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Re: New Debian Derivative



On Fri, 20 Sep 2013 14:10:27 +0530
kumar shantanu <k.shantanu2006@gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah, My OS will have less packages than default debian desktop.

Less packages on the remote mirror does not make a lighter installation.
All that does is reduce the amount of data cached by apt. If you just
mean to choose a different default desktop, that is a new metapackage,
so use a blend. If you want to actually make a genuinely lighter
desktop, you will have to recompile some packages to turn off certain
build options. At that point, it becomes a new derivative and you lose
all binary compatibility with the rest of Debian or Ubuntu. No end of
packages will break - at runtime - as you have changed the assumptions
in the libraries underneath the applications. Very quickly, you will be
recompiling every package to ensure that even unchanged applications
are relinked against your modified libraries.

> May
> be i will choose a different different desktop environment or window
> manager. Initially I will be targeting it to make much lighter than
> debian/ubuntu.

You are confusing the meaning of "lighter". A smaller archive is of no
benefit unless the packages in the archive are themselves smaller or
have reduced dependency chains. Changes to package sizes without
recompilation are already available as Emdebian Grip. Changes to
dependency chains involve large scale rebuilds of critical packages, a
large set of constantly moving patches, an automated rebuild strategy
and a *lot* of work.

-- 


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/

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