So I was researching different distros, and I stumbled upon one called Poseidon (based on Ubuntu) which was intended primarily for scientific modeling. However, it hasn’t been active since 2018; also, after Poseidon 4, they shifted to focus primarily on oceanography.
So my question is, firstly, is there an active distro that has a similar intended purpose, and comes with all the relevant software? Barring that, is it easy enough to replicate just by downloading the relevant packages?
If the answer to both is no, my question is, how could one best go about resurrecting it as a fork? Would it be better to start from either Poseidon 9 (the latest) or Poseidon 4 (before they shifted direction), and then try to update all the core components? Or to start with the latest Ubuntu (or better yet Debian), and then simply install all the software needed to make it functionally identical to Poseidon?
Bonus question: if you start with an OS, and gradually replace one component at a time until all components have been replaced, is it still the same OS? (Theseus was a son of Poseidon, but unfortunately the name is already taken)
A “distro” is basically just:
Idk anything about Poseidon but,
The answer to that is yes. Just pick a base you like (eg debian, fedora, ubuntu, …) and install the software you need. You could automate it with some simple scripts, or be fancy and write a Butane config to preconfigure a base Fedora CoreOS image. IIRC, the Omarchy distro is just the former, not even a proper “distro”.
If you want to create your own “proper” distro that other people will want to use, there’s a lot more that goes into it: updates, builds, tests, deployment, patch sets (because you’ll inevitably need to patch various components for compatibility), bug reports, some kind of governance structure…
It’s a whole software development thing. If you just need a customized platform for your buddies/workplace, customizing an existing distro is the only reasonable choice. I’d suggest looking into bootc and ublue if you need more than a simple post-install shell script.