This paper written by Andreas Tille is intended to people who are interested in the philosophy of Custom Debian Distributions and the technique which is used to manage those projects. It is explained in detail why these are no forks from Debian but reside completely inside the Debian GNU/Linux distribution and which advantages can be gathered by this approach. The concept of meta-packages and user role based menus is explained. In short: This document describes why Custom Debian Distributions are important to the vitality and quality of Debian.
Custom Debian Distributions
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
If it weren’t for custom Debian distros like Knoppix or Morphix, I don’t think I’d ever aquire an appreciation for Debian.
Debian is my first and will probably my last disttribution. Why? Because it gets the work done with less effort.
Free software is a community effort. Debian brings the forces together and let people to spend their time on interesting stuff instead of reinventing the wheel.
Debian’s main problem, IMHO, is the sheer number of packages. Many of these packages won’t be of interest to certain users, and I applaud Debian developers for recognising this.
But assuming that every package approved for a CDD will be of interest to a particular group of users is equally absurd, but that is exactly what they are assuming (by removing a metapackage if a package which it includes is removed). This will produce the same old problems, only default Debian installs will be fatter.
A CCD would have been more effective if the unwanted packages were removed altogether (eg. from the ISOs, from the web and ftp directory) and the user was given a couple of dozen distinct options as to what they want (eg. time management, word processing, etc.). It is better than throwing in the kitchen sink, which they did in the past and which they are doing with this new scheme.
Just a quick question, if I download the light version of Morphix, and install to HDD, does this mean I have a fully working Debian installed on my HDD. That I could then install GNOME 2.6 or KDE 3.2.1 if I choose, and update every other base package?
Since metapackages depend on the packages they encompass, you can just search for the appropriate metapackage in aptitude, browse the dependencies and pick and choose among them to your heart’s content. I admit this is probably less user-friendly than one would hope, though.
Package tags (http://deb-usability.alioth.debian.org/debtags) are in the works, and will be a far more fine-grained means of grouping packages than the current approach of using tasks and metapackages. The CDDs are planning on making extensive use of them in the future to address the problem you outlined with regards to the sheer number of packages. Quoth Ben Armstrong of the Debian-Jr CDD (http://lists.debian.org/debian-lex/2003/debian-lex-200306/msg00015….):
“I think the meta package approach will continue to be a reasonable way to install a default set of packages, whereas tags give the user the ability to fine-tune package choices without having to slog through several thousand packages to find appropriate ones.”
Morphix is great, but it’s been a while since the current version (0.4.1 or something) was released and so the packages may be a bit old. It may be worth while to wait for version 0.5 to be released. It should come with some enhancements – some kind of ‘Morphix control panel’ is under work, I’ve understood. Anyway, one good thing in Morphix is that it uses packages from Debian Sid (or ‘unstable’) and so it is 100% Debian-compatible.
since the current version (0.4.1 or something) was released and so the packages may be a bit old.
Yes but can’t I just apt-get to the latest? Do you know if 0.5 will have kernel 2.6 by default?
“Yes but can’t I just apt-get to the latest?”
No problem there.
“Do you know if 0.5 will have kernel 2.6 by default?”
Let’s hope so. That’s the main reason I recommended waiting till 0.5.
The LightGUI version boots you straight to XFce4 after HDD installation. If you want to boot to command prompt (and start XFce4 from .xinitrc with ‘startx’), you need to remove the startup script (in /etc/init.d/ or someplace like that – check Morphix forums if you have problems) or make the script not executable (in xffm or with ‘chmod’) so that you can study it later on. In all other respects Morphix gives you a genuine Debian system. 🙂
Here in Brazil there are some popular Knoppix-based ditributions aimed to home desktop use:
http://www.kurumin.org/
http://www.kalango.org/
They have some interesting aitions like “control panels” and ‘magic icons”, who run shell scripts that download and install softwares and configure common hardware devices like winmodems, adsl modems, etc.
Thanks
Are these 2 portuguese only ?
Or can the rest of the world use them.