Hello,
i'd like to announce a completely redone Window Maker Live ISO image has
been upploaded to sourceforge and is now available for direct download,
and also via bittorrent. Since Ubuntu in the end didn't provide what is
actualy needed for this project, i took some time and effort to switch
my focus to Debian instead. This is the first public offeering of the
results of many hours of hard work.
Please kindly check out and test my live image proposal. It would be
really great if this would be incentive enough for people to actually
start contributing for future versions.
Without further ado, please find here the complete README containing all
relevant information pertaining to this release:
---------- 8<----------
Window Maker Live now based on Debian/sid
-----------------------------------------
Using the ISO mastering infrastructure provided with Debian by the
software offerings of the Debian Live Team, Window Maker Live has been
rebuilt from scratch. It is now based on bleeding edge debian/unstable
(aka sid), borrowing some ingredients still from debian/testing (aka
wheezy), and also a few bits still from debian/stable (aka squeeze).
While trying to get sound working in the former development stages of
Window Maker Live, it became obvious that Ubuntu is not a viable option
anymore. Obviously, all ALSA and legacy OSS sound modules were simply
removed from standard official Ubuntu kernels, meaning that lots of
audio hardware and software is left behind. As this can't really be
considered user or even admin friendly, we decided to switch all future
development efforts to a pure Debian based environment. This means that
the old wmlive-create script suite has basically become obsolete.
On http://live.debian.net you will find all information needed to
understand how to use the ISO build configuration files provided here.
The archive wmlive-debian-config_20120225.tar.xz contains the config
folder, on which the successful build of is based on. Check out the
Debian Live Manual at http://live-manual.debian.net/manual-3.x/manual
for in depth information about how to manage an ISO build.
The wmlive-debian_20120225-amd64.iso has become sized slightly over
800 MB, and therefore is not suitable for a CD anymore. But who uses
CD media anyway, in the times of cheap versatile USB media? There is
also a torrent file available, although this might go a bit slow from
my end for the first full upload. Get either of these from here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wmlive/files
To save yourself from burning a CD, if you already have some USB
pen drive suitably prepared with GRUB, then copy the ISO image to the
pen drive into the /boot folder and add following grub entry to the
/boot/grub/grub.cfg:
menuentry "Ubuntu Live 9.10 32bit" {
loopback loop /boot/wmlive-debian_20120225-amd64.iso
linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper
iso-scan/filename=/boot/wmlive-debian_20120225-amd64.iso noeject noprompt
initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz
}
This ISO image includes the Debian installer, which has been rebuilt
to function with the latest Linux kernel release version 3.2.6 for
this particular release. While this ISO can probably be used to install
Debian on any system, there are still some quirks which require manual
intervention and the application of some workarounds during the final
stages of the installation process. We have tested the installation
only on a Thinkpad T61 so far, and can't promise any success for any
other machines.
Here is a short procedure for the manual installation workarounds:
- During the grub installation, the debian installer reports that the
"GRUB installation failed": Just press Alt-m to minimize the full
screen installer window, open a root terminal, and perform a "chroot
/live/installer/target". Once inside the chroot environment, just
execute the command "grub-install --no-floppy --recheck --force
/dev/sdx" (replacing the device file name with a valid one), and
after that run "update-grub". Then exit the chroot environment, and
delete from /live/installer/target/var/ the directories named "run"
and "lock". Once done, copy over the missing contents of the /var
folder of the live system over to /live/installer/target/var/,
taking care to retain the proper permissions. And while you are at
it, add a geographically adapted variation of the following line
"deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian sid main contrib non-free" to
/live/installer/target/etc/apt/sources.list. Then just return to the
installer, check the option "Continue without boot loader", ignore
the warning and finish the installation. The live system is usually
not properly working anymore at this stage, so just reboot and start
the freshly installed system from disk.
- Once you are at the desktop, just remove the debian-installer icon
from the clip, as it is of no use anymore. Also edit the command
line of the dock icon showing the cute BSD Chuck such that it ends
in "su -" instead of "sudo -i". You may as well add yourself to the
sudo users configuration, instead.
- The third dock icon which is showing an open mailbox will not start
up anything until you haven't sent sent internally any kind of mail
to your own user account. Just execute the following command to send
yourself a traditional welcome message:
echo "Hello world" | mail -s Welcome $USER@localhost
This will all be taken care of in a future update release version.
Please also note the poor man's implementation of toggable autostart
scripts via the menu entry "Session > AutoStartSwitch". I split off
the single autostart script entries into small startup scriptlets,
which have been placed into the ~/GNUstep/AutoStart folder, The
autostart script has essentially been turned into an autostart
scriptlet launcher. Now my idea was to enable the user to turn off
parts of the preconfigured autostart stuff without having to edit any
configuration file or script. Check out how it functions by exploring
the menu configuration editor included with WPrefs. Maybe someone
could suggest a better and simpler method to handle this kind of
function?
Window Maker is included as the the latest up to date Debian released
version 0.95.2, and the major applications Firefox and Thunderbird, both
in the latest version 10.0.2, have been installed manually to the /opt
folder, using the Mozilla built Linux packages. Both also come with a
range of preinstalled extensions.
The Window Maker desktop has been extensively preconfigured, in order to
allow any user to immediately start working without any further prior
configuration efforts.
Just keep in mind that this ISO release may have proven to be very
stable for the developers, but this doesn't really mean that this going
to be the same case for you.
Please go ahead and test this release and provide us with your
feedback and suggestions.
Enjoy!
wml...@users.sf.net
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