I think it's a bad idea.
Great, this is the discussion I want...
It sounds like what you're doing is giving folks theWell technically that is how Anaconda works, using a tiny linux image to load Anaconda but other than that it just collects information for configuration and installs packages. Anyway, a user would choose packages that are available to installation. The installation would happen the same way it does now. Eventually, a customized Anaconda installer would probably be available that would allow customization of the install process.
ability to select "Choose packages" in the Fedora installer before actually
installing the operating system.
Also, I am not thinking that the any joe schmo would use this service. It would really be for IT managers, developers, and technical hobbiest. They would choose the packages they wanted available to be installed. Instead of using the one size fits all Fedora install, which also has the contraint of only using packages allowed by RedHat, no third party packages.
Maintaining a distribution requires more than just tossing together downloadedThat is why I want to base the service on existing distributions. Open source is just standing on the shoulders of giants. A user could throw a bunch of packages together and hope that they worked but that is their perogative, I could do that now if I wanted but I know it is a waste of time.
software and praying it works. There is a fair amount of release engineering
that goes into it. You need to ensure software and libraries work,
that the
installer is consistent and easy to use, etc, etc, and
Agreed, I would work to make the existing installers better.
I agree, Red Hat, Mandrake, and Suse already have thriving businesses based on the support model. I expect users to get their support packs and package upgrades etc from them. I just think there is a group of people that want to define their own distribution parameters: look and feel, packages, configuration, etc... If these systems are based on say Fedora why can't they get support from these mailing lists. Would it not be the same as installing fedora and editing a file in /etc?then provide some means of ongoing maintenance (even if it's as simple as "here's a diff file, there's the code, have fun").
This process is not conduive to, nor indeed feasable, via a "public one size fits all" webpage service.
Why not?
Creating custom RPMs is one way to go... But people use technology to implement solutions not to install software. I am just trying to provide another distribution of complete solution sets not just installable software. Sure I could create a custom RPM of postfix to implement a specific part of a solution, I could also create a pre-configured distribution that I know will have the correct packages for the solution. Just seems like another way to go...If you have something else in mind, like a "pre-customize Fedora Core with your own logos" or something, that's another thing entirely. You could just release your own version of fedora-logos.
