[BALUG-Talk] Last month's meeting: ... Debian Pure Blends

[Michael Paoli]

> From: "Michael Paoli" <Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu>
> Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2018 08:25:54 -0800

> Last month's meeting was well attended, many interesting discussions,

Ah, I knew there was at least one other item from last month's meeting
I also wanted to mention (found highly terse after-meeting notes).

I forget the precise discussion/question that lead to it, but
I think it was essentially about making a custom distro to
support or be used for <some particular purpose>.  Anyway,
I'd mentioned that (well) maintaining a distro is a quite
non-trivial undertaking, and perhaps a much better solution
would be, e.g. Debian Pure Blends
https://www.debian.org/blends/
"Debian Pure Blends
Debian Pure Blends are a solution for groups of people with specific  
needs. Not only do they provide handy collections (meta-packages) of  
specific packages, but they also ease installation and configuration  
for the intended purpose. They cover the interests of different groups  
of people, who might be children, scientists, gamers, lawyers, medical  
staff, visually impaired people, etc." ...

Essentially, Debian Pure Blends *are* Debian ... it's essentially a
(sub-)"flavor" of the Debian distribution.  Essentially, certain
meta-package(s) are installed, which then have dependencies, etc.
to bring in all the relevant packages for that Debian Pure Blend
"flavor".  There are many Debian Pure Blends, e.g.:
Debian Med
Debian Science
Debian Astro
DebiChem
Debian Edu
and many more.
Anyway, my general point was, it may be much more feasible and appropriate
to, rather than try to do some separate custom distro., instead, work
to create a Debian Pure Blend.