Hello,

I have changed an install in an old Compaq Presario 920 (proc AMD Athlon XP 2000+, no sse, and 1 GB RAM) into an"Edu" version, for a little 5 years old girl.

I wanted to remix it and to get it lower than 700MB as an ISO and I am still working on it (removed libreoffice, and lots of packages not needed for the purpose of providing an Edu version). If this works I'll upload the remix to a repos on the web.

Here is what it looks like at the moment:



I have to say I have a hard time getting the Grub background the way I want it. Now it does not display an image anymore. I wonder if Grub can use jpg files?

And what about the installer in a remix? I did a first try with the option"remix to share", and it removed the Qimo wallpaper and restored the MX background, so I changed the method, and did a"remix for backup purpose" (which I intend to share). Then after starting the iso generated from there, in virtualbox, the minstaller does not have the launcher on the desktop.

When I copy it from /usr/share/applications/mx to the desktop, and install from there, it's not removed from the desktop after install to the virtual hard drive.

Do you have any advice?

Best regards,
Mélodie

removed libreoffice, and lots of packages not needed for the purpose of providing an Edu version

libreoffice does not uninstall cleanly, in the sense that many of its dependent packages (needed by nothing else) are needlessly left in place.
examples:
/home/*/.config/libreoffice/3/user/uno_packages/cache/*
/home/*/.libreoffice/3/user/uno_packages/cache/*
/home/*/.libreoffice/3-suse/user/config/uno_packages/cache/*

Install deborphan and gtkorphan and use them to help identify those leftovers.
Help -- meaning use discretion in deciding what to remove; don't trust autoremove to wisely decide (it will not, cannot).
Some of the packages I would choose to uninstall at this step, you (for your respin) would disagree with.
Here, I would remove anything postscript-document related. I would also remove most, if not all, of the CUPS infrastructure.

Next step, consider whether the expected audience is"global", vs will only ever be installed/used locally to your region.
If local only, dpkg-reconfigure locales and pare down the list of to-be-supported locales (languages).
Afterward, run bleachbit (twice, once as user, again as root) (also check whether etc/skel contains any locale-specific bloat)
followed by updatedb (to freshen the mlocate.db file)

The above 2 steps will clear away 10,000+ unneeded files. The effect on the resultant iso, though, may only be 25MB or so.
If your thinning is thorough / aggressive, the savings can be improved quite a bit further.
Next step, IMO, is to install and run from root terminal the tiny ncdu (ncurses disk usage) utility.
ncdu enables you to quickly, easily,"walk" through your filesystem dirs to identify"what's taking up how much room".
/usr/share/themes, /usr/share/icons ...do you really want to keep all the existing"stuffs" installed?
Fonts? How many do you need/want installed, and did you realize which of the installed fonts is hogging however much storage space?
man ncdu -- although ncdu enables you to selectively delete items, I perform the deletions via a GUI file manager.
Does ANY installed iconset really need to ship with 256px versions ?!? (I've even seen 512px tile images shipped in some iconsets!)
For your distro, maybe some of the apps _are_ displaying super-large icons.

I can recite at least a dozen other"steps" to pursue, paths containing"unneeded bloat"...
...but, compared to the steps above, chasing those provides diminishing returns.

-- ANY *.pyc file can be deleted (or excluded/omitted when building the iso)

-- python, perl, and vim paths contain a LOT of locale files (missed by bleachbit)
/usr/share/perl/5.18.1/Unicode/Collate/Locale/
/usr/share/vim/vim*/lang/*

-- /usr/share/doc contains a LOT of files that 5yr-olds will never read

-- if shipping iceweasel, most of the ~/profile/../*.sqlite files can be excluded/deleted (even from the etc/skel copy)

-- aptitude, if present, and apt-xapian-index (drives the in-toolbar version of the synaptic search) can be removed
(along with the huge xapian search index file)
Do I see docfetcher icon in the panel of your screenshot?
Any prebuilt docfetcher/beagle index could be excluded from the iso (call a shell script from the installer to rebuild the index)

melodie, I hope you'll jot notes as you perform the various"cleaning" steps,
and post a followup to let us know"how much space freed" by each step.

Speaking of notes, below I'm pasting a mostly-notes portion of my own cleanup script:

can also withhold from the iso the (40Mb+) linux-headers* package and
...did you build in place any of to-be-preinstalled applications? If so, you can omit any packages added for/by build-essentials

synaptic
status = installed
sort = size
Won't exactly match what's installed on the system you're starting from, but here I quickly found 72Mb
( vim, vim-runtime, python-samba, samba-common-bin, mupdf-tools, luckybackup-data, luckybackup, alpine )
installed stuff that I'd probably exclude from an EDU respin. Some of these are"easily overlooked" b/c they don't have a desktop menu launcher.
-=-
Also, while browsing the synaptic"installed" listing,
consider whatall unneeded locale-specific ispell / aspell / hunspell dictionary packages (based on the language(s) of the intended audience) are installed.

melodie wrote:I have to say I have a hard time getting the Grub background the way I want it. Now it does not display an image anymore. I wonder if Grub can use jpg files?

but can grub2 the .jpg format
example


show it etc/default/grub
and the characteristics of your image. __{{emoticon}}__

Make sure the image.jpg is not too big, and also you need to do an update-grub

anticapitalista wrote:Make sure the image.jpg is not too big, and also you need to do an update-grub

Hello,

I did, however the image appeared at the start of the computer only when I used a png image. Also, now I can't use an image anymore on the login screen. __{{emoticon}}__

Not that it's very important, but I would have liked it to work.

Anyway the spinoff will soon be online…

What about the default background in the session after remixing : if choosing the remixing option"for distribution" instead of"for backup purpose" ? Is there a way to not fall back to the defaut antiX MX background? (Not that I don't like it, but if we customize, we might want to make it a custom one for all details?)

skidoo wrote: (…)

but here I quickly found 72Mb
( vim, vim-runtime, python-samba, samba-common-bin, mupdf-tools, luckybackup-data, luckybackup, alpine )
installed stuff that I'd probably exclude from an EDU respin. Some of these are"easily overlooked" b/c they don't have a desktop menu launcher.

Hello skidoo,

I wrote yesterday to answer your 2 posts, but for unknown reason I could not get it paste the"submit" button, I had a"Forbiden" message instead…

I am going to check all your details to see what I can use from it. Thanks! __{{emoticon}}__

I have a hard time posting here, with"Forbidden" messages in white pages. Please read here:

========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://forum.linuxvillage.org/index.php/topic,727.msg4107.html#msg4107"
linktext was:"[antiX MX-14 ]Remix and issues"
====================================

melodie wrote:

skidoo wrote: (…)

but here I quickly found 72Mb
( vim, vim-runtime, python-samba, samba-common-bin, mupdf-tools, luckybackup-data, luckybackup, alpine )
installed stuff that I'd probably exclude from an EDU respin. Some of these are"easily overlooked" b/c they don't have a desktop menu launcher.

Hello skidoo,

I wrote yesterday to answer your 2 posts, but for unknown reason I could not get it paste the"submit" button, I had a"Forbiden" message instead…

I am going to check all your details to see what I can use from it. Thanks! __{{emoticon}}__

php-error-t3861.html

couldn't post: Forbidden
is due to a"feature" of phpBB forum software in use by freeforums.org
/ etc
^------ a post submission is rejected if parser encounters"forward-slash ee tee cee" substring.
Can workaround by inserting a space between, or by using markup ala [ b ]/[ /b ]etc

This isn't very convenient for posting. I have posted at Linuxvillage forums. I will be looking forward to solutions (for any or all of the issues).

(I looked at your post there, but can't figure out how to register...)

Did you try using Grub Customizer to change the screen?

Did you try using Grub Customizer to change the screen?

I looked. Grub-o-mizer doesn't provide a way to change the image.
I haven't read whether this is a snapshot or remaster... but I'm thinking that, for the live boot,
bgimage ALSO needs to be specied in /boot/isonlinux/isolinux.cfg and syslinux.cfg

Grub-o-mizer doesn't provide a way to change the image.

Grub Customizer has a tab for appearance that appears to allow for an image (size and format important) to be selected, though I never tried it. There is a lot of advice out there through a web search on"Grub Customizer change background."

This isn't very convenient for posting. I have posted at Linuxvillage forums.

FYI, I have an old account at LV (different username) but seldom visit b/c all the nagivation text, and stuff, is displayed in some weird language. Well, not weird, just fRenCh, but anyhow...