I want to update everybody on how my computing life has improved a lot with antiX-base. I decided to do a little promo for it since it's becoming the best-kept secret of the antiX forum. But I don't know where to post (a) discussion of antiX-base and (b) discussions that are mainly about responses to (promotions of) various aspects of the versions of antiX. Anti, please move this to where it should go (maybe create a new category for antiX-base or for user-experience/advocacy?).

I've been running all versions of Mepis since forever, but am still a noob in lots of ways. Now I've got full Mepis 8.2 and antiX 8.2 on desktops. But on my old laptop antiX was having quirky fits, working fine one way but wobbling elsewhere. So I switched over to sidux--mainly under inspiration from Brian Masinick. It worked *great* (thanks Brian!), especially in sucking down wireless signals more strongly than antiX. I had no problems doing system upgrades in sidux, and the distro was stable and fast. But I started getting nervous that I was beyond my competency level if something should go wrong. Moreover I was pining for the ultimate minimalist distro, which means antiX-base. But I was nervous about that too, afraid I'd bung things up without all the supporting tools and libraries and stuff coming with the full antiX install.

But I took the plunge and installed anyway.

Now I've been working on this machine for several days. It's solid--glitchless and fast on my P3 512MB Dell Latitude. It's looking like the ideal set-up for what I want. Here's my goal:

1) I do mainly academic work and want essentially a"scholar's version" of antiX running on a portable laptop. That means no multimedia or social networking or skype or whatever. I want basic internet access and email. Then I want applications for doing writing/research: all kinds of word-processing apps, bibliography/dictionary/thesaurus databases, desktop wikis like zim, outliners like gjots, mind-mappers, etc. And also Wine for loading big proprietary dictionary apps (Webster's Unabridged, OED, etc.) and non-Linux research tools mainly for Shakespeare and the English Bible. I've gotten a good start on accumulating these tools. So far, antiX-base is handling them with ease.

2) The next step, once I get the system set up and configured just as I like, is to do a remaster. I'm *really* new at this, and I'm not sure it will work. But I'd like to have this whole set-up on an install cd that I can pop into another machine (or run live from usb?). I'm working in that direction...

Since I'm mostly limited to dial-up, except for jaunts to the library to use wireless for bigger downloads, I was afraid antiX-base would be an exercise in constant frustration. But not so. Most of the basic stuff I want I can get on dial-up. So far, only Abiword, Open Office, and Wine need wireless. No doubt more complex tools will need heavier downloads--but antiX-base handles a remarkable number of apps without choking. Good news for users who want to set up their own version of antiX but are still limited to dial-up. It can be done.

In short, antiX-base is more friendly than new users might think. It's not just for the pro wanting to do arcane configurations. It's a great foundation for building a creatively individualized, project-driven version of antiX/Mepis. I'm giving it a bump here because its potential should be better known than it is.

--Mark (Malanrich)

I think what you are doing is exactly what anti intended people to to with the base install, start with the minimum and install only what you need/use. By going down this road you need not worry about the OS/DE getting in the way of what you use your computer for. It sounds like your just about where you want to be.

When you install a full blown OS/DE you get a ton of stuff you won't even look at, never mind use, so it's great to have an option to have a place to start and then go in the direction you want to go without all the fluff and bloat. Use the resources on the applications not the look and feel.

Sounds like a great project and a lot of fun. Gook luck. Let us know where you end up.

eriefisher wrote:I think what you are doing is exactly what anti intended people to to with the base install, start with the minimum and install only what you need/use.

Exactly. But it's easy for new users to get the impression (a) that base is only for highly skilled super-users or (b) that starting with base and then installing, say, claws-mail would mean gazillion MB's of support libraries and arcane configurations. I wanted to contradict both, and encourage new users to try it as a light system for maybe web-browsing and email--if not for using it as a base for an individualized set-up like what I have in mind.

I'd like to see more discussion of what people are doing with it.

I have installed the base a few times and built on it. The last time was when I was trying to do a xfce remaster(which I have never finished). I used it once(version 7.2??) on my then server which eventually had heart failure. It was perfect there because it was very light and only short a couple of apps I wanted to use on a server. The minimal graphical interface made it easy to set up and maintain rather than do everything via ssh since it is a local machine.

The potential is unlimited in the base install. The only thing that would prevent the inexperienced or newcomer starting with a base antiX install is fear. I think if they can overcome that fear they will very happy with the results but they will also have to be willing to put some work into it. The final outcome is what counts as far as I'm concerned.

It take some work to be Number 1, the alternative is second place(the first loser.)

It always helps to have a secondary machine just to play with. I've used base for a nice E17 installation (before I really started pushing things and blew it up) and a nice little xfce installation. When you have a secondary machine just for play you cry less tears when things get discombombulated.

Malanrich:
It sounds like a great project. I do mostly academic work on my laptop also which is set up with full Antix. In terms of writing/research: I've been using vim and latex, with jabref to handle the bibliographies. I find that the vim and latex combination is extremely powerful, versatile and produces great results. The downside is that there is a learning curve for both vim and latex. However, I think it's worth it and there's plenty of documentation for both. I also have Open office installed which I use with Bibus (bibliography app) and that also runs very well. vim is much smaller than open office, of course.

I have considered doing something similar to what you are doing. However I'm reluctant to start from scratch again on the laptop seeing how I have it configured and working how I want it.

As impuwat suggested, it might be a great idea to set up an"ideal" system in a secondary computer which can then be remastered, as you are planning to do.

Anyway, great job and keep us posted on how it goes!!

Regards,

Pedro

Hi Pedro. Thanks for the input. Vim and latex...nice.

What you've done just confirms what I've been wanting to do: use antiX-base to set up an ideal system for remastering (especially if we were handing off that system to a friend, colleague, or student). But I'm a total noob at remastering. Maybe someone here can answer some basic questions:

1) The remastering topics here on the forum suggest it can get arduous and technical, yet Puppy and other distros have a"remaster cd" script right on their menu. Are we talking about the same process? or is"saving and burning to cd" a session of Puppy different from remastering a particular configuration of antiX-base?

2) If we are talking about the same thing (or even if it's somewhat different), wouldn't it be convenient and almost inevitable for antiX-base to contain a script like that on its menu system, assuming that lots of people are going to be doing the"ideal system" creation that Pedro and I are talking about? Otherwise the purpose of antiX-base gets a little blurry--if you have to redo the setup each time you install (or it blows up, right impuwat?).

Any ideas on whether/how we should build this process into antiX-base as one of its fundamental components?

I just started working on making a LiveUSB version of antiX that has persistence and remastering built-in.

It might actually be pretty easy to remaster a full installation. The current sticking point is that (AFAICT) the boot kernel and initrd can only handle version 3.x of squashfs but the current tools are version 4.0 which create squashfs files that can't be booted without upgrading the kernel and the initrd.

Remastering just consists of re-creating the squashfs file on the boot media (currently called /mepis/mepis, it should be /boot/antix/squashfs IMO). The generation of this file is as simple as: followed by a bunch of excludes to exclude directories such as /proc that should not be in the squashfs.

If you want to make a LiveCD then you have to jump through a couple of extra hoops to extract files from the .iso and then re-create a new .iso file. Instructions are
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php/Remastering"
linktext was:"here"
====================================
.

It is much easier to remaster a LiveUSB. If you want to remaster I recommend that you first create a LiveUSB (you don't actually need a USB drive you can use a free or existing partition on your hard drive) and then when the remastered version is just what you want, make the .iso file for making a LiveCD.

IMO antiX should migrate to where the LiveUSB is the primary installation method and the LiveCD is secondary. IMO we also need a LiveCD that will boot a LiveUSB for installing on computers where you can't boot directly from USB. The benefits of a LiveUSB are:

1) Much faster install and running live
2) Much faster development cycle (no burning)
3) Easier to add persistence and remastering
4) Can easily add a swap partition to the usb device
5) Can easily multi-boot a variety of systems (i.e. bigger)
6) Re-usable
7) Much smaller

IMO it is like the difference between an mp3 player and a portable CD player.

BTW: I'm also a big fan of LaTeX + Vim. The
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://vim-latex.sourceforge.net/"
linktext was:"LaTeX-suite"
====================================
is really sweet. I no longer need complicated makefiles. I suggest you first get comfortable with both LaTeX and Vim before trying it because it has a learning curve too.

BitJam,

There's a lot here for me to digest. I'll work through it. Maybe others with experience remastering antiX will jump in. But meanwhile: do you have any idea how what you're describing relates to the remastering script that you find in distros like Puppy?

malanrich:
I remember that Anti had included a remastering app with the capability of creating a live cd, in one of the test releases of 8 (maybe 8.2). I think he decided against including it in the final release. I can't recall the name, but I tried it and thought it was relatively easy to create a live cd (I actually succeeded in creating one). Perhaps he can weigh in with the name.

I don't have much experience with puppy. Tried it for a bit but gave it up.

Pedro

the script is still there, it's called remaster.sh and it's in /usr/local/bin

The remaster script does work although it's been some time since I used it. It's my understanding that you can start with an iso or use your installed antiX( I have never tried the later). Once you have the iso you can then use the iso2usb script to put it on a usb stick if that's your preference.

I thought there was a graphical interface for the remaster script as well.

malanrich wrote:But meanwhile: do you have any idea how what you're describing relates to the remastering script that you find in distros like Puppy?

I did some quick Googles to try to see what Puppy is doing. It looks like it is pretty much what I was describing, which is creating a new squashfs file. AFAIK, everyone uses a squashfs file so everyone would need to create a new one in order to remaster.

The script ICE-M pointed to looks good. I suggest you give it a try.

Creating a large squashfs file can be both time consuming and resource intensive because it is the equivalent of gzipping your entire filesystem. On a hard drive or usb stick, there is a much much more efficient way. With the newer 4.0 version of squashfs you can append to an existing squashfs file.

A squashfs filesystem is strictly read-only. It contains a entire filesystem in a single compressed file. That is why it needs to get rewritten (or appended to) in order to remaster. You may wonder why we can write to the filesystem on a LiveCD/USB if the filesystem is read-only. This is where another trick comes into play: a union filesystem (antiX uses aufs = another union file system). Two filesystems are mounted on top of each other, a large read-only (in our case squashfs) filesystem and a smaller (in our case ramdisk) read-write file system. It uses a technique called"copy on write" which means that any time you write to a file or create a new file, that file gets copied into the read-write file system. To the user it appears as if the entire fs is read-write but only the parts that actually change get stored in ram (unless you use the toram cheatcode which causes the entire fs to be stored in ram).

If you boot into a LiveCD/USB, take a look in (I believe) /ramdisk/. This contains exactly the parts of the file system that differ from the read-only squashfs. With version 4 of squashfs the entire /ramdisk/ could be appended to the existing squashfs file. The great thing about this is that /ramdisk/ is usually only 1/10th of the size of the entire squashfs so you are not wasting time re-squashing what was already squashed. I don't know if Puppy is appending or resquashing.

Well, I've downloaded the latest Puppy (4.2.1) to look at what its remaster script is up to--because I've got some confusion about remastering vs. creating a live cd. The Mepis docs suggest that it's a resource-intensive operation (which my poor old Dell Latitude may not have capacity for). On the other hand, Puppy is running on bare-bones granny boxes, right? I'll keep looking into this while, meanwhile, putting together the ideal system I want to run on this laptop.

Thanks, BitJam, for ideas on how to do this with less strain on resources.

I think a remaster script/save to iso for Base is an excellent idea. I mentioned this quite awhile back in a different thread and did not get much of a reaction. Base is for play and customization. Saving what you created fits hand and glove with that concept. And the simpler the process the better.