Hi,
The recently rules published in News and Announcements related to the build of ISOS which will be integrated in the ring of the officially supported versions leads me to change the way I will provide them.
There are 3 versions I have provided these last years, the first two, Openbox full and Bonsai, have been integrated in the repositories. The last one, Education, was not integrated, the reason Textar gave was mainly that he was not interested about educational software.
These 3 flavors would never have been finished and ready to go without the help of numerous members who were interested to get both lightness and ease in a PCLinuxOS flavor, which has been possible mainly with the constantly improved openbox-menu program, and which has been possible thanks to the numerous feedbacks from the testers here, and the technical help from a few of them who had the good ideas and knew where to look when I was stucked.
This is why the decisions related to how the future of the 3 flavors concerns the Openbox users prior and should be discussed all together for decisions concerning them, their use of these flavors, and their access to the future versions.
Openbox full: it should not be too difficult to comply to the standards.
I will remove the zram loading and configuring script from /etc/rc.local, and later when zram and it's new memory allocation module zsmalloc will be both out of the staging directory of the kernel tree, we could ask for a package with scripts to use it if and when we wish (some have published scripts ported to several distributions). I am now following the progress related to the zram project on the Compache mailing list;
I will remove the xcompmgr-dana from the directory /usr/local/bin, and replace it with the less efficient one we have in the repository. (Dana Jensans had forked xcompmgr, and patched it for a better management of the transparency, and the sources are available).
I will check that all the drivers are installed, fglrx too, even if the distro raises above 700 MB.
Openbox Bonsai :
It has none of the non free drivers, because as many here know, and as the description on pclinuxos.com stated when it was still there, it is meant to build whatever you want on it and is meant for advanced users. It is a "Do It Yourself" made easy and will stay this way.
So I suggest I simply rename it to "Openbox Bonsai" and deliver it as a flavor derived from PCLinuxOS. I could offer to create a mini containing all the needed packages to be used on all machines, but this has never been my goal, so if someone wants to do such a project, I'll encourage it and help, but will not take the time to do so. I'd rather lower the time invested than reverse.
PCLinuxOS Education : It has never been added to the official repositories, and I explained my position
here. Even though the topic has been locked, I won't give up on the security part of the project, which is related to the user's datas. I can remove zram, at least until it is declared safe and out of staging, replace the actual protection with others lighter to deal with (remove the install entry from the boot stanza and add a prompt for password in the draklive-install desktop file), and that is about it.
The question for the users, contributors testers, of this flavor is so : does someone want t
o take on, make the next ones, and ask for it
to be included in the repositories, with the boot entry and draklive-install avalaible as to all users ?
Or do you wish I make the next ones, come closer to a standard PCLinuxOS flavor, but with the protections I want for the user's hard drives datas, and rename it to "whatever education, derived from PCLinuxOS" ?
About hosting : I don't have any problem for hosting ISOS, which I already do.
This is opened to comments, and I will wait for all contributors who come by to give and express their opinions.
Thanks to all, with my best regards,
Mélodie