These are my personal notes on the BlankOn Revival Project. Although many of the ideas discussed here have been seriously considered by the BlankOn Foundation team, they do not necessarily represent the official views of the organization.

Many of these reflections emerged from discussions with several individuals, not all of whom are mentioned here. I would like to sincerely thank them for their insights and contributions.

Step Down, Twice

There are many reasons behind this, but I do not intend to discuss them all one by one. Some of the reasons that are most relevant to the future of BlankOn will be addressed in the sections below.

Even though I stepped down from my positions and left the community, I never said that I had “graduated” from the BlankOn project. It was nothing like graduation. It felt more like unfinished wishes being flushed away, but even the flush was never complete. The itch was real.

The Events

The revival was triggered by a few important events. These events really moved me to think deeply about the future of BlankOn, even when I didn’t want to think about it.

1. Slamet Santoso’s Visit (2024)

Slamet Santoso visited me around 2024. We talked for hours about the project, the problems, the issues over the years, our mistakes, and is there any possible way to revive it.

Our biggest mistake was believing that in order to run the project, we simply needed more contributors at any levels and that the easiest way to find them was by recruiting college students. They were abundant and accessible, but often still inexperienced. Once they joined, we invested so much effort and time in teaching and training them, hoping that some would eventually grow into core technical contributors. Unfortunately, this approach did not work as we expected. In hindsight, it was a naive strategy. Lesson learned, we should only accept people that come with true curiosity in their heart, not by blind invitation.

At the end of the discussion, I refused to come back because I genuinely didn’t know what to do or how to do it. But that conversation became a starting point.

2. The Telegram Discussion

Utian Ayuba, one of the BlankOn veterans from the early years, initiated a discussion in the BlankOn Linux Telegram group:
“Mau dibawa ke mana BlankOn Linux?”

Honestly, I hated that moment because I was never ready to answer questions from the community. Surprisingly, many people joined the discussion, a signal that many still hoped someone would continue the legacy of the BlankOn project.

A few weeks after that discussion, I kept asking myself: Why? Why now? Why does it still matter?

3. OpenInfra 2025

I attended OpenInfra Summit 2025 and met one of the speakers, Iwan stwn, the initiator and maintainer of Kuliax. We talked about why the current generation seems different from us. Where are the young hackers who love tinkering? Where can we find them? Even if they are visible, how do we attract them to Indonesian Linux/open-source projects/initiatives? Or, are we just becoming irrelevant?

We don’t think so. Maybe we just need to put more effort to find them, and adjust ourselves to match their generation’s style.

But even if they join us, how do we make them stay and happy with the project?

4. OpenInfra Indonesia User Group Regular Meetup

I attended the meetup and Utian Ayuba was one of the speakers. He mentioned BlankOn again and again.

Why does this particular guy keep bringing up the past? I went home with a troubled heart.

I will thank him later.

5. IDSW 2025

I attended IDSW 2025 in November and had the opportunity to deliver a lightning talk about running a local tech community. One of the speakers before me presented about CLI for students. What surprised me was that his slides displayed “BlankOn Linux.”

Did he really use BlankOn Linux? That seemed impossible. All the repositories had been shut down for years. There was no maintenance. No support. So I reluctantly asked him if it was real. He said no. He included it just to spark curiosity in the audience.

I had mixed feelings. I was happy that someone still remembered the golden days of BlankOn. But I was also sad because of our current reality.

6. Artificial Intelligence

AI really played a big part in my decision to revive the project. Everything is so much easier now.

As I am writing this post, Praya (https://github.com/BlankOn/praya-gnome-shell-extension) is already part of the BlankOn Linux ISO, and around 60–70% of the code was written with AI. It was written within days, something that would have taken months to finish five years ago.

I have carefully designed the guardrail policy around AI: https://github.com/BlankOn/revival/blob/main/ArtificialIntelligencePolicy.md

The Problems

I identified 3 main problems that we need to tackle.

Unhealthy ratio between technical contributors and non-technical contributors

BlankOn Linux is a technical product that depend heavily on technical people to maintain it. When the product is running well, non-technical contributors can work around it to support it.

Not the other way around.

There were several weekly meetings in 2021 where we faced technical issues that blocked us from moving toward the final release. I had no one to help me because the problems were too technical for the others. If time is not a constraint, I believed I could handle it. But there were too many blockers, and trying to solve them alone eventually drained me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was already burned out. This was supposed to be teamwork, not a one-man show. I was not happy.

Those meetings became increasingly awkward. The non-technical contributors did not know how to contribute, because the core technical product itself was not yet stable or even ready. We were stuck.

This problem raise questions like, these technical contributors, why don’t they stay? Even if they stay, why don’t they work together to run the project? What is their motivation at the first place? Why would non-technical contributors commit to the project if they are aware that there are not enough technical contributors to sustain it?

So many questions.

The product was never been the main goal

The most common question that people throw against BlankOn project is, “What is the goal of this distro? What is the value proposition? Why I should use BlankOn Linux?”. I really hate this question because I was never ready to answer this question or I simply does not have the ultimate answer.

Many BlankOn developers use this answer, including me sometimes, “The distro is just the bonuses. It is about people, leveraging their capabilities”. While it is true to the root, these answer has potential misleading interpretation and could lead us to incorrect thinking about the product. IMHO, the last few BlankOn Linux releases were never perfect or production ready. Our proudness could not fix that reality. In Bekraf Habibi Festival, BlankOn get one booth and I have really mind changing discussion with one of the visitor, where he said that if the product was never been the main goal, we should not release it to public at all. There are real users out there, so there are responsibilities.

We were fundamentally broken.

Our model was not sustainable at all

A developer could simply resign after a version was released. We cannot necessarily call that irresponsibility, because people come and go with different motivations. We did not pay them, so we had no authority to hold them accountable. When they left, the project’s implicit goal, leveraging people’s capabilities, was considered accomplished. No questions were asked.

A server could break without anyone clearly responsible for fixing it, or without anyone capable of fixing it at all. A domain could expire because no one paid attention, especially when money was involved. Do we even have money?

We even conducted fundraising around 2022, but the funds were not enough to purchase a better server or colocation while our existing infrastructure was already failing. Some of our servers were still running on DDR3 RAM.

Few of our sponsors eventually withdrew due to our inability to deliver and the lack of clear value we could offer them.

We were unsustainable, both in terms of people and finances.