Project Description

At present it is easy to develop open source applications, but it is not as easy as it could be. Ubuntu needs an ubuntu-developer meta package/cd/dvd packaged distro that contains source packages for the applications installed in a vanilla ubuntu install, as well as appropriate development IDEs and relevant tools. Relevant docs easily accessible from the menu or local apache vhost, or help system or something. Perhaps some optimisations to make reporting more specific bugs (and patches) back to the relevant packages (i.e. packages compiled with gdb tracing). Ideally you might want to be able to install a "development" user which has things like launchpad as the homepage in firefox. This distribution could be tied nicely to the developer/ubuntu certification programme as it expands?

Developing

Good IDE's to include

Eclipse

MonoDevelop

Necessary Packages

build-essential

debhelper

mcs

Good Developer Documentation

dive into python

Gnome Developer Docs

UbuntuPackagingGuide

Interacting with the Ubuntu world

launchpad as homepage for and ubuntu user (maybe even store launchpad info in keyring or something, so that launchpad is an extension of the development desktop)

Graphics

If nothing else it makes room for people in hard hats and flannel t-shirts, with tool belts to be arranged in an ubuntu circle. And room for another colour in the human theme.

Comments

Motin: I believe that a whole seperate distro for this would be an immense overkill. What's better could be a page in the help system. "How to transform your newly installed ubuntu system into an..." with sections like "Developer's machine", "Media Center", "Music Recording Studio" etc with ready to go cut-n-paste apt-get scripts for the neccessary packages and some links to further reading. Maybe you should write a Wiki page (this one?) and then propose the documentation team to include it in the default help?a

JonathanJesse: Please include the Ubuntu Packaging Guide as one of the documents here. The Doc Team has done a great job on this guide and it needs to be included here

Motin: One year later my comment withstand. Every developer has their own set of necessary tools, apps etc for different languages. Already it is dead easy to get up running with a developer variant of Ubuntu by selecting some packages in Synaptic and googling the rest. There is no need for a separate distro as the kernel, base apps, licensing ideology etc are the same.