What is the difference between a "Linux Skin" and a full blown "Linux Distro"?

[reed9]

What distro is it based on? Do you use a custom kernel or the stock kernel of the base distro? How have you (or have you) tweaked the default configuration of packages? Do you have any custom tools? Are you packaging any of this software yourself or are these all packages distributed and built by the base distro? Do you or are you planning to host your own repository?

[techieMoe]

I see that the vast majority of your programs run on the Gnome toolkit, but your last two run on KDE. Were there no magnifier or mouse repeating tools for GTK that you could use instead? Having two sets of graphical libraries loaded can bog a system down.

[ManhattanOS]

I see that the vast majority of your programs run on the Gnome toolkit, but your last two run on KDE. Were there no magnifier or mouse repeating tools for GTK that you could use instead? Having two sets of graphical libraries loaded can bog a system down.

To be honest there really aren't Its quite unfortunate but alas, there seem to be no suitable equivalents to these programs. I made sure all of my programs were GTK based so that they could integrate with the global menu applet, which I consider to be a key feature and a step forward for the OS world.

[ManhattanOS]

What distro is it based on? Do you use a custom kernel or the stock kernel of the base distro? How have you (or have you) tweaked the default configuration of packages? Do you have any custom tools? Are you packaging any of this software yourself or are these all packages distributed and built by the base distro? Do you or are you planning to host your own repository?

Originally it was based on Debian, though now its quite changed.

I use the latest kernel which is 2.6.32-alpha8.

I suppose I have tweaked a lot of the configuration settings of the packages, because stock they just don't seem to work as well.

I don't exactly get what you mean by "custom tools". I myself am not a programmer, which I consider to be one of my greatest flaws.

I don't compile much on my own, but I don't get the packages from a repository (for the most part) instead I spent hours scouring the web to find exactly what I need. I found a lot of useful sites to this end, and am pleased with the current package list.

At this point, since its a one man show, I can't really say its not just a spin of another distro, but I haven't seen many other "spins" on distros quite like this one.

EDIT: Once tried compiling my own kernel, but not exactly sure what or how it benefited me. I have since forgotten how I managed to do that, or if I even really did it correctly. I can't seem to find the advantages to building a custom kernel, I'm not sure exactly how the kernel itself helps a lot of the system. I may have been using Linux for six months, but I'm still quite a noob, but I teach myself everything best through experimenting, so thats what I'm doing

Also, this is like the 6th incarnation of Manhattan (named for the Manhattan Project, my friend suggested the name; it stuck)

[ManhattanOS]

I tend to be quite talkative. I get easily excited over these sorts of things. I would be open to any advice you may have, as I am eager to learn.

Thanks in advance!

[reed9]

It looks like you're GNOME based, right?

What about Orca and Mousetweaks?

[ManhattanOS]

I find Orca to be nice, and whilst I don't find it complicated, others might. There is a certain amount of configuration required, and a lot of menus and submenus to go through. I will have to try out Mousetweaks, though I think I have used it a while back and decided to go with Kmousetool instead.

[ManhattanOS]

Mousetweaks works better than I had hoped. I guess I used an older version before - thanks for the info! I'll make sure to remove Kmousetool.

[reed9]

I don't exactly get what you mean by "custom tools". I myself am not a programmer, which I consider to be one of my greatest flaws.

Yes, I meant your own programs or scripts. For example, there's an Arch Linux based distro Chakra in works, which is completely binary compatible with Arch. One of the things that differentiates it from just Arch with a preconfigured KDE (aside from the fact that they have their own KDE packages) is that they've written some configuration tools themselves and their own GUI to the Arch package manager. (Which has since been included in the official Arch repository.)

There's probably not a trememdous benefit to building a custom kernel if you're going for a general desktop kernel. Sometimes distros do so to build in support for particular hardware. For example, Easy Peasy does so to make sure their kernel supports all the major netbook hardware. Most netbooks are now supported well with a stock kernel, so that's less an issue currently, but when it first came out it was an important piece of the puzzle.

[ManhattanOS]

Yes, I meant your own programs or scripts. For example, there's an Arch Linux based distro Chakra in works, which is completely binary compatible with Arch. One of the things that differentiates it from just Arch with a preconfigured KDE (aside from the fact that they have their own KDE packages) is that they've written some configuration tools themselves and their own GUI to the Arch package manager. (Which has since been included in the official Arch repository.)

There's probably not a trememdous benefit to building a custom kernel if you're going for a general desktop kernel. Sometimes distros do so to build in support for particular hardware. For example, Easy Peasy does so to make sure their kernel supports all the major netbook hardware. Most netbooks are now supported well with a stock kernel, so that's less an issue currently, but when it first came out it was an important piece of the puzzle.

I wish I could do that, that has always been a goal of mine. Perhaps I'm just too ambitious.