Shift: Ubuntu?


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109 members have voted

  1. 1. Should we use Ubuntu or LFS/Arch

    • Ubuntu
      55
    • LFS/Arch
      54


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Hey guys,

I imagine most of you have seen my statement on Shift today. In that statement, I did mention that I thought Ubuntu would be a good framework for us to work with. However, there is no way for me to deny that all of us have, at some point, wondered if starting from scratch would be a good idea.

I don't want to move too fast here, but I want us all to make a choice, not just the leaders of the project. Do you think we could make a better distro from scratch, or are we better off staying with Ubuntu?

Keep in mind that starting from scratch will disregard a lot of the work we have done. However, we have also learned a lot from the work we've finished, and it might be possible to get back to the point we are at in a matter of months. It would be a long term decision.

Also, with Ubuntu, we get the benefit of not only the Ubuntu installer, but Wubi too. I've tested out Wubi, and it *works*, but it doesn't seem flawless to me. I also tried Ubuntu 8.10 in its final form for the first time installed to a HD today... I wasn't all that impressed, but it could be my hardware.

This is a big decision, and I want everyone to be involved. Again, I don't want to move too fast; it's been about 24 hours and a lot has changed on the project. But user input never needs to wait.

- Simon

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Stay with it, and keep moving forward... Yes, sometimes you need to take a step back to advance past a certain goal, but there's nothing currently wrong as-is and why fix what isn't broken?

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It is, in my opinion, a better option to have Ubuntu as the basis. A large amount of resources is available for Ubuntu. The Ubuntu way of making things has, in a certain way, become a standard among the "Linux for the desktop". Compatibility for many things is also assured, with the most important one being the Debian packaging system. Ubuntu provides a good basis for evolution, it will be a better (and at the same time a more easy) way to develop going from there.

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Not to put anyone down or anything but I can almost make Shift from an Ubuntu base. This is great because it taught me a lot and I was very thankful for the opportunity.

LFS is very ambitious in my view. But I don't see why it can't be done and done well. I'd like to learn how to do that too at some point. Learning from you guys was great in the past and maybe I could learn more in future, time permitting.

Arch is supposed to be a bit faster than Ubuntu. Maybe it's a better base. Would it be easier than LFS?

Another point in favour of Ubuntu is that it's got money behind it. Would it be easier to let them keep track of the repos and all, and for Shift to focus on the interface?

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Arch essentially lets us do LFS quickly. It will end in more or less the same thing: a bare bones system, but in a few minutes rather than a few days :p

At that point we would start making the changes we want to.

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I think Ubuntu is the best choice as well. Will there a 64-bit edition available? I would also like to see commonly used applications such as Firefox 3.0, OpenOffice 3, VLC, Pidgin, and so on. Also, DVD and multimedia playback (iPod access, video codecs, etc.) can be a real nightmare. Are you going to include anything about that as well?

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I'd rather see it be a distro done from scratch or from a basic distro. The main reason is distros like Ubuntu are pretty complete already and your distro will be seen as being just a modified Ubuntu. Yes it will be easier to use Ubuntu but you'll be tied into things that Ubuntu does in the future.

A question, will you take a current Ubuntu release and work from there, or record modifications and apply them to future releases of Ubuntu?

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Arch! Ubuntu has been done. There's about 500 derivatives and looking at the other poll, most people say that not enough of a difference exists between Shift and Ubuntu.

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I voted LFS/Arch. Ubuntu is a distribution of its own, with far too many distros based on it as it is. I can just see Shift having a bad reputation because of it being based on Ubuntu...

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I will say Ubuntu for the sake of wubi. People dipping their foot in Linux really benefit from this, as there is no partitioning.

If we can make wubi run on whatever Shift is based off of, arch or lfs, it is a wash for me.

If we do stick with Ubuntu, let's re-do the packaging, to remove the large meta-packages, that way someone removing "evolution" doesn't end up getting prompted to remove half of Gnome.

That, and better package selection and setup than Ubuntu should make shift a bit peppier, perhaps?

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iirc, we can change Wubi. All we need is to build in an unattended installation to the ISO, then change a little bit of Wubi code. In my opinion, that's a lot less work than changing Ubuntu's packages around.

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I will say Ubuntu for the sake of wubi. People dipping their foot in Linux really benefit from this, as there is no partitioning.

If we can make wubi run on whatever Shift is based off of, arch or lfs, it is a wash for me.

If we do stick with Ubuntu, let's re-do the packaging, to remove the large meta-packages, that way someone removing "evolution" doesn't end up getting prompted to remove half of Gnome.

That, and better package selection and setup than Ubuntu should make shift a bit peppier, perhaps?

Yes yes yes, The transition from gaim to pidgin was painful because of that (ubuntu-desktop depended on gaim, pidgin replaced gaim, trying to install pidgin then tried to remove gaim, which then tried removing ubuntu-desktop and everything that depended on it)

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I use Arch because it gives you the choice of what to use without coming and installing a fully blown working system, I personally prefere this but many other wont. I think Arch would make a good base, and pacman is much better than apt

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If it's of any importance, none of what Ubuntu has is Ubuntu-specific. Basically anything that runs on Ubuntu can easily run on Arch, Gentoo, or anything with Gnome.

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It would be nice to have the first Arch-based distro with wubi included. (unless it's already been done elsewhere, I don't know for sure)

Gives people who want wubi a choice. :yes:

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It hasn't been done. If you guys want, I can be a PR person and get in touch with Wubi to see how it works. I know it makes a loopback or something er other thingamagiger...

Edit: I'd also like to add that LFS is a great way to make a Linux *base*. However, we'd need packages - so someone would need to package up 10,000+ packages and put them into a repository and maintain it as new updates to these 10,000 applications come in. Definitely do-able with a team countable on one hand, eh? (10,000 is a made-up number to express that there are a lot of packages to make!)

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If you want to get Shift noticed, it has got to be Arch. I [refer we have a clean, fast and stable OS to begin with. Ubuntu was not what I had imagined Linux to be.

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I would also like to, if we switch to Arch-based, not lose the LiveCD/installer that Ubuntu currently does.

They should be able to boot Arch/Shift as a LiveCD and use it from there, and have an "install" icon on the desktop to start the install process.

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Ubuntu is a solid base, and will let you do a great Distro, but unless Shift is better than Ubuntu, it'll never shake off the Ubuntu-derivative tag, which imo is not a good thing. Linux Mint is good, but it's still "Ubuntu with codecs". How far would you need to go to not be "Ubuntu with a new theme"?

Conversely, Shift as an Arch derivative has, in my mind, more credibility as a Distro. There would possibly be more work involved, but that extra effort would be rewarded by the community with greater respect and appreciation for what has been done. If you can combine the best bits of Ubuntu into Shift-Arch, Shift will be brilliant.

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iirc, we can change Wubi. All we need is to build in an unattended installation to the ISO, then change a little bit of Wubi code. In my opinion, that's a lot less work than changing Ubuntu's packages around.

According to their website, it should be fairly easy to integrate, the Wubi install contains 4 seperate mini-projects, all of which are open-source and fairly versatile:

	*  Lupin, the loop-installer, used to be the core of the insaller, but now most of the old functionality has been ported within Ubuntu
	* Wubi, the Windows front-end, handles everything that happens before you reboot
	* Lubi, the Linux front-end, does basically the same thing as Wubi
	* LVPM, Loopmounted Virtual Partition Manager, handles the migration of virtual disks to real partitions for Wubi 7.04 and 7.10

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