Contents
-
Debian Pure Blends
- Terminology
- Communication
- News
- Blends released with Squeeze:
- Debian internal projects which might profit from the Blends effort:
- Debian external projects which might be interested in the Blends effort:
- Tools or projects that might be interesting to adopt in the Debian Pure Blends scope
- Common Issues for Blends
- See also
Debian Pure Blends
Terminology
- Debian Pure Blend
- a subset of Debian that is configured to support a particular target group out-of-the-box.
- Debian Blend
- a Debian-based distribution that is or wants to become a Debian Pure Blend - i.e. has as an explicit goal of improving Debian as a whole, consequently all extras they offer will either become part of Debian, or are temporary workarounds to solve a need of the target group which can't be solved within Debian yet.
- Flavor
- upon installation of a Blend there often is a choice, depending on the particular use, about what set of defaults to use. A flavor is the name of such a set. (e.g. Skolelinux has flavors for main-server, workstation, and thin-client-server)
- Subproject
- group of people within Debian working together on a common purpose. In most cases this common purpose is either some specific functionality (e.g. debian-multimedia) or a Blend (e.g. debian-science).
Please see also:
Communication
Mailing list: discussions about Blends currently take place on debian-blends@lists.debian.org mailing list.
IRC: #debian-custom channel at irc.debian.org is present.
Wiki: used to document the outcome of discussions on the mailing list.
Discussion page: this wiki page can also be discussed at ?DebianPureBlends/Discussion
News
Test server for Blends webtools: here some new features of Blends/TasksPages and Blends/BugsPages will be tested
New Blends: Debian GIS, Debian Multimedia
Blends/BugsPages featuring bugs on dependent packages of a Blend
Blends/TasksPages for those Blends who are using blends-dev framwork
blends-dev framework now used by seven Blends
Blends released with Squeeze:
If you get Squeeze the following Blends are contained:
Debian Junior: For children
Debian Med: Medical
Skolelinux (built by the Debian Edu project): a Blend aimed at schools.
Debian Science: Debian for different sciences.
Br Desktop: Debian for Brazilian home desktop users.
DebiChem: Debian for chemists
Debian EzGo: packages focussed on Asian localised desktops
Debian internal projects which might profit from the Blends effort:
Debian Accessibility: see also blends page
DebianGIS : http://pkg-grass.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl , a Blend for Geographical Information and Earth Observation Systems (includes ?OpenGIS and GPSTk), see also blends page
Debian Lex: see also blends page
DebianLive : Building Live CDs might be simplified by using metapackages of a blend
Debian Lex: Debian for multimedia artists
Debian external projects which might be interested in the Blends effort:
Caimán: a Debian derivative for cuban educational system.
Sacix: a Debian derivative that provides the GNOME desktop for thin-clients through LTSP after installed (multiple profiles available).
Debian-eGov (Debian for Municipalities and Administrations)
DeMuDi: Audio (part of AGNULA)
LliureX: Distribution for the Valencian (Spain) Public Educational System ( http://www.cult.gva.es/ ).
Teófilo Ruiz Suárez < teo@debian.org >
Ichthux: a Debian derivative aimed at christians
Deb-Ice: a lightweight Debian derivative using IceWM for the window manager.
Tools or projects that might be interesting to adopt in the Debian Pure Blends scope
Klaus Knopper < klaus@knopper.net > (?)
Dirk Eddelbuettel < edd@debian.org >
Alex de Landgraaf < alextreme@xs4all.nl >
FREEDUC developers < ofset-freeduc@lists.sourceforge.net >
Linux-EduCD with preconfigurated LTSP and Moodle.
Linux-EduCD developer < rajmund@simp-st.pl >
Andreas Mueller < erposs@credativ.de >
Peter Eisentraut < peter.eisentraut@credativ.de >
Debian-CGL : Debian GNU/Linux for communications and data services platforms
Adamantix (Once was called 'Trusted Debian')
UCK - Ubuntu Customization Kit
Reconstructor - Ubuntu Reconstructor
DRU - Dell's Disc Remastering Utility for Ubuntu
Builder - gNewSense builder script
Remastersys - a tool for making a livecd from an Ubuntu installation
Unidistro - A framework to create and maintain a Debian/Ubuntu derivative distro
Ubuntu Customised Iso Image Tools - a spec for Ubuntu 8.04
(may be more here http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/installers.html )
Common Issues for Blends
Automatic installation
Using the new DebianInstaller and a few hooks to get the partitioning we want and the packages we want installed into the hard drive. I'm fairly satisfied with this solution.
Installing the list of package we want
Using metapackages (i.e. packages consisting only of dependencies) to install the packages we want. Used hooks in base-config to get them installed during first time installation. Not too happy about the metapackage approach, as it is fragile and break easily if some dependency is unavailable.
Preconfigure the packages we install
Using three different approaches:
- use modularized/multilevel configuration where available (desktop-profiles, /etc/apache/conf.d, ...),
- Load answers into the debconf database before the packages are installed using some home-make script, and
- rewrite/replace configuration files using cfengine at the end of the installation if the package is unable to configure what we want using debconf.
I'm fairly satisfied with this solution, but am not sure if the method used to feed the debconf database is the best available. I believe the best option would be to extend all the packages we use to make it possible to configure everything we need using debconf answers, when they can't be made to do modularized/multilevel configuration.
Automatic X configuration
Using home-brewed script filling the debconf database, and then call dexconf from the XFree86 package to generate the configuration file.
The Hardware detection info is fetched from various packages (discover, ?Kudzu, detect, etc).
CD building
Using a heavily patched version of debian-cd to create the CDs. Most of the patches is to include the d-i boot floppies. This should now be possible with the standard version of debian-cd, but no one in Skolelinux have taken the time to update our copy of the scripts.
Note Also take a look at DebianCustomCD and DebianInstaller/Build. These provide instructions for the building of the actual cd's (rather than meta packages, and most of the other issues mentioned in this page)
Configure default language for all users
Using a custom script to rewrite config files to modify the default language/locale.
Making simpler KDE / GNOME (XFree86) reaching and menus
Make a simpler way to select the window desktop manager for XFree86 (KDE/GNOME) by default or by selection on screen by the user (in a similar way to the LILO / Grub boot screens to select to partition to boot).
Working on a system to make simple menus and change the menu depending on the users group membership.
Working on the direct use of KDE programs in GNOME and viceversa (in a similar way to Alien).
See also
DebianBeowulf - Beowulf clusters running Debian.