Kanotix Requests - gparted / qtparted in the future Kanotix? ugo - 03.10.2006, 12:01 Uhr Titel: gparted / qtparted in the future Kanotix?
Hi everybody,
I've been very glad to read that gparted has been included in Kanotix RC4 of 2006.1, as far as I know, it's the best available tool to handle partitions in the Linux world.
Since I'm preparing some remastered versions of DSL (now) and Kanotix (in a near future) with many notes (hopefully useful) for undergraduate students, I would know which are your plans for the future.
Will gparted be included in the next official releases?
Will gparted be started just by the installer or (preferably) will there be a label in the menus to start it?
Will qtparted be still included in the next releases? Do you plan to dismiss it?
Many thanks,
ciao,
Ugo
Kano - 03.10.2006, 12:07 Uhr Titel: RE: gparted / qtparted in the future Kanotix?
gparted replaced qtparted, or did you see it anywhere?
ugo - 03.10.2006, 12:21 Uhr Titel:
Cough...cough...
I must confess that I didn't yet download RC4, I've just read the changelog and so I was wondering about your plans.
The complete replacement of qtparted by gparted is just the best option to me!
Thanks,
Ugo
ockham23 - 03.10.2006, 13:26 Uhr Titel:
Ugo, post a notice when the remastering project gets going. There are many people here who are interested in this subject.
ugo - 03.10.2006, 23:58 Uhr Titel:
Hi ockham23,
since we agree that there are many of us interested in remastering of Kanotix, I asked to add a new forum section focused on this subject: see http://kanotix.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-21330.html
Moreover, I think for people interested in remastering it would be nice to know a rough schedule-time of the next Kanotix release, I know this is an hot question but I added a thread in http://kanotix.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-21332.html.
Finally about my project. I have a very small target: I teach in an University to Mathematics students in Italy. I want that with the minimum effort (otherwise they will not do it) they are able to recreate at home more or less the same environment they find in the PC classroom. Moreover, I wish they would have an easy access to the web and so on.
For this reason I focused on live-distros that can be easily installed on the HD. Thus, my favourite are (obviously) Kanotix and DSL (for older PC's). I would pay a lot of patient work on writing notes for newbies: some of them will appear on the desktop when they begin to work, while the rest should available on the web.
My project (so called, Mattorvix) is at a very preliminar stage, you can see it at
http://www.mat.uniroma2.it/~locatell/linux&noi/
Obviously (and unfortunately) everything is just in italian. I've quit the idea to remaster Knoppix; for the last year courses I've been able to conclude just the two remastered versions of DSL and I'm presently working (when I've a little of time...) on the notes about them. Hopefully, a remastered version of Kanotix 2006.1 will be ready before the beginning of the next year course (end of February).
Ciao,
Ugo
ockham23 - 04.10.2006, 00:22 Uhr Titel:
Ugo, there's some information on remastering Kanotix in the Wiki, but it had been written for Kanotix-2005-03, which was also the last version I was able to modify. As you will notice, there are two major differences compared to Knoppix: Kanotix uses grub instead of isolinux, and file compression is handled by squashfs. Fortunately, there is a script in the Wiki article that does most of the work of creating the iso file. Maybe it's also possible to remaster Kanotix "on the fly" with unionfs instead of chroot'ing into a copy on your hard drive. I played around with that but I didn't test the resulting iso file for errors.
h2 - 04.10.2006, 03:43 Uhr Titel:
Zitat:
Moreover, I think for people interested in remastering it would be nice to know a rough schedule-time of the next Kanotix release
There is no schedule, when it's ready it is released. There is no rough schedule, there is just the fact of the presence of bugs or issues that stop a next stable release from coming out, or the fixing of most of them, which allows it to happen. This is how all good software should be developed, when it's ready, not by some abstract schedule that has nothing to do with the actual condition of the software at that point.
slam - 04.10.2006, 07:32 Uhr Titel:
I hope you re-masters are aware of the following:
1) It is impossible for our support team to assist users of non-official re-masters here - we actually can just tell them to ask the re-master. So, you will be at your own supporting your users. That's very sad for us as we try hard to help everybody, and it's bad for Kanotix' reputation as those users think they still use Kanotix and don't get proper help here.
2) Every re-master splits knowledge, manpower, users and contributions off Kanotix, instead of adding it into the project. There are many different ways you could contribute to Kanotix, and people who contribute are more likely to influence the future of the upcoming releases.
3) Kanotix provides a lot of very clever alternatives to re-mastering, which are fully supported and appreciated here. In my experience most ideas for costuming the Live-CD or a HD-install can be solved better - and fully supported - with one of those technologies.
4) Although altering the content of a CD and make it booting somehow can be accomplished, re-mastering Kanotix in a proper way is much more and not trivial at all. A lot of professional knowledge and a skilled team for testing and debugging is needed. And be assured, even the best Kanotix-remaster I have seen in the last 2 years was slow and buggy compared to the original.
Those are some of the reasons why we do not help people re-mastering at all. Feel free to explore alternatives which are supported, feel free to explain your problems and projects here and we will strive hard to find solutions together with you. Also in special cases Kano was always willing to build customized re-mastered editions of Kanotix - please contact him directly for his requirements for such work. Hiring Kano for such ist by the way not just a guarantee for quality, but also a very fine way to support the Kanotix project.
Greetings,
Chris
ugo - 04.10.2006, 14:00 Uhr Titel:
Dear Slam,
I understand very well your point of view and, BTW, let me say that I consider the Kanotix forum the quickest and most competent support forum I've ever seen in the Linux world.
Let me try to explain my point of view. Perhaps this is a common point of view for other "remaster" people. I've no ambitions to build a "my" distro: I've not enough knowledge in computer science and in Linux too to do it; moreover, for my work, I should not waste time to this aim. I agree that continuously adding new distros split the knowledge and the manpower in an unuseful way.
Nevertheless, I'm in contact with a not negligible number of potential Linux users (~40 new students per year plus other people) and I know that Kanotix is nearly perfect for them (BTW, I've installed Kanotix in the PC's classroom), but there is a little of work they should do to adapt Kanotix to their needs. I know very well that even a little difficulty will discourage them and they will try to do homework with Windows (but this is bad for many reasons: it's not the same environment they have in the classroom, it's not the same environment they'll use if they'll seriously do applied math in the future, and so on). Thus, my idea is just to add something to Kanotix (you can see a rough list below), in order to make as easier as possible the first impact with Linux of my students.
I think that it would be a big mistake if you (Kanotix developers) are too rigid about remastering. Indeed, doing this, I think that you'll not support the Kanotix reputation, because simply Kanotix still continue to not exist for many potential users! Let me just add that the average student of a first year course in Mathematics don't know that there are different Linux distros and, often, simply don't know about Linux. If they'll not have a simple access to Linux, they'll reject. In the future such students will work in other universities, companies or simply at home and they could spread the knowledge about Kanotix, I think that there are much more possible advantages than risks for the Kanotix team.
From the techical point of view, in the past I've essentially followed the notes in
http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Knoppix_Remastering_Howto
plus some other ones found in a few magazines and I had no problem neither with knoppix nor with DSL.
I naively thought that with Kanotix the story was more or less the same.
If there are other technologies (which ones?) different from the remaster to solve my problem, I would be glad to consider them.
Here there is a list of the things I need to add to Kanotix:
1-some package useful for doing basic programming and mathematics : tex/latex, xfig, gdb, emacs, etc.
2-scilab (you can freely download it, but it's not GPL)
3-add the italian labels of KDE
4-change something in /etc/skel in such a way a browser start from the short notes about the use of Linux, add some bookmarks useful for the students, etc.
5-change grub so that all the entries with the german keyboard are replaced by new ones with the italian keyboard.
I think it's all, if you think I can do it in a different and a simpler way, please let me know it.
From a practical point of view, I don't ask for a complete support of the "remasters", but in my opinion a forum section and some advices would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
ciao,
Ugo
P.S. Sorry because the thread has completely shifted by the original subject.
DeepDayze - 04.10.2006, 17:53 Uhr Titel:
Ugo, maybe a good idea is to set up your own forum for your remasters..if not on here, but on another site.
ockham23 - 04.10.2006, 18:27 Uhr Titel:
Or open a new remastering thread in the installation forum. We had remastering topics in the past, and nobody took issue with it. I think upcoming 2006-01 is a good occasion to revive the discussion.
DeepDayze - 04.10.2006, 19:51 Uhr Titel:
Then people with questions about the remaster can go to THAT thread to post the question or problem they have