Snapshot-Linux x64 v0.7

[Blue-Vision]

My Linux partition has been wiped in preparation for .7. I'll do a clean install when it's released and begin testing.

 

Thanks Jack.

[MikeM97]

Here we go !

Thanks for the news , Jack .

[simonlang]

Snapshot-Linux

.7

 

 

Changelog:

 

Snapshot-Linux .7 is here:
- Updated Qupzilla
- Latest Libre Office
- Progressbar and colors for apt-get
- apt-fast (up to 5 times faster than apt-get)
- KDE-Admin (see screenshots)
- SSM (SuperSilentMode): Replaces the Muon Updater, every update will be installed in the background. No confirmation or PW needed.
- New PPAs (x-org-edgers, webupd8)

 

 

Download:

 

2.1GB (Dropbox): http://bit.ly/1F1dCij
More Mirrors to follow soon

 

 

Screenshots:

 

[Blue-Vision]

Ahh lovely. Apt-fast was going to be filed in the 'Feature Request' box too.

 

And I knew I wasn't the only one who visited Webupd8 and used their ppa's. Alas, I occasionally get breakage with those, so I usually advise against them by default. As a set of user-toggled addon ppa's, they're awesome and highly recommended.

 

I'm testing Kubuntu 15.04 Beta 2 at the moment (and it looks like you are as well ), so when more mirrors are available I'll grab a copy and get to work.

 

Thanks, Jack!

[MikeM97]

Stylish UI

 

Thanks a lot , Jack .

[Blue-Vision]

0.7 has been nice and stable for me, Jack. No issues to report so far.

 

I did a dist-upgrade to a 15.04 base (because there's no direct way to get KDE/Plasma 5.x onto 14.04.2) as an experiment, and the install failed upon reboot. Broken symlinks, the usual things that happen when things don't go as they are supposed to. The upgrade process appeared to go fine (no messages saying that anything had broken or failed to install), and that really bothers me.

 

There really needs to be better (and more useful) output with apt as a whole. This is another barrier to mass adoption of Desktop Linux for the average PC user. Things are way too cryptic a lot of the time. Whose grandmother or parent is expected to understand commandline outputs?

 

This is another thing Distro Devs are in a position to address.

[MikeM97]

It's an early version of KDE here so far called 5.2 ...

Let's wait ...

[simonlang]

Lot's of ideas for Snapshot-Linux .8

 

most likely it will be another solid update of the software already included in .7 and maybe a bit new tweaks.

 

more ambitious project i am working on:  moving snapshot-linux away from ubuntu based ppa and deb to an arch based system. the advantages would be enormous: always up2date, i could release it with the latest kernel always, the user account creation during setup would work.  as a gui for arch packages i would use octopi. this has proven to work fine in my testings. furthermore a combination of kde4/kde plasma next could be done and you could chose your fave interface before installation.

however, some disadvantages too: it would not have the same solid and big community as ubuntu has, and would be definitely trickier for unexperienced users.

 

i did reverse-engineer antergos cnchi installer:

- i know where the pics and logos are stored can exchange them quite easily.

- i know where i can switch on/off different DE to offer. if i go maximum it would be possible to choice between: ("base", "cinnamon", "gnome", "kde4", "mate", "openbox", "xfce","enlightenment", "lxde", "lxqt", "plasma5)

- there is also a file, where you can add your custom packages. i would have to check for them the first time on an arch install in vbox which takes time but should be doable. however: if even one package is false named, changes it's name and therefore can't be found, the whole installation process stops and you are lost.

that's the same problem the antergos/cnchi installer team faces as well as far as i could read out of the comments in the different python files.

 

now there are several problems i could not solve yet:

the first one: cnchi on it's first run always checks for an update. the version on latest antergos.iso is 0.5.x something like this and it automatically updates to 0.8.x, overwriting my changes in the config files. i found one file where i could '##' comment out that update check, however there must be another place because when testing it, it still did the update. might be very time consuming at best, impossible to do at worst.

the arch/user repos are not as stable as ubuntus and sometimes they are just down and then - even if 1 single package could not be reached - the whole install process fails. i can't run my own servers for obvious reasons, so this keeps being an issue.

 

- if i offer all desktop environments i would have to ditch some snapshot-linux exclusive programs as they are KDE only and i don't want to blow up a gnome install with all the kde dependencies. for some apps there will be alternatives but for others not.

 

- i most likely would run this only as a 2nd snapshot-linux project, and continue to recommand for beginners the ubuntu ppa system which is just easier.

 

- i will be heavily dependant on what the antergos/cnchi team does with this installer and the arch/aur community with it's packages on their servers. i know with ubuntu there is a lot of continuity in that regard, i don't know about arch ennough ....

 

 

---> these are just my own ideas and represent with what i have achieved so far and where i see still big problems.

---> btw the cnchi installer is gnu license so i can use and modify it the way i want but i think i should not even need to add this for the linux world.

[MikeM97]

The DE switching idea is awesome , I'll take it too see how's going to be .

P.S : If .8 means the ex '' 0.8 '' ...

What's going to be after .9 ... ?

.10 ? [ don't you better use v10 ] ?

[Max Norris]

- if i offer all desktop environments i would have to ditch some snapshot-linux exclusive programs as they are KDE only and i don't want to blow up a gnome install with all the kde dependencies. for some apps there will be alternatives but for others not.

Just my own opinion mind you, but personally that's I'd just pick one and stick with it -- as you said it's hard to support them all due to different subsystems, GUI libraries and all that stuff. Do one and do it well.. one refined desktop would be more compelling than a mediocre kitchen-sink setup that's going to take a lot more effort to support, especially if this is a solo project.

 

more ambitious project i am working on:  moving snapshot-linux away from ubuntu based ppa and deb to an arch based system. the advantages would be enormous: always up2date, i could release it with the latest kernel always, the user account creation during setup would work.  as a gui for arch packages i would use octopi. this has proven to work fine in my testings. furthermore a combination of kde4/kde plasma next could be done and you could chose your fave interface before installation.

however, some disadvantages too: it would not have the same solid and big community as ubuntu has, and would be definitely trickier for unexperienced users.

This I can get behind though -- Arch is probably going to be a lot easier to set up as a distro builder as it's not only fairly vanilla from upstream, but doesn't have any set preferences out of the box, about as generic as it gets, plus as you say it's a lot more current and you've also got the AUR as a nice bonus. Or you could go the Chakra route with it with their "half rolling" release cycle too, which is also pretty interesting. That and I'm just a bit leery of the route Canonical is going in general.

[simonlang]

@MikeM97

 

atm i don't care that much about version numbers, so it's maybe just going to be .8 and maybe the first dist release of 2016 will be called 2016 then. it also depends in which direction my project develops.

 

 

cnchi on it's first run always checks for an update.

i fixed that one already.

 

 

but personally that's I'd just pick one and stick with it

indeed. most likely it will feature kde4 and plasma next.  so everyone can decide when he wants to switch to plasma next.

 

 

Or you could go the Chakra route

will check that one out when i got time. thanks.

[MikeM97]

@MikeM97

 

atm i don't care that much about version numbers, so it's maybe just going to be .8 and maybe the first dist release of 2016 will be called 2016 then. it also depends in which direction my project develops.

 

And what kind of direction do you mean ?

[simonlang]

@MikeM97

 

read my posting #108 

[MikeM97]

@MikeM97

 

read my posting #108 

 

Cool .

You engaged all those stuff in one word .

[Blue-Vision]

Nice! I've been interested in Arch-based stuff for a while. I tried to get my own install of Arch going but I failed to get it to boot for some reason that still eludes me. It appeared to install correctly, which adds to the strangeness -- even GRUB installed properly, it just failed to boot up, like the kernel was missing.

 

I will happily participate in testing it out.

 

Might I suggest a flavor of Arch that uses a graphical installer, though? It's 2015, we're past the need for doing things "the difficult way".

 

As software goes, Arch and Ubuntu are neck-and-neck. That community does a fantastic job keeping everything up to date.

[simonlang]

Nice! I've been interested in Arch-based stuff for a while. I tried to get my own install of Arch going but I failed to get it to boot for some reason that still eludes me. It appeared to install correctly, which adds to the strangeness -- even GRUB installed properly, it just failed to boot up, like the kernel was missing.

 

I will happily participate in testing it out.

 

Might I suggest a flavor of Arch that uses a graphical installer, though? It's 2015, we're past the need for doing things "the difficult way".

 

As software goes, Arch and Ubuntu are neck-and-neck. That community does a fantastic job keeping everything up to date.

 

arch installer can be a pita no doubt about it. a little bit better is the installer archbang offers, which looks like oldschool DOS, but is easy ennough for me. however i never managed to successfully boot archbang after installation in virtualbox.

 

have a look at the graphical installer of antergos for example. that's the one called cnchi and has a nice GUI, is written completely in python. i had a read in the antergos forum today and sadly most errors still persist and checking some of it's python files they work a lot with dirty fixes and had to leave some options out.

well: at least they realized now that aria2 as a downloader is absolutely unusable, as long as they went with that one i never could install it in virtualbox, they have (temporarly) replaced it with curl now which works fine.

 

and last but not least, instead doing some work for my university, i spent the whole day with my little project, however some things still don't work and i have no clue why will have to ask for that in the antergos forum i guess.

[Blue-Vision]

No better place to solve problems than University.

 

Let us know how it goes!

[MikeM97]

No better place to solve problems than University.

 

You're right .

It's even easier so far [ even for Linux newbies as me ] . 

[simonlang]

last thing for today:

 

 

 

[MikeM97]

Can you change those left incons ?

[simonlang]

Can you change those left incons ?

 

which ones? please specify

[MikeM97]

which ones? please specify

 

All of them , remake that taskbar , please .

It can look better .

[xrobwx71]

I am running this in Virtualbox. At first, the screen size was "stuck" on 640x480. I ran this: sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-additions-iso in terminal and rebooted to a larger, usable screen. Now I can test this puppy.

[simonlang]

I am running this in Virtualbox. At first, the screen size was "stuck" on 640x480. I ran this: sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-additions-iso in terminal and rebooted to a larger, usable screen. Now I can test this puppy.

 

sure vbox needs the guest additions to support higher resolutions, alternatively you can also install them directly with virtualbox chose "insert media with guest additions" in the menu.

good luck with testing, i hope you enjoy.

 

All of them , remake that taskbar , please .

It can look better .

 

 

stuff like the taskbar or apps have no high priority right now. to be more precisely, as long as i can't make the installer working the way i want, there is no need to further customize stuff.

fyi: the default antergos boots always in gnome for the live cd but you can install other DEs as shown in one of my screenshots.

[MikeM97]

fyi: the default antergos boots always in gnome for the live cd but you can install other DEs as shown in one of my screenshots.

 

How about other boots ?

You know how it says , 1st impression matters the most .