On Mon, 2008-11-10 at 12:32 +0100, Andreas Tille wrote: > On Mon, 10 Nov 2008, Neil Williams wrote: > > > I was never particularly clear on why "Custom" was a bad name to use. > > Actually "distribution" was the worst part of the old name.
ok > Before we have another round of discussing names: Could everybody > who is really interested in the projects please have a look into > the paper[1] and see if they identify with the things described there. ack > IMHO Emdebian does not really fit into this. That's why I mentioned the flavours - traditional Emdebian is different, but that is what will be the Crush flavour. Grip will be straight Debian, just with smaller packages. > To be a Debian Pure Blend > everything has to be inside (pure) Debian. For Emdebian Grip, this does apply (albeit that the scripts themselves are in development and waiting for the Lenny release before being uploaded). > We just try to make sure > that people understand this fact. If you would like to call Emdebian > a "Custom Debian Distribution" this is perfectly fine now because this > term is now not covered any more by a concept we are using which Emdebian > does not really fit into. You see, that's my problem - Emdebian Crush is very customised. Crush will take out big chunks of Debian (like perl :-)) and Crush involves cross-building (or rebuilding) all relevant packages. Emdebian Grip is quite different - Crush will be based on Grip (in that the files taken out by Grip will also be taken out in Crush) but Grip *only* removes files from packages, it doesn't change the functionality or behaviour of the packages themselves. The files concerned are /usr/share/doc/package/*, /usr/share/man/*, /usr/share/info/* etc. and Grip will make use of TDebs, DEB_VENDOR and Dpkg::Class as that support becomes available. Grip also sets Recommends to off. Packages can be "gripped" after download from normal mirrors but that loses the benefit of reducing the size of the package cache data and reduced sizes of the downloaded packages themselves, so Grip will support a customised mirror with fewer, smaller, packages. I guess what are talking about here is the mirrors. Do all Blends use unchanged Debian mirrors? If so, what are Blends blending? Emdebian Grip will use the same kind of support as Blends - a customised installer that uses the Grip mirror, customised package selection (XFCE as the default "desktop" install), customised install setups (ext2 preferred over ext3 as many Grip devices will be solid state storage). As such, Emdebian Grip could be the ideal choice for putting Debian onto a netbook like the Aspire1 and Eee. Once things start to work, I'll be using my Aspire1 to test Emdebian Grip and then see about working with the Eee team to iron out the details. The idea will be to get a Debian install onto a netbook without having to change the defaults or fiddle around with post-install configuration - i.e. a USB/net installer that does the right thing, out of the box. Emdebian Grip *is* intended to be Debian, just 20% smaller (maybe 30% if I can get it that small) and with support for the kind of tweaks that small devices might need in order to run Debian (like ext2 and XFCE instead of ext3 and GNOME/KDE). The intention is to have Grip generation entirely automated, even working as a repository update hook. Emdebian Crush is a derivative, yes. When released, it will be described in the form: Emdebian 1.0 (based on Debian 5.0 "Lenny") etc. I'm hoping that Grip will be seen differently - as a normal Debian install, just smaller. Whatever changes might be necessary to actually deploy Grip, I will be seeking to fold those changes into the relevant Debian packages. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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