Unified Installation meta-distribution suggestion

anonymous_user

I recently purchased a netbook and was able to install a tailored version of Linux (Ubuntu netbook edition) to suit my purposes, and I am able to install a variety of programs that are compatible with it. I have recently discovered the Linux Foundation and read about the Linux Standard Base, and I am eagerly awaiting a release of the MeeGo project that will bring even more choice and diversity to netbook computing, while still adhering to unified standards.

While reading about these efforts, I had an idea about increasing adoption of Linux on the desktop. While there is no one "official" distribution of Linux, and having many different distributions offers great choice, adhering to the Linux standard base offers compatibility. I wonder if just like this, a meta distribution could be made to be easily booted or shipped with hardware that would allow a user to boot into a basic LSB based interface that would allow them to easily install their choice from any number of distributions that are compatible by downloading and configuring the appropriate packages, etc.. If this were backed by the Linux foundation, just like the LSB, working with hardware manufacturers and the Linux community to give users choice while adhering to standards and maintaining compatibility. I think that if this were made available as an easy way for an end user to install and configure their system to their specific hardware, it could greatly help Linux adoption on the desktop.

I apologize if this is a bad place to offer this kind of suggestion, I am new to the Linux community and don't have a great amount of programming or project managing experience to start something like this, but I thought someone here might be in more of a position to support something like this if they thought it was a good idea. Thanks for your time and contributions.

Goineasy9

You might be interested in this pdf on the subject that the Linux Foundation released back in 2008:

http://www.linux.com/index.php?option=com_rubberdoc&view=doc&id=5&format=raw

We all would like to see LSB take hold in more distros, it would make things a lot easier, especially for those who write utilities so they can be used across all Linux distributions. Even the identification of a distro is a chore for programmers. Instead of having a standard lsb-release ID, various distros use their own ID text/doc (ex. fedora-release). In some distros, I've seen an lsb-release link that points to the distro ID, but it would be nice to have lsb-release as a standard. This is just one example.

I am in no way an expert on the reasoning behind the problems with the acceptance of such a standard, but you are correct, such a standard would be a great help to all of us in the Linux community.

jabirali

Thanks for the link Goineasy9, interesting read.