Rel4tion-Wiki/projects/distro.mdwn

So, Dragora is more like Slackware. A keep-it-simple distro interesting to
advanced users but not easy for new ones. This is not enough - I seek something
easy to use. More universal. I can still learn from it a lot of course.

The philosophy: Let us reverse the situation! Right now we have big distros
with freedom issues, and others which need to make an effort to remove the
nonfree parts. Even if those exist, the upstream knowledge and experience are
still in the nonfree distros, and it keeps an unhealthy dependency. It's also a
bit ridiculous: Why add things into a package, just to remove them later? There
must be a better way.

Let's have it the other way around: There will be an independent fully free
distro, and if anyone wants to make a derived distro with added nonfree
packages, they are free to do so (although I hope everyone people will stick to
the free distros). There will be so much less unnecessary reinvention: Free
things are packed just once, and no nonfree things need to be removed. It's
like building an initial building, and people can later add new floors on top.
Building and then removing later would be a ridiculous waste.

At this point in history, free software is only a *subset* of all software. The
natural idea for packaging it would be to have people who care about software
freedom have a fully free distro with just this specific subset, and then others
who don't mind other software can add what they want. Maximal reuse, minimum
duplication and no workarounds.

And now, links:

- <http://www.turnkeylinux.org/forum/general/20130818/i-made-new-linux-distro-today>
- <http://www.networkworld.com/article/2225903/opensource-subnet/how-to-build-the-ultimate-imaginary-linux-distro.html>
- <http://www.linux.org/threads/build-your-own-distro.5212/>
- <http://www.wikihow.com/Build-Your-Own-Linux-Distro>
- <http://www.tuxradar.com/content/how-build-your-own-linux-distro>
- <http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/>

Since it will also insist on decentralization, the main way to get things would
be torrents. In fact, it's even possible to get packages in P2P ways just like
apt-p2p instead of central servers!

A possible path:

- Use this chance to define a good extensible package format, if deb can use
  some improvement (otherwise no need to reinvent)
- Make a minimal environment with a kernel, GNU userspace and console-only
  access
- Make plans and infrastructure for all kinds of tasks and contributions and
  content distribution, how processes work, how and when to patch, etc.
- Start adding things people need: all the hardware support, servers, GUI...

This is clearly tons of work, but I just don't see myself using ubun7u material
and communication channels and 3rd party packages etc. for the foreseeable
future. Even a minimal console-only distro is a good start, if it's stable,
provides a full GNU userspace and can do useful things like text editing,
compilation and running some servers.

With the expected move from Debian to Trisquel, I also want to lean about
packaging and be able to package my things, either for Debian or for Trisquel
directly. Info:

- <https://wiki.debian.org/Packaging>
- <https://wiki.debian.org/HowToPackageForDebian>
- <https://wiki.debian.org/IntroDebianPackaging>

Info about helping Trisquel:

- <https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/how-help>
- <https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/trisquel-team>
- <https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/manuals>
- <https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/trisquel-community-guidelines>
- <https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/how-trisquel-made>
- <https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/proposed-policies-procedures-solutions>
- <https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/development>

The diversity of topics on the Trisquel wiki brings again the issue of a
semantic distributed wiki. Also, Trisquel's forums and mailing lists work
together somehow - I suppose it's a Drupal feature. My wiki having no ML
connection is a major weakness! I could achieve that using Citadel, actually,
although I'm not sure it can show things like a forum. Right now the port issue
is a big problem, and `vnstat` says I used *15GB in a single day*! It means the
50GB per month limit is unacceptable.