Creating a new distro dedicated to MIDIBox and audio/midi development

[stryd_one]

Hi UbuStuGurus :)

Please forgive me for such a lengthy first post.. 

I'm stryd_one, I'm the guy who's kicking off this midibox distro project.
It's not my idea, in fact it's been around for so long I couldn't tell you
who had the idea originally, but we want to have an out-of-the-box solution
for DIY electronics and midibox project newbies to be able to boot live and
perform all of the developmnt they need, without having to worry about
lengthy configuration and install procedures. Of course, a natural extension
to this is to include a bunch of audio/video apps so that the distro can
also become a project studio on a disk. We don't just build these things
just to look at them ;)

I've basically been waiting for a solid flavour of linux to come along, and
hardy is it.. So it's time to get started. For me personally, this will be a
long planned and awaited migration away from windows, so I'll be setting it
up as I personally need it, and in parallel I will be using the same
processes and adding a few things for a distro I can share with the
community. I figure, if I have to do all this work to escape M$, then I
might as well share the love with the community, right? Thankfully the
community are as enthusiastic as I, and a few guys (like simone) have been
helping out a lot already. Gotta love the free developer ethos :D

There are a number of reasons why I didn't consider that our work would be
an entirely welcome addition to the ubuntu studio project. Aside from the
fact that there is no 'desktop' release of ubustu, which is a complete
blocker, the biggest would have to be that we will be distributing software
which is "free" but not proper FLOSS software which meets with ubuntu's
ethos. I personally don't need any of such apps, but others do, and because
this is meant to serve our broad community we have no choice really.

There are also likely to be some substantial differences between the lists
of packages that we will need, and that ubustu provide. Rather than
attempting to deliver enough audio production apps to suit the majority of
musicians, as is the role of a distro like ubustu; the aim is to provide a
selection of what members of our community are most likely to use, as a
secondary concern to the development apps like SDCC and GPUtils and AVR-GCC
etc. Development is the focus for us.

In addition, some of the apps we want to use which do coincide with ubuntu
(studio) really could do with being later versions than those available in
the ubuntu repos. As such, I'll have to install them myself, and for the
sake of flexibility and easy inclusion in the community distro, I'll package
them and install them that way, so I can include the packages in the distro.
Community specific mods (unneeded by myself) like bookmark collections for
FireFox will also be packaged up, so it makes it easy for me to modify my
own build to become the community distro. 

Of course, I'll be more than interested in becoming involved with the UbuStu
project and sharing any relevant packages I build; perhaps you can even
assist me along the way? I have over a decade of professional IT experience
at a fairly high level, and used to work doing app packaging when I was a
desktop engineer and now advise on windows packaging too, but I'm somewhat
new to linux (not the command line, I'm a novell engineer. Let's not talk
about SuSE here huh? hehehe) 

A collaborative effort between our community and ubustu is unquestionably
the most productive way to do things, a totally independent fork from
standard ubuntu packages makes no sense, as was pointed out so
enthusiastically by Jason - mate, I totally know where you're coming from
and totally agree with your stance - I can't stand when people make a mess
by forking stuff unnecessarily like that! But I think that when you know a
bit more about the specifics you may see why I didn't feel that merging our
distro and ubustu was appropriate. Maybe you can enlighten me, and I can do
so, which would be absolutely fantastic! 

But, the fact that I have not made a .deb package before, is the core reason
I hadn't directly offered to share my packages as yet (although as you have
noticed on our forum, it was my intention) - I don't know how professional
they will be, or if they will meet the ubuntu requirements... I know I'll be
likely to be packaging the occasional nightly/unstable/beta builds and I
don't know if they are wanted... I may be distraced by my hardware projects
and not perform to deadlines... Etc etc...I'd very much like the packages to
be suitable, but I'm not at a stage where I could promise such a thing, so I
felt it premature to offer my assistance, as I may be useless to you guys
after all. If not, great! My work is yours!

Of course, I did mention that I'd like to hear the input of other
communities, and naturally ubustu is at the top of the list with CCRMA. I'm
sorry that came across as advertising, but that was really not the
intention. I'm sure I can freely speak for all who are and will be involved
when I say that if we can work with the ubustu community then that would be
a massive advantage to us (and I'm sure the ubustu devs wouldn't mind a
helping hand from a half dozen people), so I'm sorry to have offended. At
this stage, all we were hoping, is that a community such as this would be
well versed in linux audio specifics, and maybe could suggest some juicey
apps that we shouldn't miss out on, give us hints about whot to do and what
not to do, etc. We thought you could maybe help us out.

So, if you guys would like to weigh in some suggestions, education,
documentation, hints, warnings or whatever, please do - any constructive
input would be warmly welcomed. I would be honoured to assist in the ubuntu
studio project in any way where our goals coincide, so if there's anything
you'd like my help on, please ask away. Whether the two projects coincide to
a sufficient degree to warrant a merge in any form, or not, should not stop
our communities from collaborating with each other for the benefit of the
greater community - and I would assume that's a common goal for us all :D

Thanks for your time and any advice,

stryd_one