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fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: wheezy-based refracta beta2 bugs, discuss, kudos, whatev

Thu Nov 22, 2012 1:05 pm

Right now, I think the most common use case for the pseudo-distro, Refracta, is to have an easy way to install debian configured the way we want onto our own and our friends' and families' computers. For me, it's also about having a live OS that I can take with me and use on someone else's computer or use as a rescue and repair system. Every one of us is going to want a slightly different configuration. In fact, I think that half the people listed as refracta devs don't use refracta. I see that as a good thing. The snapshot tool and installer have to remain versatile enough to accommodate the variety. Or the tools can be re-spun to fit particular situations.
I want to respond to other things that were posted, but I'm out of time and will return later or tomorrow.
Oh yeah, what's xfapplets panel plug-in? I couldn't find it by that name.
meandean

- meandean
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## Re: wheezy-based refracta beta2 bugs, discuss, kudos, whatev

Thu Nov 22, 2012 1:32 pm

> fsmithred wrote:Right now, I think the most common use case for the pseudo-distro, Refracta, is to have an easy way to install debian configured the way we want onto our own and our friends' and families' computers. For me, it's also about having a live OS that I can take with me and use on someone else's computer or use as a rescue and repair system.

Sounds about right....

> fsmithred wrote:In fact, I think that half the people listed as refracta devs don't use refracta..

I often use xfce for others but I do not use it myself. I am going to try it again though as I am not quite happy with other wm/de either.
meandean

- meandean
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## Re: wheezy-based refracta beta2 bugs, discuss, kudos, whatev

Thu Nov 22, 2012 1:33 pm

I can't quite catch what thwaks point is exactly so I will wait for further clarification or a mental burst that lets me understand.
I will try to hit on it a bit though...
I have never considered refracta to be a distro actually although we have to call it that as we are distributing software. Not really even a derivative. Just a 'canned' debian install that offers a bit different pre-packaged goodness than debian does...along with a snapshot tool, different installer, live image, and such.
What would a showcase of a xfce powered environment look like anyway?
Some local .desktop files wouldn't hurt to clean up the menu. But then again when someone wants to change something we have tweaked and then has to go looking for what we tweaked. That is never fun. That is actually why I probably do not use other distros is that I often work harder at undoing what they have 'fixed' then simply fixing what debian has not done for me.
thwak

- thwak
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## Re: wheezy-based refracta beta2 bugs, discuss, kudos, whatev

Thu Nov 22, 2012 8:36 pm

@nadir
I didn't realize that you're staunch "no non-free" advocate. I'm not, but I didn't intend to ruffle your feathers about that. BTW, if you're the same "nadir" as at the debian forum (i think so) thanks -- you're among the few kind-to-noobs participants I've found over there.
salineOS? I'm not using it. I just mentioned it, and antix, because they also include (and kinda emphasize) remastersys and / or refractasnapshot.
Today I'm using "GALPon MiniNo" (debian + openbox +LXDE)
Last night, I booted to Semplice, and later today I'll probably boot Lubuntu 12.10
Surveying the various debian+lxde distros this weekend...

> most common use case for the pseudo-distro, Refracta

Aha, reading that helped me put things into perspective

> What would a showcase of a xfce powered environment look like anyway?

"showcase" as in, all the xfce goodies installed nad xfapplet + superbar (gnome-do) installed to an xfce4-panel... but that's moot, in light of the above description of the intended use case.

> why I probably do not use other distros is that I often work harder at undoing what they have 'fixed'

heh, I hear ya!
nadir

- nadir
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## Re: wheezy-based refracta beta2 bugs, discuss, kudos, whatev

Fri Nov 23, 2012 7:05 am

Yes, to a certain degree i am an advocate. Keeping refracta in mind it looks like one of the few which doesn't add non-free as if there was no tomorrow (some things, like wifi, seems to make sense, imho).
I also like antiX, and a lot (though it is not much in free neither... ). I am not sure why. Well: it booted on all and everything i tried to use it on. Perhaps due to that.
And yes, i try (!) to be friendly, mainly cause i am a noob myself (aka in need of help by others). When i am interested in the subject i can be awkward ... sometimes... but that ain't mean (just awkward).
Last time i checked my feathers were fine
I have often thought about a common forum, btw, but it doesn't look like it would be possible to organize that.
Like said above: To me (!) refracta really is just a project, not a "real" distro (One might call it a customized debian). I get ideas by it. I also have a good troubleshooting live-CD (Say cryptsetup is installed).
I also agree with what Dean said earlier (lots of distros make changes for the sake of change "something", and then it's a pain to undo it).
Saline is going on my nerves, but i am not sure why. Probably cause i am a Debian fanboy. crunchbang did go on my nerves too. I also didn't know why. Something with a) changes for the sake of change and b) pointing out all the time that it is soooo low on resources (while it is just like stock Debian and just like any other environment, besides kde and gnome, assuming they are not configuret) and c) they take it too serious.
dzz

- dzz
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## Re: wheezy-based refracta beta2 bugs, discuss, kudos, whatev

Fri Nov 23, 2012 10:28 am

I said somewhere that debian-live in wheezy seemed half baked. Don't waste your time with live-persistence (or live-anything) in wheezy. I had to trawl their mailing list to find this:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-live/201 ... 00061.html Daniel Baumann, 05 Oct 2012

> you'll need to pin the sid packages in when building a wheezy image.

Having rebuilt refracta-wheezy-beta2-20121117_2253 with live-* from sid I'm doing much better and now got persistence working. (my lenovo keyboard works too!)
wheezy live-boot is 3.0~a35-1 28 Jun 2012 There have been 10 newer versions in sid since then, currently 3.0~b7-1 Even with sid version I only got live-hooks working by hacking lib/live/config.sh
Another downside of no-install-recommends: live-boot and live-config have no manpages; live-boot-doc and live-config-doc must be installed seperately. They really do need to be available (even though they might refer to things that still don't work 5 months later)
fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: wheezy-based refracta beta2 bugs, discuss, kudos, whatev

Fri Nov 23, 2012 1:17 pm

> Having rebuilt refracta-wheezy-beta2-20121117_2253 with live-* from sid I'm doing much better and now got persistence working. (my lenovo keyboard works too!)
> wheezy live-boot is 3.0~a35-1 28 Jun 2012 There have been 10 newer versions in sid since then, currently 3.0~b7-1 Even with sid version I only got live-hooks working by hacking lib/live/config.sh

Yuk. I wanted to avoid a mixed system. Do you know if the version in wheezy will get upgraded before wheezy goes stable? I know some packages will be allowed to upgrade during the freeze, but I don't know which ones.
I just noticed the live-tools package. "...contains additional support scripts for Debian Live systems" Is that something that would be useful and should be added?
dzz

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## Re: wheezy-based refracta beta2 bugs, discuss, kudos, whatev

Fri Nov 23, 2012 2:16 pm

It depends what you mean by a mixed system. When I upgraded live-* no other core system stuff got changed, there were no libs or other deps to upgrade from wheezy.
Sid sources were then disabled just because I don't want the aggravation of a mixed system (I got proper sid elsewhere)
Testing might be less prone to actually break than sid but something which is semi- or even non-functional, or just plain irritating, can hang around a long time. If something in sid actually breaks a system the fix always comes quick (or one can downgrade the offender)
Who knows if or when new live-* will make wheezy, my guess is it will at the last moment, when they get it right as much as possible in sid before it's too late
http://packages.debian.org/sid/all/live-tools/filelist Seems non-essential but useful in some cases. Installed Size (sid) is only 155.0 kB so probably should be added
RE wicd:
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/p ... /changelog shows some wheezy activity. My rebuild included an older version of Ceni for now.
Apart trom that (and unwanted gtk3 bloat) wheezy seems OK but enthusiasm here is little more than academic compared to squeeze with a few needed backports.
meandean

- meandean
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## Re: wheezy-based refracta beta2 bugs, discuss, kudos, whatev

Fri Nov 23, 2012 3:03 pm

> fsmithred wrote:Yuk. I wanted to avoid a mixed system. Do you know if the version in wheezy will get upgraded before wheezy goes stable? I know some packages will be allowed to upgrade during the freeze, but I don't know which ones.

I also used the live stuff from unstable to build my recent LXDE image. As dzz said, it doesn't drag in anything and no reason for it to cause any sort of conflicts either. As far as I know the newest and bestest 3.x version of live stuffs will go into wheezy and then it it will be the 4.x version for the next release. So I have little to no doubt that the latest & greatest 3.x that goes into sid will be what wheezy is released with. Pretty much nothing is suppose to be uploaded to sid/unstable right now except for what is to go into the wheezy release, they are near clones at this time. So right now mixing is practically foolproof as there is little to no difference in testing and unstable. In fact you could say NOW is the best time to have a mixed system since the things that actually need fixing for the release are actually first uploaded to sid. Of course if you want a stable/wheezy system you need to be sure you do not continue to track testing/unstable once wheezy gets released but you knew that...
fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: wheezy-based refracta beta2 bugs, discuss, kudos, whatev

Fri Nov 23, 2012 4:29 pm

Working on it...
I can confirm that persistence doesn't work using the beta2 image. I'm now trying it with live-* from sid in my test system. Assuming it works, I'll do the same in the official build system, and it'll be in beta3.
BTW, just in case anyone was wondering when the latest refracta will stop being beta, I'm planning to keep it that way (or at least "rc") until wheezy goes stable. Or maybe a week after that.
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