At the moment I’m working on a few tweaks to the DTX scripts. These latest versions do a couple of things.
Anyway, from now on I’ll have scripts with a beta tag if you ‘d like to have a look at them and see what I’m up to. You can find them here – http://omnsproject.org/build-scripts/
* Please remember they are testing/betas and may do unusual things
Please read the disclaimer
Latest updates to the DTX Linux build scripts are now available. They work the same as the previous scripts and have mainly had the code cleaned up and some install options changed.
The goal with these scripts was to include the various options in previous versions into one manageable script for 32 bit or 64 bit systems. The installer now gives you options to install some extra packages from unstable as well as options like installing nautilus or not. I use nautilus for a specific network need but I know many people don’t use it so you have a choice. It will pull in a lot of extra gnome dependencies so consider yourself warned I left the unstable part in because it’s an easy way to set up access to Unstable packages with Testing pinned as the default.
The build-script will give you a working Xfce (4.6) desktop. The default package selection does not include xfce4-goodies but there is an option later in the script to include this or not. The other options remain the same like whether or not to install Java Runtime, Flash and Openoffice using the Debs from the Openoffice site.
Other packages included that you may or may not want to include by editing the script with nano before running it (see installation notes) include:
The final option of note is the ability to install the DTX default desktop setup. This option will install the DTX themes, icons, backgrounds in the relevant places and configs in /etc/skel. The script will also create a new user to take advantage of these options. Without adding the user the desktop setup won’t work and will default to the default Debian setup. Anyway, if you don’t want these just answer ‘n’ at the appropriate stage. ‘Y’ if you do Not installing the DTX default will give you a default Debian desktop upon reboot. The choice is yours
N.B. Please also note that the default DTX desktop does not include a desktop folder
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Installation
Begin with Testing netinstall image for you architecture http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ (burn image on lowest speed)
Boot and commence the text based installer. The steps are fairly straight forward and if you’ve used the Ubuntu alternate or minimal install CD before you’ll feel right at home.
From the package selection options choose ‘Standard System Utilities’ and ‘Laptop’ (if required) only
Once complete, reboot and login as root.
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Now you are ready to use the script
Run the following commands
32bit
wget http://omnsproject.org/build-scripts/dtxlinux-installer-32.sh
for 64bit
wget http://omnsproject.org/build-scripts/dtxlinux-installer-64.sh
Copies of the previous install scripts are still available in an archive section http://omnsproject.org/build-scripts/archives
Anway, choose and download the 32 or 64 bit script you need and make make it executable
chmod +x debian-testing-installer-*.sh
If you would like edit the script in anyway (i.e. install a different package set or remove/add options) then now is the time to do it
nano dtxlinux-installer-*.sh
Also if installing the DTX desktop setup you might want to edit the name of the user it will install. This is ‘dtxlinux’ by default
Now run the script
./dtxlinux-installer-*.sh
All going well the script will just run and install everything needed. You’ll be asked several questions along the way about installing the various options.
When completed just reboot… enjoy
When finished you will reboot into a default debian setup or the DTX desktop depending on your install options. Remember to read the notes at the bottom of my previous post on adding wireless etc. I’ve added a couple of wireless firmware packages to these scripts that I often encounter (again remove them before installation if you don’t need them – they won’t anything however if you leave them in) but you will probably need others.
The End Result if choosing the DTX Linux Desktop
Wallpaper – Simple Flame
GTK – DarkShible
Xfwm4 theme – Xfce 4.6 default
Icons – Gnome-Colors(Wise)
Tint 2, Conky, bashrc and Terminator configs
And a screenie of my preferred setup which is mainly tint2 instead of the Xfce panel
Happy Scripting
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I don’t normally plug distros on this blog but thought I’d make an exception in this case. willxtreme and sHy have collaborated to create a live Arch system inspired by Crunchbang Linux. Now with a live installer it makes it a very nice option for a slick Openbox based experience.
Read more about it here – http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=89627
I’m currently in the proces of updating the Debian Testing Xfce install scripts to install the latest version of openoffice (3.2) as well as some other updates and configuration options. All going well these will be available in a few days
Updates now available. Please see http://dtx.omnsproject.org/?p=337 for details. If you were using these scripts while in the final testing phase I’d strongly recommend downloading the final versions. There were several bugs in the testing versions and they won’t install properly.
One of my favourite scripts in recent times is ADComp’s ADesk Menu. ADesk Menu is a small python gtk script that adds a dynamic menu to your system tray. This ideal for people who use panels like tint2 with window managers like openbox or pekwm.
The script can be downloaded here http://www.ad-comp.be/public/projets/adesk-menu/adesk-menu_0.2.tar.bz2
For those wanting to follow David’s other scripts and his Madbox distro can do so at the following links
Recently I’ve recently discovered a great little build script for Archlinux. It’s basically a script you run once you have a base system up and running. The script as it stands will install openbox and my intention is create versions of it for Xfce and PekWM. Until then here are some instructions for using it. All credit to thegreenblob at Ubuntu forums for the original.
After installing a base Arch system don’t make a user account. Make sure you have a working internet connection and at least one pacman server uncommented.
Then run the following commands
wget http://openboxarch.110mb.com/openboxarch.sh
make it executable
chmod +x openboxarch.sh
If you would like edit the script in any way (i.e. install a different package set) then now is the time to do it
nano openboxarch.sh
Now run the script
./openboxarch.sh
You’ll be asked a few questions but for the most part it does things automatically.
The script only installs the generic vesa driver so you’ll either need to modify it before installation or install your required driver afterwards.
Update: the creator of this script has created a new version that adds the following extra features.
* Chooses default GTK theme
* Changes Openbox Theme to match
* At the end it now asks you if you want to do extra stuff, if you choose yes it will,
* ask you if you want to install flash
* ask you if you want to install yaourt
* ask you if you want to install common media codecs
* ask you if you want to be able to play encrypted dvds
to use it replace openboxarch.sh with openboxarch-beta.sh in the instructions above
N.B. Occasionally the links to these scripts can be down. If wget fails to download them then I have copies of them available here.
http://omnsproject.org/build-scripts/
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A few people asked for my install notes for my new Debian Testing installs. I hope they are of use to someone
Debian Testing build notes Nov 14, 2009
for 64bit install (with 32bit notations)
Begin with Testing netinstall image for you architecture http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ (burn image on lowest speed)
Boot and commence the text based installer. The steps are fairly straight forward and if you’ve used the Ubuntu alternate or minimal install CD before you’ll feel right at home.
From the package selection options choose ‘Standard System Utilities’ and ‘Laptop’ (if required) only
Once complete reboot and login as root
First task is to edit the sources.list
nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Mine looks like:
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Squeeze_ - Official Snapshot amd64 NETINST Binary-1 20091109-21:36]/ squeeze main
deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
#deb-src ftp://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/ testing main
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main non-free
#deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
#deb ftp://ftp.debian-multimedia.org testing main
Don’t uncheck the multimedia repo until its keychain is added later on.
Save sources list then update
apt-get install update
Now install a basic X desktop to see if things are working okay
apt-get install xserver-xorg-core xorg alsa-base alsa-utils gdm snmp xfce4 ttf-bitstream-vera ttf-dejavu terminator wicd wireless-tools thunar-archive-plugin xfce4-screenshooter geany
Once completed reboot. All going well you should be greeted with the gdm login screen and a screen that looks something like this
Now install the rest of the system to your liking
First add the debian-multimedia repo and keychain using the install instructions here – http://debian-multimedia.org/ . Now go back and uncheck the debian-multimedia repo in /etc/apt/sources.list
Start a terminal, change to root, then update
su
apt-get update
Now you are ready to install whatever packages you like
The following is my default set based on XFCE. Iceweasel is missing because I wanted a later version (explained below) but if you’re happy with 3.0.1 add it in now. Included here are a couple of intel wireless firmware packages that I regularly need (see wireless notes at the end of this howto). Remove them if you don’t need them.
apt-get install vlc gimp hpijs tint2 conky f-spot inkscape scrot xfburn audacity gftp lame gtkpod-aac w64codecs exaile xchat lame gtk2-engines-murrine geany xscreensaver-gl-extra cups-pdf ristretto evince system-config-printer lxrandr xarchiver firmware-iwlwifi firmware-ipw2x00 catfish gthumb
*change w64codecs to w32 codecs for 32bit installs
Flash and Java -I like to install flash and java separately but you can do it all in one go with the previous installs if you like
apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
apt-get install sun-java6-jre
Printing – if like me you want a system without synaptic you’ll need to install system-config-printer without recommended packages. So remove it from the list of packages to be installed above then install it later with:
apt-get --no-install-recommends install system-config-printer
You may also need hal-cups-utils if you have usb printer . If you only have network printers you can give this a miss.
apt-get --no-install-recommends install hal-cups-utils
ntfs – If you have a dual-boot machine you may also need libntfs-3g54 an ntfs-config if you want to read and write to that partition
Installing Iceweasel 3.5.4
Testing currently only has Iceweasel 3.0.1. If you are not afraid with a few packages from unstable on your system, and want to use Iceweasel 3.5, here are the steps you can go through to install it:
Add the testing and experimental sources to your apt sources:
$ echo deb http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian unstable main > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/testing.list
Set the default distribution to “testing”:
$ echo 'APT::Default-Release "testing";' > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/default
apt-get update
Install iceweasel:
$ apt-get install iceweasel/unstable
* if you are worried about adding these packages from the unstable repos then another option is to install Swiftox to get something based on 3.5 http://getswiftfox.com/deb.htm
* * Iceweasel 3.5 is now in testing. I’ll leave this bit here as an example of how to install a package from unstable.
Openoffice 3.1
I’m not sure what version of openoffice is in the repos. I still prefer to install it with this method on any deb based system http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic/185/howto-install-openoffice-3-using-openofficeorg-debs/
* Edited here to work without sudo
First you will need to download the debs for your system from the openoffice org website. Make sure you download a Linux DEB package. Go to http://download.openoffice.org/other.html . I downloaded the English US package but you may want another. I assume they will work just as well.
Once you have this package downloaded navigate to it in thunar and then untar it.(Right Click–>Extract here) Navigate into the folder that is created, then into the DEBS folder and then open a terminal in that folder. You can do this in thunar by right clicking in the folder and choosing ‘Open in Terminal’.
Then within the terminal change to root
su
then simply run this command
dpkg -i *.deb
When this is finished run the command
cd desktop-integration
then run the
dpkg -i *.deb
command again. This will install the debian desktop-integration package which will give debian menu entries.
Other Issues
When Terminator starts the first time it doesn’t generate a config file at ~/.config/terminator/config
I needed to manually create this file then add my favourite config details (tango palette and transparency)
scrollbar_position=disabled
force_no_bell=true
background_color=#000000
foreground_color=#ffffff
font=Mono 9
palette=#2E2E34343636:#CCCC00000000:#4E4E9A9A0606:#C4C4A0A00000:#34346565A4A4:#757550507B7B:#060698209A9A:#D3D3D7D7CFCF:#555557575353:#EFEF29292929:#8A8AE2E23434:#FCFCE9E94F4F:#72729F9FCFCF:#ADAD7F7FA8A8:#3434E2E2E2E2:#EEEEEEEEECEC
enable_real_transparency = True
background_type = 'transparent'
background_darkness = '0.7'
Volwheel: if you are a tint2 user like me then volwheel is a necessity
I couldn’t find a working Volwheel deb for Debian so I used the current crunchbang package and installed it this way.
Download the deb
wget http://crunchbang.net/packages-9.04.xx/pool/main/volwheel_0.2.6-1crunchbang1_all.deb (*I’ll rebuild this package when I have time and post a new link here)
Open a terminal, change to root then install with dpkg
su
dpkg -i volwheel*.deb
you will get some error messages about missing dpendencies. Fix this by running
apt-get -f install
Dependencies should install and volwheel will finish configuring
A few notes about Wireless
The module for the Atheros card on my 64bit system is built into the default kernel. To get wireless working with wicd just run in a root terminal
su
iwconfig
This will tell you where your wireless card is located. i.e. wlan0 or eth1 etc
Then add this information (i.e. wlan0) to wicd’s preferences – Preferences – General Settings – Network Interfaces
On my old 32 bit thinkpad with an Intel card I had to install the kernel module separately from the non-free repos after the initial install. A quick search at http://wiki.debian.org/WiFi and packages.debian.org should help you find the module you need. Once installed follow the procedure above to find where the card is located and add it to wicd’s preferences.
Future plans
An install script to do all this automagically
That’s all – enjoy
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My current desktop looks like this
Full screenshot here http://omns.deviantart.com/art/Screenshot-Nov-14-2009-143550393
Conkyrc
http://omnsproject.org/config/.conyrc
bashrc
http://omnsproject.org/config/.bashrc
tint2rc
http://omnsproject.org/config/tint2/tint2rc
terminator/config
http://omnsproject.org/config/terminator/config
activate touchpad
http://omnsproject.org/config/touchpad.conf (place in /etc/modprobe.d)
