[Dev] new graphical liveCD ISO

Megver83 megver83 at openmailbox.org
Thu Jul 6 16:21:39 GMT 2017


BTW, the Calamares fork I did it's based on Manjaro's, which supports
OpenRC. Also, the OpenRC ISO shouldn't be difficult to make, IDK how to
use Parabolaiso/Archiso, so I limited to just remaster the older ISO
(long ago). However, I remember I made a lot of little tweaks when
making the MATE Live ISO + OpenRC, so if any doubt I could help :)

El 06/07/17 a las 11:49, Josh Branning escribió:
> Hi,
> 
> I'd say that was a good choice; LXDE, probably my first preference, and
> I think it's good you are working on an openrc version, which I may be
> willing to test.
> 
> But out of personal taste, I am not 100% sure about the installer. Can
> the ISO be built without? I would be interested to know.
> 
> That aside, I think this could be a vast improvement over the MATE desktop.
> 
> Many thanks,
> 
> 
> Josh
> 
> On 06/07/17 16:31, bill-auger wrote:
>> as you may know, the current graphical liveCD ISO is over 6 months old
>> and more importantly, no longer installs smoothly, but requires some
>> manual commands to be run in order to make the keyring sane and then
>> to replace and remove certain deprecated or obsoleted packages upon
>> the first system update
>>
>> last month, oaken-source recreated all of the ISOs to fix this issue
>> but the MATE installer has some serious regression issues and after
>> several attempts we decided to simply put the old one back - this is a
>> problem becuase it is the graphical installer that those least
>> tech-savvy of users will choose and this was the very reason that made
>> an upgraded ISO an urgency
>>
>> since then i have created a new ISO with parabolaiso based on
>> LXDE/openbox and have customized the "user-friendly" graphical
>> calamares installer for parabola - i am also investigating if it is
>> worthwhile to adapt the 'manjaro-tools' ISO builder to parabola - it
>> has several attractive properties over archiso - notably, it includes
>> dozens of configurations for different WM/DEs and also it creates
>> calamares configurations automatically - it may be a lot of work to
>> adapt for parabola but it is interesting and it should be noted that
>> the current parabolaiso has not seen it's upstream since 2013, so
>> updating that could be a significant amount of work itself
>>
>> i understand that these user-friendly graphical installers are not
>> such a priority in the arch world but, for better or worse, parabola
>> has been attracting many non-technical casual desktop users lately and
>> such features are extremely important to them - it is exactly the arch
>> reputation that intimidates people from trying parabola - with a
>> pretty graphical installer and the octopuss program parabola can be
>> made to be quite appropriate for the casual desktop use-case as well
>>
>> this does not only apply to parabola - free software generally is not
>> known for it's user-friendliness but non-technical folks are the
>> majority of PC users and so in order for FOSS to thrive, the issue of
>> user-friendliness deserves much more attention than it currently gets
>> - IMHO that is clearly the reason why ubuntu and mint are the most
>> popular nixes
>>
>> manjaro, for example, is more popular than arch because it appeals to
>> both experienced and casual users alike (manjaro is actually 3rd place
>> on distrowatch now - above ubuntu - for comparisson arch is 14th
>> place) - i think that parabola (certainly hyperbola) should aim to be
>> not the libre arch equivalent as it is now, but the libre manjaro
>> equivalent, something that is not quite so scary for the folks who
>> would likely choose trisquel as their first libre distro
>>
>> in any case, if parabola is to have any graphical ISO at all, the
>> existing MATE ISO should really be replaced ASAP - it is not clear how
>> exactly parabola goes about the peer review process but if anyone
>> would like to test these builds, please do - or perhaps i could just
>> upload a pre-made beta ISO somewhere if others just want to evaluate
>> and critique the artifact - whichever is the best way to get more eyes
>> on it and move the project forward that is fine by me
>>
>> as it is, the LXDE-systemd ISO has the quite ugly default theme and
>> does not have the calamares installer in it yet but that is very close
>> to ready though it too could use some beautification - LXDE uses GTK
>> themes so the 'parabola' theme from the MATE install can probably be
>> used easily - this LXDE-systemd ISO could be released nearly as is,
>> but i would want to make that look a bit prettier and more
>> importantly, to have more eyes on it besides my own, WHILE it is being
>> worked on - clicking everything to make sure it is a useful liveCD and
>> installer before considering it production ready - it is unclear to me
>> how far the 'adhocracy' approach should extend - but at some point,
>> peer review becomes essential and that point is somewhere between the
>> prototye and release
>>
>> feel free to open particular issues on notabug:
>> * https://notabug.org/bill-auger/parabolaiso
>> * https://notabug.org/bill-auger/calamares
>>
>>
>> to build the LXDE ISO:
>> ```
>> git clone https://notabug.org/bill-auger/parabolaiso
>> git checkout lxde
>> cd parabolaiso/config/lxde-systemd
>> ./build.sh -v -T x86_64 -V "`date +%Y.%m.%d.%H.%M`-alpha"
>> ```
>> both the -T and -V are optional - the -T value can be either 'x86_64'
>> or 'i686' - without the '-T arch' it will build the dual ISO - the '-V
>> date' is just to make the output filename different for each
>> development build
>>
>> to build and launch the calamares installer:
>> ```
>> git clone https://notabug.org/bill-auger/calamares
>> git checkout parabola
>> cd calamares
>> ./mk
>> ```
>> this one still has some rough edges - there is a PKGBUILD also but i
>> have not verified that it works correctly yet - the ./mk script is
>> what i have been using for development
>>
>>
>> some notes on the design decisions:
>>
>> the new ISO configs have some immediate advantages over the MATE ISO
>> already - for one, octopi does not work on the MATE ISO because the
>> auto-login is root - the LXDE ISO logs in a the 'parabola' user with
>> password-less sudo so octopi actually works as expected - secondly the
>> MATE ISO requires an internet connection to install and downloads the
>> entire operating system - this is quite different than any other
>> liveCD ive ever seen - typically a liveCD will decompress it's
>> squashfs onto the target disk as the base for the installed system so
>> that the OS can be installed without a network connection - of course,
>> that is not the "arch way" so i understand why that design decision
>> was made - but it is not very practical - the user must download this
>> 2GB ISO which contains 2 complete operating systems (32-bit and
>> 64-bit) when the user will almost certainly only use one - immediately
>> this initial download could be cut in half simply by making separate
>> 32-bit and 64-bit ISOs - next, upon in
> s
> talling, the user then downloads again an entire operating system as
> packages via pacstrap - clearly, this is ridiculous - for this reason i
> have customized the ISO build script to allow making either the
> dual-target ISO, or one each for only x86 or x86_64 - also, they carry
> all of the packages necessary to install the complete system without any
> network connection - this of course make the ISO much larger again but
> this allows it to install via pacstrap the "arch way" instead of
> exploding the SFS - it can be debated whether or not this "best of both
> worlds" approach is justified, but although it is still wasteful, i
> consider this to be more reasonable than having two complete operating
> systems in one ISO when the user is almost certain to only use one of
> them - it is no more difficult to make separate 32-bit and 64-bit ISOs,
> takes no more time, and makes each one half the download size
>>
>>
>> notes on progress:
>>
>> the 'lxde-system' ISO config is working and does what it says on the
>> tin - the 'lxde-openrc' ISO config is a work in progress - it will
>> build an ISO but it does not yet boot fully - note that the difference
>> here applies only to the LiveCD environment - the final installed
>> system depends only on the configuration of the calamares installer -
>> i left the existing MATE CLI install scripts in place as a fallback if
>> for some reason the live xserver fails to launch
>>
>> the current calamares installs MATE with systemd - i am working now to
>> get it to install an openrc system and other WM/DEs - eventually this
>> should be able to allow the user to choose amoung various combinations
>> of init systems and desktops
>>
>> this de-coupling of the ISO and installer and not re-using the SFS has
>> the added advantage of allowing for any number of liveCDs
>> (KDE,gnome,i3) to all reuse the same calamares installer package yet
>> that same installer could be used to install any other init system or
>> WM/DE configuration - e.g. a KDE-systemd liveCD (or any other) could
>> install an LXDE-openrc system (or any other)
> 
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