Goal: To Build a Lightweight, friendly and highly optimized linux distribution
Audience: My target audience are disatisfied Puppy Linux users.
Objective 1: Design
Determine the best building environment to start this project.
T2/Arch/Other Pre-existing linux environment
These all have their strengths and weaknesses. Many of the top distributions have
broken dependencies and crude hacks to make things work. Redhat, Debian, Ubuntu
and Suse are all guilty of crap and bloat. This is also true for smaller "non"
branded or hobbyist environments. Arch is a good choice for a binary based
starting point but doesn't offer the flexibility that and environment like
T2 does. Gentoo...no way.
Objective 2: User Friendliness of Interface
User friendliness should be key point here. Some argue that keeping it console
based allows freedom as opposed to GUI'fying everything and taking away those
said freedoms. But people won't use it if it is not friendly. Focus should be
maintained on keeping the user interested in what they are doing without
"overdoing" it. Examples of "Over Doing it" KDE...Examples of "Incorrectly Doing
it" Gnome. Example of "We don't know quite what we are doing" XFCE.
Objective 3: Minimal Size
Keeping things user friendly usually comes at the cost of eye-candy.
More eye candy = easier to use. Not necessarily always true but more often than
not. Focus should be kept on minimal size vs eye candy and ease of use.
Objective 4: Simple
The system should be simple and intuitive enough that any user can quickly see
how to do the most common tasks that they need todo.
For example: Abiword should be called "Word Processing" Pidgin should be called
"Instant Messaging" dont' use confusing techno babble to confuse the user in the
name of being "different"
Objective 5: Professionalism
The project must appear professionally completed. Nothing conveys garbage to the
user faster than the words "hobby", "side gig", "played with" etc.
Either the project is done intentionally as a professional image or not at all.