[AktiviX] BLAG - Blag Linux and GNU distro

[max]

Hi Charlie, hi aktivixies

> Came accross the BLAG distro a coupla weeks ago (maybe from this list?),
> but I haven't had a play yet...
i haven't yet either. the only thing i don't like about it so far (how's that 
for prejudice?) is that it's gnome based... (no, i don't - i use xfce4, but 
usually tell ppl to start with kde)

> I reckon it'd be awesome to make a 1 cd mdk distro that'd boot off cd as
> well as installing normally, but like you I haven't got much time to put
> into building distros - AFAIK its quite a huge task :-(

nah. it's theoretically easy the scripts are on the mandrake cds. you get all 
the rpms you need in one place, run the script which makes an index of them 
for the installer to work with and then splits them into handy iso-sized 
chunks. neat. 

only i can't get it working. main problem is working out how to change the 
(uncommented) config file for the scripts. and i can't work out how the 
scripts work. now, a better person than i could prob do it easily. after that 
it should take only a couple of hours work. (i've already worked out and 
tested how to get all the rpms i want into one place, deal with dependencies 
etc).

the nice thing about doing it in this way is that once we've worked out how to 
do it, we can easily do it every time a new mandrake comes out. that way we 
rely on mandrake to do all the hard work of bringing the new software 
together and turning it into rpms,  and sorting out new probs with new 
hardware etc. not to mention doing updates. since  we'll only have stripped 
down the current mandrake distro, it'll still be 100% compatible with mdk, 
and any missing software can be easily added in using mandrake disks or the 
internet.

if anyone is interested the bits you need are hiding under 
<MandrakeCDROM-1>/misc/MakeCD, the config file you need to edit is under 
<MandrakeCDROM-1>/misc/doc/<versionnumber>.conf

I can get a bit of funding to press loadsa linux cds to hand out to activists 
(eg in ef!AU, peace news, at anarchist book fair etc etc), which is why i'm 
so interested in a single cd distro that is easy to install and administer...

> BTW around 60% of pcs shipped in Thailand have linux desktops
> http://www.linuxinsider.com/perl/story/32110.html . I may have to consider
> moving to a less mainstream OS ( http://bbspot.com/news/2000/12/smart.html
quite. i'm thinking of becoming a fructarian (vegan is too mainstream) geek 
running maxkernel-gnu. (ok maxkernel won't work, but i'll be the only one 
with that os!)

max