Feature-based live debian for schools and learners
Hi live-folks,
The chopping of our live distro [1] into feature fragments has made substantial progress, so I'd like to invite all interested live-builders to take a look at this mechanism and codevelop, i.e. further generalize the build franken scripts and repository layout. Or improve on the opinionated defaults for interface appearance and system behaviour, make them more atomic, add alternative config fragments...
- There might be more elegant ways to implement such a feature approach..
- it could be used to make live-builds completely modular and perhaps easier remixable.
The most sane approach I found to handle the relative symlinks for activating "features" from build "variants" is the excellent ranger file manager, as it allows to select a "feature" in the `features/` folder (`v`), copy it (`yy`), go to the `variants/[NAME]/features/` folder and symlink it there (`pL`).
[1] https://schulstick.org/ – intended audience: learners of any kind (in schools, universities, makerspaces [.. care homes, art studios, companies] ..).
Right now, the imminent TODOs for me personally are:
(and from our development budget, be there hereby put a 50€ bounty on getting done ANY of these before I somewhen get to it..)
- grub boot menu language selection (i18ned versions for developing world)
- GUI for tweaking automatic night mode (and way to kill journal noise caused by "WONTFIX" systemd timer having no quiet flag)
- pyqt welcome / tutorials / walkthroughs app .. with feedback channel
- an open-source replacement for anydesk remote support software and others
- properly signed automatic feature update apt repository (+ infrastructure.. rerepro
- better appimage usability (testing appimaged and appimagelauncher integration atm)
- figure out the situation with UTC vs RTC on windows systems (features/live_components_forked/livefs-include/usr/lib/live/config/1120-util-linux)
- integration / fusion with https://lernstick.ch/ (we discussed it on phone in summer)
- automatic tests? gitlab CI?
- christmas release?
- flyers?
- fix some live-build issues (error status not set on error within bootstrap stage, make stages to apt update in a config option, package cache overlay mount instead of current copying moving deleting)
- easiest persistence encryption workflow?
- security review (what about that clear text root password.. we use the 8000-rootpw hook from tails)
- bringing it out to the people: scale debian up
- biggest stumbling block for advanced terminal users: undocumented very custom configuration
- (some features contain abhorrant hacks xD)
- (save KDE's konqueror challenge: a very good file manager and blink engine frontend that shines combined with arbitrarily nested split tabs)
I'm just preparing another release build but that might take a few more days, but building is easy (`scripts/build-live-system.sh` but I might get to creating a Makefile tomorrow).
Best Regards,
Marcel
--
"Through history, scarcity of resources and competition has been the default mode for humanity.
What does it take to enable people to understand: that the current financial troubles are limitations of the traditional monetary paradigm. That these limitations to the most part are pure convention and can be overcome within a decade by boldly setting up attractive functional structures of economic cooperation..?"
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