Meeting/25 June

These are the meeting notes from the first meeting, on Sunday, June 25, 2006, 8:30 EST.

Meeting notes

1. The subject matter for this night’s meeting was strictly aimed at gathering ideas and deciding on the general direction of this project.

2. There was general agreement that we need to produce a Live CD with the option of installation for the user.

-The goal would not necessarily to create a working LiveCD system with applications (i.e. instant messenging and office suites). There are other distros for that (i.e. Knoppix). If we design a LiveCD system it would be just to prompt the installer or to be used as a troubleshooting tool.

3. There was a suggestion that we create two distros, one for new users, and one more advanced. A suggestion was also made to create one distro that has advanced install optione, but explanations as well as “easy” default settings.

-We may need to start with an easy distro and add options later to ensure that testing will go as smoothly as possible.

4. The theme would be directly tied to Neowin’s theme, and we would have links to our forums through a web browser.

-We should also design widgets that will display recent forum posts and recent front page news on the user's desktop.

5. Scripts could be used to gather the latest drivers from the manufacturer’s website, including Nvidia and ATI drivers.

-Many forum members do complain about the difficulty in installing video drivers and wireless network drivers. I would like to simplify/streamline this process.

6. There was talk about using a light window manager as well as one that had more eye-candy.

-Fluxbox on X11 was discussed as the light window manager (possibly with a dock) and XGL was discussed for the eye-candy option.

7. The general feeling was that we create a distro from LFS, but create our own packaging system.

-That idea was expressed vocally by only two or three members. There is a thread on that on Neowin: http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=474000

8. There was discussion about which file system to use. This issue was unresolved by the end of this meeting.

-It was generally accepted that EXT3 and ReiserFS may not be ideal for our members. XFS and JFS were mentioned as being faster and less CPU intensive. Of the two, XFS is more popular.

9. Final thoughts were proposed about organization of this project. Future meetings to gather ideas will be arranged, at earlier times to allow other time zone members to participate easier.

10. A list of areas for members to volunteer will be created as well as a wiki for this project.

-The volunteers should be approved by the team leader to ensure that the person who ends up responsible for coding actually knows how to code.