new KLU-jamXFCEbase 1.1 (620MiB) Ubuntu Jammy-based

[rcrsn51]

- at least for those in a situation where turning off secure boot is simply not an option).

The Starter Kit project has handled this situation since 2020.

[rockedge]

The Starter Kit project has handled this situation since 2020.

Just saying this is no help to me. Please guide me to this Starter Kit.

[wiak]

- at least for those in a situation where turning off secure boot is simply not an option).

The Starter Kit project has handled this situation since 2020.

Typical spam post. Same poster often provides links to non-existent resources or information that needs the attachments supposedly provided. Apparently the attachments often get removed because the poster gets into a huff because no-one posted a response quick enough.

I don't myself bother at all with such poor sources of information anymore since better to use reliable people than waste a lot of time and suffer disappointment when claimed contributions don't even exist. Result is a kind of unreliable forum pollution; there are many such link or attachments removed by that 'expert'. Plenty of others can provide same expertise actually, and without fuss or conditions. The ultra-long 'Starter Kit' threads are basically wasted since so many such 'holes' in their useful continuity. No dev 'team' can thus grow and develop there, which results in one-man band dictatorship situation that leaves its users uncertain of its likely maintainance and future continuity.

People less need individual 'experts' than they need reliable useful information and equally reliable contributions provided without conditions or required hoops to first jump through prior to being given the info or provision. And who has time or cares to read huge thread to finally find the claimed resource (which may or may not still exist)? Pity, but that is how that situation has become.

[rockedge]

for a guy so hung up on response time I am surprised I received no response from @rcrsn51 to my query. Leaves me to have to search for it.

I seem to remember having this conversation before about the nastiness and the removing of the links and packages.

Man I posted twice test results AS REQUESTED and no response. That was yesterday and the day before so we are talking hours and hours.......but only silence.

I can imagine if the shoe was on the other foot.

[mikeslr]

for a guy so hung up on response time I am surprised I received no response from @rcrsn51 to my query. Leaves me to have to search for it.

I seem to remember having this conversation before about the nastiness and the removing of the links and packages.

Man I posted twice test results AS REQUESTED and no response. That was yesterday and the day before so we are talking hours and hours.......but only silence.

I can imagine if the shoe was on the other foot.

Real life can be distracting. Even I sometimes forget to follow-up on conversations. And as far as I can tell, there's a not uncommon human-quirk that something clear in one's own mind is belived to be communicated to another by just the reference point enabling it to have been remembered*. Add that you've structured the Forum to make it easy to find the starter kit, viewtopic.php?t=644, once you know where it is don't be too put-off by rcrsn51's silence.

Some Like it Hot.png (223.43 KiB) Viewed 395 times

Nobody's perfect.

-=-=-=-=
* PS. Working down from the top of the forum, I just ran across this conversation where the tables were turned as to who failed to provide references. viewtopic.php?p=132561#p132561. More important: Note to self. Hunt of 'Some Like it Hot' and watch it again.

[wiak]

for a guy so hung up on response time I am surprised I received no response from @rcrsn51 to my query. Leaves me to have to search for it.

I seem to remember having this conversation before about the nastiness and the removing of the links and packages.

Man I posted twice test results AS REQUESTED and no response. That was yesterday and the day before so we are talking hours and hours.......but only silence.

I can imagine if the shoe was on the other foot.

Real life can be distracting. Even I sometimes forget to follow-up on conversations.
...
* PS. Working down from the top of the forum, I just ran across this conversation where the tables were turned as to who failed to provide references. viewtopic.php?p=132561#p132561. More important: Note to self. Hunt of 'Some Like it Hot' and watch it again.

That's all very well, but the real issue, not only but particularly in that Starter Kit, is the oft done removal of contributions. Having clashes of personality and in-fighting happens at times, not that any of that has importance, but if even a few removed parts of what we contribute this forum as a useful resource to come visit would be destroyed. The guy has a lot of expertise and that is well acknowledged so pity to feel the need to hurt users as a weapon of control. Not worth dealing with that - better to buy Windows since all they look for is your money.

Do you remember rufwoof? Another who felt he had the right to control the behaviors and opinions of others. A big loss to this forum overall in terms of interesting ideas and technical descriptions (if not in terms of packaged working contributions). Okay, so didn't quite vanish since his own particular distro interest and needs forced him to somewhat reluctantly return to this forum. He also went to the in a huff trouble to delete many of his useful posts. What a daft dumb waste of time.

[wiak]

my life is a bit upside-down at the present @gabtech so the negative approach of some towards me gave me a good excuse, but of course I'll get back onto this eventually. Indeed it weighs on my mind that KL needs a newer Ubuntu-based release, which will I assure you appear sooner or later here since its lack feels like an unnecessary black hole in the KL universe.

It will hopefully not be long till I do this. It is just one distro release after all and the core commandline version is almost trivial to make as it happens.

So I'm doing a bit work on this at the moment.

Currently built a commandline only test KLU-Noble and trying different mksquashfs compressions on that. Results on main root filesystem are as follows, and won't be much different at all once I inherit and copy in the KL utilities from latest KLV-Airedale, which will be my next step prior to releasing a commandline-base KLU-Noble. The following includes NetworkManager (for connection via nmtui):

Main root-filesystem uncompressed normal directory size: 619 MiB

mksquashfs compressed using -comp xz -Xbcj x86 -b 1024k: 161 MiB

mksquashfs compressed using -comp zstd -Xcompression-level 19 -b 512K: 187 MiB

mksquashfs compressed using -comp zstd -Xcompression-level 19 -b 1024K: 183 MiB

I'll be using that last zstd with -b 1024K. Much more responsive than the small xz compressed version; albeit 14% larger in storage size it is relatively small anyway. Obviously the final iso will need kernel/modules/firmware and initrd added (I'll also be using same zstd compression with the firmware and modules). The firmware included tends to determine final size of the iso (once compression level decided); that and whatever the user chooses to provide for a GUI desktop - smallest would be a custom gui desktop rather than what upstream provides by default, but the likes of Sway with Wayland is pretty small addon anyway.

NOTE WELL that this is a pretty nice base commandline release with pretty full Ubuntu commandline utilities. Of course a lot of these could be stripped out, but why???! I really don't appreciate unnecessarily crippled releases.

I will be using a skeleton FR initrd so users can then easily swap in any Puppy-style huge kernel/modules combination that provides overlayfs support (aufs not needed, but not a problem if also compiled into the huge kernel, and the overlayfs can be provided either built in to the kernel or as a module).

I will thereafter include a quick install script for a GUI desktop (which can be supplemented by alternative desktops by distro extender using alternative addon script); I'll likely provide a test iso with one such desktop built in (useful I imagine for Clarity 'tests'). I 'could' provide that as addon desktop sfs files, but more generally it is usually better built into the main root filesystem iso release since then pseudo full install mode of the uncompressed main root filesystem allows easy remastering all in one chunk. Nevertheless, users interested in moulding the distro into a variant of their own choice will be better to start with the commandline-only base variant, put that into pseudo full install mode, and run a suitable desktop gui install script to create the final frugal install.

Release date? No idea at present sorry, but at least you know I am actively working on it... and I will endeavour to release the base commandline-only variant relatively soon since others may find that useful for their own addons

[Clarity]

... I really don't appreciate unnecessarily crippled releases. ...

Less developer work and chance for developer errs is reduced for the minimal benefit a cripple provides.

Time better spent in ability toward a stable platform for any user. Smarter users know how to cripple for their use and experienced user know how to change complete system operations for unique needs in a remaster.

The multiple desktop option idea, you propose is interesting approach. But you'll need a 'ncursive' console app for a desktop DE selection to run, OOTB, affording any user to choose one to continue to a chosen desktop, or, to operate in console only mode.

A good approach, no doubt.

[wiak]

Well, when I say it is not 'crippled', of course the base version is minimal and thus crippled to that extent, but the amount of 'crippling' is determined by Ubuntu minimal build rather than by myself. That way any 'official' Ubuntu minimal-rootfs upgrade will work as Ubuntu intended.

The base build is coming along well and easily because rather than trying to re-invent wheels I am borrowing from long-developed KLV-Airedale for the KL utilities components; that is helped A LOT by the fact that most of that is included in one location, which is /usr/local hierarchy, so I am simple copying that hierarchy from KLV_Airedale into a separate numbered addon (which I can use uncompressed during dev work, but will squash later once ready). Of course, there may well be components of that /usr/local hierarchy that should be removed for my purpose, but that can be determined during actual use and from forum user feedback - main thing is that KLV-Airedale dev work can help determine this overall KL-utils sfs if rockedge will keep in mind we can conveniently use his Airedale dev work for this more general KL utilities addon.

Of course not everything needed for KL utilities addon is including in that /usr/local hierarchy. For example, there are some binaries that have been placed under /usr/bin such as snapmerge puppy (though personally I'd prefer that also under /usr/local/bin. Also /usr/share/pixmaps and /usr/share/applications contain some parts that may need determined later via user use and feedback. The more KL specific sharable stuff that could be organized under /usr/local hierarchy the better though. One thing related:

I want to use a huge kernel type of construction alongside only skeleton latest FR initrd for this KLU_Noble build. Reason is that, like general Puppy builds, the use of a huge kernel arrangement makes it easy for users to swap different kernel/modules/firmware combinations to suit their own computers (old and new). I see that latest KLV-Airedale is not using a huge kernel; is that an official Void Linux kernel? @rockedge or whoever: Is there a suitable newish KL huge kernel/modules and good firmware set available that you'd recommend for first release of this KLU-Noble I am working on??

[rockedge]

@wiak I also think that the placement of KL utilities into a directory (squashed or not) is a good idea.

I always intended to move the snapmerge and the rest of the RAM2 mode components into /usr/local/bin because it is as @wiak noted, easy to use the same parts in other KL's with the components all in one place.

For now we'll keep KLV-Airedale going in it's current design to make borrowing from it easier. It is the secret on how fast a special purpose KLV can be constructed. KLV-vmHost was built rapidly by modifying an already existing PLUG file recipe for an almost KLV-Airedale and adding the the virtual machine packages. Then some manual polish and there it is...a working KLV for running virtual machines.

Is there a suitable newish KL huge kernel/modules and good firmware set available that you'd recommend for first release of this KLU-Noble I am working on??

I have been using either a huge full real time kernel self compiled with various firmware modules or a modular Void Linux kernel extracted and assembled like a Puppy Linux huge kernel. I feel like there is a lot of success using the huge Void Linux modular kernels.

Though a thought....what if we use the same tools as FirstRib/KLV that extracts the actual Void Linux kernel and creates the initrd.gz, 00modules and the vmlinuz but modified for doing the same using an Ubuntu kernel??

Code: Select all

FRmake_initrd.sh
FRmake_initrd_dep.sh
FRextract_kernel.sh

The 01firmware I am still trying out different ones from Puppy Linux or extracted manually from Void Linux firmware