future

[Thilo Pfennig]

to take a view in the possible future: What would be really perfect
would be a Livecd-Creation software where you could drag elements from
one side (available software-groups) to the other.

So you might have icons for GNOME, Openoffice.org, KDE,... on the left
and can drop it to the right. Then you can save this as a possible
Live-CD. Dependencies should then be resolved. Libe in burning
applications it should be displayed how much place is taken.

If you double-click on something like GNOME you could see the
applications and/or libraries inside. Then one could deselect some
applications that are part of GNOME by dragging them from right to left.

And, yes this could also be combined with a burning application.


ciao,
Thilo

PS: just to share the idea...

-- 
blog: http://www.alternativ.net/~vinci
license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/de/

Starting point

[Glen Eustace]

One of the biggest problems I have had on my current project is finding
an appropriate starting point.  I looked at a lot of the LiveCD
implementations and the majority are aimed at the complete functionality
end of the spectrum. What I was after was the exact opposite, absolute
minimal functionality.

At present, the minimal install of FC4 still installs way too many
things for what I wanted. There are dependencies on packages that I'll
never need or use and it is proving difficult to cut it back.

It would be great if the build environment and the result could be
totally independent. i.e. actually start with a clean slate (empty
CD :-) and add only those things one really wants. All the supporting
stuff used to manage the installation and the whole process e.g. python
and lots of others should only need to be present in the build
environment not the resulting CD.

I am looking at CDs for Kiosk-like solutions. It would be great to
simply drag across the kernel, networking and a browser, satisfy the
dependencies on that lot and leave the rest.

At this time, I have used an FC4 minimal install and the ADIOS/YETAA-ATK
and then tried to remove everything that I don't want. A tedious
process.

Starting point

[Thilo Pfennig]

Am Mittwoch, den 17.08.2005, 10:47 +1200 schrieb Glen Eustace:

>  It would be great if the build environment and the result could be
>  totally independent. i.e. actually start with a clean slate (empty
>  CD :-) and add only those things one really wants. All the supporting
>  stuff used to manage the installation and the whole process e.g. python
>  and lots of others should only need to be present in the build
>  environment not the resulting CD.
>  
>  I am looking at CDs for Kiosk-like solutions. It would be great to
>  simply drag across the kernel, networking and a browser, satisfy the
>  dependencies on that lot and leave the rest. 
Have you heard about the "freedom toaster"? It was introduced in the
Go-Open series in Australia (an open source series sponsored by Mark
Shuttleworth:


http://www.go-opensource.org/go_open/episode_3/what_is_hot/ (you can
also episode 3 on this website)


They produced something that is hardware and software and enables users
to just burn a distro like Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. It's not quite
what you want, but it is also Kiosk style. The combination with hardware
is cool. A small linux inside and then maybe they have some number keys
and a key for submit and cancel.


Maybe the better process would be if Fedora itself is built with a
modular system that we also can use for creating a live CD. So Fedora
could be a very flexible distro 'by default'. This software then should
be distributed with Fedora so it gets more testing.

Does anybody know how Fedoras official CDs are produced right now? What
are they using as helper tools?


Thilo

-- 
blog: http://www.alternativ.net/~vinci
license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/de/

Starting point

[Rahul Sundaram]

Glen Eustace wrote:

> At present, the minimal install of FC4 still installs way too many
> things for what I wanted. There are dependencies on packages that I'll
> never need or use and it is proving difficult to cut it back.
>   
>  
Not related to the Live CD but would you mind filing bugs against the 
appropriate packages. Additional functionality can be split up into sub 
packages. This is being considered for dovecot for example

regards
Rahul

Starting point

[Glen Eustace]

On Wed, 2005-08-17 at 15:08 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>  >At present, the minimal install of FC4 still installs way too
> many
>  >things for what I wanted. There are dependencies on packages that I'll
>  >never need or use and it is proving difficult to cut it back.
>  >  
>  >
>  Not related to the Live CD but would you mind filing bugs against the 
>  appropriate packages. Additional functionality can be split up into sub 
>  packages. This is being considered for dovecot for example 
It would seem that many packagers are assuming that their package will
be installed on a full distribution, these dependencies seem to cause
unnecessary bloat. Rather than trying to make packages as independent as
possible, I am seeing a steadily growing proliferation of the spiders
web.

I can't give you a specific, but the sort of thing I am getting at is
the use of perl and python scripts that are only used during the
configuration of a package. In normal use the package doesn't need perl
or python but if you want to install the package, you wind up having to
include these packages as well (and they aren't small). While it may not
be the case everytime, a bash script may have done the job quite nicely.

It seems that as time has gone by, we are seeing more rather than less
dependence with packages. I remember being able to do a minimal install
of some of the earlier RH releases and they wer something like 126Mb
compared with a minimal of FC4 which is more than 500Mb !! The base
packages themselves haven't grown that much, but the dependencies sure
have.

Glen.

Starting point

[Rahul Sundaram]

Hi

> I can't give you a specific, but the sort of thing I am getting at
> is
> the use of perl and python scripts that are only used during the
> configuration of a package.
>  
If we have to improve the dependencies issues you are talking, please 
find specific instances and report them in bugzilla. 

regards
Rahul

Starting point

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

Glen, I suppose you're talking about instances in which a lazy programmer 
uses perl for a one-line function that could just as easily be solved by 
bash and sed.  Right?

But how often does this happen besides for perl or python, since both are 
pretty central?  Are you talking about module bloat?

If you have specific examples, that'd help a lot.

--g

_____________________  ____________________________________________
  Greg DeKoenigsberg ] [ the future masters of technology will have
 Community Relations ] [ to be lighthearted and intelligent.  the
             Red Hat ] [ machine easily masters the grim and the 
                     ] [ dumb.  --mcluhan

On Thu, 18 Aug 2005, Rahul Sundaram wrote:

>  Hi
>  
>  >I can't give you a specific, but the sort of thing I am getting at is
>  >the use of perl and python scripts that are only used during the
>  >configuration of a package.
>  >
>  If we have to improve the dependencies issues you are talking, please 
>  find specific instances and report them in bugzilla. 
>  
>  regards
>  Rahul
>  
>  --
>  Fedora-livecd-list mailing list
>  Fedora-livecd-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-livecd-list
>

Starting point

[Steve Grubb]

On Wednesday 17 August 2005 17:18, Glen Eustace wrote:
>  It seems that as time has gone by, we are seeing more rather than
> less
>  dependence with packages. 
I think we are doing a better job of finding the dependencies. Many were 
always there undocumented and your scripts would blow up because something 
expected wasn't installed.

-Steve