Hi again Federico, I know more about your business now and hope these tips will help you.
A. I have no experience in creating new sessions, so you need the advice from someone else about that. B. Standard Lubuntu session I think it is easier to tweak the standard Lubuntu session and use that also for your customers. 1. Remastersys I think Remastersys has stopped developing, but there is some new project taking over. That might not be mature yet, but you can try with the newest released version of Remastersys, to make your custom Lubuntu to distribute. 2. Alternatives But there are also other alternatives. I think it is easy and straight-forward to keep one instance of Lubuntu for development, so you have no personal files on it. Then this one can be imaged and transferred 'directly' to a target computer without making an iso file. The reason why this works is that the Ubuntu engine under the hood is really modern and smart (and different from Windows). It selects drivers (except proprietary ones) at boot time and it configures the network at boot time too, at least for the desktop versions. So an installed instance of any Ubuntu family flavour is as portable as the corresponding live CD or USB installer. You can carry it in a USB drive in your pocket. 2.a. Cloning The HDDs may have different sizes. It is possible to clone to the same size or bigger, and use gparted afterwards to start using the extra space, if any. This should be straight-forward with either dd or Clonezilla. dd is very powerful, but is nick-named 'disk destroyer', because it is risky. Clonezilla is smarter, and copies only used space on the drive. But I think it skips the swap partition, you need to make that afterwards with gparted, and make the UUID match in /etc/fstab. 2.b. One Button Installer If a computer can boot from USB, there is also the alternative to use a new installer, that I am developing now, the One Button Installer. It is made to be extremely simple to use. It makes two partitions, one for the root file system and one for swap. And it expands a tarball of the system you want to install into the newly made file system. Reboot, and you are up and running. With this method you can install also to a smaller HDD, and you need not use gparted afterwards. So what you need to do yourself in this case, is to make a tarball of the system you have tweaked (the instance of Lubuntu for development, so you have no personal files on it). From the One Button Installer, exit to the bash shell, mount your drive with Lubuntu onto /mnt and run cd /mnt sudo tar -cvzf /home/$USER/ball.tar.gz . (I think, took it from memory). You may want to run without v (verbose), and you may want to write the tarball directly to another drive, not the boot drive of the One Button Installer. The space and dot at the end of the command line are important, because they decide the source of the tarball to make the path relative. Finally you need to change the name of the tarball or the variable 'tarball' at the beginning of the script file 'mktst' to match. You can keep several versions of your tweaked system as tarballs. 3. Making individuals If several computers are to be run in the same LAN, you should create individual computer names (in /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname). The original user can be the administrator's account, and new user accounts can be created... Best regards Nio On 2013-06-29 17:43, Federico Leoni wrote: > Hi Nio, > Thanks for your reply. > Normally I don't sell PC, I work with customers device and a standard > Lubuntu. > The average age of computers is over 7 year, Pentium4 or Pentium D > normally, with 512mb ram. One of my services is to powerup this > computers finding used parts (or new one if not avaiables) to the > maximum possible to gain more horsepower. Again is not for money, it's a > mission! ;-) > In this situation Lubuntu is the best choice, I know I could use > Ubuntu/Kubuntu for a more eyecandy experience, but Lubuntu as the > advantage to be very light and with a very good level of configuration. > So I will stick with this flavor even if with some issue like the one > with samba share on pcmanfm ( > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pcmanfm/+bug/1174571 ) but, > you know, Gigolo is your friend! :-) > Think on it: different customizations using a very light composite > manager let it have a good interface with minimum efforts. Let me be > clear: I don't want Compton on our distro obviously, Lubuntu target is > not eyecandy, is speed and quality. > But... I'm still using my old 2002 notebook, a Dell C400 (P3 866mhz / > 768mb ram) to use Lubuntu! Need to use an old kernel due to a bug with > Intel xorg package ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1186800 ) but I can > run it smoothly. > And I'm really happy with it. :-) > > F. > > On 2013-06-29 00:14, Federico Leoni wrote: >> Hi there, >> >> I'm Federico, an 41 y.o. Italian guy who's living in Brasil and a proud >> linux user since 2006, when I've started to use Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake >> over WindowsXP. >> Many years after I'm still use *buntu distro but just this year I fallen >> in love with Lubuntu and now I'm spreading the word. >> >> Ali, don't know if is a "start ubuntu" related argument or if is better >> write directly on ubuntuforum. You decide. >> >> Last year I've started a business here in Brasil and I'm offering >> Lubuntu as a solution for home use and for small offices, but I'm losing >> customers because of the standard interface. >> Some users asked me for an OSX style, others for a Windows7 style. >> Please don't underestimate this aspect, we can reach many more users in >> this way, even if with more powerful computers, and is very important >> for who would migrate. Eye candy is a good thing too. >> Using Cairo Dock (more OSX style) or Dockbarx (for W7), both with >> Compton enabled, even with some glitches and some specific themes I did >> the job. >> TThings starts to be complicated when I tried to create my custom >> session beside the exixting one for the "standard" Lubuntu. I mean, I >> know I need to create sessions in /usr/share/xsessions/ to see them on >> LightDM, for example I create a new session called LubuntuCMP.desktop >> based on Lubuntu.desktop already present on the folder. This is the > content: >> >> [Desktop Entry] >> # The names/descriptions should really be better >> Name=LubuntuCMP >> Comment=Lubuntu - Lightweight X11 desktop environment based on LXDE >> Exec=/usr/bin/startlubuntucmp >> # Icon= >> Type=Application >> >> Then I created my personal /usr/bin/startlubuntucmp pointing to a >> session folder called LubuntuCMP. Worked, I can set a theme for icons >> and windows editing the desktop.conf file but I can't change the >> position of the panel without modify it on other sessions, nor I can get >> autostart file to work. Compton and the specific dock simply doesn't >> start. Here an help would be much appreciated because I think there is >> another configuration file. >> Then finally I'll start to think how to create my custom lubuntu CD. >> Before someone ask: no, I'm not asking money for this nor I'll change >> the name of the disto, it's just a custom setup to help me in my job. >> I'm ready to discuss about it in more detailed way with anyone interested. >> >> Thanks, >> >> F. >> >> > Hi Federico, > > I wish you good luck with your business in Brasil offering Lubuntu as a > solution for home use and for small offices :-) > > If you answer to a couple of questions it might be easier to help. > > - Do you install Lubuntu into computers, that are already owned by the > customers, or do you sell computers with Lubuntu (your tweaked version) > installed? > > - In each case, how much horsepower is there in the computer? I mean, > are the computers old with slow CPU or low RAM, or new? (Without knowing > your answer I think it is OK to install an Ubuntu flavour with more eye > candy into a newer computer: Xubuntu, Ubuntu with Unity or Kubuntu. It > is 'within the family'.) > > Best regards > Nio > -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-comms Post to : lubuntu-comms@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-comms More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
