NeoLin - Who's in?

[Copernic Reporter]

FYI, Neolin is also a headache, migraine, pain killer in Romania.

[Fourjays Veteran]

Going to follow this project and see how it develops. My two cents - pick a core focus or goal for the distro.

I would personally like to see a lightweight distro, that is still as polished and modern as "heavy" distros like Ubuntu. I recently had to upgrade Ubuntu on my Mum's netbook and it went all to hell performance wise, basically because they've abandoned netbooks. It seems none of the big distros will really work well on slower computers anymore, and all of the lightweight distros seem to be too geeky, old fashioned and ugly.

I eventually settled on a heavily customised Xubuntu install (it's panels can be setup to work like the Ubuntu dock, which my Mum finds easier than menus), but I do think this is an area where there is a bit of a gap at the moment.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

To those questioning the need for a Shift²: The point is more to have a community project and to geek out than to take the world by storm. (That comes later.)

Fourjays: Agreed, the distribution should have a core focus. The idea behind Linux Mint or Elementary OS appeals to me - make a good, well configured desktop distribution with a sensible selection of default applications and great artwork. We have more than enough talented people who could contribute on these forums.

[Glassed Silver]

Bonus if we integrate Neowin into Shift.

Something like a native application for personal messenges, Neowin IRC heavily integrated, stuff that doesn't make it into the major release might be found in a package manager to install afterwards, sorted by member names of the contributors, date, size and full text and tag searchability.

Call that section "Tweaks and Add-Ons"

Stuff that proves popular gets raised into the main builds. (not replacing development team votes for new additions/enhancements)

Glassed Silver:ios

[n_K]

'Linux will never be a serious desktop contender if theres a new distro coming out every so often'

Oh yes I totally forgot about that, everyone wants the exact same interface with the exact same package set and configurations and everything - just so long as it's the same.

No-one could possibly imagine different people wanting different things like a very basic lightweight fast system on an old PC and a very simple interface that's similiar to other OS's on very non-tech-savvy person's desktop.

Obviously you're right because they likes of gentoo, debian, ubuntu, suse, fedora, dsl, knoppix, arch, *bsd don't exist with many MANY people using each of them respectively and very happy with their decisions...

(maybe I'll come back after you've read this and add a </s>)

[pers3us]

No-one could possibly imagine different people wanting different things like a very basic lightweight fast system on an old PC and a very simple interface that's similiar to other OS's on very non-tech-savvy person's desktop.

Obviously you're right because they likes of gentoo, debian, ubuntu, suse, fedora, dsl, knoppix, arch, *bsd don't exist with many MANY people using each of them respectively and very happy with their decisions...

Don't bother with them buddy, there is no point. They wont understand. Lets focus on the objective here. Mods please moderate this thread and kick anyone who is trolling!

[+jamesyfx Subscriber²]

I'm going to be following this project. I enjoyed observing the development of Shift, and I hope this new project gains the same kind of momentum.

I'm not useful enough to be a contributor to this though, all I can do is web design and a few graphics... Those skills aren't necessary in computer software. :p

[pers3us]

all I can do is web design and a few graphics...

Actually, thats really useful skill set. We might need your help. So please put your name up as contributor for those.

[n_K]

Let's just get this straight LiquidCrystalMeth, either post here if you're interested in working on the project or if you want to express an interest in it.

If you've got questions, comments, rubbish, etc. to talk about this distro and it's possibly future, start a NEW thread or reply to the original thread I made, NOT HERE.

Moving on.

'all I can do is web design and a few graphics'

Hey that's a useful skill! Gotta have a website for it :p

[pers3us]

Guys, I have question. Would you prefer to work on something like Sparrow mail (Never used myself so i don't know much about it) or Thunderbird?

[pers3us]

perhaps you are right that offering a broader commentary on why i think the current ones sometimes fail at doing this is off topic.

The sole purpose of this distro is to learn, but in turn we want to do things differently. We are not just repackaging another one, rather we are planning to build applications that work better than the alternatives. We are planning to make it as consistent/beautiful as possible. This is not something we can do if we go to already big names and suggest our changes, they don't work that way. So please understand, we here are trying to make something of our own, and any encouragement/help is much appreciated.

[Tidosho]

I'd be glad to be a mirror server for the distribution of the ISO's of the OS. I run a small computer repair company so it'd be good publicity for this project and my company. We do Linux installs and repairs too so would be happy to be roadtesters.

Personally I'm ace designing UI's in C#, VB6, VB.NET, GTK/Glade so would be happy to help if you decide to use any of those technologies. I've worked on UI development in a few open source Python torrent clients over the years such as ABC, LH-ABC and GTorrent, although I'm better in VB6 and .NET than Python.

[pers3us]

What happened to everyone? No more activity?

[sanctified Veteran]

What happened to everyone? No more activity?

Work and personal projects got in the middle. But I'm still brainstorming more design ideas, including a GUI mockup proposal. Will post them next week.

[pers3us]

Work and personal projects got in the middle. But I'm still brainstorming more design ideas, including a GUI mockup proposal. Will post them next week.

What do you think of a Sychronization application/service. Something like google's chrome os. This sync engine will sync everything with google, i.e gdrive, photos from picasa, mails (Which would be used by mail client), reader etc.

How good is the idea and how feasible?

[Barney T. Administrators]

Hi Everyone,

My suggestion for all of the trollers in this thread is as follows:

Do not engage them. Keep your eye on the project at hand and move forward. I will delete all trolling comments as I see them. There is no reason to waste energy on people who criticize this project with no intent on helping.

I have deleted all posts that are either trolling or irrelevant to this project. I will warn for trolling if this continues.

Keep your eye on the ball....... you guys have the right spirit! (Y)

[n_K]

If we're going with arch, and deciding on x86_64 or x86... I know there's a dual-boot image or arch and you can select which architecture to boot up with (and install from).

I personally think it'd be better to ALWAYS boot into x86 and detect if the user has a x86_64 capable PC, if so prompt them what varient they'd like to install, otherwise just install x86 (assuming the packages would be gotton off the net and not from a CD)

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

I'm wondering, is there some way we'd be able to lever something like Anaconda as the installer? I like the idea of having a GUI installer over the basic Arch one.

I also like the idea of having a dual-architecture installer, so you could choose x86 or x64 as desired.

[threesixtyflip]

Sorry haven't been online much this week, had work to do :(

I agree with using a dual architecture so users of both platforms will be able to be supported. I think finding a graphical installer for Arch would be a major benefit.

[pers3us]

I'm wondering, is there some way we'd be able to lever something like Anaconda as the installer? I like the idea of having a GUI installer over the basic Arch one.

I am not sure if we can use Anaconda but guys at Chakra have built this installer called Tribe. http://chakra-linux.org/tools-tribe.html

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

I am not sure if we can use Anaconda but guys at Chakra have built this installer called Tribe. http://chakra-linux....ools-tribe.html

Interesting, Tribe could be the way to go.

[threesixtyflip]

Interesting, Tribe could be the way to go.

You're right, this does look very interesting. Im going to read into it a bit more methinks.

[n_K]

Anaconda is good for most situations... But I've had severe problems with it, especially on a mac, not sure if it's incompatible with GPT or what but it always crashes the installer for sabayon.

[Noir Angel]

If you can build in good UEFI support I'll be interested. I have found booting and installing Linux in EFI mode to be a bit hit and miss depending on the distribution.

[n_K]

As we're going with arch, there's a few bugs I've noticed with arch that might be worth trying to fix;

1) Tilda (terminal), if set to auto-launch on login, most of the time it will go properly where positioned but sometimes randomly it will appear at the top left corner and be very small (might be due to gnome lauching things before the desktop has loaded, maybe add a `run after desktop has loaded?` option?)

2) Arch linux's default installer (when I last used it anyway) supports installing using /dev/sdX, label or UUID but if you use UUID, it does not use UUID for grub's menu or fstab (can't remember which), so that's a quick fix. Plus it's apparently supported to install to USB devices but whenever I've installed to a hard-drive connected via a JMicron IDE -> USB device, the initramfs moans that it can't find it, so we can add more modules to the initramfs kernel.