No GUI

Matthew Dillon dillon at apollo.backplane.com
Mon May 8 08:39:14 PDT 2006


    I agree with Simon.  The nrelease has a packaging framework and if
    someone wants to put together a bigger release or a GUI-enabled
    release or whatnot, all the tools are there to build it.  If someone
    (or some entity) wants to build and maintain a more sophisticated
    release, nobody here is stopping them!

    Even so I would caution against trying to have it boot into an actual
    X environment.  One of the big problems with X (for the last 20 years)
    is that its virtually impossible to get a working high-resolution 
    desktop without a lot of playing around.  Linux fares no better in
    this regard... actually being able to boot a CD directly into X
    has always been a hit-or-miss affair.  It is probably best to have
    even a sophisticated release CD boot into a console login prompt
    with a list of simple instructions: login as 'root' or 'installer' or
    'X', etc.

    * We have an nrelease infrastructure that allows one to very easily
      construct customized release ISOs.

    * I welcome someone making a project out of creating a fully GUI-enabled
      ISO (well, at least after logging in as 'gui' or 'X' or whatever),
      and I have no problem with such a project being committed to our
      nrelease framework as another build target.

      I think having such targets would be beneficial to the entire 
      community.  For example, we could have one build that includes 
      a full GUI, and we could have another for DVDs that includes as
      many packages as we can fit.

    * If a third party (Some DragonFly developer, or some company, or 
      whoever) wants to maintain their own secondary release using
      one of these new targets or creating their own proprietary build,
      that's perfectly fine with me.

    * The core release, however, is going to remain as it is.  Its nice and
      small and serves the developer base very well.  I don't want the
      core developers bogged down trying to maintain a large end-user
      infrastructure, that isn't what DragonFly is about.

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxx>





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