From: Andrew Walrond <andrew@...>
Date: 2003-10-22T20:03:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby-oriented Linux distro?

On Wednesday 22 Oct 2003 11:02 am, Gavin Sinclair wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, 6:01:16 PM, Hal wrote:
> > There's been some talk of something like this in the past.
> >
> > If a project materialized, would anyone here be interested
> > in working on it?
> >
> > I'm not spearheading this myself, but I have friends who are
> > very interested in it. I'll be an active participant in the
> > project.
> >
> > Feel free to email me offlist.
>

Sorry - missed the beginning of this thread, but it was I who spoke of this 
before. Rubyx is the name, and I have yet to launch it publicly (Time... as 
always)

However, Rubyx exists, works very nicely, and I'm using it in several 
production environments.

It's currently light on packages (containing only those I've added), but 
supports all the usual stuff; samba, cups, hylafax, apache, qmail etc, and 
the kde desktop. Also a brand new Ruby based init-script system

Rubyx comes in the form of a script, which downloads all packages in source 
form and builds everything from scratch with your choice of toolchain 
versions.

Its been designed to be real-easy to add your favourite package, even if a 
relative novice at coding. In most cases, you can just copy a similar package 
object and change the name ;)

I would love some help with Rubyx; It's got loads of new features which you 
have to play with to appreciate. If anybody is interested in getting 
involved, if only in testing, then drop me a mail off list and I'll show you 
how to get started.

A few words of warning though
	1) Rubyx _improves_ on the FSH, imo ;)
	2) Broadband, (or one hell of a lot of patience) is required while rubyx 
downloads the sources. Unless you can persaude me to send you a cd ;)
	3) Rubyx uses the free (for Open Source Development only) version of 
bitkeeper to get kernel and other sources (linus uses bitkeeper), so if you 
are a die-hard fsf nut then don't bother ;)
	4) Well, there must be more dire warnings, but I can't think of any...

Perhaps I'll setup a mailing list if enough people are interested in trying 
it.

Andrew