NeoLin - Who's in?

[Matthew_Thepc]

I see people mentioning using debian source and using arch source yet no-one seems to know which we're using?

I'm anti-debian because it's old, clanky, and the cause of a lot of problems for it's bad support system with the leap second recently.

Any idea what distro we're going with or what?

I think Stocker (our PM) has decided on Arch, so unless someone can point out a very good reason to use Debian, I think we should focus our energy on Arch.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

I see people mentioning using debian source and using arch source yet no-one seems to know which we're using?

I'm anti-debian because it's old, clanky, and the cause of a lot of problems for it's bad support system with the leap second recently.

Any idea what distro we're going with or what?

No one said we have to use Debian Stable. Debian Testing with some select backports from Unstable will work just as well. Especially with Testing being frozen for the Debian 7.0 release later this year this ensures a stable, yet somewhat current basis.

[a.mcdear]

I'm in. Linux has become my primary area of interest nowadays.

[Matthew_Thepc]

does someone want to get a poll running for preferred base?

[Matthew_Thepc]

Or (I just found this, so if it's really horrible I'm sorry :D) we could use SliTaz http://www.slitaz.org/en/, just 35 MB and the source looks easy to get :p

[n_K]

Nah, rebecca black linux!

http://sourceforge.net/projects/rebeccablackos/

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On a serious note, I think experimenting with Wayland instead/with X11 would be awesome, if we could get a stable working distro with Wayland WM as default out, it'd be a leap forward for linux as a whole ;)

[DaveLegg Developer]

#shift ;)

[Matthew_Thepc]

Nah, rebecca black linux!

http://sourceforge.n...rebeccablackos/

---

On a serious note, I think experimenting with Wayland instead/with X11 would be awesome, if we could get a stable working distro with Wayland WM as default out, it'd be a leap forward for linux as a whole ;)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wayland looks like Arch would be able to do it, but is there any real reason we should?

[pers3us]

On a serious note, I think experimenting with Wayland instead/with X11 would be awesome, if we could get a stable working distro with Wayland WM as default out, it'd be a leap forward for linux as a whole ;)

I have been following Wayland development for some time now. They are not quite there yet. I do not understand most of their technicalities but yeah not good for the first release at least. May be second.

Also, I have to ask, Why Arch and not Debian? OR ubuntu for that matter? On what basis are we discussing this?

n_K how about you becoming the lead developer?

[threesixtyflip]

#shift ;)

Nice one! :)

As for wayland, its still in heavy development/testing atm. I think for now its probably best to stick for something that we know will work.

I think I will create a poll for the base. If there is some good reasons why we should be using X base, then put them in there :)

[n_K]

In theory, waylay does work, you can run X inside of it :).

That'd be something special, a distribution with wayland by default, only rebecca black OS has it atm and it's not got constant updates. Get it working well and whatnot. Who knows.

'n_K how about you becoming the lead developer?'

Literally haven't got a clue what that actually entails :/

[pers3us]

In theory, waylay does work, you can run X inside of it :).

That'd be something special, a distribution with wayland by default, only rebecca black OS has it atm and it's not got constant updates. Get it working well and whatnot. Who knows.

In theory yes. You actually bypass some old X protocols. Its changes a few things and renders most of the window managers and desktop environments useless. There are lots of work going on to make some of them (DE/WM) work on wayland and we have some working prototype but they are still prototype. We will have lots of trouble just making it work.

If you still insist we can get wayland working by using DE specifically made to work with it.

[threesixtyflip]

In theory yes. You actually bypass some old X protocols. Its changes a few things and renders most of the window managers and desktop environments useless. There are lots of work going on to make some of them (DE/WM) work on wayland and we have some working prototype but they are still prototype. We will have lots of trouble just making it work.

If you still insist we can get wayland working by using DE specifically made to work with it.

What are the actual benefits of using Wayland though?

[threesixtyflip]

does someone want to get a poll running for preferred base?

Well ahead of ya.

https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1088637-shift2-what-base-poll/

[pers3us]

What are the actual benefits of using Wayland though?

XOrg is pretty old and was not designed to be used with compositing and things like that. They added that later on and many such tweaks and additions made XOrg a complete mess.

Wayland is basically XOrg with its mess sorted out.

Refer to these links:

http://askubuntu.com...-wayland-better

http://wayland.freed...chitecture.html

[n_K]

When completeled, wayland should offer exceptional graphic performance for linux, as long as a driver is available for your card/chipset, beating the equilvient in Xorg by far, windows/mac by a bit (assuming it's set up properly).

[exotoxic]

shift2linux.org would be a good domain i think

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

Why the hell doesn't the Neowin community turn all of it's workforce into a single existing distro instead of segmenting the efforts with a newborn newcomer that will have little chances to accomplish anything other than fulfilling a whim?

Well any code we produce that is useful to the base distro can be pushed upstream (assuming upstream would accept). :)

[n_K]

Why the hell doesn't the Neowin community turn all of it's workforce into a single existing distro instead of segmenting the efforts with a newborn newcomer that will have little chances to accomplish anything other than fulfilling a whim?

Thing of everything you could do if you supported a distro that could use your hand. That would be a much better service to humanity. If i could code i would gladly join you in that enterprise but unfortunately i can't, but could serve with translation into spanish.

Cheers.

Why doesn't the neowin community read the ****ing thread before commenting?

[Barney T. Administrators]

'n_K how about you becoming the lead developer?'

Literally haven't got a clue what that actually entails :/

The Lead Developer is the person that holds the reins for actually developing the distro. This includes directing other coders for various parts, creating and compiling code, branding, and making reasonable milestone and release dates for the different releases. In essence, the lead developer directis the development of the distro. In contrast, the Project Manager coordinates and is the liasion with all of the areas (devs, graphics, web content, public relations, and all the other bits that are needed) and orchestrates all of them to make the whole system work.

#shift

That's your Neowin Shift IRC channel

[Noir Angel]

Okay here's an idea, a crazy one I know but worth a shot I guess.

How about some-what native support for gamers? Instead of messing around with Wine it would do all that silently? I'm not even sure if that can be done? It has crossed my mind before but I was to embarassed to ask lol :blush:

E: I know gaming ain't Linux main point but it would still get some gamers involved lol :laugh:

That aside I'd love to help. Whatever I can do...

Sadly, never going to happen as long as Direct X is used for the majority of commercial games. Look how long it's taken to achieve binary compatibility with old win32 apps, achieving complete API compatibility is still a lifetime away as of yet.

[Matthew_Thepc]

OK, newbie question for those of you who've done this before, how are we going to do it? Will we start with an Arch installation and then install/uninstall/modify etc. some stuff, and then turn that into an ISO to distribute, or are we going to take the Arch source, modify it, take some other package sources, modify them, then install the moded Arch and then in stall or what? Sorry again if I've got it all wrong :p

[pers3us]

but a set of people with a taste for a common news site, and not many are serious programmers nor have all the spare time in the world

Refocus your labor of love ;) I'll leave you thinking about that.

I suppose you haven't read the thread also you don't posses manners as it was specifically mentioned in first post that trolls are not allowed here!

As for what you have to say, well this Linux is distro is not to add one to list of many, we wanted to learn so we are doing this. If you have a problem go and rant about it somewhere else. And Shift 1 was quite a success if I remember correctly.

If you ask me, even if one person is using my distro, its quite big an achievement for me. Its my choice that I build my own distro or do whatever from my knowledge. Also how do you know we can't do this!

As far as work for distro itself is considered, the work that we do here could be reported to upstream distros...

[Barney T. Administrators]

And Shift 1 was quite a success if I remember correctly.

:yes:

Shift was a resounding success with well over 100,000 downloads and was listed as one of the top 40 Linux distros on Distrowatch. We were registered with The Linux Foundation as an official distro, and we're a member of the Open Invitation Network. But more importantly, members of our community got the chance to experience creating a distro from scratch. The Shift project did exactly what it was designed to do. It brought our Neowin linux community together for an outstanding experience that lasted well over 2 years.

[lukeslife]

I attach with this post the version with the 2.

However I'm not sure we should add the number direct to the logo.

The logo could be the main branding, just as Ubuntu has it's logo independent of the release.

What we can do is to have a main distro logo and a release logo. Why? Differentiation. If Ubuntu can have different ridiculous names for every release why couldn't we have visual distinctions for each release?

Im letting my mind to run wild since Im doing what I always wanted to see in a Linux distro: Elegance, attention to detail, CONSISTENT DESIGN AMONG RELEASES, memorable branding (only Ubuntu has managed to do this). Something that can appeal not only to the geeks and hobbyist sense of design.

I don't quite like how that turned out, but it was done in five minutes. Months of refinement will make a world of difference.

What do you all think?

I love the design. Looks really good