Branding

Status

• People: ColinWatsonLead, MartinPittSecond

• Contributors:

• Interested: MarkShuttleworth, MattZimmerman, JuanjeOjeda, AndrewFitzsimon

• Status: BrainDump, DistroSpecification, UduBof, HighPriority

• Branch: n/a

• Pending: MarkShuttleworthQueue -- braindump needed.

Introduction

This specification describes our strategies to allow for the effective branding of Ubuntu and derivatives. Some branding can be attained without affecting packages, other branding initiatives will require derivatives to rebuild or even modify and rebuild packages. We will also refer to aspects of Rosetta that should affect distro branding.

Rationale

Scope and Use Cases

• Provide for branding or neutralization, as appropriate, of the following components:
  • CD
    • Boot loader splash image
    • Boot loader text
  • Installer
    • Debconf templates
    • Package selection
    • Help texts
    • Dialogs

  • Express Intaller(UbuntuExpress)

    • Artwork (Logos, images..)
    • Help texts
    • Dialogs
  • Live CD
    • "Starting Ubuntu..."
  • Base
    • Archive keyring?
    • Debconf templates?
    • lsb-release? (hard)
  • Boot
    • USplash image
    • "Starting Ubuntu..."
    • Grub menu entry
    • Grub theme
  • Desktop
    • GDM theme
    • Splash graphic
    • Default wallpaper
    • Default browser homepage
    • Default browser boomarks
    • Gnome/Kde theme
    • Menu
    • Apps on "Add/Remove programs"
    • Icons on panel and desktop
    • "About Ubuntu..." (System Menu)

Outstanding Issues

• /etc/lsb-release
  • Used by tools to determine, e.g., where to report bugs

• Posibility to create a tool to derivate distros: [http://software-libre.org/moin/Meta/en/BrandingSystem Branding System] (not checked translation from [http://metadistros.hispalinux.es Metadistros] subproyect)

UDU BOF Agenda

• Runtime branding, build-time branding and package-selection branding
  • Which approach is most suitable for each requirement?
  • Can we avoid build-time branding entirely? It causes big infrastructure problems
• Branded CD builds
• Debconf branding
• Refactoring desktop branding

  • gconf schemas, etc. (<dist>-branding)

  • artwork (<dist>-artwork)

UDU Pre-Work

• Review [http://www.ubuntu.com/wiki/DistributionDefaultsAndBranding DistributionDefaultsAndBranding] against the above