[NTLUG:Discuss] An NTLUG Distro

[Justin M. Forbes]

On Thu, Apr 02, 2009 at 10:17:56AM -0500, Daniel Hauck wrote:
> I just read some commentary regarding criticism and Linux.  The original
> notion was that Linux needs more critics to keep it moving.  Another
> person pointed out that the reason there are so many very different
> Linux distros out there is because it is essentially "criticism applied."
> 
> This got me to thinking.  Chris Cox is unquestionably a really smart
> fellow with strong views on various things.  I wouldn't think to suggest
> this if I didn't think he was smart enough to pull it off.
> 
> What about an NTLUG Distro project?  It would naturally be more of an
> exercise than something we could expect to actually catch on in the
> wild.  But not only could it be used as a vehicle to express critical
> views of other distros by addressing them, but could also serve as an
> educational experience in rolling one's own distro.
> 

As someone who has both created an architecture port of an existing
distribution (x86_64 for Fedora Core 1) and acted as almost the sole
maintainer for another distribution for a long period of time, I have to
say this is not a small project.  Just keeping up with security updates is
almost a full time job on a general purpose distribution.  When you start
looking at cobbling a full distro together without just repackaging  the
bits you want from an existing distribution to do the integration work you 
have even more problems.  It is more than a fulltime job for at the very
least a handfull of people.  I am not saying that it is impossible, in fact
it is very possible if you have the right people involved, but what is your
time worth?  Maintaining a distribution is a grind, and instead of working
on nifty upstream pieces you end up just trying to keep your head above
water with bugfixes and security updates.  And that doesnt include the
effort to initially create and stabalize the distribution.  I am very happy
to be working for a company that has understands this, has a good number of
resources, and gives developers time to work on both our products and
upstream.

Justin M. Forbes