dcore-101

[sm8ps]

Greetings and season's greetings to everyone involved in this amazing project! I have followed the development of TinyCore over years and have made several fruitless attempts of getting it to work. Too far off the mainstream concepts for my limited knowledge but always fascinating.

Lately, however, I had to dive a bit into initial RAM disks, squashfs and the like. Finally, it all started making sense and my last efforts finally got me through to a working TC 5.4 installation on an Acer Aspire One ZG5 notebook. Wicd, Chromium all worked well. However the repos lack recent updates for e.g. web browsers and it all seemed a bit abandoned to me. Many apps were missing that I could recall from older versions of TinyCore.

So I turn to the forum and find out why it seems so quiet around standard TinyCore. It took me some time to understand what dCore is all about and how amazing it is. Absolutely brilliant! I got the basics working with ethernet, flwm and wbar. My first test case was to loadsce Xournal which worked perfectly well. LibreOffice mostly and wireless not at all so far.

Before I continue tinkering with it all, I would like to get some questions cleared. They all fall into the beginners' category so please bear with me! It seems now would be a good time to spread the word about dCore but the lack of introductory information makes it hard for newcomers to start off.

I would be very willing to put it all together on the wiki. My notes usually are quite exact so that I could easily extract relevant information. I also do maintain my privat Mediawiki site with a couple of hundred pages so that I certainly could structure things appropriately.

To keep things tidy, let me stop this intro here and continue with the questions in a new posting.

Cheers!
Stefan Müller, Switzerland

[sm8ps]

Thanks for taking the time read these questions and maybe help me advance!

Notice: I am using ub-dCore-trusty, release December 19, 2014.

LibreOffice

Installing LibreOffice worked but there were no icons. So I created a mega-package from a file
containing "libreoffice, libreoffice-{gnome,style-human,l10n-de,help-de}". That did show icons and everything.

• The internationalization is not working. Is there some type of helper script needed?
• There is no icon for LO in wbar but there is one for OpenJDK Java 7 Policy instead. Can one automatically have icons in Wbar for all loaded extensions? (Chromium for instance does come with one but not Xournal.)
• The apps do not show in the list of Applications (FLWM menu). Similar question to the above. (Chromium and Xournal both do show up.)

Wireless

I have tried several different ways to get wireless working (with ethernet available), however none of them was successful. I had created a mega-package from a file containing "wireless, wireless-tools, wireless-3.8.13-tinycore, wpagui".

• The download breaks with the following error: "Connecting to repo.tinycorelinux.net (89.22.99.37:80) -- wget: server returned error: HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found -- md5sum failed for wireless-firmware.tar.gz, exiting.." So it seems that this package is missing.
• What are these different packages for? Should it, in principle, not be enough to import Wpagui? If not, how are these programs started in order to make Wpagui work (or Wicd for that matter)?

Wicd

I tried myself to simply import Wicd by itself. An icon appears in Wbar but it is non-funtional. When launching Wicd from the command line, it throws an ImportError "No module named gobject (File /usr/share/wicd/daemon/wicd-dameon.py", line 46, in <module>: import gobject).

• Is the package not supposed to get all of its dependencies? (It seems that I do not quite get the point!)
• What else is needed to get Wicd working?

Apps browser, persistence

One thing that I am deerly missing from standard TinyCore is the apps browser. I just wanted to express how useful something like that would be to control the loading and managing of apps. I do realize well that dCore is at a rather early stage. At least it would be nice to have all the information about {import,update,load}sce (etc?!) together in one place on the wiki.

• Is there anything more than those threee?
• As far as I can tell, persistence works the same way as with standard TinyCore, right?

Last but not least thought

I recall somebody writing in the forum years ago that TinyCore was already then just about exactly what Google was trying to achieve with ChromeOS. IMHO, dCore is yet another leap towards a truly universal mobile OS. Great respect to the developers!

[Jason W]

Hi Stefan.  I will try to answer your questions.

Libreoffice-

Ubuntu does not have an easy "locales-all" package like Debian does, the locales have to be built separately.  I have just looked into it and see how to do it, I will hope to work that in to be automatic.

Wbar icons and WM menus, we are somewhat at the mercy of the files Debian uses, but we can make adjustments for those that are needed.

WIreless-

Wireless-firmware imports fine here on Utopic.

The Wireless package, like all others, are independent of the kernel modules needed.  For beginners, I recommend importing "kernel-all-3.8.13-tinycore" assuming that is the current kernel version. 

Wicd has issues starting, and I have not used it nor wpagui.  I do aim to give them attention one day.

Appbrowser-

There are 48000 packages in Debian Wheezy, and more if other repos like backports are added to it.  Not useful to have them listed all in one long list, but maybe with a Search function one could narrow down what they are looking for.    I am not a C programmer, but maybe one day I can have a Xdialog type of graphical utility that can be a front end to importsce.  Since in that case small size is not the main point but look and feel.

Persistence is the same as with Core.



I do wish there were more documentation on dCore, but all my time seems to be taken working on it and none left for the wiki.  Any help in that direction is always appreciated.  Of course, things have been moving so fast lately that the dCore utilities have been a moving target.

[sm8ps]

Thanks for your help, Jason! And thank you for your great work on dCore!

As for LibreOffice (and maybe other apps?): could one say that Debian would be easier to use for international users in general? (Sorry, I am not very familiar with Debian. In TC5.4 I had used getlocale.tcz.)

I double-checked about the missing wireless-firmware.tar.gz on 'http://repo.tinycorelinux.net/5.x{/x86}/import/' and indeed it does not show up. I do not understand how it can work in Unicorn, assuming it does  refer to the same repo. (The loadsce-script and major version is the same in both versions, isn't it?) Importing kernel-all-3.8.13-tinycore fails with the same error.

The app browser would be especially useful for managing my own SCE-files. The import is no big deal, indeed (at least not at the moment) but I did like the ability to make apps available on demand or after boot by a few clicks, especially combined with the overview of available apps. --  It is just a wish from the lazy user's perspective. 

My next goal is to get wireless working but for that I do need wireless-firmware.tar.gz and wpasupplicant working, if possible with a graphical tool. I can try with Unicorn but it might be a few days before I get some more tinkering time ...

Cheers!
sm

[Jason W]

Debian at this time is easier to use with i18n since it has a nice little bundle of a package locales-all.  Ubuntu I will have to code that in. 

All the dCore x86 ports use the same x86/import repo, so it should just work.  I will boot with Trusty to make sure.

Ondemand works with importsce and dCore.  Use the flag "-o" with importsce for the resulting SCE to be ondemand.

I admit the wireless graphical tools are lacking right now in dCore.  But wpasupplicant works, as well as the wireless commmands.  At least in what manner I use them.

Thanks for your input.

In time I will create an Xdialog utility to use as a front end to importsce, the scarce resource is time.

[sm8ps]

I wanted to start over with Debian Jessie on a clean install. (The previous one contained parts from regular TC 5.4 as well as from ub-dCore-trusty.) Now I cannot even import any SCE and need some help, please!

I removed the folders 'opt', 'tce' from the partition where the boot options point at. Booting gets me to a working prompt. (There is one complaint some lines above that, stating "-sh: /usr/bin/tty: not found", followed by "sh: tty: unkown operand".) The folders 'opt', 'tce' have been recreated and populated with sensible content. Ethernet works fine. Now I want to follow http://tinycorelinux.net/dCore/x86/README/README-X-Desktop.txt.

'importsce -b Xprogs' seems to work fine. (Though, before asking if I want to import Xprogs, there is an error "grep: /mnt/sda6/tce/debinx*: No such file or directory".) Nevertheless the list of packages if fine, containing Xprogs, Xtc, fltk-1.1.10. The creation terminate seemingly OK, albeit too quickly. Indeed, the directory 'tce/import/Xprogs' remains empty as well as 'tce/sce'.

I have checked the script '/usr/bin/loadsce' but could not spot anything obvious. Can anybody tell me what I need to adapt?

[sm8ps]

The new dCore-jessie.gz from 26-Dec-2014 21:15 (suppose this is my local time zone; size is 10.1M)  resolved my problem. Many thanks for working on this issue!

I am (slowly) getting closer to a reliable set-up ready to be posted. BTW, who can provide me with a login for the wiki?

Cheers!
sm

[Jason W]

Hi sm,

dCore is still a bit of a fast moving target.  But there is great need of documentation.  I am not familiar with the wiki or it's login, but I will look into it as I need all the help there I can get.

JW

[Rich]

Hi sm8ps
You can login to the Wiki with your forum user name and password.

[Jason W]

Thank you Rich.

[LichenSymbiont]

I started a wiki article for dCore... in August... or something. But I'm a hopeless perfectionist, and I'm ashamed I didn't publish it when I had at least gotten the sections down -- as there is *no* dCore wiki page!
Then we could have gotten it into shape by now, and quite a bit of effort would have been saved.
Of course, I know I'm not really involved in the project, and should have no obligations... but stil... a lot can be achieved by just setting something up really nicely for the community to have clear goals, and gradually refine it.

But we can only affect the future -- so I'm going to publish it soon.

Here are the sections:
===== General Info =====
==== What is dCore? ====
dCore is a minimal live Linux system based on Tiny Core, with the ability to install and download .deb (Debian-based) packages... sharing scripts with TC... and so on...
===== Installing dCore =====
==== Basic Install ====
The process as described by Jason... but I will also provide a basic script here.

==== Installing to flash-drives ====
Without a GUI tool (just bootloader installation and config), but will also direct to the usual tools.
===== ARM info =====
==== A7 ====
==== A10 ====

===== Contributing =====
Easy ways to contribute.

===== Laptops =====
==== Suspend ====
Suspend to RAM...
And perhaps a special script for aquiring Wifi and suspend packages...

===== Development =====
Here I provide my own info, for providing some good focus for the development of dCore.

===== About this page =====
Feel free to contribute to this page... and so on...

That looks fine, right?

[Rich]

Hi LichenSymbiont

... as there is *no* dCore wiki page!

Logging in to the Wiki allows you not only to edit existing pages but also create new ones.

[LichenSymbiont]

Oh, that I know.
What I was trying to say is that I was just wanting to polish the wiki page offline, then this little project just slipped out of my mind.
So I should have just created a rudimentary page, instead of setting an unecessarily high standard for it.

A happy new years to you (and all)!
I hope this will be the year of commercial high-end VR, and a great burst of productivity for Linux and TC!

[sm8ps]

Happy new year to everyone from me, too!

Thanks for sharing your ideas about structuring the wiki pages, LichenSymbiont! It is good that we get the opportunity to discuss things before setting them up. After all they should provide the primary source of information about dCore.

My projected layout is a bit larger scaled than just one page. Let me explain briefly: judging from my (rather limited) perspective, dCore will eventually replace standard TinyCore. I say this based on the availability of recent software which is rather limited for current versions of TinyCore. (I am happy to learn different if I should be wrong.) My personal experience had been to install TinyCore 5.4 only to find out that much of the software (e.g. web browsers) had been updated for the last time in 2012. The concept of dCore is absolutely ingenious by combining the TinyCore technology with the current repos of big distributions.

I believe that many people will come to seek information about dCore/TinyCore and there will be several different aspects to cover. The current state of the wiki seems a bit scattered, making it quite difficult for newcomers to find a way into the "Core".

I would like to see a second start page for dCore added to the wiki which is linked from the main page. The structure could be imposed by introducing a namespace ":dCore". Thus the page ":dCore:start" would serve as entry point to the dCore realm. For the moment, my focus lies on desktop installation because I believe that people needing smaller systems should have enough background knowledge to extract the necessary information by themselves. (This focus may shift in the future of course.)

Among the aspects to be covered I see the following. These are preliminary thoughts; the list is necessarily incomplete and should be reviewed. Adding items at a later time is not an issue, of course.

• Core Concepts (from a practical point of view):
  
  • What does dCore provide & how does it work? (Links to existing pages useful but probably helpful to explain in simpler words -- at least for me it would have been ...)
  • What more is needed for a full installation? (Network, software, user data, persistence; same remarks as above)
  • Portability
• Typical Installation: Frugal install with persistence.
  
  • set up live system via TinyCore & install on USB-stick
  • install manually on hard-disk (boot-loaders!)
• Wireless
  
  • manual installation from outside
  • installation from dCore (over ethernet)
• Laptops
  
  • Suspend
• Installation of software packages
  
  • Strategies
  • Dependencies
  • Updates
  • Examples
• Development
• Contributing

I have no experience with installation on ARM devices so probably the section on installation needs to be reshaped. To facilitate the discussion, I have created the dCore namespace and copied this structure there. Laying out the details can be more easily done in the discussion page than here in the forum: http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/talk:dcore:welcome

What we should discuss here is the intended audience(s) and set-up(s). Not  to exclude anybody but to have a clear view about what we intend to put forth. That will make it easier to lay out the structure. We can certainly serve several different types of audience and there is room for enlargement later. As you can tell, I aim for the 101 section. 

Cheers!
Stefan Mueller

[Juanito]

My personal experience had been to install TinyCore 5.4 only to find out that much of the software (e.g. web browsers) had been updated for the last time in 2012.

Extensions are user submitted - rather than pointing out that they are out of date, submit updated ones