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Auteur: Godefridus Daalmans
Datum:  
Aan: dng
Onderwerp: [DNG] About the experimental live DVD
Hello,

I would like to clarify some things about the live DVD that I made:

- arch is amd64, userid user password live. It works inside virtualbox,
not tested on bare iron. Do sudo bash to work as root.

- It was an experiment by me to learn live-build and see how far I could
get with it on Devuan while avoiding systemd

- It's not really a server installation, because that doesn't match with
a live DVD. Maybe that's why it was so easy to stay away from
libsystemd0 (thanks Devuan!!)

- It has udev and libudev1 (Devuan Jessie, couldn't purge systemd
completely)

- It is not an "official" Devuan selection of packages; it's a bloated
DVD full of 2.4 Gb of unrelated stuff. I call it "Vannsätter Linux".

- Nothing from non-free, so it's missing firmware-linux-nonfree, rar,
p7zip, and various microcodes, as well as mondo/mindi/afio :-(

- No wifi programs 'cause I don't have a laptop (suggestions??)

- I just put on it stuff that I selected for the following four
completely different purposes:

(1) generic live DVD, like the old Knoppix, for people from my village
to experiment with when they crash their MS Windows computers. The
locale is set to sv_SE.UTF-8, good to practise your Swedish. I couldn't
figure out how to change it while it's running.
So you can enter your credit card details if you want to begin on-line
shopping. I'm not a security expert, so I thought iceweasel (=firefox)
and HTTPS are good enough.
It has childsplay and stellarium.

(2) basic system admin rescue tools. I've only sporadically worked in a
system admin rôle, so it probably doesn't have the exact tools that you
expect :-)
It's especially lacking backup tools such as mondo/mindi/afio.

(3) programs that I like such as canfield and singularity :-)


(4) a large collection of development tools, scripts and programs, and a
short tutorial I wrote about the GNU hello and Debian hello package.

Let me try to explain (4)

We all need to begin somewhere.

Not all of us are experienced enough in the areas we need to learn to
make Devuan thrive.

A large task like "make an improved Devuan fork of a Debian package" or
"make a better udev" or "split dbus in three" is best done in little
steps, on a "safe" computer system like a live DVD inside virtualbox, so
you don't thrash your own computer.

I thought that this live DVD would help budding enthusiasts and people
like me to learn how to assist the Devuan team in their work.

Once you've re-built the Debian hello package yourself, you feel a bit
more confident that the goals of Devuan are actually attainable and
within human reach :-)

I cannot begin to say how impressed I am with Debian and Devuan, if you
look "under the hood", like you can with this live DVD (it contains the
debian-policy documentation, for instance).
It gives one the feeling that people much cleverer than you have
designed this (kinda opposite to systemd).

I made this DVD to help people like me to begin somewhere. Feedback is
welcome.

Now if you like I can upload it somewhere tonight (slow connection here
in the sticks). Any legal tips on how to do proper attribution to
Devuan, Marillat and Debian? Should I make a source DVD for it as well?
Maybe I should try a jigdo if that's possible.

Please reply to this long e-mail with a short description about what
kind of packages *you* had *expected* to find on a live DVD. There's 2
Gb left :-)

Frits D.