Fwd: Debian live, Debian Desktop and tasks.
Gustavo Franco wrote:
> Forwarded to you because it's not showing up in alioth. Haven't
> mailman discarded my message because i'm not subscribed, you can
> configure the list this way to avoid too much spam manual filtering?
> Btw, there's no awaiting moderator approval message for me.
I'm moderating non-member posts. As I'm quiet quick with this (rarely
more than half an hour of delay until the message shows up), and there
is not that much traffic on the list anyway, this works for the moment.
I've resend it myself to the list.
> I just tested the current Debian live (GNOME) and i'm quite impressed
> with the result. How it boots that fast?
Thanks. Well, basically because we're not using cloop but squashfs.
> Well, i would like to invite you to join the Debian desktop project.
> Actually, we're a team composed by members of: pkg-gnome, pkg-kde,
> pkg-xfce, tasksel groups in alioth and others. Recently the former
> debian-desktop in alioth admins give us the group control there too.
> There's the public mailing list[0] and the development page[1] with
> some more information.
Thanks. There will be reworked live-package after the weekend/beginning
next week (in debhelper style instead of a "monolitic" script). Until
this is finished, I'm busy. Afterwards, I'm comming up with some
questions related to -desktop anyway.
> * Desktop environment today:
> - When the user installs Debian Etch using d-i etch rc1, after the
> base install he will be prompted about install tasks (set of
> packages). There's 'Desktop environment' as an option. If selected, it
> will install both desktop[2] and gnome-desktop[3] tasks. If the user
> wants to install KDE, he needs to pass 'tasks=desktop,kde-desktop'
> before the installer boot
I plan to have the 'default' debian-live image consist of:
* Desktop environment task installed at the system
* D-I as alternative boot session
* G-I as secondary alternative boot session
> * What's being worked on for Etch:
> - There are some tasksel changes that will be included in RC2 (eg.: we
> will have network-manager by default). The new task xfce-desktop will
> join the desktop family too
That's really nice, long waited for that (not as a user, but for the
xfce package-list in live-package).
> - I've asked Joey Hess if we can build official GNOME, KDE and XFCE
> images (CDs). These images would contain only the related tasks, its
> dependencies and a small set of language tasks. Today, the "Desktop
> environment" doesn't fit in the first cd due to the language tasks,
> both GNOME and KDE fits in the first dvd though.
Would be nice. Hopefully, we can make combined images (that's what I
call them when they contain a live session and a installer session to
select at boot time).
> I've some questions about Debian live:
> - Couldn't you change the build process a bit to create the images
> based on gnome, kde and xfce tasks content plus a live task (listing
> casper and some more stuff you need) ?
live-task? it's only one package: casper.
But I'll add some meta-packages to the 'new' live-package (such as
live-dev and live or similar anyway).
> - What do we want to push in Etch that isn't there yet in terms of
> packages or patches ?
The live specific things are three folded:
1. the generating image/system script (live-package). For this, it's not
crucuial if the package to build etch images is not part of etch, but of
unstable (same motiviation as with cdebootstrap/debootstrap).
2. the initramfs generator (casper). This needs to be taken out of the
generated distribution, but casper is thanks to Marco at good shape and
ready for etch release. Although he may would like to push additional
great feautures in it, it's not "release-critical", so to speak, if they
don't make it.
3. live specific bugs. There are a few packages known to not work in
Debian Live images due to upstream bugs.
One of them are all GNUstep packages (relies on /proc, problem known and
needs trivial recompile of all related GNUstep packages, will be done by
the GNUstep maintainers after etch).
Another one is mono which relais to get realpath out of /proc. Don't
know about the status of this one, though.
> - With everything needed to build the live images in Etch and that
> tasksel oriented stuff change, we're ready to ask Joey to create
> official live images. I'm sure that it won't be that hard but we don't
> have too much time. :)
Actually, I don't know why joeyh must do this. Assumed that after having
non-static live-package in the archive, and assumed it's mostly
bug-free, I'll ask for declaring Debian Live as an official sub-project
of Debian.
Once this is granted, I think we can build the images ourself and get
them mirrored on cdimage.d.o (uma.acc.se or whatever it is, physically).
Thanks a lot for your thoughts,
Daniel
--
Address: Daniel Baumann, Burgunderstrasse 3, CH-4562 Biberist
Email: daniel.baumann@panthera-systems.net
Internet: http://people.panthera-systems.net/~daniel-baumann/
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