The PCQLinux 2007

Every year for the past three to four years, we've had this debate. Should we

or should we not bring out a Linux distro? And believe me, every year it's

getting tougher and tougher to decide. The reasons for this are simple. One,

there are already lots of Linux distros out there, and increasing. Two, Internet

connectivity is not a big problem anymore, and is also constantly improving.

Just leave a download on overnight over a DSL link, and wake up in the morning

to find it all there on your machine. Those sitting on big fat Internet

connections in offices are luckier. They can download any distro during a coffee

break. Under such circumstances, it's only natural that when we have to bring

out a new Linux distribution, we had to do something really different to live up

to user expectations. So, besides trying to answer standard questions like which

distro to base it on, how many CDs/DVDs should it consume, etc, we also had to

figure out how to make it special. What should we do to make this distro stand

apart from the crowd? Hopefully, you'll like what we've finally built after

months of sweating it out.

Our first hurdle while building PCQ Linux 2007 was choice of distro. The

Fedora lovers in our team have been winning this debate for the past three

years, but this time they only managed to win half of it. The other half managed

to convince the rest for using CentOS as the base. So our desktop distribution

is based on Fedora, and the server version is based on CentOS. Interestingly,

this in turn is based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux base. The reasoning for

this is simple. We wanted to give a desktop distro with all the bells and

whistles, the latest and greatest software releases, for which Fedora is the

best bet. For the server side, we wanted to provide a more stable release

instead of giving the latest and greatest software. Hence we used CentOS.

Choice of media came next. We've been giving PCQ Linux on multiple CDs in the

past, so this time we decided to use a dual-layer DVD instead for the job. We

felt that there were many advantages of doing this. For one, there's no fear of

losing one CD and then desperately asking friends and foes to loan you their

copies. The second advantage is that you just have to preserve one media. With

multiple CDs, chances of one of them going bad are higher. Third and biggest

advantage is of course size. Four CDs is equivalent of around 2.4 GB, whereas a

dual layer DVD offers 8.2 GB. We would never have been able to bring you the

kind of software that we've given this time had we resorted to CDs. So if you

don't have a DVD combo drive or writer, then better go get it now. They're not

too expensive nowadays. Then came the difficult part of building it. The first

challenge that we had to address was to figure out how many skews of the desktop

and server versions should we give.

PCQ Linux 2007 Desktop



In the past, we've given a complete distro that can be converted into everything
right from an entry-level desktop to a super computer. While that was quite

good, we faced quite a few issues while building it. In order to create so many

installation types, we had to add or remove packages, toil with Anaconda, etc.

This resulted in tons of dependency errors. For instance, the strangest problem

we found in one of our older distros was that a printer driver wouldn't install

if we removed a Japanese language support pack. Thankfully, one of our readers

pointed this out on the forum. This time, we've not created multiple types of

installations in the desktop version. Instead, the entire Linux distro will get

installed. From this, we have of course, removed the components which we know

won't cause any problems. Once it's installed, you'll find a Menu switcher

program on your desktop. This will basically change the Application menu

configuration and show only those applications that are really required. So, if

you want to use PCQ Linux 2007 as a MediaCenter PC, then it will only show the

programs relevant to that. If you need to use it as a developer workstation, it

will only show the programs relevant to that and so on. Like this, we've created

four different configurations. Besides these two, the remaining two are Home and

Scientific Desktop.

Enterprise Server



On the server side, we've done a very interesting thing. We've carried a
virtualization software called VirtualBox with the distro. We've removed most of

the applications from the distro and given ready to run virtual disk images of

three key applications with it. These are preinstalled, preconfigured

applications. You just have to load them on top of VirtualBox and they'll be up

and running.

The immediate benefit of doing this is that you don't have to worry about

toiling with the installation anymore. Simply concentrate on what you really

need to-configuring the applications according to your organization's needs. The

long term benefit is that in the future we can bundle more such images with the

magazine and you just have to load them on top of your existing distro. The

images we've given this time are for Al Fresco Document Management software,

Zimbra messaging and collaboration suite, and Web Huddle online meetings

software. Next time, we can give more.

The biggest challenge that we faced in this was adding the virtualization

software into it. At first we tried using Xen, but it wasn't available for

CentOS. We then shifted to VirtualBox. This one also didn't have a readymade

version for CentOS, but thankfully, its source code was available. So the

challenge that the team spent sleepless nights (particularly Shekhar) on was in

compiling this source code for the distro.

The Installer



The other two stalwarts of the Linux team, Vinod and Anindya said their biggest
challenge was in making the DVD a dual-boot. Many sleepless nights later, they

managed to get it to work. This time's installer is really simple. It's

completely text based, but extremely easy to use as you'll see in the article on

installing PCQ Linux.

So here it is, all ready and waiting for you to try it out. We'd like to

thank all the people who've provided their precious inputs for making this

distro. We'll await your comments on this one at the PCQuest online forum.

Anil Chopra, Anindya Roy, Krishna Kumar, Rakesh Sharma, Sanjay Majumder,

Shekhar Govindarajan, Vinod Unny and Vijay Chauhan