Re, plain distro strategy.
A quick question. I got this whatever distro, customized it to my own taste
and re-released it as Abdullah Linux 1.0 - actually what have I achieved? Not
much really, just converted it from Ali's taste to Abdullah's taste. Both
tastes turns out unpalatable to Soon, so he re-converts it to his own taste
and so forth. No matter how many times it gets customized, it's always ripe
for yet another customization. But the simple fact remains that, the original
(Ali's) distro was already built to a sensible maturity, and all the
recustomizations were redundant. My conclusion is, we can simply take what
Debian default installation offers for whatever desktop environment selected
and just be done with it.
Of course there will be exceptions like distro logo, distro name, maybe a
wallpaper, minor changes to default apps installed, docs pertaining the
distro-specific changes... This is what a minimally personalized distro is,
and it should be quite acceptable. From there on it's the user's taste and
domain. BTW I think trying to dazzle the user with default apps selection art
is somewhat a wasted effort and not a big deal really, as each user's taste
is to himself and he can install whatever he likes. The apps list that
excites you may disappoint me, and vice versa.
And by changing as little package as possible in the upstream distro has
additional benefits (othe than the saved time and energy gone into
customization). Trisquel will be able to use Debian main repository to the
full extent, save a few exceptions that contain distro logos etc. The whole
burden of building, debugging, maintaining, rolling, even physical serving of
the "main" repo, which presumably will constitute most of the distro, will be
near zero. It's repercussions are self evident. More liberated hardware and
software, less bugs, less resources drained. A good candidate for mass
consumption. :)
