Re: SEUL: Re: SEUL distribution?

[William T Wilson <fluffy@benatar.dunadan.com>]

On Wed, 14 Jan 1998 AJT60@student.canterbury.ac.nz wrote:

>  This was just what I was about to suggest. It would be awkward if 
> SEUL users had to go to a different packaging system for packages not
> available in SEUL. In effect it would become a kind of Debian-lite, 
> (or, dare I say it, a Red Hat-lite or whichever distribution you feel
> is most suited to the goals of SEUL). 

This has already been discussed and decided.  We will be basing the
initial distribution off of Red Hat; we will be using RPM packages; our
packages will not be installation- compatible with either Red Hat or
Debian.

The whole point of SEUL is to get away from fighting with the package
manager, package versions, etc.  InstallShield is the closest thing to a
model we have right now, but we want to address a number of its flaws as
well. 

In particular, we want to not have to fool with Red Hat and Debian's
tendency to upgrade before things are completely stable in an attempt to
stay "up to date".  This is not Yet Another Linux Distribution.  It has
different goals from either Red Hat OR Debian.  SEUL is not intended to be
either the most up to date or the most advanced or even the most powerful. 
It is designed to be simple to use.  To this end, many of Red Hat's
packages will be left out, the system will not use Red Hat's installation
tools, and it will generally not behave like Red Hat at all.  It will look
more like Windows than anything else.

>  The other thing I'd suggest is picking one mail transfer agent and 
> sticking with it. I had more trouble configuring mail than anything 

We will be using Sendmail (which is the only one we can distribute easily)
and probably procmail for mail deliver.  This is what red hat uses and we
won't change it unless we need to.