"hard core" linux

[Paul A Houle]

    I think a lot of the people who have problems with Fedora would be 
happy to have an alternative ("fork" distribution) to work on.

    It looks easy to spin a custom distribution -- basically you can 
unpack the fedora DVD on your web site,  remove any RPMs you don't want 
from the RPMS directory,  add any ones that you want,  run a few 
scripts,  and then cut your ISOs.  All you need is 15 GB or so of free 
disk space.

    It would be trivial to develop a distribution that consists of a 
subset of Fedora Core packages plus packages from Fedora Extras:  the 
advantage here is that users can plug into the existing system for yum,  
so there's no need to work on security updates,  plus users get 100% 
compatibility with Fedora.  It would be easy to address common 
complaints about Fedora such as "bloat" (Two desktop environments,  who 
knows how many GB of internationalization files),  packages that make it 
difficult to install your own software (OpenOffice).  It might be a bit 
silly,  but I'm still missing 'fortune' and the games package that came 
with Slackware.

    In the age of BitTorrent,  the task of distributing the new 
distribution would be easy as well:  set up a tracker and a few seeds 
with good connectivity,  and the problem is solved.

    (Actually,  that scares me a little -- what if somebody spins a 
'black hat linux' with a bad ssh that misrepresents itself as FC and 
spreads the .torrent file around the net?)

    This kind of project would make Extras more relevant:  people who 
want to put packages in alternative distributions would have a 
motivation to get packages into Extras so they can benefit from the 
update network.

    Longer-term,  it might be interesting to do more of a fork:  but the 
further you diverge from Fedora the more problems you have.  For 
instance,  people who want to play mp3's might like a distribution that 
has no media players and no dependencies on media players -- they can 
install what they like the way they like it.  Trouble is that they might 
use yum to install some other packages that have dependencies on media 
players and all hell breaks loose.  Open Office creates similar 
problems:  removing OO gives us more flexibility with the web browser,  
but if someone tries to install OO,  it either aborts or the web browser 
gets borked.

    One answer is to maintain a parallel tree of rpm files (lots of 
work,  lots of resources),  another answer is to make yum (perhaps a 
forked yum) smart enough to 'overlay' one repository on another:  'Hard 
Core' might balk at an attempt to install OO from Fedora Core,  or 
overlay it with an OO that has fewer dependencies on it's environment.

------

    Many of us can imagine our own personal perfect Fedora-derived 
distribution,  but really the challenge is to think of a coherent 
mission for an alternative distribution (or series of alternative 
distributions) that would be compelling to enough people that it could 
get some momentum.  Any ideas?