Chances are we will not ever release a separate Mezzo package ourselves. Our goal has always been to provide a complete experience. However, I am happy to provide anyone interested in building these packages with any information they require to ensure they include all needed files.

The primary reason for this decision is that it presents a slippery slope.. once we release deb packages people want rpm packages or other formats, we find ourselves and our community support forums dealing with questions and issues that would never have arisen with a unified distribution. On top of this, Symphony has always been experimental. We are always willing to go back to the drawing board and break backwards compatibility within the desktop to try something new that improves usability, performance or esthetics.

I am not saying definitively that this stance won't change in the future but it has been my position since starting the distro in 2004. All recent builds including the current one in-development are based on Ubuntu and continue to be fully compatible with the Ubuntu repos including installing the default Ubuntu desktop along-side Mezzo via apt if one wishes.

In any case, if anyone has a real interest in building deb packages, let me know and I will be happy to provide what information I can to help.

Quote from tiloubrunet on December 10, 2012, 20:29
You should release a mezzo package on ubuntu, so that other people can use this super desktop.
It's just an idea, what do you think of it?
Renaming it would be good!

Suggestions?

This might satify you somewhat!! http://kuartetdesktop.sourceforge.net/

Since we moved to an Ubuntu base system, we have provided Symphony as a disk image with our modifications but for various reasons did not package the Mezzo desktop or run our own apt repository. It is not finalized yet but due to some things not available or not patched as we want them in the Ubuntu repositories it is likely that Symphony will end up hosting it's own apt repository this time around. If this is the case, it may be possible to install the Mezzo desktop on any Ubuntu (and possibly Debian) based system. No guarantees anything will work and we have no plans to support or do bugfixes related to running Mezzo on other distros but right now it looks like installing on other distros will be as simple as adding our repo and apt-get installing a mezzo metapackage.