Apricity OS without doubt had been the most beautiful distro featuring the gnome desktop.
Also this year, as in 2019, I have tried and managed to revive it on virtualbox using Arch with the gnome and gnome-extra packages. Came out quite nicely, as you can see in the screenshots below.
It was quite a struggle this time, since many extensions Apricity OS used, can’t be used in gnome 42 any more. But I managed. This is what I used:
Manually
Caffeine
Clear Top Bar
Dash to Dock for COSMIC
Desktop Icons NIG (DING)
Frippery Move Clock
Hibernate Status Button
Mpris Indicator Button
Static background in overview
Top Panel Workspace Scroll
TopIconsFix
from System
Pamac Updates Indicator
Places Status Indicator
Removable Drive Menu
User Themes
Theming
Numix-Circle and Vimix-Doder:
What is missing, is zsh and powerline-shell integration. I didn’t manage to put that into Narwhal OS yet. I’ll try further. I am not so experienced with zsh either. But I enjoy using the zsh-implementation from manjaro.
Screenshot from the zsh-shell in Apricity OS (Photo is from the old apricity.os Homepage):
The next step would be to revive Apricity OS featuring the gnome and later cinnamon desktop environment. The name will be Narwhal OS.
The plan is to keep it simple and to focus on one (gnome) , maximum two DEs (gnome and cinnamon) for start, just as the Apricity Guys did Apricity OS Apricity OS github-page:
I want to use the Arch Linux repos and making one repo for Narwhal OS for theming, calamares for installation and pamac, and some other stuff, for the time being.
This is what would come into my repo:
calamares
archlinux-appstream-data-pamac
chrome-gnome-shell
ice-ssb
libpamac-git
numix-circle-icon-theme-git
numix-icon-theme-git
pamac-aur-git or the one from Manjaro itself
vimix-gtk-themes
paper-icon-theme and paper-gtk-theme (I’ll integrate it later in my local Narwhal OS. It’s meant as an alternative, therefore it would be included in my repo)
yay-bin
Release of new isos will be every month following the Arch release cycle.
But, basically I know practically nothing about making one’s own distro, or making one’s own repo first and foremost (I have found a video from distrutube [dt] though. That’s where I’ll probably start.).
I need your help though: Is my plan realistic being a standalone person?
The Apricity guys stopped Apricity OS, despite they were a team, because of lack of time.
I may underestimate the workload though? What can you tell me, how much work is setting up and maintaining your own distro? In my eyes, given the fact that my distro will be, despite the Narwhal OS repo, vanilla arch, it doesn’t sound like that much work. I also don’t plan to design something myself, like icons etc. The plan is just to use what is there in vanilla arch, and what I need from AUR will be put into the Narwhal OS repo.
I haven’t really found decent resources on how to make your own distro. Can you give me some kind of link? Or simply tell me where to start, what I’d need to learn?
Especially the maintainers here can give me maybe Tipps. They also had to start at some point and were beginners.
Of course, if you like the idea, you can also help me with the project. We could set it up as a team then.
I have also thought about using manjaro, since with buildiso everything would be there already to make a spinoff from manjaro gnome which would be called Narwhal OS. I already tried to revive Manjaro bspwm-mate, so I guess I could get into it rather easily.
If I have time, I’ll try that out and post a link to the iso for you to download and try out.
Thanks for reading and your answers.
Yours,
Seantum
and now there’s a ton lot to do in work. I am working in the Supportteam of my sofware company) I’ll try to make the Manjaro iso.