lesslinux.org Development Blog

Build lesslinux-20090626-1010.iso lesslinux-20090626-1435.iso fixes firmware loading issues with lots of WLAN cards and adds some new applications (Evince Document Viewer, Gnumeric Spreadsheet, AbiWord, File-Roller):

The current development builds of LessLinux use a simple mechanism to create hardware protocols. Just plug in a FAT formatted USB stick (it should be partioned, superfloppy might work but will not be supported forever) that contains an folder hwinfo in the root directory of the stick. You might also specify the boot variable hwid=… to a unique identifier (like the PC brand and model).

I would be very happy if you sent me as many hardware protocols as possible. Please note: hardware protocols might contain data that allows to uniquely identify a single machine. In environments where this is a problem you might open the archive in hwinfo and just send me the files you wish.

To edit the boot line, just press Tab: (more…)

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!

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

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.