mentalunix-developers

Re: [Mentalunix-developers] re-awaken the project?

[Clinton E. <unk...@un...>]

>   - Guile 1.6
>   - Mplayer (which just became 100% GPL)
>   - ...
> - The installer is still now user-friendly (no hardware detection)

err, not now, but not (as in woody is not user friendly). stupid typo.

--
unknown_lamer (not at home)

Re: [Mentalunix-developers] re-awaken the project?

[Clinton E. <unk...@un...>]

 
> As for re-awakening Mentalinux.  Well, sure, what the
> heck!!  At the moment, I won't be able to do too much
> interms of install and system debugging and stuff, because
> I don't have the hard drive space.  But, that should change
> in the next few months.  
> 
> Now, as for getting stuff like xfree4.2, and kde3.0 ported
> to debian, sure.  And finally doing the development we've
> thought about in the past would be fun.

There wouldn't really be any porting, just rebuilding the packages on a 
Debian woody system and maybe some tweaking of the control files to 
make them have correct dependencies. I also want to include a few 
extras with Mentalinux Debian (e.g. public domain fonts, bleeding edge 
CVS versions of stuff like XINE, etc).
 
> Now, for my idea's...
> The way I see it, is we can do this too ways.  Mentalinux
> like we originally planned, with debian as it's base, and
> making it pretty, or use the Mentalinux idea, and make
> something like a virtual distribution that would be
> distribution independant.  What I mean by that is
> developing the installer and all the apps in a way that
> could be easily built, and installed on any distro.  In
> other words, Mentalinux wouldn't be a debian distro per say
> (I'm not saying we abandon that Idea, im saying we don't
> stop there), but rather a structure that could be built
> over debian, redhat, mdk, gentoo, suse, slackware, or
> whatever. How we would do this, im not entirely sure, but
> hey, its just an idea right!

Maybe writing the mentalinux packager (or maybe a better name of meta-
packager since it would be a meta-packager :) after all would be a good 
idea, but not for a while. I was also thinking about writing some 
Autoconf and Automake macros to automate the building of packages 
(rpms, slp, debs, etc) from any autconf project that uses the macros 
(e.g. ./configure --[debian-package | rpm-package | slackware-package | 
stampede-package]). I might do that over the summer (maybe not because 
I _really_ need a job so I can pay for drivers ed [I could have gotten 
my license 8 months ago :-\ but I have to pay for drivers ed, half of 
the $1700 in repairs on the truck I'll be driving, and some other stuff 
so I can learn responsobility or something]).
 
> In any case, I willing to help out, but between my Gentoo
> tweaks, working at Lycoris, and this, I might not be the
> fastest developer!!!

Doesn't really matter--any help would be great. Your Gentoo tweaking 
could be a good thing; if you have any interesting configuration files 
we could use those for the mentalinux defaults.

> Sounds cool, and I'm gonna help out if it does come
> through, even if it doesn't, I'll start working on it!!!

I'm reading the pgi manual now, and should have a semi-working 
installer in a week or so (I have to make a kernel package that would 
work on machines other than mine so that pgi can use it--this is really 
easy with make-kpkg, but I have to edit the control files to give it a 
different name so it is slightly less easy now :).

-- 
unknown_lamer (not at home)

Re: [Mentalunix-developers] re-awaken the project?

[Clinton E. <unk...@un...>]

> > Is anyone still here?
> 
> Im here.

Great, now we're up to three people again :) (weren't we the original 
three?)

> > - The installer is still not user-friendly (no hardware detection)
> Good point.  I hate the debian install.  It drags me back to the days 
when I
> was using redhat 4.  or caldera 1.3.  Its just so old.  By making a 
version
> that is easy to install we would automaticly have a huge fanbase from 
debian
> users, and the deb dist could expand to newbies.  Hows this for and 
idea.
> Steps to install
> 1. Download small(100k or so) download manager.
> 2. Decide the components you want, it downloads them, then creates 
images to
> burn.
> 3. By deciding everything before the images are created it could 
autoinstall
> without any imput during install.

That is basically what you do with Debian right now--you grab two 
installer disks or an ISO image, dd them onto floppies (or burn the ISO 
onto a CD), reboot with the disk in and then install over the internet. 
The mininal progeny installer disk is something like 90MB, so I might 
just build my own mini install disk that actually fetches the installer 
(I can use the bf2.4.18 debian disks as a base for this).

> > Basically just tweak Debian to make it slightly nicer. Contributing 
all
> > of our changes (except for the updated packages because those would
> > already be in unstable) back to Debian would be a good idea too.
> Sounds great.  We could mkae it look nicer, but also strip it down.  
There
> is so much junk and legacy software on dists.  I hate downloading and
> installing 900meg dists.  Its ridiculous.  Do I need 17 email 
programs, or 5
> browsers?  A striped down version would be much better for newbies, 
but by
> having apt-get or custumized downloads as mentioned above, any 
poweruser or
> hacker could get the programs he wants easily and quickly.

Just because the programs are there doesn't mean you have to install 
them. I agree that the default install shouldn't include all of them, 
but then again the current Debian installer doesn't do that either. One 
of the things we should do is create a few new meta-packages (or task 
packages, which I believe are harder to make now because they are 
automagically generated from the Task: field of normal packages) for 
common profiles like developer, server (maybe not...), desktop, etc. 
and allow the person doing the install do choose from one of those and )
optionally) refine their selections using dselect of deity.


> > So, does anyone want to start work on the distribution again? I'll 
start
> > on the install disks soon if anyone wants to help with the rest.
> Im in.  Graduation from High School is next month and Ill be free to 
work on

I've started to work on the install disks, sort of (mainly just messing 
around with pgi). Using Pgi would give us a working installer in no 
time at all, and allow us to do all the cool stuff using configlets 
during the second stage install. I guess its time to read those Python 
docs...(unless someone wants to hack pgi into our own installer and use 
something like Scheme instead).

I'm working on the install kernel right now. I want to get a good 
kernel config and after that write a shell script to automagically 
generate optimized kernels for every architecture. I suggest everyone 
look at the GCC 3.1 changes @ gcc.gnu.org--mainly the section on the 
new optimizations. I want to build p4 and k6-2 kernels as well as ones 
with 3dnow!, MMX, MMX2, etc support (which will require hacking of 
arch/i386/config.in). But that is for later. 

I also want to apply a few patches, namely the low latency patch, 
resier fs patch, and imon patch. Does anyone have any objections? The 
imon patch speeds up fam (that e17 makes heavy use of...I also want to 
included e17 CVS debs since the e17 cvs source has the debian dirs 
already there). I do a bit of audio recording, so the low latency 
patches make sense, and generically improve the "feel" of the system 
(even if they slightly reduce overall performance). Reiserfs is for 
obvious reasons (even though I use ext3, others like reiser). Does 
anyone wants any other patches applied? (if this paragraph makes no 
sense, it is because my sister is bitching at me right now to get off 
the net so she can talk to her friends [she's on the phone too..argh]).

> it.  Im sorry but I forgot who our web designer was, but since we will
> undoubtably completly change the project, Im willing to redesign the 
site
> and be webmaster in addition to helping with the dist.  Ive got a lot 
of
> free time and can make a pretty cool site.

I think Dustin was the webmaster (the site says he is at least).

> -Mike Church(aka the_micea, aka lastcode, aka compugod)

-- 
unknown_lamer (not at home)

Re: [Mentalunix-developers] re-awaken the project?

[Clinton E. <unk...@un...>]

> > That is basically what you do with Debian right now--you grab two
> > installer disks
> which rarely work.

Really? They worked fine for me at the end of April when I had to
reinstall Debian because of fs corruption. The 2.2 disks didn't work for
some reason with my friend's network, but the bf2.4 disks worked fine.

> 
> > or an ISO image,
> only if you have a cable modem, and plenty of hard drive space.
Yes, but you can also buy official images. I'm trying for find some
place to host a complete Debian mirror. Maybe we can eventually
distribute Mentalinux cds.


-- 
unknown_lamer (not at home)