[Dev] Parabola as an option for Purism Librem laptops

[Mladen Pejaković]

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On 05.07.2017 21:18, Josh Branning wrote:
> On 05/07/17 19:45, Joshua Haase wrote:
>> Mladen Pejaković <mladen.pejakovic at puri.sm> writes:
>> 
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>>> Hello Parabola community!
>>> 
>>> Now, to the point. Besides our PureOS (Debian based OS, without
>>> non-free), we want to offer other distros as an option to our customers.
>>> Those will come on an USB drive, with small fee just to cover the USB
>>> cost and labour. We are considering to offer Parabola live install image
>>> as well, therefore, we want to ask if this is okay with the Parabola
>>> community?
>> 
>> I like the idea as long as the process is publicly documented and
>> reproducible.
> 
> AFAIK, the parabola build system isn't publicly documented and
> reproducible as it currently stands. It would be great to see this
> happen though.
> 
>> 
>> I think there are/weree people working on a Live ISO for parabola.
> 
> The CLI version of parabola works fine as a live ISO. I don't know
> about the MATE desktop version though.
> 
>> 
>> Don't know whether a custom installer is needed
> 
> I am not a official developer, but I suggest either using the default
> ISO, and building from (on top of) that (there's probably a way to
> repack an ISO with modifications and/or scripts, I have done so before
> with Debian, but never parabola [1]), or failing that taking a look at
> parabolaiso [2] to completely rebuild a customised ISO.
> 
> (... I think Adonay was nudging for the former method.)
> 
> In both cases, the source code will need to be provided by puri.sm;
> most liberally if you are to distribute, probably in the most
> practically reproducible form where possible (build system), but also
> for the binaries or machine code for the software you distribute
> (parabola).
> 
> I assume you are already doing this for the Debian based OS, so
> shouldn't be too much of a problem for puri.sm to do the same for
> Parabola.
> 
> I think a good way to distribute the sources for projects like these,
> would be to first set up a mirror from which you intend to distribute
> them. As long as the mirror is in sync with the parabola servers, this
> would be a good method or flow for [legally] constructing customised
> free software operating systems in general, not just for parabola, but
> other distros too. If the mirror is added to the list of parabola
> mirrors, it would also go some way to reducing the load on the
> official parabola servers. It would also mean that you could
> theoretically continue to produce ISOs, even if the internet were to
> go down.
> 
> Enough said now,
> 
> 
> Josh
> 
> [1] http://www.publicsite.org/J05HYYY/software_downloads/IonianMaker.tar.gz
> [2] https://git.parabola.nu/~~obsolete/parabolaiso.git/

I'll try to answer to multiple questions at once.

First to clear things a bit: we do not want to fork Parabola GNU/Linux.
We find it great as it is and we want to provide it to our customers AS
IT IS. Since we are more leaned towards Debian GNU/Linux, we are using
our PureOS (derivative of Debian but GNU FSDG compliant - or at least
that's what we are trying to accomplish) as our base system.

Bottom of line: we simply want to get the official ISO image from your
website and "burn" it (with `dd` or something like that) to an USB key.
If you have other suggestion for us regarding this, we are listening.

Parabola GNU/Linux will be optional, on an USB key, charged only a small
fee for the device itself (we don't intend to have any margins here).

Cheers,

- -- 
Mladen Pejaković
Purism support
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