Hello fellow openSUSE hackers. So far we have a few people to start this project to optimize certain parts of openSUSE, but as usual the more the better. Maybe we just present each other and start from there with expectations and capabilities. I start and once we have identified anyone that is interested we can move this discussion offlist. We need anyone with any skill and capabilities to inject some steroids into an already fantastic distribution. My name is Andreas Girardet and I work for Novell as Consultant in NZ. I am the founder of and used to be maintainer of Yoper "Your Operating System" an optimised from scratch Desktop distro (I have stepped out of Yoper at the beginning of the year). My main goal is and always has been to make the Linux migrants' experience a very positive one. I am very excited about openSUSE as I believe it is the first commercial grade distro (as far as I am aware) that has a completely Open development model. As opposed to an open distro trying to be commercial (with drawbacks) or the other big commercial distro not really supporting its open "step" child and just using it as a test bed for technologies as opposed to its main source tree. My experience are mainly in packaging, System Administration and I am overall a resource of boundless enthusiasm, which can be highly infectious. My expectation is to 1.) Create a openSUSE / SUSE based desktop, that is at least as fast and snappy as windows. Most peoples' experience of Linux on the desktop is at first a disappointment, when it comes to speed since some distro's do run significantly slower than Windows. NLD and SUSE is not an exception and ex windows users in the Novell office complain about this and welcome my little tweaks here and there to make it snappier. But I rather have a solution to the issue instead of hacking and tweaking single systems again and again. 2.) Create a test case with a written proof of concept of such a desktop to lay in front of the openSUSE community. Plan is to release a first desktop at the same time with 10.0 going gold. This testcase should have a written design with respective outcomes/deliverables and a spread sheet with tests we can do against openSUSE standard and openSUSE on steroids. I would call it SUPER ...:D SUSE Performance Enhanced Release ... only kidding, but we do need some sort of codename for this. We can use this testcase also as a business case to put in front of Novell/SUSE internally here to put some ressources into moving things aggressively into a more optimised desktop direction as I believe this will be the one key differentiator moving forward in the battle of the desktops. 3.) Personally I want to stay as close as possible to the openSUSE code, since this means that each openSUSE release gets followed on the day by our "addon" packages. Those packages should and could be installed on top of an existing openSUSE install or for convenience sake we could also create a 1 CD base desktop distro a user can download and install quickly and then install additional packages onto with Yast or Kynaptic/Synaptic against the gwdg.de repository , which I personally really like. We could also create a mini install containing <150 base packages on top of which a geek can install the rest. A real minimal install, which I personally also like. In short I do not want to create a new distro out of this or a fork that requires large amounts of code maintenance, since IMHO that would be futile and certainly something that is in my eyes not really required and quite pointless, I certainly would not want to be part of such a fork. The maintenance will be done by the wider community anyway, we just take it and mold something out of it that we think is faster, better, stronger ;) ....... SUSE on steroids. I am sure SUSE research can use some things we will do in future releases and we certainly will do whatever SUSE research thinks could improve performance. 4.) Personally I have some time I can dedicate to this, possibly 20-30 hours per week. My focus can be on the design and the packaging. I think we can easily have something ready by the time SUSE 10 goes gold. 5.) Personally, we should have scripts at the end of this which automatically create our custom version out of each SUSE release. That we we can spend time fine tuning instead of constant hacking and packaging. I can also already give us all an account on a buildserver on a 100Mbit in the US I set up. Please let me know if you want access to it. So if you are still keen, reply and present yourself and tell us about your expectations. We should at some point move this offlist or onto another list, since I am sure others on this list don't want to constantly read our ramblings ;) Thanks for those who listened and GO SUSE GO! Thanks so much for openSUSE .... a dream come though .... Regards, Andreas Girardet Consulting Architect Novell, Inc., the leading provider of information solutions http://www.novell.com My phonenumbers: NZ Mobile: 0064-027-645-9827 NZ Landline: 0064-09-3081400