Remastering MEPIS - Invitation
Posts: 1194
Hello from Saxony!
This is STIBS from SaxenOS.com. Actually I'm looking for a fresh base for my distro. In the last days I've been mailing with Warren back and forth about remastering MEPIS. Some of you guys here may remember me from the early days of MEPIS in 2003 (I just noted, my account here exists already for 3 years and 45 weeks 
). Later on I worked for SphinxOS until they run out of money (and still owe me 2 months salary ).
I adopted Warrens "well-preconfigured-credo" for my own distro SaxenOS and it was based on Slackware/Zenwalk for the time it exists because Slackware is a distro where you still have full control over your machine. Just few distros can really claim that, definitely not SUSE nor Ubuntu. But full control also means a lot of learning and sometimes it's a lot of configuration work for the user. Since the users are the real kings, I'm looking for a new base distribution where things are even easier than in my nicely preconfigured Slackware.
I've tested a few of the top ten on DW and a few of the less well known (e.g. the technically high level Paldo) and was quite disappointed with what I saw in regards of stability and user-friendliness. I remembered the ease of remastering MEPIS and Warrens great configuration tools and installer. Luckily he didn't throw his MEPIS technology over board and uses just the Ubuntu packages and not their technical infrastructure. So MEPIS is still unique.
Now let me introduce my lil project, these are the goals of SaxenOS:
- Lightweight - should run on Pentium 1/2 w/ 128 MB RAM and 2 GB harddisk
- Office/home desktop with just 2D graphics but enough drivers for other hardware
- Nicely preconfigured, all plugins, codecs/css as extra downloads
- No fear of proprietary software (It for sure can be good software and coexists nicely w/ OSS, doesn't it?)
- Considering InstallJammer(.com) technology for addon Software which is not in the repos (registers w/ dpkg).
- Very few games (for now just AOP on the CD)
- Special attention to small biz, training and education needs (target are also developing countries).
- A second version of SaxenOS will be an installable Terminalserver Live CD for classrooms and small companies.
Programs I included in the last Zenwalk-based version:
- XFCE 4.4 (I also used to include EDE but not in this version.)
- Abiword, Gnumeric, Planner, Gimp, GThumb, Bluefish
- Seamonkey, Gaim, GFTP, Audacious, Graveman, Gxine
What I'm playing with atm.:
- Opera 9.2x replaces Seamonkey
- Pixel-demo replaces Gimp, Xsane and more graph software
I know from Warren, there were several requests about remastering and using MEPIS as the base. Agreeing on some basic rules of nice cooperation and giving back to the MEPIS dev team and community (e.g. by adding software packages used in the offspring-distros to the official repositories) are some things, Warren expects from derivative maintainers. I think, that's something I can easily agree on.
Over the holiday weekend I'm trying to make a test version of SaxenOS based on MEPIS. Let's see, how it goes. In the meantime I hope to read some responses, ideas and flames about remastering MEPIS, about SaxenOS and about the goals of my distro. Any input is highly appreciated and if you like my ideas and want to help, I'd like to hear from you.
Best!
STIBS
m s t i b s a t g o o g l e m a i l d o t c o m
Ha! Ko! Great to see you!
Posts: 1194
It's good to see that so many from the old days still are trusty fellows of the MEPIS crowd. =))))
Btw, squashfs of the 1st test just builds ... hehe
STIBS
1st try already works quite well
Posts: 1194
OK, it's buggy but I try to upload it tonight.
bugs:
- no login as user demo (I used user demo1 to remaster it), only root login with passwd root
- gksu doesn't work, but this anyway doesn't matter since only root login is possible (hehe)
- default language in xfce is german, at the first login in gdm you have to set the language to English
... more themeing stuff and not packaging things for Debian (plain configure/make/make-install installs)
Check the SaxenOS.com d/l section tomorrow.
STIBS
Edit:
1 more bug ... uncheck the proxies in Operas advanced network settings!
STIBS
antiX
Posts: 849
Hi there stibs.
I have a remastered Mepis 6.5 that you can have a look at if you like, called antiX. Just pm me at MEPISlovers for the passwords.
See this (long) thread at Mepislovers
http://www.mepislovers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=5444
slideshow of antiX here:
http://s9.photobucket.com/albums/a72/anticapitalista/antiXrc3/?action=view¤t=screenshot_grub.jpg&slideshow=paused&interval=5
I sent an email to Warren a few days ago and and am waiting for a reply.
Edit: How do I shrink the second link?
anticapitalista
Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.
Will this do what you want?
Posts: 305
Thanks, but I can't edit the
Posts: 849
Thanks, but I can't edit the above post now to have this link.
anticapitalista
Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.
Nice!
Posts: 1194
Not bad anticap =)
Just Fluxbox is way too light for my taste. Nice work, well done!
> Edit: How do I shrink the second link?
hmmm del key?
Cheers!
STIBS
Hi Stibs, Welcome back,
Posts: 2299
Hi Stibs,
Welcome back, though you were here before me
Great thing you'll be using MEPIS as a base, in order to get results through synergy. Antix and SaxenOS certainly fulfil certain needs for parts of the community. Good that MEPIS can help you guys with that and good that MEPIS gets back both in contribution and in recognition.
I tried Sax a while ago, and ran it in a VM at my office machine for a while, and was pleased with it. I prefer 'the full Monty' for my normal workspace, but as I said, lightweight certainly has its markets.
Good luck and see you around!
Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question
Thx for the welcome carlops, ISO is up.
Posts: 1194
Hey!
Test-ISO is online.
http://saxenos.de/wb/modules/download_gallery/dlc.php?file=29
As written above, buggy but working. Had it running all night while it was uploading itself.
I'd like to hear bug reports.
Best!
STIBS
Does this run as a livecd as
Posts: 244
Does this run as a livecd as well?
Oh, and if so.. is there a link I can plug in my download manager, it's a bit big to download by browser.
Hi eadwine =)
Posts: 1194
http://saxenos.com/wb/media/download_gallery/sos_mepis_based.iso
Yes, it runs nicely in live mode, make sure you login as root. I messed the demo account.
STIBS
Thanks for the link!
Posts: 244
Thanks for the link! 
Well.. first thing I tried is booting, of course. Unfortunately I got:
/etc/init: 5 /linuxrc: not found
I selected the same options I did when running the 6.5 livecd, 1024x768, and the 75Hz option.
Running live CD as root?
Posts: 150
Yes, it runs nicely in live mode, make sure you login as root. I messed the demo account.STIBS
Is it good practice running a live CD as root? Could not that mess up the data you got on other root partition.... or maybe leave some untasty stuff around..... Sounds dangerous to me........
Hey Stibs, glad to see you
Posts: 4077
Hey Stibs, glad to see you around, I will test your distro whenever I get some time, probably tomorrow.
Hope you'll release changes to betas and RCs with xdelta.
Thanks.
--
Check out MEPIS Wiki: www.mepis.org/docs
testing SaxenOS
Posts: 6
Hi Stibs, good luck with the new SaxenOS.
(...) my own distro SaxenOS and it was based on Slackware/Zenwalk.
(...) these are the goals of SaxenOS:
- Lightweight - should run on Pentium 1/2 w/ 128 MB RAM and 2 GB harddisk
Well, I suppose it's hard (or impossible) to make a Debian/Ubuntu distro run as fast as Slackware It's just a matter of package optimisation (target CPU, CFLAGS etc.).
- Nicely preconfigured, all plugins, codecs/css as extra downloads
- Opera 9.2x replaces Seamonkey
Excellent.
Programs I included in the last Zenwalk-based version:
- GThumb
- Gxine
GThumb: It seems that gqview is faster than gthumb (and sometimes easier to use - but this is a matter of user opinion).
Gxine: Maybe Mplayer? It's GUI is still gtk-based.
Test-ISO is online.
Well I didn't have any luck so far, during the boot process I get the message "/etc/init: /etc/init: 5 /linuxrc: not found" scrolling continuously on the screen (I booted with the default options). My hardware: AMD Duron 850 Mhz, 256 Mb SDRAM.
And one more thought, since you're coming from Slackware, maybe a good idea would be to keep dhcpcd as the default DHCP client? It works flawlessly (unlike dhclient).
Cheers.
forget the test iso, I'm starting over
Posts: 1194
Hey =)
Thx for the comments.
After some stress here with a teacher job and my writing work I'm starting again to work on Mepis based SaxenOS. It'll go slow since I also rebuild my house - right now I have more work for muscles than for brain muscles.
Stay tuned.
STIBS
Stibs... where do you get
Posts: 2299
Stibs... where do you get the time???
Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question
Volume!
Posts: 5513
Stibs must be like Linus Torvalds, when asked how any profit could be made on Linux when it was freely available. His answer: "Volume!"
I think stibs makes up for the lack of time by doing more in it. That and working a 32-hour day. Right?
Jon
The ability to comfortably use a computer is directly proportional to desire to listen, learn, and experiment, and is inversely proportional to the fear, anger, and stubbornness that you show.
I'm just wasting my spare time with this =)
Posts: 1194
Stibs must be like Linus Torvalds.
Hahaha ... no, I'm no coder.
Actually I said, it will go slow. So don't expect fast progress.
I tried yesterday night to put the Mepis packages on Debian Sid and it was a desaster. Sid run very quick with no hiccups but the Mepis packages are much too intertwined with Ubuntu.
I did this test because I'm not happy with the Ubuntu packages. After an upgrade of Mepis to Feisty stage it was completely wobbly and the Ubuntu stuff has so much overhead for a "better user experience" ... simply said: it really suxx ... sorry, had to get rid of that.
Atm. I'm completely demotivated to do anything on it, because I'm for sure never will use Ubuntu in any other form than testing it - definitely not basing my distro on it. This became even more clear after yesterday night (ask my monitor, I shouted at it a lot).
Cheers and greetings to ole Warren!
STIBS
Welcome back Stibs.....:-)
Posts: 690
I am glad to learn that you're planning to come up with SaxenOS (I have your 2.0 currently installed on my desktop system) as a derivate distro from Mepis. Just let me know when your first attempt is "testable"...
Success....!
Regards, Ko
Ko Bros