[Freedombox-discuss] Finding a good place to start
On Thu, Oct 07, 2010 at 10:13:24AM +0530, Abhishek Dasgupta wrote:
>Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>[snip]
>> As I see it, this is the priorities:
>> 1) put together a (virtual) core system
>> 2) embed the system in small cheap iron
>> 3) make the box dead simple to configure/personalize
>
>So, essentially 3) is the only non-trivial part, right now.
Apparently not so trivial that anyone has taken the time and attention
to do 1) or 2) yet!
>A website where the users could select options and have an image
>dynamically generated from them would be cool (like
>live-build.debian.net) with a set of static images for more common
>configurations.
>
>User should only have to:
>1. Plug in the plug computer, connect it to local LAN.
>2. Browse to http://freedombox.local/ or something like that and
> configure.
Yes, that's one approach. Very broadly described.
If someone is looking for trivial parts to start doing some concrete
work, I suggest to work on collecting lists of choices. Here is one
approach to do that:
1) Open aptitude in fullscreen-mode
1a) Mark all installed packages as auto-installed
1b) Check all packages that now will get uninstalled, and mark as
manually installed if really needed on its own (i.e. not only
needed to support another package)
2) Customize configurations...
2a) Before editing a configuration file, save a backup as either
$file.orig or $file.old - the latter if you suspect that the
file you have is not "original", e.g. was autogenerated based
on debconf question during install.
3) Clone git://source.jones.dk/bin (I put it in /usr/local/bin),
execute localbackupconfig and localbackuppkglists as root, and
check their results (below /tmp if you did not provide a target)
You can do the above on your own laptop or desktop machine - or, if you
fear that you might break anything in the process then start with a
fresh install on a separate disk. I do it on all machines I maintain,
and execute the scripts during nightly backup routines.
The result of above should then somehow be grouped in classes: Reasons
for package choices and configuration customizations. E.g. "ALSA",
"Network", "Gnome", "Webservices", "Mailservices" etc.
We can then share and compare groupings of package choices and
configuration customizations, and discuss differences.
- Jonas
--
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
[x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
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