Hello,
Let me make some things more clear.
"I'd like to know what kind of problem. Just because there are problems
with Debian, doesn't mean you can submit wishlist bugs to help make
things better for your specific issues you see."
The problems aren't about Debian itself, I have no complains about Debian. It's more a matter of how people that have no prior linux experience use the system, for them it's very hard. I've also used SuSe 10.2 and Sabayon. SuSe is very userfriendly, but can also be very unstable and is quite slow. Sabayon has the benefit that most hardware works out of the box, using Wlan is no problem under Sabayon, while under SuSe is was a pure hell.
Debian is very stable, ever since we use Debian I hear no complains anymore about things crashing or about the system being slow. Still I believe it should be possible to simplify Debian for business use. And I think the best way to start that is by starting this CDD.
See, installing Debian is one, but the system then still has to be configured. I'm talking here about for example SMB/LDAP authentication. Centralised installation of packages. Asterisk or Openpbx for a VOIP server. These are just some options that are useful things for businesses. On purpose I didn't mention the exact things that this CDD should contain in my prior email. I have my vision on that, based on the experience that I have within my company. I'm sure that other potential users also have an idea about what it should contain. And those ideas I am very interested in. First step is to form a group willing to work on this, explecit details about what exactly the CDD should contain is the second step I believe. What matters now is that the goal is clear and that there is support for the project.
> Of course there are some distro's with exactly this goal, however they are
> usually commercial products/forks. Probably all very good distro's but also
> awfully expensive, and that makes them not very interesting for small- and
> mid-sized companies.
"Like... which ones? How do we know which ones you are talking about when
you don't specify. Ambiguity really doesn't do anyone any good."
You are right on that, I'm talking about distro's like SLED, RedHat, Xandros. These distro's aren't free. And I believe that this CDD (which is still Debian) can provide a free alternative to that.
"There are already Distro's that do exactly as you say, but maybe perhaps
use CentOS or Gentoo as a base. There are ones that provide these things
in a Debian platform too."
That is absolutely true, however Debian has proven to be a very stable linux distro. My goal is not to re-invent the wheel. I don't want to create a new distro, but simply make Debian with this CDD more usable for the purpose of the CDD.
Of course Debian by itself already contains a lot of suitable packages, that is very good. But still for most businesses still a lot has to be done to make a standard Debian installation suitable for their needs.
"And understand you need not build a whole distribution, just a good subset of installed packages and maybe
some "sane" defaults."
Yes, I understand that very well, that is exactly why I make this proposal to form a CDD.
Regards,
Arjan