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[Debian-NP] Morphix

Quoting "gianlucanigro@inwind.it" <gianlucanigro@inwind.it>:

> I just spent a couple of hour playing with Morphix.
>
> While Knoppix is a bit more advanced (on my newest PC with a ASUS mobo
> Knoppix
> worked with the on-board graphic card while Morphix didn't) I liked very
> much the idea of  defining modules.

Great! Glad you like the modular design, as thats the whole idea behind the
project :)

Trying to port Knopper's work each time is pretty error-prone, he's got
the experience when it comes to hardware detection. We keep playing
cat-and-mouse with eachother, but eventually all changes in knoppix flow into
morphix. Recently patches are being sent, which really reduces the amount of
time it takes...

> I imagine a web front-end helping users build their custom ISO images and
> letting them download the final ISO ready-to-burn perfectly suited to their
> needs.
> 
> This work could be shared with other projects developing "vertical" version
> of
> debian.
> 
> Moreover a module-based distribution could simplify to a large extent the
> management of the project.

Indeed, I've been thinking about this from day one. However, your suggestion
that the creation of iso's would have to be done server-side, which, alas,
doesn't scale with the increase of modules (the current 7 mainmodules can have
up to 4 different minimodules, will be expanded to 255 soon, of the available 16
minimodules, euhm, that are quite lot of different iso's. Did calculate once how
much space a worst-case scenario would take up, and it wasn't pretty :)

Clearly, the only possible solution for this is for iso's to be generated
client-side. Which isn't too bad, but the user would have to use a
script/application for mixing and creating the iso. Thats what i'm busy with now.

First, all module/iso information is stored in a central xml file. This will
idealy also include url's to different servers, and thus allow for a spreaded
management of all module types (I don't want to do all the work, being pretty
lazy, and there are quite a few excellent Morphix-modules out in the wild
already that i'd like users to notice but I don't have mirrored):

http://am.xs4all.nl/morphix/morphinfo.xml

No DTD yet, as I'm still working the structure out, modifying it when I hit a
new idea. But it does have all module and iso information.

http://am.xs4all.nl/gfx/isomorphgui.png

A screenshot of the GUI i'm building, which uses the remote xml file. As always,
I'm trying to keep it simple and understandable for the user (even though there
are enough who don't know what an iso is). 

No code in the cvs yet on this subproject, as it isn't nearly finished or
working, but given enough time this monkey should produce something useful. An
"apt-get" for livecd's? I hope so...

Cheers, 

Alex

PS. CC'ed to morphix-devel as people developing their own modules might be
somewhat more interested.

                 /'-'\
                ( o o )
------------oOO0--(_)--0OOo------------
Wouter Alexander de Landgraaf          
Student AI & CS VU Amsterdam 
Phone: 06-16844084
GPG: http://am.xs4all.nl/key_alex.asc
WWW: www.alextreme.org & www.morphix.org
             .oooO       
             (   )   Oooo. 
--------------\ (----(  )--------------
               \_)    ) / 
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