Back when I used to live in Greece, there was a popular saying: "Greece is not just Athens". Similarly, Linux is much more than (the highly marketed) Red Hat or Mandrake. Assuming you got the skills required, a Linux distribution can be created, distributed or sold by virtually anyone. This is what Free Software is all about anyway. Two Sweedish Linux coders are offering their own Linux distros for some months now (with newer versions on the way). Per Lidén has put together CRUX from scratch, while John Eriksson has evolved a lightweight Slackware version to his own ROOTLinux. OSNews interviews both the developers regarding their (part-time, hobby) projects and their future prospects.
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I think its great these guys are putting together a distribution, more the merrier! What I would like to see is a distribution that is so easy to install it does not ask any questions at all. Mandrake is close and my favourite but it still asks too many question during install. How about one that has a default desktop of KDE say, a good bunch of Home Office apps and configured for internet. I know that means a lot of auto-detection but it would be great for those very new to Linux and computers in general.
It's fun to see people actually doing something instead of speaking about it, and I agree that linux distros are horribly bloated with too much software you never use, doesn't really need, or just plain unnecessary doubled effort (tons of the same stuff, only being developed until pre alpha stage and then left). But it's also way cool to see an old classmate (PT95!) go up on osnews. Keep up the good work!
Cool interview... I think I might try out ROOTLinux, it sounds like it will be a nice Linux distro. CRUX sounds good to but it doesn't have what I need so I might hold out on trying that for now.
Whenever I hear about new Linux distribution the completely wrong analogy comes to my mind but I can't help it. It's about christian religion and how it splitted in different branches and then splitted again and again. May be it's because I was really impressed by St.Augustin story - he was incredibly popular and influential and easily could spawn a new religion movement but chose not to. Instead he decided to make existing one stronger. As I said it's probably wrong analogy - these guys are great and I wish them all good luck. After trying 6 or 7 of different distros from Linux zoo I started to value FreeBSD approach more and more.
BTW, a new swedish distro is coming out soon, hopefully before 2002... And its made by a Swede...
