I definitely see GOLD being developed in a way that draws from and
contributes back to the work of other libre distros, including Trisquel. I'm
not looking to reinvent the wheel here, or create anything exclusive. Since
every part of the GOLD distro will be free code, the Trisquel crew could
include the GOLD gaming library app in their repos and make the accompanying
game repos available to Trisquel users, if they wanted to.
But I agree when Soon To Be Free says a distro is not just an OS, and the
project infrastructure wrapped around maintaining and distributing that OS,
but also a user community with it's own identity and group culture. Gaming is
a niche interest within the wider software freedom movement, and software
freedom is a niche interest within the gaming world. One of the big picture
goals of GOLD would to increase that overlap, mainly by drawing more gamers
into the software freedom movement by addressing their specific needs. But
also by showing free software/ open source folks we can have a user-friendly
console gaming experience without holding our noses and using proprietary
consoles or Windows dual-boots, or trying to play games using interfaces
optimized for work.
My main reasons for envisioning GOLD as a separate distro is that form
follows function. Trisquel is aimed at average desktop users doing a mix of
work, communication, and entertainment. The default user interface for both
Trisquel and Trisquel-mini is a standard desktop environment, designed with
the assumption that the user is sitting in front of a desktop or laptop,
interacting mainly with a keyboard and mouse. Although it copes fairly well
with larger screens and multi-screen set-ups, the Trisquel interface is
optimized for the medium-sized screens of desktops and laptops.
GOLD will be aimed at gamers doing a mix of gaming, communication, and
entertainment. The default user interface will be a game library or
entertainment centre environment, designed with the assumption that the user
is sitting in a couch or an armchair some distance from the computer and the
screen, interacting mainly with a game controller of some kind. Although it
will aim to support as many screen sizes as possible, the GOLD interface will
be optimized for the larger screens typical of gaming and video watching
uses.
Because I envision GOLD as an entertainment console, I see no reason to
include an office suite or any other work-orientated software in the default
install, and maybe not even in the repos. Keeping the default install as
light as possible in both size (MBs on disk) and resources used (processor,
memory, graphics) is as important for a game OS as it is for a multimedia
production OS. But also, since so much of both my work and my leisure time
these days involves computers and the net, it's becoming very important to me
to find ways to keep these use cases separate. I see GOLD as a way to provide
a libre entertainment system that strongly discourages segueing into work. I
envision it as something I'd have installed on a dedicated gaming box in the
lounge, or dual-booted on a laptop with a work distro (eg Trisquel), which
would be optimized as much as possible to discourage segueing into
entertainment.
Another more technical reason is that I'd rather base GOLD releases directly
off Debian, like SteamOS does, rather than wait for new packages and updates
to trickle down through Ubuntu (and maybe Trisquel) before we can use them.
In fact, it may be possible to build GOLD as a fork of SteamOS, just as
Trisquel is built as a fork of Ubuntu, starting with a SteamOS build, replace
the kernel with linux-libre, replacing the Steam interface with the GOLD
interface etc.
BTW I thought of another set of words GOLD could stand for, which avoids the
use of "Linux" without "GNU":
Gaming
Orientated
Libre
Distribution
GOLD doesn't have to official stand for anything. It's a good shiny name in
its own right. I'm not wedded to GOLD either, for now it's just a working
title to hang the project on. Another name could be GLAM:
GNU
Linux
Adventure
Machine
