[ubuntu-florida] Rolling Our Own Ubuntu Distros

[Mike Feravolo]

Hey:

I was thinking about a few ideas that I have for customized Ubuntu
distributions and wanted to send them to our list before our next
meeting.

1) Using the desktop icon style from the education distro (edubuntu),
since it has sort of a "friendly" look to it. Given the fact that
edubuntu is GNOME based basically it is Ubuntu, make we can even make up
our own screen widgets (e.g. folder icons, wallpapers . . . ) This
distro could target the household computing market and include the kids
applications on a DVD based installation

2) For all the "(K)ool (D)esktop (E)nviroment" fans out there we could
also do an Kubuntu based variant. Maybe the "k"-one could be focused
more to the "power users" of office productivity applications and people
that like the "Start Button". I plan to replace Edubuntu with Kubuntu on
one of my machines that are connected to the internet.

3) Custom distros on a USB Stick, of course we would have to recover the
money for the media. But I don't think most people would mind and we
wouldn't have to make more then one at a time.

In addition using the USB sticks during the development of our own
distribution would reduce the quantity of CD's that the shredder will
have to eat.
 
I recently purchased a USB stick with Edgy on it from a company from the
UK and plan to demo Ubuntu using my Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC). UMPC's are
about as windows based a system that you can get, and they are entirely
pen based. That way people can see how the live CD works and I don't
have to lug around my old and slow notebook.

NOTE: You can skip the next paragraph if you don't want to know [or
already know] what a UMPC is. Just for the goof . . . .

I have a Tablet Kiosk EO-7110, which was one of the first ones released
in the USA last July. It's a great little system weighing less then two
pounds with a 1GHZ cpu, 1/2Gig of RAM, (2)USB, WiFi, Blue-tooth and 40GB
Hard Drive. UMPC's have no CD drives, keyborads, pcmica slots, Cat-5,
serial or parallel connections and fit inside a small portable DVD
player case.

I can access both my windows 2003 server and the Ubuntu boxes using RDP
and VNC. All my workstations run some kind of Ubuntu and Open Office and
play well with the UMPC and the windows 2003 server.

That's it for now

Mike Feravolo