hey everyone,
thanks for all the comments!
Karsten made it very clear, but just to make it even more clear... I'll
add my 2 cents. Also because what I'm going to say is one of these
obvious thing you don't necesseraly see unless you experience them.
(at least it was the case for me ;)
Ubuntu as it is installed by default is what we consider bloat because
it comes with all kind of things and thingies that we don't see
as necessary.
These issues are related to what the Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu dev think is
a good desktop experience, which means enabling all kind of services and
use whatever desktop/panel/manager with an army of helpers. This is not
how *we* use Ubuntu when we say we use it as a base for Puredyne. We
only use what we think is relevant for our scope of usage, just like we
did with Debian and dyne:II. As said in a previous mail, from a user
POV, it's almost impossible to make a difference between our debian
based c&c alpha and the ubuntu based equivalent we've been playing with
so far.
If you google a bit you'll see that Ubuntu as a base system is used by
wide amount of distributions (not necesseraly ending with "buntu") and
they all provide a different user experience and different default
software selection, philosophy, etc. (for example gNewSense, Linux Mint,
crunchbang...)
If you want to control what is installed on your machine get a ubuntu
net install and choose the advanced installer. You'll end up with a
minimal system (without even acpi support or an MTA) on which you can
build up and install only things you need, such a controlled system is
likely to last years without the need to reinstall the machine from
scratch, because it will be easier to stay in control and monitor
manually changes from an update to another.
OTOH, if you use the Ubuntu default installer you'll end up with the
same system as every other standard Ubuntu users, force fed with tons of
binaries that will make your machine not always happy because of complex
interactions between them. That's a user choice. At any time you are
free to choose the advanced installer and pick what you really want and
need. It is more work and needs more understanding of GNU/Linux, but
more control always comes with a price. But it is worth, always.
Now, each distro has its own niche, so to speak.
Our goal has always been to make a live distribution that is the "swiss
army knife" for creative media, and that you can install fully if you
need to. We focus also on stability and performance as primary goal, not
on desktop experience. We *need* Puredyne to run flawlessly for
workshops, live performances, recording sessions, art installations,
etc. So rotating 3D desktop is not ... a priority ;) and we try to test
things as much as possible. Our alpha/dev version are always available
for download and any feedback is always helpful.
Our packages for Puredyne, and our selection process did not change.
Our live scripts are still the Debian ones and not the Ubuntu one, and
our ISO generator the same. We are just using Ubuntu packages because
it's more fresh, and the release cycle fits more with how we works in
Puredyne. As Karsten said, we seriously looked at backporting and
further pinning but this was a dead end. Backporting is nice but we're
not enough in the team to do that for more than a couple of packages.
and seriously that's not very exciting to do, we'd prefer focusing on
the live distro features and update more often the package we are
already maintaining. Regarding pinning this is not reliable on the long
term, to be able to support, maintain, document and build something you
need a solid ground. Also, using the, now liberated, launchpad platform
brings back fun into packaging .deb :) and will help gather more
developers to join our effort.
https://launchpad.net/~puredyne-team
https://launchpad.net/~puredyne-community
Finally, the differences between packages from Debian to Ubuntu exist,
that's true, but they are in most cases sane for a desktop/workstation
use, so this fits Puredyne. GOTO10 would not replace for anything in the
world our servers with Ubuntu, but for workstations, there are minor
differences that makes perfectly sense, such as the quicker integration
of things like Policykit or pulseaudio, etc. The echanges between Debian
and Ubuntu and the existence of projects such as utnubu means it's not
all black and white.
I guess we're all learning something new every now and then, get more
experienced, and try to adapt our thinking and approach accordingly.
Puredyne is no difference.
a.
PS: About LXDE, yes we're trying it at the moment, nothing decided yet.
---
[email protected]
irc.goto10.org #puredyne
