choice, such as gnome only, is generally not going to work. ubuntu tried it and now you have kubuntu. some peopel like KDE or something else over gnome, or have a hard time using gnome. In my 1 day test of gnome i've hit 4 things either can't be done in gnome, or can't be found in gnome... these 4 things are crucial to my use (and are in a different thread).
If you want to do this, you can do a "stage4" setup, where you install gnome and the gnome apps, remove the old distfiles and such, then make a backup of the system.
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HydroSan
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Joined: 04 Mar 2004
Posts: 764
Location: The Kremlin (aka Canada)
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| Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2005 8:30 pm Post subject: |
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Well, I was more going along the lines of "the options to change stuff at your will are there, but by default everything works perfect."
It's the By Default I'm going for, where you install it, and hey, the default settings don't suck! Hell has frozen over!
It's be similar to Windows having all the codecs/browsers/media players/editors installed and configured with minimal fuss. Except it'd be Linux, and it'd be cool. But you can always customize and change it.
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