As many of you know, I recently released the Monerodo OS - a customized Ubuntu that has Monero Core, Monero Pool server, and various mining software already installed. I also worked on a TUI (text user interface) to permit those without command-line interface knowledge to manage their device in a relatively easy manner. The OS can be installed on any 64 bit system by setting up a USB stick using pendrive linux. More details on the whole thing can be found here.

I was inspired to put together this OS because I feel that we need to actively boost the infrastructure of the Monero network. While the eventual development of the Monero Core GUI will allow many more people to use Monero for their personal financial needs, I don't know whether Monero Core GUI will address the infrastructure component. Why? A lot of people use laptops or tablets these days and might not want to burden their personal computers with these services. Additionally, if anyone wants to build a mining rig, and they happen to not be great with computers, they are in for a lot of headache. I firmly believe that in order for cryptocurrency to truly blossom into its full form, everybody needs to be able to run the software and setup the hardware.

So the current version of the OS makes it possible for anyone to turn any old PC into a Monero node and pool server and miner very easily. I think this concept of a dedicated node box will become more important with the advent of i2p integration. From my experience with i2p, the longer you have i2p running, the better the i2p experience. Thus, an on-and-off device just isn’t going to cut it.

I was also inspired to put together the OS to help those that can’t use the monero CLI and in general don’t know how to get a lot of this stuff to work (miner launch settings, pool settings, etc). Generally, I see myself trying to bridge the gap between the obvious hardcore code people (the core developers, other contributors) and the complete noobs to computers. I’ve always been able to find my way with computers (which should be evident via the Monerodo OS), and while I can’t do things at the level of the core coders, cryptographers, and other developers, I can hopefully fill a gap that exists between Joe iPad and the Cryptocurrency Revolution.

And hopefully my efforts can offset any time that would be taken up by true coders addressing these user-level concerns.

Various aspects of Monero core have already been integrated into the TUI, but more needs to be added. I got to the point where if I didn’t release it, it would never be released because it would never get finished.

Milestones are just listed, because there’s no particular order.
Total requested amount: 550 Maximum timeframe: 14 months
Unclaimed funds will be pushed to Monero core development at 14 months.

Milestone: AMD mining support using Wolf’s new miner.
Amount: 50 XMR
Timeline: 4 months

So I bought an AMD card.

Milestone: Release using FreeBSD as the backend
Amount: 100 XMR
Timeline: 12 months

So this is the distribution I was looking for. Thanks icebreaker.

Milestone: “Reproducible Build” Script for build of OS
Amount: 300 XMR
Timeline: 14 months

Apparently this is the holy grail of custom distributions – recreating the entire process in a script so that it can be vetted, verified, and reproduced by others in the community in what is known as a “reproducible build”. This milestone will be for a script that recreates version 1 of the monerodo OS (or whatever version is best by the time this gets pushed out, or I’ll have various inputs in the script to customize). Based on the 6 months it took me to get the first version of the Monerodo OS working smoothly, this will be a pain. Not to mention time consuming because I’ll need a fresh base OS install everytime I test.

Milestone: VPS version (Ubuntu)
Amount: 50 XMR
Timeline: 4 months

While I’m no fan of running nodes on VPS, I understand why people do it, and the fact that this will make pool servers easily deployable is attractive. There are some minor tweaks I’ll need to make, and I’ll have to maintain a separate VPS build script repository (or convert the non-VPS scripts back to VPS compatible scripts and just modify the conf files… yeah that should work). Most of the funds here would cover the costs of me buying a VPS for testing purposes. Maybe I should test on cloud GPU instances too?

Milestone: Hardened, headed version
Amount: 50 XMR
Timeline: 12 months

The current monerodo OS leaves a lot of security vulnerabilities unaddressed – namely, the necessity to keep a password enabled SSH daemon running and a requirement to keep the hard drive unencrypted. I’ll tweak a version with all of the security features people suggest.