Distrubution Ideas

[RoosterMan]

So, I've been interested in possibly making my own distro project. Yes, I know there are too many, but there are still areas where I see large gaps. I will list a few of my ideas, and I'd like to hear some of your own input or ideas.

Libre Beginners Arch: (Parabola + Deployability = Paratrooper)
It seems that currently there is not one fully libre and fully modern distro. This would essentially be based on Parabola, a libre version of arch, but instead of initially booting into a command line or desktop environment the graphical installer would provide an easy method of choosing desktop environment, included applications, and whatever else is needed.

Alternative mobile phone OS: (PocketHack)
What annoys me most about Android, iOS, or Windows phone is purely who they are made by. And now Meego and Maemo have been canceled. Why not just get a cheap Chinese smart phone and build a legitimately good and customizable OS? Far too simple.

Heavy Ram-based distro: (Puppy linux for big computers = Bernard Linux)
There are many computers with 4-6GB of ram. Why not create a full featured distro that is as lightning fast as Puppy Linux? (If you haven't tried it, just try the liveCD from the last LXF.)

What are your ideas? (And maybe some input on mine)

[RoosterMan]

Humorously late bump

[guy]

Libre Beginners Arch: (Parabola + Deployability = Paratrooper)
It seems that currently there is not one fully libre and fully modern distro. This would essentially be based on Parabola, a libre version of arch, but instead of initially booting into a command line or desktop environment the graphical installer would provide an easy method of choosing desktop environment, included applications, and whatever else is needed.

Perhaps you could help make the Arch/Parabola installer more developer-friendly in this respect.

Alternative mobile phone OS: (PocketHack)
What annoys me most about Android, iOS, or Windows phone is purely who they are made by. And now Meego and Maemo have been canceled. Why not just get a cheap Chinese smart phone and build a legitimately good and customizable OS? Far too simple.

There are other smartphone distros out there. I'm sure one of them could do with a hand.

Heavy Ram-based distro: (Puppy linux for big computers = Bernard Linux)
There are many computers with 4-6GB of ram. Why not create a full featured distro that is as lightning fast as Puppy Linux? (If you haven't tried it, just try the liveCD from the last LXF.)

Full-featured + lightning-fast = ridiculously large amount of effort. I can't think of a distro that would reject help in this direction.

Personally I would like to improve the user experience for debian/gnome, maybe by backporting cinnamon or improving the printer driver install experience.

I can see no value in creating a new distro unless I belonged to a specialist community with customisation needs beyond any existing distro.
Maybe that's just your own name at the top of the credits
Or how about one optimised for use of Raspberry Pi in (teaching) microcontrol and programming? I could enjoy getting into that.

[Rhakios]

Alternative mobile phone OS: (PocketHack)
What annoys me most about Android, iOS, or Windows phone is purely who they are made by. And now Meego and Maemo have been canceled. Why not just get a cheap Chinese smart phone and build a legitimately good and customizable OS? Far too simple.

Do I recall that there is actually a problem with this idea? Something to do with the fact that the radio part of the OS can't be fully hackable? Back in the days of the Openmoko project, there was something about this...

[guy]

Alternative mobile phone OS: (PocketHack)
What annoys me most about Android, iOS, or Windows phone is purely who they are made by. And now Meego and Maemo have been canceled. Why not just get a cheap Chinese smart phone and build a legitimately good and customizable OS? Far too simple.

Do I recall that there is actually a problem with this idea? Something to do with the fact that the radio part of the OS can't be fully hackable? Back in the days of the Openmoko project, there was something about this...

Should be possible to implement the radio/telephony interface driver as a proprietary blob - just like most Linux hardware drivers

In fact I can't think how else the existing phone distros can have got round the licensing issues.

Of course, if the Oracle-Google case spins out that APIs are copyrightable then the whole industry will be in deep cacky-poo

[Rhakios]

Well, I looked it up, it actually had something to do with the open hardware aspect of it, though it would need the software to make it work.