June 25th, 2009 Releases, Screenshots
| Comments Off on ALSA included — now with sound
Here we go again. I just included the base ALSA files, some kernel modules and device nodes to make sure sound is working.
Currently sound is muted after boot, so you have to run alsamixer and use the key M to unmute front and PCM (OO is unmuted). Use the arrow keys to change the volume. It should look like in the screenshot.
You can grab screenshots now by pressing Shift+F12. Screenshots are saved as PNG files in /tmp/screenshot_YYYYMMDD-hhmmss.png.
I included some more firmware for Zydas and Ralink cards, please test if your WLAN interface is detected correctly and can be used with WICD.
Some words according fast boots: You can skip copying to RAM by pressing the TAB key in the boot menu and setting the variable toram=700000 to an insanely high value toram=9999999999. You might also want to skip the hardware protocol (which consumes lots of time) by adding hwproto|hwinfo| to the variable skipservices.
Download build lesslinux-20090625-1240.iso!
June 23rd, 2009 Releases, Screenshots
| Ein Kommentar »
Next step: I included the wireless tools, wpa_supplicant and WICD as a graphical frontend. All PCI and USB cards supported by the Vanilla kernel 2.6.29.5 should now be automatically loaded. I re-built the kernel with support for some staging drivers. Firmware for WLAN cards is included for Ralink cards, other firmwares and an update to 2.6.30 should follow in the next days.
Since I do not have included a screenshot application yet, a blurry shot made with my digicam:
Other changes:
- Firefox updated to 3.0.11
- Thunderbird 2.0.0.21 included
June 5th, 2009 Packages and Architecture, Releases, Screenshots
| Comments Off on Presenting Matt’s Magical Mount Manager
Another build, another new tool: mmmm is a simple yet efficient mount manager that clearly shows to which physical drive a volume belongs:
mmmm is built around the XML output of lshw and uses just Ruby and Ruby/Gtk. No DBUS, HAL or Policy Kit required which makes it attractive for builds that try to be as light as possible.
The interface of mmmm is clearly inspired by GtkMount of the Pmagic live distribution, but using the XML output of lshw is a bit more precise than just parsing “fdisk -l”.
TODO: mmmm is very usable right now, but for the future a button to reread devices would be nice.
Please test: Please test the latest build (lesslinux-20090604-1326) and tell me if mmmm correctly finds all your volumes. You might also send me your hardware information, so I can debug possible problems more easily.
Update: A small bug in mmmm prevents extended partitions from being correctly detected. A fixed build lesslinux-20090608-1708 is available.
May 28th, 2009 Releases, Screenshots
| Comments Off on Xconfgui added, packages updated
Another major step is done: An easy to use graphical frontend is added to adjust some final settings before starting into the desktop. The functions currently implemented are:
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Start of the X-Server to automatically detect the graphics card:
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Install LessLinux to an USB stick:
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Use or create encrypted containers:
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Set the user password:
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Adjust monitor driver and resolution:
Currently installation to USB stick and creation of encrypted containers does not do a check of free space. So you have to take care yourself. Besides that those functions work very well.
If you want to help, plese download the latest development build and run it.
Other improvements:
- Many updates of individual packages
- Xvesa not the only Xserver anymore, Xorg with drivers or Ati, Nvidia, Intel and Openchrome added
- Mousewheel now works in Xvesa
- XFCE updated to 4.6.1
Please provide feedback: I would be thankful if you provided me with some feedback regarding graphics and resolution on your hardware. If something does not work perfectly, please describe the problem and send me you hardware information so I can work on a solution. You might prepare an USB stick with an empty folder “hwinfo”. LessLinux writes an archive with lots of hardware information to this folder. Send me the content along with a description of your problem and I will try to solve it.
What’s next: I am now working on separating message strings from the tools to prepare some internationalization. WLAN support also has a high priority and the mount tool should follow soon.
Where to get it: Please download Lesslinux build 20090528-0856 from download.lesslinux.org/testing/
May 7th, 2009 Packages and Architecture
| Comments Off on libc decisions in future releases
When I started LessLinux I was considering uClibc as base C library, it is small and provides nearly everything that is needed for a small niche distribution like LessLinux. Unfortunately, several applications needed to be patched to compile flawlessly against uClibc. So I went with Glibc, just the BusyBox used in the first stages of the boot procedure is statically linked against uClibc.
Still there are some drawbacks when using Glibc, especially the dependence on Bash as shell and the relative big size. Now there seems to be a solution for this problem. Eglibc is a fork of Glibc that aims to be source and binary compatible with Glibc but removes the dependency to Bash as sole shell and will allow for lighter configuration. In the medium term this seems like a perfect solution: LessLinux does not need NIS and for some applications even localization might be skipped.
In the next weeks I will not have the time to play around with Eglibc, but as soon as the release of Glibc 2.10 is near, I will give Eglibc a try.
May 5th, 2009 Releases
| Comments Off on Next release, switched to Glibc 2.9
The next build is available, it is now built upon glibc 2.9. Besides that the former firefox binary is now replaced by a firefox 3.0.10 built from scratch — when starting LessLinux you will notice that Firefox starts in Minefield livery. This is OK for now since it is not an official build.
I also made some progress with the mount tool. During the boot process hard disks and USB sticks with FAT32 are detected, a Ruby-Gtk based simple graphical frontend now aks the users’ password when clicking a device (just in case you wonder, the password is set to “test”). A full fledged “mount manager” will follow.
We are nearly GPL compliant now, all sources are available at http://distfiles.lesslinux.org/. I will move obsolete sources to the subfolder “old/” some time in the future, but this does not have any priority here. The build system progresses and since the next days will be fully dedicated to LessLinux you might expect some progress and at least weekly updates in the next time.
April 9th, 2009 Releases
| Comments Off on New test version, new download location
All further testing releases will be available from http://download.lesslinux.org/testing/. Connection attempts to the old download server will be redirected.
Meanwhile Build 20090407-1111 fixes the complicated shutdown on earlier releases: “sudo” is now configured to allow the use of the command “shutdown”, “halt”, “reboot” and “poweroff” for everyone. Please consider: “/sbin/shutdown” is a simple shell script just good enough to allow shutdowns from the XFCE graphical environment.
April 8th, 2009 About
| Comments Off on Gotta start somewhere
What? LessLinux is a distribution that is aimed to be light, embeddable, simple, stupid. It is not based on any existing distribution and is currently solely intended to be used as a live distribution, started from CD, USB or via PXE.
Why? I use LessLinux as a test field for concepts and ideas that I want to incorporate in future projects. LessLinux is intended to evolve to a simple platform for different kinds of toolboxes and “single purpose distributions”.
Where? You might download a current development build of LessLinux from http://cdprojekte.mattiasschlenker.de/Public/LessLinux/
How can I help? Please prepare an USB stick with an empty folder “hwinfo” and send the archives in this folder after booting LessLinux to ms@mattiasschlenker.de. It will help me to work on the hardware support which is the biggest topic for now.
Why a blog? The chronologically ordered structure allows for easy updating. Blogs are usually well-indexed by search engines and using tags like “FAQ”, “Cheatcodes”, “Troubleshooting” will bring in some structure. As soon as LessLinux is settled a bit, a Wiki will follow.
Wo gibt es Infos auf Deutsch? Als Einstieg sei auf zwei Postings im Rootserverexperiment hingewiesen:
If you find some bugs either in LessLinux or in this blog, please let me know. I try to release as early and as often as possible. This also included this blog, so most of the styles should work, but some might not be displayed ideal. The template currently uses a crude mixture of German and English, this will also be fixed in the next days.
