[OpenIndiana-discuss] Sonicle XStreamOS repo and XStream Desktop in progress

[finid at linuxbsdos.com]

Gabriele,

A company-sponsored illumos desktop distribution is very welcome.

Here are a few suggestions:

1. A graphical installer will make it a hit for new users. Users expect 
one on a modern desktop distribution. If you don't have a gui installer 
yet, check out PC-BSD's graphical installer.    Might be easier to port 
it than code one from scratch.

2. Let's shoot for complete out of the box "it just works." That means, 
I install it and start being productive without having to mess with 
configuration files and other manual configuration that should work by 
default. Think about those who do not want to learn how the OS works 
before they can send email or interface with their friends on social 
networks.

3. Excellent default physical and network security posture of the box.

4. Graphical tools that makes it easy for new users to make use of ZFS' 
excellent features.

5. On the app side, being able to choose between OpenOffice and 
LibeOffice is a good option, especially since their will be some feature 
differences. This is minor, but you might want to not bother about pdf 
readers. Firefox comes with a built-in PDF reader, which has rendered a 
standalone PDF reader obsolete.

6. LXDE sounds good for a desktop environment, but have you considered 
Cinnamon? It's one of the most popular ones we have around and because 
it's built atop GNOME 3 technologies, it's not very resource intensive.

That should get us started.

Looking forward to the first public release, but if "outsiders" to take 
a look at it before it hits the download mirrors, I'll be more than 
happy to take it for a spin.

Thanks,


--
finid
http://LinuxBSDos.com



On 2013-05-15 09:28, Gabriele Bulfon wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> at Sonicle we've almost finished rebuilding a brand new IPS repo with
> updated packages from
> latest illumos kernel, updated userland components, X11 1.13.1,
> updated pkg commands.
> We wanted to rebuild everything from available sources, to remove any
> possible dependency
> from old packages derived from OI.
> This repo will be available soon on our public
> pkg.sonicle.com/xstreamos publisher, then a pkg update
> will do the job over any previous XStreamOS installation.
> Then, I'd like to announce that we're also working on a Desktop
> version of XStreamOS.
> We've chosen, first, do deliver the LXDE desktop as a lightweight 
> frontend.
> So we have already packaged all the gnome and other dependencies in
> our userland.
> The desktop already works, and is nice.
> To make it usable, we're packaging all the typical application one
> may need on a fresh install
> (file manager, text editor, calculator, terminal, and so on).
> We've also already packaged both Firefox 20.0.1 and Thunderbird
> 17.0.5, and they work great on illumos.
> We have plan to pre-package open-office or libre-office, pdf readers,
> media apps and so on.
> We would like your suggestions for what you would expect to have on a
> Desktop distro of XStreamOS.
> Thanks!
> Gabriele Bulfon.
> Gabriele Bulfon - Sonicle S.r.l.
> Tel +39 028246016 Int. 30 - Fax +39 028243880
> via Santa Maria Valle 3 - 20123 - Milano - Italy
> http://www.sonicle.com
> 
> _______________________________________________
> OpenIndiana-discuss mailing list
> OpenIndiana-discuss at openindiana.org
> http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss