[Ubuntu-BD] Discussion and planning on RBL linux distro

[Mohammad Bhuyan]

One of the key aspect of any "successful" product design is to reuse
or piggyback as much of "existing product/knowledge" as possible. This
not only ensure that amount of effort involved is less, also ensures
that the already "productized" components of the new product results
into a more usable / complete product.

Now theory aside, if the goal is to come up with a Linux distribution
for the mass market of BD, then the first step should be to find a
distro that is already close to the requirement and fix/fill the gap.

For example, I am sure out of Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE any one is a
lot better distro then what we can come up from scratch and then spend
few years + few million bucks behind it to bring it to the stage where
Ubuntu, Fedora or OpenSUSE is now today. I guess we don't need to
discuss that these distros are powered by commercial companies who
spend lots of $ to maintain these distros. Bringing up anything from
scratch will face hardware compatibility hell, integration hell,
application support hell etc.

Golden (proven over time) rule of I.T. is Don't fix anything that is
not broken.

Following this thread, I felt that the only problem stopping main 3
from the perfect solution for BD is the online repos. I guess that
where the focus should be. If it were my initiative, then I would
focus on creating:

1. A repo DVD containing all the mainstream apps required (ensuring
dependencies) provided with a nice graphical manual to use that repo
DVD.

2. Local mirrors to actual repos.

And then I will leave the rest to the users.


Now coming to the practical aspects of make this project happening and
sustained (what happen when people like you with lots of enthu gets
busy with life?):

1. Approach the Telcos to provide sponsorship. They get their logo on
the repo DVD, project website etc.
2. Approach ISPs for sponsorship on mirror hosting.

Or use combination of Telco and ISP sponsorship for supporting the project.


I could give a detail plan, but only if it makes its appeal to you.

Finally, in case you are really interested to make you distro from
scratch, the best place is:

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Btw, this is a great place to learn Linux distro internals.

Regards,

Soyuz