[LUAU] DaemonLinux

[bbraun at sparcy.synack.net]

Well, I don't know how many of you read Slashdot, but you may have
seen tchrist's (tom christiansen) posting about DaemonLinux.  
Tom lives down the street from me, and I've setup perl.com's firewall
(it's in his house), so I've known him for a bit.  He's not much
into working on stuff like that.  However, I have been whining about
how much I despise linux distributions a lot, so I have become involved
in the project to say the least.  I now host and moderate the mailing
list, as well as host the web pages.  If any of you are interested,
let me know.  I'd be more than happy to share the work (and therefore 
the credit =) of the project with luau, if the group is interested.
Otherwise, I'll see if the ISC is at all interested, but I doubt they
will be.

Anyways.  For those that don't know, DaemonLinux is the Linux kernel
running on a basically BSD platform.  I've already generated a distribution
for my personal use that comes close to this, but I have not released
it at this time.  (I'm currently at the 44th Internet Engineering Task Force
meeting in Minneapolis)  

Information: 
	http://synack.net/daemonlinux
	daemonlinux at synack.net  (moderated mailing list, majordomo run)

Status:
	Infancy.  I setup the stuff today that tchrist asked me to do.  When
I get home, I'll try to package my distribution.  I leave in about 2 weeks
(maybe) for a while, so there will be a big push on my part for about a
week, then hopefully enough momentum will build up that other people will
get going.

History:
	This has been a joke for quite a while at various USENIX's and apparently
at LinuxWorld, although I wasn't there.  With tchrist's posting we got a
lot of people together that actually want to get moving on this.

Plans:
	Short term plans:
		When I get home, package stuff I have and post it on the page.
synack.net is a very poor old machine, on a T1.  I may move it to Vixie's
at the palo alto internet exchange for a 100mb on the same local loop as
altavista.  If I move it, this will happen in the next week or it won't 
happen until June when I go out to work for vixie again.

	Long term plans:
		CVS tree.  Packages based on the OpenBSD distribution.  Porters have
access and upload changes.  Initial distribution will still have glibc core
to maintain binary compatibility.

Problems:
	libc.  BSD libc is not thread safe and does not take advantage of 
linux specific things.  Not to mention being the hardest to port.  Many
people are working on BSD libc being thread safe, then the port will
be at least a little simpler.

Personal Goals:
	BSD binary compatibility.  I've been diddling on this for a while,
and perhaps I'll get up the energy to do some real work on it.  Once this
is accomplished, I'll be happy.

Why:
	GNU/Linux is a misnomer.  It is Linux.  We will not refer to things
ast BSD/Linux, but rather, just Linux.  This is not a holy crusade against
the gpl, that would be just dumb.  The kernel is GPL'd, the compilers are
FSF, and so is glibc.  This has a number of purposes, and not the least
of which is plain old hack value.  There are many things about the BSD's
that I like, it is convenient to have a consistent layout of things, and
you have the linux kernel there that we all know and love.
And it sounds like fun especially for those of us who complain about things
like bad distributions, linux has gone to the dogs, etc.

Who:
	The people that fit into the category mentioned in Why.  You don't need
to be a programmer at all!  Compiling things, directory layout, documentation,
etc are all important aspects!  You probably would have to be into doing
things for the hack value, but that is why most of us got into linux in
the first place.

Anyway, that's my pitch.  Let me know what you think.

Thanks,
Rob
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