A new idea at a remaster. A totally different approach.

[false-hopes]

Okay, tonight some sort of hidden inspiration inside of me broke loose. I have been working on my own little customization of Knoppix. I figured it would be neat to show off to some of my friends, and be able to take my own little linux system with me on a cd everywhere I go. So I started working with my system. Now, a few days later, I am thinking about a new type of remaster, one that could turn Knoppix into a full-fledged Debian distrobution, much more than it is by a harddrive install now. The idea is to have the Knoppix CD boot right into a harddrive installer program. The harddrive installer would install a rather small system, with maybe a gui (not sure yet) but pretty much just a Knoppix system without any of the overbloated software. From here, you would reboot and have a shell script come up after logging in (it may have to be invoked by the user, a price to pay for my idea). The script would have a menu from which you could choose what to install for your system. Basically, a menu like this:

Which of the following would you like to install:
[1] KDE System
[2] Games
[3] Office System (openoffice, utilities that are needed with it)
[4] Fluxbox System
[5] Chat Programs (gaim, xchat, any other necessities)
[6] Graphics (Gimp)

And a whole bunch of other possibilities, but I don't feel like listing them all out right now. I know exactly how to program the shell script that will install the programs required, using apt-get. I would like peoples opions for this idea, and any help would be appreciated. I am a relative noob to linux, I know some stuff but not a lot, and this project would be part of a large learning curve I want to learn about the ins and outs of linux, more than what you get installing gentoo or other distrobutions, learn to do some basic shell scripting and things like that. Any advice? tips?

--Robert Deaton

[if I get a good response like I hope to, I will try to set up a paypal account for donations, as I am a poor 13 year old who needs a decent PC to work on, since this laptop won't cut it.]

Questions? E-mail me at bobby@false-hopes.com or IM me at masqueradicstyle

Thanks.

[garyng]

How is it different from the new Debian-installer then ? Even the old one(existing one in woody) functions similiarly.

[TyphoonMentat]

I assume it has better hardware-detection than the Debian installer.

If you're going to remaster, it'd be best to remaster from Kanotix, as that's been Debianized and tweaked for hard drive installs anyway.

[false-hopes]

i already started the base system for the remaster, i used the official knoppix, used a dpkg-query to output all the package names, put them in a file, and added apt-get remove to all of them, and took out the ones that i figured would be needed for the system. I saved that file as a shellscript, so now I need to fire up an emulator and get the system down to the bare minimum. Then, I need to learn about the bootup procedures, and see if I can find a place where I can make knoppix-installer start automaticlaly on the first boot. Any tips?

[garyng]

I assume it has better hardware-detection than the Debian installer.

If you're going to remaster, it'd be best to remaster from Kanotix, as that's been Debianized and tweaked for hard drive installs anyway.

If you mean the old(woody) one, it may be true but I am not sure about the one in sarge which is under extensive testing. As far as I can tell, knoppix use the same hwdata package which if being kept up-to-date in debian, shouldn't make much of a difference. Afterall, it is just a PCI id database. The USB stuff is handled by hotplug and XFree86 4.3 has pretty good default setup for various hardware too.

[false-hopes]

True, the newer sarge releases problably do use the same hwdata package, but is debian really friendly for a noob? One idea of this distro would to be simple enough for a noob to use and decide what to install, but after the install throws them in a linux environment without the help of YaST or similar programs. Not only that, but its a great learning expirience for me, seeing as I'm still a bit of a noob myself

[garyng]

YaST is going open source so I hope someone will port it to debian soon. May be you can do it. From a usability perspective, I don't see Knoppix to be much different than Debian, assuming X and KDE would be installed. Once in KDE, they are all the same.

I am not discouraging you to do it, just voice out what I see so as to let you know what is out there. Playing around with linux has always been interesting and whether it is useful for others doesn't really matter. I have been playing around with Knoppix and attempted to make my own convenient distribution too but now I found other things to be more interesting like running linux on Xbox, or modify the Linksys router to be more useful or setting up a LAN environment using out of date hardware(thouse 50 dollars a pop Pentium notebook) with a powerful server using VNC/RDESKTOP, for cash strapped community service etc.

Enjoy your venture in linux and good luck.

[false-hopes]

me? port YaST? NEVER.

I mentioned YaST because I hate it, its terrible. Its like "look at me i can do everything you dont need anything else, not even fdisk i uninstall that and use my own partitioning because i'm better". YaST is for the Total n00b idiot, but I don't think even they deserve that.

As far as this, yes, it is going to happen, most likely no matter what people say, but if I can get input and maybe a few more ideas or a few tips on ways to make this all go faster, then it would be a great help.

By the way, it would not be running KDE, it would problably use XFree and Fluxbox, because its really lightweight, and I would have a terminal so that they could invoke the packages installation script.

[garyng]

By the way, it would not be running KDE, it would problably use XFree and Fluxbox, because its really lightweight, and I would have a terminal so that they could invoke the packages installation script.

For newbies ? I hate to say it but it would be of little use if any. This field is to some extend shaded by Windows. Have you seen command line on Windows for newbies ? Even KDE is not enough if you are talking about newbies but at least it is a start. Anything less than that is just not suitable for newbies, IMO.

If people don't mind about command line, I am afraid they would find the standard Debian more than enough.

How about you try Libranet or may be lindows(Linspire) and see how they fair if you want ideas ?