New linux distro for desktop

Anjum Butt · Post by **Anjum Butt** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 10:21 am

Hello all users of linuxpakistan.net
I am new to this group.

As most of us are aware that Redhat Linux available in Pakistan is not suited for desktop users.

After 4 years of working on linux at my home system,
I would to announce that I have started work on a new Linux distribution for the Desktop PCs.

I have created the base system and its been stable for last 1 week.
And now I am going towards the desktop GUI.

I will release specs in a few days.

mahin · Post by **mahin** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 4:08 pm

Welcome!!!

Great News! waiting for more details.

Since you are in Karachi if you have time then would you mind showing demo of your work in forth coming monthly meeting? It would be on 15th June at 3.00pm. Please check this link if you need more details. http://www.linuxpakistan.net/news/

See if you could make it else post some more details over here.

This is indeed a very good new's for Linux in Pakistan

.

Post by **mrkkhattak** » Tue Jun 10, 2003 6:09 pm

Assalamualaikum,

Congratulation ... we will look forward to see your work. wish you good luck ...

Regards,

-Meraj

newbie · Post by **newbie** » Wed Jun 11, 2003 2:08 am

it will be a great honour for pakistan !!

zaeemarshad · Post by **zaeemarshad** » Wed Jun 11, 2003 5:35 am

This particular distro should be a lot stable. what are u going to use as your gui manager. i recommend against using GNome. its not stable and nautilus is a lot buggy.

Regards
Zaeem

Anjum Butt · Post by **Anjum Butt** » Wed Jun 11, 2003 11:28 am

Below are some specs for the base system. These specs are incomplete so excuse me for that.
It is somewhat based on "Pure LFS", which was compiled using a modified RedHat 7.3.
However we cannot call it a Pure LFS as it does not follow "LFS" or "Pure LFS" projects.

The sources for these packages were gathered from their respective ftp sites.

I am still unable to give out diskspace or memory requirements right now as I am currently busy optimizing and compiling XFree86 and got a real tight schedule.

For now, I only target for Pentium 2 and above systems, however, once the main task is accomplished, I will recompile it for i586 architectures.

Base System:
Kernel with CryptoAPI 2.4.20
Alsa Sound System * 0.9.4
Glibc 2.3.2
Util-Linux 2.11z
Bash ( patched ) 2.05b
Sh-utils 2.0
Ncurses 5.3
Midnight Commander 4.5.55
GZip 1.2.4
BZip2 1.0.2
Tar 1.13
Sed 4.0.7
Perl 5.8
LibTool 2.5
Zlib 1.1.4

* Alsa sound system refers to modules, libs and utils package

Development:
GCC ( C,C++ ) 3.3
Binutils 2.13.2

WiP:
PAM 0.7
XFree86 4.3.0
QT 3.1
GTK+ 2.1
KDE 3.2

Future Addons:
This is a really __LONG__ list

Anjum Butt · Post by **Anjum Butt** » Wed Jun 11, 2003 11:33 am

zaeemarshad wrote:This particular distro should be a lot stable. what are u going to use as your gui manager. i recommend against using GNome. its not stable and nautilus is a lot buggy.

Regards
Zaeem

Actually i am currently focusing on KDE as its a lot stable and quite good looking, but am also looking foreward to have a stabler GNOME release too.

mahin · Post by **mahin** » Wed Jun 11, 2003 2:50 pm

Anjum Butt wrote:
For now, I only target for Pentium 2 and above systems, however, once the main task is accomplished, I will recompile it for i586 architecture.

I am just curious why you are opting for i586 where as i486 is our need due to availability of second hand computers.

Please proceed as you think proper.

Anjum Butt · Post by **Anjum Butt** » Thu Jun 12, 2003 7:10 pm

Thanks for the query.

The reason for compiling it for 586 is that it will be very slow on anything below 586.

The base system works fine on even 386 with as little as 4MB ram.
But X Server, KDE and GNOME are very high on memory requirements.
On my Pentium 166 ( without MMX ) with 32 MB ram, it took nearly 3 minutes to start KDE 3 on redhat 7.3, GNOME was even more slower thanks to nautilus.

However, with remote desktop support with VNC will make it possible to run the system on a powerfull system and have the display sent to a low end thin client like a 386 with SVGA display and just around 4MB ram.

nafri · Post by **nafri** » Fri Jun 13, 2003 12:10 am

this is indeed a very interesting development. more so as the other pakistani distro -- basit's pklinux, based on slackware -- is no more maintained.

could you please tell me why do you think that "Redhat Linux available in Pakistan is not suited for desktop users"?

irfan

Anjum Butt · Post by **Anjum Butt** » Fri Jun 13, 2003 12:32 pm

nafri wrote:this is indeed a very interesting development. more so as the other pakistani distro -- basit's pklinux, based on slackware -- is no more maintained.

could you please tell me why do you think that "Redhat Linux available in Pakistan is not suited for desktop users"?

irfan

Well Irfan,
We did a little survey on an ideal desktop operating system, something
that was for a desktop user. We took some ordinary desktop users,
and asked about what was and ideal desktop os supposed to have,
what we got was something which was windows oriented. I mean people
are so much used to windows that if we place them in front of a linux
system, with its full potential, they will be sitting dumbfond.
They will not have any idea about it. There are people I personally know
who have removed linux from their systems due to the nature of the OS and the way RedHat manages it.

LindowsOS people did quite some work on it but it still is not satisfactory.
Especially, the licensing issues are of most concern to me ( though
nobody else seems to care about them ).

Also RedHat Linux is compiled for a 386 processor with only kernel and glibc ( core pakages available for 586 and 686 ).
Due to this other apps get slower. and the system is not able to utilize the full potential of the hardware, resulting in slower and degraded performances from GUI and multimedia apps that are the heart of a desktop oriented system.

Since with this distro I am focusing an ordinary desktop user, I intend to
deliver an efficient desktop system ( without dev tools ) in less than 600 MB as compared it to RedHat's 1 GB limit.

Post by **fawad** » Fri Jun 13, 2003 10:04 pm

Anjum,
You're shooting for all the right goals on this system (if only you could add grsec and freeswan to the mix

).

What are you planning to use for system configuration? The redhat tool, mdk ones or webmin?

How about package management? Do you plan on using apt for rpm for package installation, upgrading etc?

-fawad

nafri · Post by **nafri** » Sat Jun 14, 2003 12:35 pm

Anjum Butt wrote: Also RedHat Linux is compiled for a 386 processor with only kernel and glibc ( core pakages available for 586 and 686 ).
Due to this other apps get slower. and the system is not able to utilize the full potential of the hardware, resulting in slower and degraded performances from GUI and multimedia apps that are the heart of a desktop oriented system.

many thanks for your detailed reply.

i am not a big fan of redhat either. currently i use mandrake 9.1, which i prefer because it offers better performance on my P-II machine, as it "is optimized for Pentium and higher processors (and compatibles)". the downside is that i cannot run it on my VIA C3 based mother board as mandrake "does not run on earlier x86 processors". [quotes from the mandrake website.]

mandrake, like redhat, offers an easy-to-use installation program, which is a major plus point for an enduser like me. i hope that your distro will have a good installation program as you are targetting non-techies.

now, let us talk about the GUI. X windows is resource hungry. and so are GNOME and KDE. (a not so popular alternative is to use IceWM or windowmaker.) however, most endusers usually do not have more than 4mb of video ram [and usually not more than 128mb ram]. and this is not sufficient for runinng X and a window manager, with mozilla and open office. (i understand that there are light weigth browsers and wordprocessors, but these are often limited in terms of functionality.)

so how do we solve this problem?

irfan

Anjum Butt · Post by **Anjum Butt** » Sat Jun 14, 2003 7:14 pm

fawad wrote:Anjum,
You're shooting for all the right goals on this system (if only you could add grsec and freeswan to the mix ).

Thanks for the thought, if you can give me the site addresses and a description of what they do, I will consider adding them.

fawad wrote: What are you planning to use for system configuration? The redhat tool, mdk ones or webmin?

First i was thinking about linuxconf but now I thing webmin or usermin will do just fine.

fawad wrote: How about package management? Do you plan on using apt for rpm for package installation, upgrading etc?

Well I haven't already decided that, both apt and rpm are quite good systems with their own features, but since this a brand new desktop os,
i was thinking about writing down a customized installer system, something with features of both and a resemblence of MSI ( Microsoft installer ), I mean rpm is quite good to the job, but when apt packages gets a bad dependency problem, they run into an uninstall frenzy.

Anjum Butt · Post by **Anjum Butt** » Sat Jun 14, 2003 7:32 pm

nafri wrote: i hope that your distro will have a good installation program as you are targetting non-techies.

First of all, I am currently busy building the whole system optimized.
after that, we have plans to build an installation system thats even easier than that of LindowsOS.
Plus, since its going to be a release for Pakistan, we have stripped all extra locale files and will provide default settings preconfigured.

nafri wrote: most endusers usually do not have more than 4mb of video ram [and usually not more than 128mb ram]. and this is not sufficient for runinng X and a window manager, with mozilla and open office.
so how do we solve this problem?

We are also concerned about this issue, and will work on that as we go.

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