When Debian Live was initiated, there were already several Debian based live systems available and they are doing a great job. From the Debian perspective most of them have one or more of the following disadvantages:
Debian is the Universal Operating System: Debian has an official live system for showing around and to officially represent the true, one and only Debian system with the following main advantages:
We will only use official packages from the Debian repository in the "main" section. The non-free section is not part of Debian and therefore cannot be used at all for official live system images.
We will not change any packages. Whenever we need to change something, we will do that in coordination with its package maintainer in Debian.
As an exception, our own packages such as live-boot, live-build or live-config may temporarily be used from our own repository for development reasons (e.g. to create development snapshots). They will be uploaded to Debian on a regular basis.
In this phase we will not ship or install sample or alternative configurations. All packages are used in their default configuration as they are after a regular installation of Debian.
Whenever we need a different default configuration, we will do that in coordination with its package maintainer in Debian.
A system for configuring packages is provided using debconf in lb config (use --preseed FILE) allowing custom configured packages to be installed in your custom produced Debian Live images, but for official live images only default configuration will be used. For more information, please see Customization overview.
Exception: There are a few essential changes needed to bring a live system to life (e.g. configuring pam to allow empty passwords). These essential changes have to be kept as minimal as possible and should be merged within the Debian repository if possible.