Creating a distribution from Gentoo

[jscherer]

Okay so I did not know where to put this but I was wondering how hard would it be to create a distribution from Gentoo. I have heard of a lot of distribution spin-offs of Ubuntu but I was wondering how possible is this in Gentoo because I have been creating a distribution on paper right now and I was just seeing what the opinions are from the forum. I am sorry if I am stepping on anyone's toes because I am not meaning to I was just wondering. Thanks for all the replies and again i am not trying to pull away from Gentoo I was just wondering because I thought it would be cool to create a distribution.
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Justin Scherer
Lets help each other one step at a time.

[Sven Vermeulen]

Very easy. The problem isn't deriving a distribution from Gentoo, the difficulty is in keeping it alive...
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[phajdan.jr]

I think that a good first step is starting to contribute. Here's why I believe this is a better option.

1. You will make a more informed decision. You will know the distribution better, see its problems, its strength and weaknesses. You will interact more with the community, and gather info what are its needs, and which of them are currently satisfied, and which are not.

2. You will see how hard running a distribution actually is. Users report bugs, and there are really a lot of packages. Staying current while still providing an acceptable level of stability is a challenge. Also, you need infrastructure: mirrors, website, version control, mailing lists, irc, shell servers, etc. Someone needs to create documentation, run the users support forums, etc.

3. You will see how much you can do while being a distro developer. I think this is the most overlooked factor. People say "hey, I'll create my own distro, it'll be the best, it'll be mine". It turns out that in many distros (like Gentoo), developers have a lot of autonomy, and a lot of power. In many cases you can just start doing what you believe is good for the project. You can start converting your vision into reality, and see other people joining you.

Sometimes there are really "small" things that make a big improvement. By contributing to an existing distribution, you get all its benefits, and can still do something real.

Of course running your own distro is going to be a good learning experience, a challenge, and maybe a success. If Daniel Robbins (the founder of Gentoo) decided to stay with his older distros or FreeBSD, we wouldn't have Gentoo. On the other hand, he was a developer of Stampede Linux before he founded Gentoo. The design of Gentoo was also influenced by FreeBSD's ports system. So it turns out a lot of ideas for "new" distros come from the deep knowledge and understanding of existing distros.

And more on the purely technical side, if you see Funtoo's git tree, it's really easy to just fork a git tree and you have a Gentoo-based distro. Sabayon is a Gentoo-based distro too.
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http://phajdan-jr.blogspot.com/

[d2_racing]

Indeed guys and maybe jscherer, you should try to become a Gentoo dev and if you like it, then you may start your own distro or your own overlay.

I don't know your background, but becoming a dev is really a good start, because you will learn how Gentoo works from A to Z

[jscherer]

Well thank you! That was all great information and I think I will become a developer for Gentoo for right now. Yeah I have a major idea that I want to implement in my won distribution that is not really the focus of Gentoo but I think if I get some more knowledge about the Gentoo system and start realizing what it will take I think it will give me a deeper understanding of how much work it takes to creating a distribution and maintaining it.

I also have to say this, the support on the Gentoo forums is so much better and friendlier than other Linux forums. Before, when I would get on those forums the guys would make me feel like an idiot and just call me a noob and everything else. Here, people walk you through the steps and help you to solve a problem. I just wanted to say thanks to all of you that do help us beginner Gentoo users out.

So I am going to become a developer and start to work on a project that interests me and hopefully it will help me out. So, again, thank you to all those that have responded and if anyone else wants to give me and others more of an idea that would be great!
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Justin Scherer
Lets help each other one step at a time.