[OpenIndiana-discuss] distribution constructor for making OI spins?

[Tim Mooney]

In regard to: Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] distribution constructor for making...:

> On 2021-01-20 04:09, Tim Mooney via openindiana-discuss wrote:
>> In regard to: Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] distribution constructor for 
>> making...:
>> 
>>> I would love to have XFCE.
>>> 
>>> But as I know, the OI devs will not package other DEs. They stay royal to 
>>> MATE.
>>> 
>>> You can't found any other DE's packages on the repo.
>> 
>> You might want to review the mailing list archives for this mailing list
>> to get a clearer understanding of why that is.  It's been discussed
>> before.
>> 
>> If you or Chris or someone else builds an entire desktop environment
>> like Cinnamon and publishes a repo that is kept up to date, I would
>> definitely give it a try, at least in a VM.  If someone does this and
>> keeps it up to date for a long time and continues to contribute to OI,
>> I would probably use that as my main desktop environment.
>> 
>> Just building it once, without a commitment to keeping it updated, isn't
>> good for anyone, though.
> TBH The only reason OI isn't my "daily driver" is the DE available. If I
> had XFCE (what I currently use), or better, Cinnamon. I'd have a hard time
> not using OI. Overall I like it better. But I'm (currently) pretty well
> committed to FreeBSD as maintainer of some 160 ports, and I create
> installs for all my servers && clients. I've been on BSD since Bill Joy
> forked 386BSD, and hacked on various NIX' before that. But if I could
> cobble up an OI I could justify as a "daily driver", and something I could
> recommend to my clients. I'd make the switch.
> Which brings me to why I initiated this thread. Since I need commitment
> to justfy *my* commitment. I thought I'd send out a "feeler" to see if
> there was any interest. Appears I'm not the only one. So I'm going to
> "take the plunge". I'll start gathering all the information I need to get
> all the dots in a line, so I can start production. Any pointers to help
> shorten the trajectory would be *greatly* appreciated. As well as keeping
> the wiki working. ;-)

I'm indifferent to Xfce, but when you start working on Cinnamon and deps,
that's something that I would be happy to collaborate on and test.  oi-dev
and the irc channels are your best source for help on porting, and I've
gotten good feedback in PRs where I've asked questions or been stuck
part way through updating or porting a package.

Also, rather than the wiki, I would highly recommend

 	http://docs.openindiana.org/

and then "HandBook->Building with oi-userland".  That's been migrated from
the old wiki page and updated and had some corrections and a few
clarifications added.  There may still be improvements that could be made, 
so the first few times through the process, please pay special attention
to places where that document misses information or appears incorrect.  If
you mention the issues on oi-dev, I'll get PRs submitted (or you can,
if you fork the docs too) to try improve things.

Tim
-- 
Tim Mooney                                             Tim.Mooney at ndsu.edu
Enterprise Computing & Infrastructure /
Division of Information Technology    /                701-231-1076 (Voice)
North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105-5164