DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: Learning  from Feather



Disclaimer: I'm not dissing feather or its author; they've done a great job
(Avoid the flames. ^^)

Feather has released 0.4.2, changelog:

Quote
Changes from 0.4.1 to 0.4.2:
- Added customisation ability - simply place all the .deb, .tgz and .tar.gz
 files in an /extra directory on your CD-ROM or USB stick, create a
 "deblist" file which contains the names of the .debs and the order to
 install them, and then boot with "knoppix custom".
- Added PSS, a self-written music server to stream music over your network.
 See /home/knoppix/docs/pss.html for details.
- Updated XMMS to 1.2.10
- Added gaim script
- tcc now works
- Removed knoppix-terminalserver because of unsatisfied dependencies
- Downgraded libpcap and tcpdump to 0.7.2 because of PPP problems and to
satisfy apt-get
- Added alsaconf and usbview and updated Getting Started accordingly
- Updated aMSN script to 0.91
- Added Lua properties sheet for SciTE
- Updated naim, and added links for nirc, nicq and nlily
- Removed TinyIRC as nirc is now available
- Updated and Debianised partimage
- Added the hostent Perl module for PSS
- Fixed wdict and xpuyopuyo script
- Added code to save memory on scripts
- Added icon creation to Openoffice.org script

Look at the bolded area. DSL currently allows only tar.gz AFAIK, correct me if I'm wrong. Allowing the installation of deb files AND select which packages to install would be wicked cool.


Don't flame me if I'm rambling  :p
DSL version 0.7 has additional functionality to customize via *.dsl packages

While the number of packages are determined by people who are able to create them, they are better integrated into the menu structure.

I think that adding automatic *.deb re-installation would be a neat addition to Damn Small Linux, but the preferred route for popular new programs would be to create custom *.dsl packages with menu integration instead of installing a raw *.deb file.

*.deb install definately gives the more advanced user a ton of flexibility, though.
Do you honestly think that that approach wasn't considered. For the orginal release: This is why not:

1. No icons
2. No fluxbox menus
3. Difficult to share with others because of 1 & 2
4. Wastes memory for docs, man pages, menus and other files nor really needed. ( remember is on the ramdisk)
5. Many deb packages require user interaction to setup
6. Dependencies requiring other pkgs not needed or wanted
7. Possibly breaking exisiting programs or infastructure

It seems to me that approach is not that friendly for the new user.

In my opinion it is better for the more advanced user to CLEAN up a deb pkg removing the unnecesssay files, adding icons, and menus, thereby reducing its size and making something that could easily be shared with even the newest of users.
Oops forgot one:

8. Using debs would require restoring the dpkg structure thus using even more of the ramdisk.
Hi all,

       I have been using DSL for long now and have seen the birth of many distros built around DSL. Amongst the few I have always been interested in feather and recently to LuitLinux. Now please don't throw those flames on me too by starting a talk about luit. I think we can learn a lot from these new distros. Also I feel that DSL developers are also learning something from them. Right from the DSL getting started screen to recent additions like abiword and gcombust shows that DSL developers are going through them.

       Regarding user customisation by adding .dsl and tar.gz files to the cd, honestly I think a small credit should also be given to Luit. As far as I remember, in the very first release of Luit a couple of months back, Luit had shown how to add mozilla firefox to the CD by a user. It had 2 options for adding firefox. One as a tar.gz format and the other to install firefox on the cd itself. I think now DSL and later feather have brought the first optiont in a bigger  and better way.

       Now let me bring forward to you all some personal experiences of mine with these options.

1. It was just yesterday that I came through this forum that Luit had released mplayer for DSL and Luit. So I downloaded it and burnt a copy of DSL 0.7 with mplayer.tar.gz from luit and also abiword.dsl and firefox.dsl. I then tried to boot from the CD but then it got stuck in the middle. The culprit .. mplayer.tar.gz from luit. Reason.. DSL 0.7 by default scans the CD for any tar.gz and .dsl file extentions and tries to install it and mplayer.tar.gz wasn't meant to installed like this. I tried options to stop this and then soon realised my cd is of no use anymore. According to my openion, it is ok to scan for an extention like .dsl but I find no reason why such a common file extention like tar.gz should be searched for. It is also a bad idea to automatically scan for .dsl files as I say about it in my next experience. I think it should only be installed only when required as had been shown in the first edition of Luit.

2. Regarding my other experience, it was only the other day that I was burning a copy of DSL 0.7 with the openoffice.dsl module. I then tried to boot from the CD. But no luck as I had only 256MB RAM. I will now have to upgrade to 500MB RAM to use my CD. Now look at this point. It has been mentioned that we can customise DSL and make a full 700MB cd on our own. But then what are we asking for. 2GB of RAM to be aproximate to run a 700MB myDSL CD. I think we can put this away from our mind for the moment. Lets see a second possibility. I burn a copy of DSL 0.7 with abiword.dsl and try to boot a PC with 32 MB RAM . Remember, we make a live CD to be able to boot any PC or to rescue other PC's. Now if I am not wrong, abiword.dsl will require about 20 to 25 MB of extra RAM. Now will that PC be able to run? The very concept of DSL being able to run in a low end PC is lost while Luit and Astrumi is happy to run abiword in under 32MB RAM.

      Now I would like to be clear that I am not bringing these experiences of mine to rebuke the DSL developers or to praise luit or others. In fact we all have to accept that it takes some time to perfect a new idea. Now here are some of my openions for future DSL.

1. Please add an option to stop automatic scanning of .dsl and tar.gz files and allow the users to install them ony when one is required.

2. I think we can also take from luit the second option to install softwares on the CD itself. Thus we can then save RAM space. At least firefox, openoffice and some packages can be installed in such a way.

3. When option 2 may not be possible, we can have the option of installing a package on a temporary mounted hdd partition.

I think other's may also have some other better options than mine. ( Please don't say that RAM is dirt cheap ).
Next Page...
original here.