Re: [seul-edu] Re: ISO project--a different approach

[Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

Michael Shigorin wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 01:48:16PM -0400, Doug Loss wrote:
> > I'd be happy to have Debian Jr or DebianEdu take what we
> > develop and bundle it into their work, but we're committed to
> > being distro-neutral, which probably also means
> > packaging-system-agnostic.
>
> So when participating in a vivid project generaly *can* make at
> least joy, reimplementing the wheel from scratch generally
> doesn't.  The package management question is just that -- you can
> have almost no pain with accurately written software when
> packaging at least RPMs (no DEBs on me but debian/rules seem to
> be quite similar by time spent?) -- but messing with "neutral"
> tarballs *is* a pain whatever you do.
>

You mistook my meaning.  When I say, "distro-neutral,"  I don't mean least
common denominator.  Instead, I mean that whatever we do must be easily
installable on any Linux distro.  Connectiva has created Synaptic
<http://distro.conectiva.com.br/projetos/46/> as a front end to APT; along
with their apt4rpm <http://apt4rpm.sourceforge.net/>, that would give us a
graphical installer that would work with either DEBs or RPMs.  If we
package each app as both a DEB and an RPM, then distros can take our work
and bundle it with their installers of choice.  But with something like
this our ISO can be downloaded and easily installed on an existing Linux
system.

>
> So probably the "installer" part could be generally skipped if:
>
> - some already available are quite fitting;
> - we concentrate on package repositories which could be relied
>   upon as a fresh edu software source (just like FM as a
>   "general" catalogue or say SAL for sci).
>
> Then the problem is transformed from the original one of de facto
> creating *and* maintaining distribution (with quite critical
> things like Apache for web apps which have no relation to the
> project's goals, but somehow are depended upon -- heck, stable
> and featureful kernel *is* a problem!)...
>

We never intended to create our own distro!  Boy, that's the last thing I
want to do--add yet another distro to the mix.

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Doug Loss                 All I want is a warm bed
Data Network Coordinator  and a kind word and
Bloomsburg University     unlimited power.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Ashleigh Brilliant