thiussat

I think building from LFS would be the way to go.

One thing I have always wanted to see in Linux distros are distros that are built for specific CPU's. You don't see this very often. For instance, with Gentoo you can compile your system to be optimized for an Athlon64 or a Core2Duo, etc. I think it would be kinda nice for us to create a OCnix benchmarking distro in general and then have several different versions, each optimized for the most popular x86 processors.

Creating a Linux distro doesn't require one to be an uber-coder or kernel hacker. All it requires is a good working knowledge of the Linux CLI and a LOT of patience and willingness to test. We would need to test the final product on a lot of different hardware, but finding those people would be easy on this forum, as there are a lot of people with the latest hardware

I agree with some other posters: The biggest consideration when devising a distro is the purpose of the distro. In this case, it would be to have a stable and light-weight distro used for benchmarking. Stable because you don't want crashing while benchmarking, and light-weight because you don't want the hardware being stressed by things like KDE or Gnome or compiz. Therefore, XFCE or LDE would be the way to go. You also would want to use the latest possible kernel and keep it updated whenever a new kernel is released (since many people will be using the latest hardware).

So, I see a distro with Xfce, Phornix test suite (and other Linux hardware stressing packages). You could also throw in the basics like browsers, email and perhaps a basic office package.

At any rate, I'm game to help out.

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sizeak

While I agree with the core concepts of what you've said, I think it would be a much better idea to eaither base it on Gentoo or Arch. Also I believe that OpenBox would be a better choice for a light weight window manager since all it provides by default is a right click menu that list all the programs in catagoreys etc, which is controlled by an xml file. Thus it highly customisable and ver easy to customise, while also being very light weight.

Anouther must that I think should be included is conky. Though we should package it pre-configured to match the OS theme/look and to display the best summary of info for overclocking etc.

Excuse any bad spelling etc, its late and I've had a long long day at the uni. Id be game to help to though.

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shame on us
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xtascox

Agreed.

We need and IRC room or something if we ever want to get this project back off the ground.

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GodofGrunts

That sounds like a plan. I just installed Arch and I'm using the "Awesome" windows manager.

MAN IT'S FAST!

I haven't played around with it enough to know whether I like it or not, but WOW.

My core 2 duo lappy boots to the desktop in ~8 seconds even with it's crappy HDD and RAM. If I turned off the Nvidia logo it'd go even faster, but I like it.

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sizeak

Give OpenBox a try, its pretty damn awsome. I've never built a custom distro myself, but I'll have a look into it over the next few days. We should think up a list of different jobs involved and find people willing to do them etc. Maybe start a new thread, like a project worklog or something?

__________________
shame on us
doomed from the start
may god have mercy
on our dirty little hearts
shame on us
for all we've done
and all we ever were
just zeros and ones

Zipperhead

Good ideas we all win

SilentPixel

I'd be game to help build kernels. I've recently started experimenting playing around with custom kernels. If we were to make different versions with different cpu architectures then the kernel would just need to be recompiled for those specific architectures. Luckily nothing changes between Core2 Duo/ Core2 Quad / New Xeons

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xtascox

If everyone will put it to use I will set up an IRC server for OCNix. I think it will be much easier to discuss things there.

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SilentPixel

I think that would help a lot in terms of discussing things in real time. My only downfall is that I'm limited by line speed. I have a 256Kb/s upload and that may halve soon... but I'm prepared to help where I can

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bomfunk

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I mean it. No one disgrages Compiz without a consequence, infidel!

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