Refracta Development, Scripts, etc.
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thwak

- thwak
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## refractasnapshot is a blessing. Thank you!

Fri Feb 14, 2014 7:21 pm

By following link from
mintCast 192 – February 6, 2014 http://mintcast.org/2014/02/06/mintcast ... lementary/
to
Why Did Linux Mint Ax mintConstructor? http://fossforce.com/2014/01/linux-mint ... nstructor/
I just discovered the news that LinuxMint(TM)(R)(Patent Pending)(allYerSearchRbelongToUs) has withdrawn its mintConstructor remastering tool from distribution.
I'm reminded what a blessing refractasnap represents, and that I probably haven't said THANK YOU often enough, or loudly enough, in between my posting to nitpick hiccups in existing features and documentation.
For me, the central bit in the ReGlue news post is this quote, attributed to His Holiness Mr. Mint:
(capitalization, with sarcastic intent, is mine. It's not present in the news post.)

> “Regarding branding issues themselves, we’re getting in touch with the maintainer of Linux Mint Studio and he accepted to rename and re-brand his work under a different name. We got no news from ‘Dewdrop’… As a rule of thumb we like to encourage everyone to use the technology we develop (i.e. our packages, repositories and tools) but to also discourage people from using our name, logos, artwork and branding. Ideally, we want to share everything we do, but we don’t want anyone else but us to call themselves ‘Linux Mint.’ It’s our identity.”

https://github.com/isek/mintconstructor ... tructor.py
You can refer to a fork, and browse the github tree, to see that "mint-common" is declared as a dependency of the mintConstructor package.
I'm saying:
The quoted "explanation" offered regarding mintConstructor's withdrawal is specious, and that Mint's bent (as in,"the fruit didn't fall far from the Ubuntu tree") is toward monetization. "please DO use our stuffs... just don't use our logo or name" SOUNDS like a benevolent invitation, but I'm convinced it stems from Mint's desire to land its preinstalled crapware (present in the base Mint ISO thanks to hooks placed by components within the "mint-common" package) on as many desktops as it can.
Mint Search Enhancer.
end user can clickety-click opt out but, by design, cannot uninstall.
Attempting to weed it out by the roots (why? Because it represents a privacy/fingerprinting issue) necessitates traipsing across various dirs, editing various files... AND installing/using a sqlite db editing utility. After which you'll discover that, oh-so-conveniently, the "mint-common" package has been cough, cough, updated and silently reinjected via the MintUpdate daemon.
Anyone who shares, creates a remaster from any Mint base, unwittingly serves as a pawn in spreading Mint Search Enhancer.
Yeah, please change the logo, the name, the artwork and...
...(but) when Aunt Minnie later decides to install Opera (or Chrome, or Firefox, or Iceweasel, or Thunderbird) the preinstalled hooks will inject Mint Search Enhancer into each of those newly-installed applications.
Hahaha.
Between Mint and Ubuntu, they've managed to perpetuate this crapware far and wide enough that they're pissed off Mozilla.
Newer versions of Firefox and Thunderbird now perform "update check", first run, and periodically thereafter, specifically checking whether
"someone else, a downstream affiliate, has modded/displaced the official (Mozilla-provided) search addons"
and popping up warningWarning dialogs inviting the user to consider re-downloading and restoring the 'official' addons.
(Oh, and here's a handy checkbox you can set to prevent (strangerDanger) 'Others' from changing the search addons away from the Official addons...)
Shortly after the inception of Mint Search Enhancer's auto-injection, His Holiness responded to criticism by "explaining" that the total revenue stream it generated, across xx months, amounted to about "a dollar, plus change". Really? Okay, if He sez so... but, according to their 2012 annual report, Mozilla realized revenues of $198 million AND has gone to the extent of embedding "Health Reporting" into their apps ~~ a component which, among other things, telegraphs to Mozilla a daily tally of how many Google, how many Bing, how many AOL searches (40+ search engines) have been conducted via the installed browser during the past 24hrs. IOW, it's big bucks, and Mozilla has been compelled to institute a means of automated daily auditing, to verify how much each search partner owes 'em.
In the wake of this failed (anticipated) revenue stream, and in light of the ongoing upstream vs affiliate battle escalation... if Mint et al doesn't come up with a planB for achieving Big Bucks, I expect their interest in ongoing development will quickly wane.
Last edited by thwak on Sat Feb 15, 2014 6:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
nadir

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## Re: refractasnapshot is a blessing. Thank you!

Sat Feb 15, 2014 1:41 am

> (allYerSearchRbelongToUs)

Good one.
Good post too (well: what i understand yet. pretty tired).
fsmithred

- fsmithred
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## Re: refractasnapshot is a blessing. Thank you!

Tue Feb 18, 2014 2:46 pm

I'm glad you find it useful. Thanks for your input to make the tools better. And thanks for the info on mint - I just talked a friend out of installing it.
nadir

- nadir
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## Re: refractasnapshot is a blessing. Thank you!

Tue Feb 18, 2014 5:20 pm

> fsmithred wrote:I'm glad you find it useful. Thanks for your input to make the tools better. And thanks for the info on mint - I just talked a friend out of installing it.

And another good one.
Though no one ever asks me about Linux, i often think which distro i could recommend (to beginners). To be honest: The only distro i can think of is Debian. Refracta too, but that is very close to Debian (in fact i think that for someone else i would sure choose refracta, for several reasons *see bottom). antix would be another choice, but i would hesitate to let them run into icewm or fluxbox (or now jwm and what else comes with it). Some seem to work on a xfce-edition. I looked at it, it looked good (though i didn't know the menu).
I don't look much at distros anymore. I know a couple of Debian based ones, and the rest is so long ago ... (Fedora would probably be ok too, but then i had to learn it myself. Duh).
* Well: i can install it in the blink of an eye and all needed apps are there. I would configure it due to the needs of the user (what she says) and when that is done, make a refractasnapshot (store it on the hard-disk of the device and on a CD). I did such in the past, but as of now i couldn't convince anyone, it seems.
** I mean: seriously. As far i can see you can run into two problems. Graphics and wireless. Both can be solved in a reasonable time (and you do it once, not twice a week). The rest of Debian is as beginner friendly as it can be.
golinux

- golinux
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## Re: refractasnapshot is a blessing. Thank you!

Tue Feb 18, 2014 5:37 pm

I've been hanging out over at the Mepis forum. Their work-in-progress MX-14 looks promising for n00bies. It includes refractasnapshot (just called snapshot) which makes me like them even more.
thwak

- thwak
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## Re: refractasnapshot is a blessing. Thank you!

Wed Feb 19, 2014 6:20 pm

In hindsight, rather than ranting in refracta forum, I should have posted "all that" as a comment on the FOSSforce article page.
remastersys? MintConstructor? okay, buh-bye
www.reglue.org
"Recycled Electronics and Gnu/Linux Used for Education.
Reglue, in a nutshell, gives free Linux computers to under privileged children and their families."
I was (still am) chagrined that Mint's withdrawal of MintConstructor "pulls the rug out from under" the tiny, noble, ReGlue project. If Mint had simply marked the MC github pages "deprecated" or "unsupported as of XX-YY-2014", I wouldn't have groused. Their decision to remove / delete the pages speaks for itself. As for the explanation / rationalization, from Clem -- yeah (duh) clearly Mint's agenda nowadays prioritizes "protecting our brand".
thwak

- thwak
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## Re: refractasnapshot is a blessing. Thank you!

Wed Feb 19, 2014 6:32 pm

> work-in-progress MX-14 looks promising for n00bies

Dunno whether it's a hobby, or an obsession, but I continually check out new distros/projects, including many that have no interest or expectation of ever showing up on distrowatch. Mepis, across the years, I just didn't "get it". Same goes for PCLinuxOS, when I see a distro's forum filled with "package requests", that just seems SO dysfunctional. MX-14 connects users with the vast resources of Debian's repos, provides a distro-specific repo containing supplementary packages... so, yeah, I expect it will be well received.

> antix would be another choice, but i would hesitate to let them run into icewm or fluxbox (or now jwm

nadir, I don't hesitate. Instead, I choose/guess (if the user didn't already have a stated preference) which DE is most suitable as a starting point and setup that DE as the SLiM default. User then has opportunity to explore the other DEs later, at their leisure (or not). The cumulative filesize of the extra DE files is a blip, minimal.
golinux

- golinux
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## Re: refractasnapshot is a blessing. Thank you!

Wed Feb 19, 2014 7:56 pm

> thwak wrote:

> > work-in-progress MX-14 looks promising for n00bies

> Mepis, across the years, I just didn't "get it". . . . when I see a distro's forum filled with "package requests", that just seems SO dysfunctional. MX-14 connects users with the vast resources of Debian's repos, provides a distro-specific repo containing supplementary packages... so, yeah, I expect it will be well received.

Until MX-14, I never had much interest in Mepis either. KDE? UGH! But one package in their Community Repo provided a multimedia app - dvdstyler - that was not available for wheezy. Ordinarily, I would never use a package from another distro but I was assured that it was just a straight build for wheezy. And it does work perfectly. Without it I would be on squeeze in perpetuity. That's how I got interested in MX-14. Haven't actually installed it yet - just played with the live disk. I can see how some of their tweaks might help out a n00bie.
dzz

- dzz
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## Re: refractasnapshot is a blessing. Thank you!

Wed Feb 19, 2014 9:52 pm

Hats off to Mepis. As good as mainstream Debian is (the best IMO) there will always be something (like dvdstyler) that just isn't available, has no good alternative or just doesn't work right. I never actually used their "distro" but their community package repo has helped me out numerous times . They have good attitude too.. and don't forget the great work from stevepusser (active there and in mainstream Debian) who knows more about backporting than anyone else I ever heard of.
And yes, refractasnapshot is a blessing (and thanks thwak for helping it's development with intelligent feedback and constructive ideas)
golinux

- golinux
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- Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2012 1:23 am

## Re: refractasnapshot is a blessing. Thank you!

Wed Feb 19, 2014 11:56 pm

> dzz wrote:. . . and don't forget the great work from stevepusser (active there and in mainstream Debian) who knows more about backporting than anyone else I ever heard of.

Yes indeed. He is some sort of genius when it comes to getting unworkable packages to work. Plus he's always so helpful over at FDN. I don't know how he finds enough hours in a day to contribute all he does.
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