Many thanks for your interest in DeskWeavers! This file provides a
quick guide about how to handle it, from the download phase
to the login screen. The current version is a full edition, with the
latest LibreOffice, Firefox and much mode.
(Of course, you can install anything yourself!)
WHAT IS DeskWeavers?
Conecta Research has developed DeskWeavers, a reinterpretation of the
Linux desktop. It executes from a 4GB USB Key, and allows the user to
run a modern and efficient Linux Desktop on most PCs without the need
of changing or removing the native operating system such as Windows.
Designed to be used in Public Administrations or as an enterprise
desktop, DeskWeavers is a real OS on a USB key, not a live CD, and as
such allows for extensive customization and adaptation.
It is the result of the open sourcing of parts of
the Conecta HealthDesk system, designed using the result of our past
European projects COSPA (a large migration experiment for European
Public Administrations), SPIRIT (open source health care), OpenTTT
(OSS technology transfer) and CALIBRE (open source for industrial
environments). It has been recently revamped to use it as a no-cost
client for the CloudWeavers private cloud system, or as a personal
desktop for use inside of a Virtual Desktop infrastructure, thanks
to the limited use of resources (180MB of RAM per desktop, compressed
updates and upgrades, and more).
DeskWeavers is a binary image designed for 4GB USB keys, easy to
install with a single command both on Linux and Windows, simple to
replicate and adapt. It does provide a simple and pleasing user
interface, with several pre-installed applications like the latest
LibreOffice, the GIMP graphic editor and both Firefox and Google Chromium.
It uses the BTRFS filesystem, that allows for both compression and
error verification and concealment - which means that you have more than 4GB
of free space on the key, and that DeskWeavers will be able to work properly
even with cheap or damaged USB keys. An extensive set of optimizations were
used to ensure that your DeskWeavers key will not wear out with use,
compared to a traditional Linux installation.
DOWNLOAD EVERYDESK
The DeskWeavers image file hosted on SourceForge is a 2.3GB 7zip file.
After you've downloaded the compressed image file, you have to extract it.
Windows: we suggest you the use of the free 7-Zip utility, downloadable
from http://www.7-zip.org/
On linux you will need the p7zip package for extraction.
INSTALLATION PROCEDURE
Windows and Linux installation procedures are described separately.
In both cases, you need an *empty* 4GB USB key.
WARNING! Be *sure* you actually *don't* have any data in your key,
since the procedure will wipe its content!
Installation procedure
The USB image can be downloaded from the SourceForge project. After download,
uncompress it, and then you simply have to copy it on the key.
Under windows you can use the Open Source Win32-image-writer tool,
(available from https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer ). In this case,
select the disk image and your USB key drive letter, and "write" to perform the
image copy. Warning: the process will wipe your key! So, check before writing
the image for any file in the USB key that need backup.
Under linux, it is possible to copy the image using the "dd" command, or through
a graphical tool. Under Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu USB imagewriter (the
package name is "usb-imagewriter") that works like the W32 image writer in the Windows case.
If you prefer a command line approach:
insert your key in one of your computer's USB port, open a terminal window, type the following command
dmesg
and press the Enter key from your keyboard. This way the system helps you to identify the
device name of the USB key. Check the last lines from the command's output and you'll probably
get a result similar to the following one:
[ 7532.975104] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[ 7532.977915] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 15568896 512-byte logical blocks
The "sdb" is the name of the disk in your system. Change directory to the
place where you downloaded the image, type the following command
sudo dd if=<name of uncompressed image file> of=/dev/sdb bs=1M
press Enter and don't remove your key until the copy is done. Be careful
to use the EXACT name found in dmesg!
For more details and screenshots of the possible tools, you can find more details in general
on writing image files to USB keys here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromImgFiles
with the only difference that the image is the one downloaded from the DeskWeavers sourceforge page.
The image can also be run unmodified under QEMU, for example to test or modify its
configuration before installing the image on the USB key. For large scale adaptiations,
we suggest to perform the initial modifications through QEMU on the "master" image,
and then deploy this modified image to all your PCs. This way, configurations like
default servers, specific applications of interest and more will get replicated to
all your users in a single step.
Default login/password
The default login is “admin“, with password “conecta” (without the quotes).
The password is the same for all administrative requests as well.
user: admin
password: conecta
Congratulations! Your new system is now ready for you to enjoy it!
Again, many thanks for your interest in our product!
--
The DeskWeavers support staff
EXTERNAL LINKS
For furher informations about EveryDesk, please visit:
http://www.everydesk.org
http://carlodaffara.conecta.it/
http://twitter.com/cdaffara/
For more information on the CloudWeavers private cloud toolkit:
http://www.cloudweavers.eu
Background images by Pr09Studio:
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/AVAW?content=122255
and http://pr09studio.deviantart.com/
