[NTLUG:Discuss] An NTLUG Distro

[terry]

On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Justin M. Forbes <jmforbes at linuxtx.org> wrote:
> 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
>


By the way,  (and I know this is OT, but...)  I went to Pine Bluff,
Ar. at the first of the week and while I was there, I made a couple of
2 hour+ visits to the library, (mostly doing genealogy research for my
brother-in-law) and I was very pleased to see that they had about 20
RH or Fedora thin clients connected to the internet for  public use.
It was a good fast system - a joy to use - Very well done. Just
wondering if Redhat or Fedora has a special project specially for this
type of public application?



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