Mathiasdm Posted June 16, 2006 Share Posted June 16, 2006 How about a custom bootloader? I've been thinking about creating one, but it's kinda out of my league ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Derf Veteran Posted June 18, 2006 Veteran Share Posted June 18, 2006 I would personally like to see grub boot options for: kernel x.xx with nvidia driver kernel x.xx with ati driver kernel x.xx with vga driver (aka safe gui mode) kernel x.xx command prompt only (aka safe non-gui mode) That would totally help me out and make it easy for everyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barney T. Administrators Posted June 19, 2006 Author Administrators Share Posted June 19, 2006 Thanks, everybody. I have had several folks step up to the plate and volunteer to get the structure of this CD (or collection of scripts) together. If anyone has anything that you feel needs to be added, please let us know (in this thread, so we can keep suggestions in one place). :yes: Thanks, Barney Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prosidius Posted June 19, 2006 Share Posted June 19, 2006 Have the video card drivers preinstalled so I dont have to waste the 5 minutes of my time doing it myself. :) Additionally offer a command line and gui option for the package manager if you were to have one. If possible try for a widget thing that grabs the news and/or recent posts from the forums like on the homepage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kreuger Posted June 19, 2006 Share Posted June 19, 2006 Barney maybe you can also have all the packages like mp3 playing, dvd burning, ndiswrapper and everything install with it (by choice) to help out Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DAaaMan64 Posted June 19, 2006 Share Posted June 19, 2006 Not to be the wet blanket here (ok, ok, this is being a wet blanket), but this idea has come up before, and there is no real interest in it, as there hasn't been any compelling reason to come up with a "new" distro. Perhaps a pre-set group of packages to add-in to an existing distro (something like what EasyUbuntu appears to do) would be a better, and more supportable, idea. That way no one needs to go through the hassle of actually maintaining a whole world of possible packages. </wet blanket> :ermm: (Y) Lets make a neowin group that can help another distro develop, whether that be ubuntu or slackware, I don't know. But lets show we are linux intelligent not linux nuts. Then for neowin's hard work see if you can get a neowin theme installed by default. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barney T. Administrators Posted June 20, 2006 Author Administrators Share Posted June 20, 2006 (Y) But lets show we are linux intelligent not linux nuts. Then for neowin's hard work see if you can get a neowin theme installed by default. Gee... I certainly do NOT consider myself a Linux nut............. :no: And I would hate to work really hard on someone else's distro and then beg to have our name added to it........ that just doesn't sound right. Barney Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DAaaMan64 Posted June 20, 2006 Share Posted June 20, 2006 regardless of whether you'd hate to or not, it would be best for the linux world to help another distro, rather than make a new one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
former1 Posted June 20, 2006 Share Posted June 20, 2006 Whilst I personally think this is more to promote neowin, than actually help the users of neowin. I guess it's a pretty nifty idea. But let's be serious about something, who is actually going to download and install a Linux OS that's been created by a forum community? If you want to advertise Neowin AND be useful to users, do not go around creating another distro of Linux. To be honest I hate seeing these new projects pop-up and then ofcourse it's the same old, with a few kernel changes here and there a different wallpaper and that's it. I think that if/should you want to sucesffully help the community and promote Neowin at the same, create a form of "one click install" for various distros (ubuntu / FC / CentOS / ArchLinux / ...) that would give users the option to install the latest VGA Drivers, ndiswrapper, etc. etc. But that's just my personal opinion.. :whistle: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vlad Posted June 20, 2006 Share Posted June 20, 2006 Whilst I personally think this is more to promote neowin, than actually help the users of neowin. I guess it's a pretty nifty idea. But let's be serious about something, who is actually going to download and install a Linux OS that's been created by a forum community? If you want to advertise Neowin AND be useful to users, do not go around creating another distro of Linux. To be honest I hate seeing these new projects pop-up and then ofcourse it's the same old, with a few kernel changes here and there a different wallpaper and that's it. I think that if/should you want to sucesffully help the community and promote Neowin at the same, create a form of "one click install" for various distros (ubuntu / FC / CentOS / ArchLinux / ...) that would give users the option to install the latest VGA Drivers, ndiswrapper, etc. etc. I pretty much agree with where you're coming from. I could see making a Neowin theme for Gnome/KDE/whatever, maybe with a grub splash screen, a bootsplash screen, wallpaper, screensaver, etc. Note that this is something that's distribution independent, meaning everyone can use it, which imho is a Good Thing. But essentially rebranding something like Fedora Core is...weak. Not to mention actually developing, building, and maintaining a linux distribution is a difficult thing to do, especially if you aren't already extremely familiar with Linux. As for including things such as drivers, there are serious licensing issues to consider. A fair number of companies will not be happy with the redistribution of their drivers and firmware. Frankly, there are PLENTY of better places to get help with specific distributions and what not than Neowin (the Fedora forums, the Gentoo forums, various wikis...). Not that people can't ask a question and get an answer here, but... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kreuger Posted June 20, 2006 Share Posted June 20, 2006 But let's be serious about something, who is actually going to download and install a Linux OS that's been created by a forum community? Err..every linux distro is built by a community (sometimes forum users but not based around that forum like the idea in place here) some have backing from major corporations but they're all still community driven. They all depend on user input to improve. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markwolfe Veteran Posted June 20, 2006 Veteran Share Posted June 20, 2006 I think that there is some confusion, because the direction isn't 100% clear. I don't believe that this is going to be a "new distro", or an advertised theme for an existing one. I think that this is being planned as a script/kit that a newbie can use to set up an existing distro with pre-set packages and features, like a GUI 'safe' mode, nVidia/ATI drivers, NDISwrapper and these other ideas already posted in the thread. Sort of like an "EasyUbuntu". (and, with EasyUbuntu already existing, I think that a Neowin project to do something similar should focus on an add-in script for a different distro - otherwise that would be a lot of duplication of effort. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barney T. Administrators Posted June 20, 2006 Author Administrators Share Posted June 20, 2006 I think that there is some confusion, because the direction isn't 100% clear. I don't believe that this is going to be a "new distro", or an advertised theme for an existing one. I think that this is being planned as a script/kit that a newbie can use to set up an existing distro with pre-set packages and features, like a GUI 'safe' mode, nVidia/ATI drivers, NDISwrapper and these other ideas already posted in the thread. Sort of like an "EasyUbuntu". (and, with EasyUbuntu already existing, I think that a Neowin project to do something similar should focus on an add-in script for a different distro - otherwise that would be a lot of duplication of effort. Yeah Mark.. that is the current thought..... but we are still just gathering information... :yes: Barney Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kreuger Posted June 20, 2006 Share Posted June 20, 2006 Oh well in that case, shouldn't we just provide ideas to the easyubuntu people to improve it or is this going to be for all distros? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barney T. Administrators Posted June 20, 2006 Author Administrators Share Posted June 20, 2006 Oh well in that case, shouldn't we just provide ideas to the easyubuntu people to improve it or is this going to be for all distros? Well, I think that the idea here is to produce something special to Neowinians as well as being useful to those who want an easier way to apply these scripts / packages to whatever distro we want to use...... Barney Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vlad Posted June 21, 2006 Share Posted June 21, 2006 Well, I think that the idea here is to produce something special to Neowinians as well as being useful to those who want an easier way to apply these scripts / packages to whatever distro we want to use...... Barney That's pretty freaking vague. It seems to me installing such things is pretty damn easy, even by linux's standards. Perhaps I have a narrow view on the subject, but I don't really see how or where you can improve these things, which are already fairly well documented elsewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barney T. Administrators Posted June 21, 2006 Author Administrators Share Posted June 21, 2006 That's pretty freaking vague. It seems to me installing such things is pretty damn easy, even by linux's standards. Perhaps I have a narrow view on the subject, but I don't really see how or where you can improve these things, which are already fairly well documented elsewhere. Well.... I am not trying to be vague, but I am looking for broad suggestions. We haven't really decided if this is a project worth pursuing, or if we would be just duplicating things already done. As far as what we would like to do, there are a whole host of suggestions in this thread that people say would be useful... in producing a utility type of script that would enhance one's ease at installing drivers, packages, etc. I agree that many distros are easy to use and administer....... but I am trying to see if there is enough support to do a project of this type..... Barney Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riz360 Posted June 21, 2006 Share Posted June 21, 2006 Building a distro up almost from scratch will require a lot of expertise, I quite like the idea of the active desktop Fred666 orginally suggested. How about an addon package for ANY linux distro, includes Window Manager (Openbox), Active Desktop with Neowin (configurable if possibly), Panel (Pypanel, FBPanel, Gnome Panel, KDE Panel). I'm not aware of any app that can do active desktop on linux. Failing the active dekstop ideo, how about wigets? adesklet, gdesklet, kdesklet You can reach a wider audience with an add on (customised and fast) desktop system than your own distro. Btw if we do go down the distro patch please please have i686 optimised as an option, the amount of distributions not including that is pretty odd. The speed improvements where i686 optimizations are carried out are huge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kreuger Posted June 21, 2006 Share Posted June 21, 2006 how about wigets? adesklet, gdesklet, kdesklet I invite you to check out superkaramba Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sn4k36 Posted June 21, 2006 Share Posted June 21, 2006 This might kinda sound a little weird, for the linux scene... But i think it might be a great idea to make two different neolinux distros... One for the complete linux n00b and one for the more advance users... The n00b will be kinda like the starter edition of windows xp.. with really kick ass doc's that even a 80 year first time computer user could understand.. But also have it setup in such away that'll help them prepare themselvies for the advance version of neolinux. neolinux n00b edition: very easy installer with preinstalled packages such as rpm packages.. An it'll only take one or two clicks of the button to install a newer version of the linux kernel.. etc and for the more advance version... will u can pretty much kinda guess what i'm talking about here if ur already a linux user. anyways that's just my few cents worth to try and help out.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kreuger Posted June 21, 2006 Share Posted June 21, 2006 I think the whole point of this is to be newbie friendly. Every distro as far as I know can be used by advanced users even if it's made for newbies. They can tweak it how they want since they know how. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Derf Veteran Posted June 21, 2006 Veteran Share Posted June 21, 2006 I would suggest we pursue a newb distro because anything we do can be reversed engineered by the experts anyway if we make the source material available (logos, widgets, etc...). I don't think that Neowin would want to host a full repository for a new distro so I assume we would use an existing distro and direct the package manager to the original repositories. We could add a small repository for our custom items. I agree that the best way to do the "Active Desktop" approach would be through widgets. We could have one widget for "Recent Forum Posts" and other widgets for the front page news feeds and blogs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daylene Posted June 25, 2006 Share Posted June 25, 2006 (edited) Hey everyone, Just wanted to throw my thoughts out about a Neowin Linux distribution. First off, I think that we should start off with a debian-based live CD. If we can tackle that, it wouldn't be too hard to move up to full-scal distro. All we would need to do is give the live CD an "Install to Hard Drive" option. Secondly, I think we should have a distro being newb-friendly and base it as a multimedia experience. That means we should probably choose Knoppix. It is debian-Based and is a live CD. Summary: -Knoppix live for distro -Make it Media-Centric and Newb friendly I have already registered it at sourceforge, so I will let you know how it goes. Also, please join #neowinlinux on irc.freenode.net We can use this as the Neowin Linux IRC channel. Edit: I submitted the project to sourceforge, hope it goes through! Edited June 25, 2006 by bulio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barney T. Administrators Posted June 25, 2006 Author Administrators Share Posted June 25, 2006 Hey everyone, Just wanted to throw my thoughts out about a Neowin Linux distribution. First off, I think that we should start off with a debian-based live CD. If we can tackle that, it wouldn't be too hard to move up to full-scal distro. All we would need to do is give the live CD an "Install to Hard Drive" option. Secondly, I think we should have a distro being newb-friendly and base it as a multimedia experience. That means we should probably choose Knoppix. It is debian-Based and is a live CD. Summary: -Knoppix live for distro -Make it Media-Centric and Newb friendly I have already registered it at sourceforge, so I will let you know how it goes. Also, please join #neowinlinux on irc.freenode.net We can use this as the Neowin Linux IRC channel. Bulio, sent you a PM to discuss all of the options here........ things look good! Barney Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Decryptor Veteran Posted June 25, 2006 Veteran Share Posted June 25, 2006 I'll fully support this endeavour... ...If it uses the BSD kernel. :shiftyninja: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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