Quote Originally Posted by utu View Post
Greetings again, Forester
Hi utu,

I quite liked your description (post #7, this thread) of what you want the first time I read it. It is a fair reflection of what I think we discussed way back when.

I don't know that others will understand it quite the same way. Some might not recognise it as 'remastering', some might wonder what is so special about this set of requirements. I seem to remember KK himself wondering why bother.

I still think you have a valid point to make but it needs to be able to made convincingly.

When I think of what is involved in remastering I see a 'selection' of what to include, 'assembling' what is selected, 'generating' a new image from the assembly and, of course, 'testing, testing, testing'. Others might see it differently - they might include publishing the new image, for example. I think the process is iterative and I'd see testing as continual, rather than something that is done at the end.

In the middle of all this, the 'generation' bit may not seem all that important but that was all we were really talking about. Perhaps our approach is a bit to simplistic. I don't think so but you would need to convince the skeptics.

You start with a working LiveUSB installation. You use synaptic to add a few packages and may be remove a few others. That covers 'selection'. You've also covered 'assembly': everything is in your persistent store. You've been playing with the new packages as you've installed them. That covers 'testing' too (for all practical purposes). So all you need is the 'generation' bit and that isn't something you can do with a click or two of the mouse.

This may not be 'remastering' as KK knows it but it seems to be a reasonable scenario (at least) for the 'ordinary' user's first attempts at remastering. I think there is a case of providing a simple (to use) tool for this.

Do this make sense ? Is there any point in my continuing ? It only gets harder from here on.

The next questions you might be asked as about the scope the method covers (like is this LiveUSB only ?). There is no problem with there being limitations but it helps if you know what they are. Open discussion may help widen the scope at little cost and bring others on board.

P.S. Still interested in the special properties of ntfs for remastering.