Hello list, Here a some notes made during (and after) the meeting during DebConf25 ---A meeting for the developers, maintainers and (potential new) creators of live images to discuss about the live images, their current state and future work.
Agenda for the BoF:
* Meet and greet
* Wishlists
* Requirements
* Planning for forky (and duke?)
Potential topics (currently in random order):
* tag2upload
* FST (file system transposition)
* cross builds
* root-less build
* reducing the local patches of Debian derivatives
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Participants to the meeting were:
* Project representatives: VyOS, SolydXK, Tails, Ubuntu (single board
computers), Debian (obvs), Freeduc (https://usb.freeduc.org)
* Some users of live images -----------------------------------------------------------------------Roland becomes the DD with superpowers to maintain live-build but still intends to use the proper maintenance procedure.
Topics mentioned: * live-build will use tag2upload for future releases* Make image build work without root permissions (see https://salsa.debian.org/live-team/live-build/-/merge_requests/420)
* Reproducible builds (already works under certain conditions)* Extend the information in `filesystem.packages` to include the repository (needed for e.g. derivatives)
* FST — will improve friendliness to Windows users -> needs a test in openQA* Image size is a problem, especially with respect to the FAT32 limit of 4GB. -> Even modern large USB sticks are formatted with type 0x0C, which means that for a regular user the largest file can be 4GB
* Installation with encryption needs additional testing* Default key derivation function in cryptsetup may be deprecated — someone needs to check if it was updated in Trixie already * Standard live image install is without separate /boot and as such limited to LUKS1/PBKDF2 * Manual install with separate /boot partition still uses LUKS1 with PBKDF2 which is obsolete * manually tested with https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-live-builds/amd64/iso-hybrid/ XFCE * The image size grows due to additional firmware being added. Using an "allow" list approach doesn't sound attractive as it requires constant updates for newer firmware. The current "deny list" is easier to maintain. * Calamares development has become more active lately, derivative maintainers may want to consider contributing their patches to it. * All Debian images ended up with a maintainer's manual in Italian and Spanish but not any other language, because it was in a meta-package for a desktop environment. That prompts the question what exactly should be in live images by default — do they need CJK input methods, etc.? * It would be nice if derivates could use live-build without their own local patches -> please upstream them (https://salsa.debian.org/live-team/live-build/-/merge_requests) * For the above to work: The tool live-build should make it easier for derivatives to replace the branding and clearly show the user that the image is a different distro, not Debian
With kind regards, Roland Clobus PS1: See also a list of TODOs in https://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/TODOPS2: I would really like to have all upcoming changes (MRs) being tested automatically -> either with salsa-ci or with openQA, depending on the level of required integration/required hardware/test environment
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