This site serves a dual purpose: to celebrate the life and achievements of Alan Turing, and to support Turing Linux, a small Linux distribution based on the idea of the Universal Turing Machine, by way of VirtualBox.
Alan Turing was a British mathematician who is most famous for his role in breaking German codes during World War 2, but who also had other significant achievements that by themselves were sufficient to cement his place in history -most notably, his theoretical work that laid the foundations of computer science.
Turing Linux is a small Debian-based Linux distro supporting VirtualBox, facilitating the running of multiple other distros on one computer.
Of course we should celebrate Alan Turing. Your idea to make a minimal distro to try other distros are really good. This can be done with all Debian versions, but of course, there need not be any programs added in addition to a browser and virtualbox.
It will not be a new distro, because you use a picture of Alan Turing as wallpaper. As far as I can see, it is just a minimal Debian with Openbox VM and tint2 panel.
This is easy to make with the normal Debian-installer. I have made made many such issues the last few years, and given these many different names as OpenDeb, MiniDeb and Debian Bang or Open Mint.
Now I’ve got a new name: TuringOS. You must be thanked for this. I look forward to see how you can develop your Debian version.
At first I didn’t understand what you were saying, especially in “It will not be a new distro, because you use a picture of Alan Turing as wallpaper.” which I effectively read as “your choice of wallpaper prevents it from being a new distro”! Your English is very good but “just because” instead of “because” resolves the ambiguity. Anyway, I think you raise a fair point; rephrased I think you’re saying that Turing Linux is a respin, not a new distro. I disagree.
A respin might be defined as a cosmetic variation of an existing distro with no significant new functionality. Yes? So, Ubuntu is based on Debian but adds quite a lot so we think of it as an independent distro, not a respin of Debian. However, Ubuntu Satanic Edition (USE) adds dark Satanic wallpaper, heavy metal music, and AFAIK not much more, so its a respin of Ubuntu (apologies if I do USE an injustice). But there will be some cases that are harder to decide. At first, Mint seemed like a respin of Ubuntu, but now perhaps we consider it a ‘new’ distro?
I believe that Turing Linux is more ‘new distro’ than ‘respin’ because, although based on Debian, it includes a ready-to-run virtual environment. Nothing more to download before you can run other distros. It isn’t disqualified just because anyone can take minimal Debian and add that themselves, otherwise you could say that about most other derived distros, namely, that you could, in principle, have built them yourself.
I think you trivialise the distro creation/respinning/remastering process a little too much. I’m a highly experienced programmer but still I had to learn a lot and make many experiments to create TLOS. Now I can recreate it in a very short time, but for most people to get to that point isn’t trivial, unless they already had a lot of relevant experience and knowledge.
I could make some more points to defend the status of Turing Linux as new distro rather than respin, but for now one more will do. You said “Your idea to make a minimal distro to try other distros are really good.” Thank you! In the end, it comes down to whether people think its a good idea, and apparently they do.
Thank you for your good answer. I agree with you that it is a good idea to make a minimal distro for testing other distros. Can also see that you make easy for others to make use of TLOS.
I’m not a highly experienced programmer, but prison guard. I have now made my own TLOS based on Debian Wheezy. This is made with Debian-installer, and only difference from your TLOS is that I use nitrogen instead of feh to put the background. I added login manager Lightdm and I use the script “cb-exit” from Crunchbang to exit. I have also added gmrun, gdebi and synaptic.
Hi Mogens, thank you for your answer too! I also am working on TLOS with D.Wheezy; plus remastersys v3.0.0 (testing). I found I needed gdebi so as to automatically resolve dependencies from the local .deb files, but it seems to bring in a lot of dependencies (gnome presumably). This is temporary until remastersys is available from repo rather than .deb file
I shall also add a login manager, at least xdm, perhaps lightdm or slim. I’m especially trying to keep it lightweight! Why cb-exit?
I use ”cb-exit” because the script provides a choice of logout, suspend, reboot and power off. The normal openbox-logout brings you only back to the loginmanager where you need to go to the upper right corner, to get these options when using wheezy and lightdm.
It is not necessary to add gmrun, gdebi or synaptic.