Re: [GNU-linux-libre] dyne:bolic 3.0 beta1 - comments welcome!

[Jaromil]

hi Rubén,

On Thu, 16 Jun 2011, Rubén Rodríguez wrote:

> > the new dyne:III - the third series of dyne:bolic development, has
> > reached its beta status and is getting ready to go public!
> > 
> > if you have time please let us know about your experience with
> 
> I don't have much so I didn't test it in deep, but at first sight

thanks for taking the time!

i'll reply with some questions, consider i'm kinda new to apt and can
use well some advice. see if anyone here has ideas and time to spare

> * It comes with third party repositories enabled by default,
> including ubuntu and medibuntu, which both contain many non-free
> packages.

yes, i guess its fine if i just remove the repository entry then.

i was wondering and initially started to mirror all karmic repo and
then planned to delete packages from it, yet i have not much space on
my server so that's not a good idea.

> * Installing linux-image or any other kernel flavour replaces the
> default linux-libre with the vanilla kernel, complete with firmware.

this should also be solved by the solution above, to remove the ubuntu
repo. no need for updates.

> * It comes with a package called "non-free-codecs" preinstalled.

gosh! i've used some grepping and vrms yet this was incomplete.

would be nice to have a script that checks presence of packages, i'll
produce this as development progresses

> * It comes with "jockey", an utility to install proprietary drivers.

double gosh

> * The official repository seems to lack the source code for most of
> the binaries on the live cd.

i guess i need to refine my reprepro recipe to mirror sources?
going to check that.

yet the main way to distribute code for d:b will be via phisical
media.

> > this version of our OS is based on the last stable version of
> > pure:dyne "carrot and coriander" ( see http://puredyne.org )
> > closely reviewed following the 100% free guidelines set by the
> > linux-libre project.
> 
> Could you explain how pure:dyne, dyne:bolic and dyne.org are
> related?

dyne.org is a free software house dedicated to freedom of speech and
expression, since the year 2000, 'nuff said on the website.

keep in mind we are mostly "upstream", most of us use GNU/Linux since
the early '90s, we grew up with Slackware and experimenting on VAX/VMS
and we still keep some computers alive http://museum.dyne.org in
short: we are freaks. srsly. :^D

dyne:bolic is a distro i've started packing together in 2001 do deploy
quickly and cleanly and on most computers the free software i was
making myself (muse-streamer, http://muse.dyne.org) needed to make
radio and other media activist things in crisis and war zones (had
that passion at that time), its born out of ideas swarming in the
http://hackmeeting.org (RMS will be there also this year!) and has
seen a big deal of the Italian scene contributing to it.  we've built
into it some unique features which made it notable to many hackers and
are not yet ported to the new dyne:III, but will be as this
development progresses, remember we are "upstream" coders not just
distributors, so we do a lot of ad-hoc development...

pure:dyne is a group of enthusiast artists who spotted dyne:bolic
esp. in festivals like http://piksel.no (Janet Casey was with us
there!) and started doing their own. it is another foundation
producing pure:dyne which is called goto10.org, i'm in contact with
some of them, we had diatribes about the proprietary packages and i'm
confident we can slowly solve them, yet goto10 doesn't shares the same
priorities we have at dyne.org and that you have at GNU. the "pure"
comes from pure:data a free software popular among artists and the
merit of goto10 ppl is that of packaging a lot of loose code in that
community, making it usable and preserved through time. i think that
is a remarkably good effort, their problem is with proprietary
hardware and requirements in art installation and performances... but
all what they are producing in terms of packaging is free, hence the
pure:dyne repository is interesting for us.

at last, my plans for dyne:III is to follow gnewsense on the debian
shift, yet as of now pure:dyne has the most interesting platform to
base our mods on. i'm all ears to see what happens in future...

ciao!

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