[Fsfe-ie] IfsoCD (Breezy OpenCD alt: Mutagenix)

[- M e l -]

Hi Dave

Going to copy the group on this for extra thoughts and input.  Sorry I missed
the last meeting as well, I had some time off and completely forgot ;-o

Sorry I kind of fell silent on this the last couple of weeks but it's not out
of idleness on the matter.  I've looked into loads of options but didn't get
the wiki updated with these yet.
I'm disgusted that I can't find a hard disk installer on ANY of the Ubuntu LiveCD
 variations, the exception being Beatrix (which is still based on Hoary while
TheOpenCD is based on Breezy (minus the installer).

Breezy Badger problems

Installer:
I'd been looking at the possibility of rewriting the Beatrix installer to install
TheOpenCD which shouldn't be too hard, but if anyone else was interested (and
a better and more practiced programmer) it doesn't look hard.

DHCP:
I think the Breezy version on TheOpenCD has this problem fixed.  Basically booting
with a network card, but NO NETWORK CONNECTION caused the DHCP to hang at boot
time, this despite supposedly accepting a 'disable dhcp' option at the boot
prompt.  Just something we'd have to make sure was fixed.

GOTCHAs
If we're replacing any of the optional content, we'd need to make sure XScreensaver
isn't pointing at a directory we remove.  This was a problem on the GUADEC Germany
2005 cd.

ALTERNATIVELY TO ALL OF THE ABOVE

Among the many things I looked at, I was most impressed by Mutagenix (FreeRock
Gnome).  LiveCD, installer and a beautifully configured desktop.  The gware
Gnome CD didn't appeal to me as much.  I'm VERY partial to all variations of
slackware for the purposes of Live CDs because they are a complete doddle to
remaster, and most even come with remaster scripts as well.  If not, http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip
certainly has.

My next move was to suggest Mutagenix FRG as an option on the wiki.  CD weighs
in at:
Jul 07 2005 20:38	570927104	mutagenix_frgnome-2.6.11.8-i486-1.iso
Downloadable from:
 ftp://mirror.datapipe.net/norlug/mutagenix/2.6.11.8-1/

I've been using it for the best part of a week on an 128mb laptop and it hums
along lovely, plenty of apps and no stability problems.

If you want to investigate the LiveCD based on my pain, go right ahead.  Can't
claim to have found all the 'gotchas' but those were the obvious ones.  But
if there is a need to go through a messy remastering progess, Slackware variants
are a much better option.  You can do 'installpkg -root=/whatever' to customise
to your hearts content and burn the result with a shell script.  I'm hoping
to do this on the bank holiday weekend coming up.
Keep in touch!

Mel

>Was there any talk of the CD during the last meeting? TheOpenCD now with 
>the included bootable distro seems to do exactly what we had planned 
>ours to do. Do we continue development when there is a clear 
>alternative? Do we just produce a modified version of TheOpenCD? Do we 
>stick to our plan and build our own?
>
>My DVDR refuses to work so I'm gonna have to buy a new one. 
>
>Dave
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