Linux For The Masses - Proposed System Components

File System Support

LFM will use a journaled filesystem such as ext3 or ReiserFS. Users appreciate not having to wait inordinate amounts of time for scandisk or fsck before booting.

All commonly used filesystem will be built in: vfat for fat32 and msdos, iso9660, and udf.

The automounter will be enabled so that cdroms, dvds, floppies, and zip disks are immediately available. Visual feedback should be provided in the case of zipdisks and floppies via the gui to indicate when writes have been completed and they may be safely ejected/removed.

Samba will be included. A simple interface to export select directories under the user's Home directory will be provided for simple file sharing.

NFS will not be provided. No end user should ever be expected to have to deal with NFS. NFS will, however, be included in server/admin packages for use in large sites.

Devfs will be used for saner device node handling.

Kernel Support

The kernel will be built modular just like other distributions. This will enable the widest support for devices possible. Users will not ever be expected to even know what a kernel is, let alone be asked to recompile one.

Boot Scripts

Booting will be done by neither SysV nor BSD style bootscripts. Rather simpleinit/need/provides will be used. See here. They provide for much simpler and safer boot script management, as well as much faster boot times.

Supported Platform

Most end-users have at least a pentium class or faster x86 machine. To ensure a good user experience, and to save development resources, LFM will target only i686 hardware. In fact, all applications will be optimized for i686, and will thus not run on i586 or lower hardware.

Applications

LFM will contain only applications required for minimal system administration (which should rarely ever be needed) and which support end-user gui applications. The common end-user will not delve into programming, text processing with La/Tex, or should ever be expected to read man or info pages. Neither man nor info will even be installed, and there will be no man or info pages taking up space on the drive. Documentation may be available in ps or pdf format for printing, however, TBD. End-users today expect to find documentation in html or similar format. They should be cross-referenced seemlessly across formats if more than one.

LFM will contain only one main application in each class. Users shouldn't be assaulted with a list of 20 text editors or word processors to choose from. The desktop environment will be a slimmed-down KDE with koffice.