[Sussex] Searching for a distro....

[Matthew Macdonald-Wallace]

Hi all,

I've been using Ubuntu for about a year now on my laptop and I figure
that it's time for a change! :o)

Here's my wishlist:

1) A distribution that has no "free vs. libre vs. open" zealotry
attached to it
2) A distro that has good package management (portage/apt etc)
3) A distro that is highly customisable (a la gentoo) yet does not have
huge build-times (??based on binaries??)
4) A distro that use SysV init, _NOT_ upstart
5) A distro that has a huge amount of software available for it (this is
probably a repeat of 2!)

Here's my reasoning:

1) I just want my distro to work.  Freedom (as in speech) is nice, but
for me it doesn't even figure on my "I want" list.  I want to watch
youTube, listen and watch RealMedia/MP3/WMV/WMA encoded formats on my
laptop _without_ having to add deb repos from people I don't know/trust.
It's my opinion (and I'm aware that it isn't shared by a lot of people!)
that Linux will never make it as a desktop until the community (or at
least part of it) drops the "you can't use that, it's proprietary"
attitude. (/me dons the flame-proof suit of pragmatism...)

2) Whilst I am prepared to download and compile from source when I need
to, a system that drags all the dependencies in for me is definitely
high on my "that would be really nice" list.

3) If I install software onto a server when there is a known issue with
library compatibilities (I'm thinking PHP5 and nusoap here), it would be
really, really nice if various things that are obviously modular (i.e.
are switches on the command line of the base package such as SOAP!) were
extra modules.  I've recently setup a couple of LAMP stacks based on
Ubuntu and had to recompile the PHP libraries without Soap support so I
can use nusoap to run things like SugarCRM and Joomla.  Gentoo is
fantastic for this (/etc/make.conf and package.keywords solve
everything!) however the fact it takes five days to compile a basic
Gnome Desktop with Open Office and FireFox is too long for me and my
clients!

4) SysV has been brilliant up until now.  It is still used (AFAIK) on
the majority of Unix-based systems.  Upstart is a pain when it comes to
securing systems as none of the examples in the books work (and they are
relatively new books!), things I have configured for years in inittab no
longer work in the new layout and the documentation (AFAICT) is minimal
to non-existant! </rant>

5) It is important to me that I can install various programs quickly and
efficiently however (as I've stated above) I don't want to be editing
the distro-recommended setup to do it.  Adding 3rd party repos to a
production server is (IMHO) non-negotiable.  It does not happen. It is a
security risk.  

So I guess what I'm after is a cross of all the good bits of debian (but
without the `cat "FREE!=LIBRE!=OPEN" > /dev/throat` FSF mentality!) and
the handy config of Gentoo.  Is this possible?

Cheers,

M.
-- 
Matthew Macdonald-Wallace
matthew at truthisfreedom.org.uk

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