Basic ISO Brainstorming

I wonder how much troublesome could be to build a basic ISO.

I’m not referring to the so called “minimal ISO”, which only the devs are able to use, but just a minimal ISO as in the common understanding of the average-skilled users.

Ideally imho it should contain:

- all the basic packages essential to the system, including of course those useful for network connection
- the installer
- language: English only
- icewm for a minimal desktop environment
- no office stack (libreoffice, calligra, etc.) just a simple text editor similar to kate or leafpad
- no multimedia stack (VLC, cantata, etc.)
- no graphic stack (krita, karbon, etc.)
- no print stack
- maybe useful midnight commander
- maybe useful an internet browser (or maybe not)

Well, you got the idea.
Of course I may have missed something obvious. Please add or correct the above.

How much time and work would require, in turn of the benefit of being able to test a pure minimal environment.
Another advantage, imho, is that a more light weight ISO image (as in MB/GB) could be provided for download, whilst currently our ISOs became ~/+ 2.6 GB.

At the same time, it is necessary to set up -if not already available- and provide a full set of metapackages task-* in order to subsequently and intuitively install what will be needed in addition to the base.

All comments are welcome, especially by the developers (who are the main subjects that would be called to this matter, since the bulk of the initial work would fall on their shoulders).

Doable? Not doable? Worthy of further discussion?

Thanks.

2 Likes

This also interests me a lot.

1 Like

:+1:

Hallo friends, @bero @TPG @Colin and all developers @Cooker team , you certainly missed this topic, that would be interesting to have some interaction :slight_smile:

1 Like

I’d like the topic will be discussed at next TC meeting.
@Colin

1 Like

:+1:

You and I know how difficult is can be to get things like this changed or done in the first place.

Post-edit: So more voices speaking in favor in TC-meeting will most likely matter.

1 Like

2 option:
a) it’s useful
b) it’s not useful

It’s useful? > 2 option:
a) can be done
b) cannot be done

Can be done? > 2 option:
a) easy
b) hard

Easy?
How can we help?

Hard?
How can we help?

1 Like

Hi,
certainly doable and not all that much work for development (probably QA will scream at having yet more things to test though :wink: ).
Let’s put Falkon (if we want to put a browser at all) – much smaller than the rest of them and still works well.

I definitely want a version without any UI stuff as well (much like the current minimal iso), quite useful for installing servers that possibly don’t even have a graphics card.

2 Likes

Hi @bero thanks for your reply here.

I’m confident that QA won’t scream :grin:

Any improvement or different “flavor” I believe will be welcomed, however as we (mostly you skilled developers) already have the current so called minimal ISO available, I suggest for once to start with something more widely usable and test-able :wink:

What I’m thinking and I think what @rugyada wants is something very minimal but that can have X server if user wants but can also be suitable for server installs. We do want IceWM desktop the real lightweight desktop. But only the IceWM desktop no other. Then user can do what ever they wish with whatever packages they wish.

This would be useful for a lot of different things. I would argue that, for short term, it would be perfectly OK to build two ISO versions. The minimal being discussed here and Plasma5 only without LXQt. Folks wanting LXQT or other light weight desktop can always add it to their OS with dnf. Will is still be task-lxqt, task-cinnimon, ect.?

Post-edit: Or ISO that installs easily and user can easily add task-xserver and IceWM if they wish to use graphical interface.

1 Like

Thanks.

1 Like

A bit of disagreement here.
IMHO better task-xserver and IceWM included and ready to go already in the ISO.
That’s my own opinion.

1 Like

I think Ben if you want something fairly quickly then it would be better to stay with LxQt. The reason for this is that the current installer Calamares requires the Qt libraries so we have to supply those by default. Since that’s what LxQt needs too it will lead to a smaller iso. Calamares also carries some python overhead as I recall.

TPG came up with a bash based text installer from Lunar Linux which I started to adapt for server installs but it still needs quite a lot of work as well as testing. This installer would allow the use of a basic X server setup that could use one of the more lightweight window managers. With the best will in the world though I can’t see this happening quickly because of the installer development component. There are still quite a few issues to resolve before we have a working normal iso.

Having said that bero has just reported that he has managed to successfully build an Lx4 iso which he will try and boot after walking his dogs

2 Likes

Just to be clear we, or at least I’m, not asking for this to somehow solve the “we can’t build an ISO right now problem” that is a separate issue and not the purpose of this ISO. The purpose is to have the smallest, simplest, most minimal yet graphical ISO possible. With a very minimal package list as per @rugyada’s list which is a very good place to start on this IMO. And we’re wanting this to be one of our products going forward. In other words this is a “Feature” request. The hope is this will not be to much additional work because there will be so few packages on the ISO.

2 Likes

100% agree.

I would agree that would be better. But next users will be expecting plasma only ISO with no lxqt. And lxqt only ISO. Like what users asked for repeatedly for Lx 3…

Ok. Then it’s mandatory to be sure that these 2 packages/packages-tasks will install flawlessly without any issue at all.
If so, I can agree :slight_smile:

1 Like

Let me clarify something. Is this request for minimal ISO for purposes of minimizing the download size, ie. the size of the ISO? Or is this more for what results after the install?

Maybe shoulda asked this sooner.

Post-edit: Reading fits post I guess it is probably both.

Both. And one leads to the other, more or less…

2 Likes

Yet another point in favour of a minimal environment - btw already pointed up in the past - is that any issue related to a/any specific piece of sw will not interfere with basic ISO building process.

IIRC there have been several times when ISO building was kinda blocked failing just because of conflicts or wrong/missing deps or such of apps that although being part of our standard full ISO are not *necessarily* a must-have.

1 Like