Debian On An Sd Card


Hi Stuckie,

Awsome work :) I'm running 1.0.5

One issue I'm having is trying to remap shoulder buttons to mouse buttons &/or get right button emu with evdev.

I've edited /etc/skel/.pndXmodmap and ~/.pndXmodmap and even tried loading ~/.pndXmodmap manually but it makes no difference at all

On the evdev side of things does anyone know if its possible/how to get right clicks out of evdev?

Owen.
 
Hi friends.

I took liberty to play with Stuckie's 1.0.5 rootfs. I kind of dig XFCE (we know you love XFCE chris_c, sorry lol) I take no credit for anything other than the time I spent adding packages breaking and configuring things. This is based off the work of others and I present it to the community to help further its development. I have made some headway in getting some PNDs to work some 100%, some launch, and some do not much else. The pandora user session has been tweaked for more finger friendly action (see screenie) and see the changelog for all additions/modifications. I'd like to thank Stuckie for an awesome rootfs to work from and chris_c for his testing with Stuckie plus all the others from where I gathered various tweaks.

Rootfs is here.


Screenshot is here:

screenshot.png

KNOWN WEIRDNESS:
=================
Must access card with PNDs to mount it, then wait a moment hit F5 on desktop to get PNDs to populate it. If you want XFCE menu to populate with the PNDs you must log out of session and log back in. Fix anyone?? :)


Changelog/Instructions

If you'd rather get just get PND integration to work as far as I have follow these steps:

-Copy nand´s /usr/lib to /opt/, rename folder to pan-lib, add LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/pan-lib:/usr/lib to /usr/pandora/scripts/pnd_run.sh

-Copy nand's /etc/xdg/op to /etc/xdg/op

-Copy from nand /usr/bin ofbset, op_*, to /usr/bin

-Copy bzip bins from nand /usr/bin to /usr/bin/

-Copy /usr/lib/ libsdl* and libcurl* libtiff* from nand to /usr/lib (do not overwrite files)

-Copy /usr/sbin/fbset* from nand to /usr/sbin


If you download the rootfs all the above has already been done + the extras listed below:

EXTRAS
======
-Set autologin to user pandora and allowed root permission to have X login.

-Added abmouse, normouse, xkbset to /usr/bin with corresponding .pndmodmap* files to /home/pandora
this allows A/B Left/Right mouse button operation. Added launcher to panel (mouse icon) to revert
back run normouse (joystick icon).

-Added conky folder to /home/pandora added line .xsession to execute it on xsession login.

-Install via apt-get mtd-utils to allow mounting of nand to created folder of /media/nand/

-Install via apt-get xfce4-goodies to get additional xfce bits like xfce4-terminal etc.....

-Install via apt-get net-utils, ping, and traceroute

-Added modified op_start.png to /usr/share/pixmaps and configured startmenu icon to it.

-Added Xubuntu-2x theme to /home/pandora/.themes for finger friendly titlebars and nice look.

-Added Zeckton ttf to /home/pandora/.fonts and selected size of 8.

-Added .gtkrc-2.0 to /home/pandora for finger friendly scrollbars.

-Adjusted XFCE4 panel to 54 pixles high more finger friendly action.

-Adjusted desktop icon size to 24

-Adjusted desktop font to 7.

-Adjusted some transparency aspects of desktop for task oriented visibility.

-Adjusted terminal prefs...transparency and made font green size 7.

-Added dir exports from Angstrom .xinitrc to top of .xsession file but commented out the export of
$HOME/Application/Settings because battery monitor was misreading somethinng and tnhought battery level
was 0% and immediately shutdown the Pandora. Also copied Applications dir to $HOME/pandora to try
for more PND functionality....orignal folder is stil there renamed Applications-


Enjoy!
 
I'll try this shortly (is LXDE still available as an alternative GUI? It kicks XFCE's bloated ass). Thanks for your efforts, PND support is all that's holding me back from using debian as my main OS.
 
All releases back to 1.0.1 are still available.. so the recent three of LXDE, XFCE and Xopher's enhanced XFCE are:
LXDE: http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/apps/pandora/Debian/pandora-squeeze-1.0.4-grip.tar.bz2
XFCE: http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/apps/pandora/Debian/pandora-squeeze-1.0.5-grip.tar.bz2
Xopher's Enhanced XFCE: http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/apps/pandora/Debian/pandora-squeeze-1.0.6-xopher-edition.tar.bz2

There's little difference between 1.0.4 and 1.0.5 bar LXDE and XFCE.. the bug fixes were documented here: http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/57097-debian-on-an-sd-card/page__view__findpost__p__945994 so you can add them yourself.

Xopher also provided a change log that you could follow to get 1.0.4's LXDE up to par with the Enhanced XFCE release.

I'll be concentrating on a 1.1 release now, but if anyone's willing to go do the changes needed to have LXDE and XFCE on equal terms, then feel free and I'll stuff it on the server - same for any other Debian fiddlings based on this work; just give me a shout if you need hosting space.
 
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I suppose you can make pretty looking shapes out of a crap, but at the end of the day, it's still just a lump of shit.

What's that smell, have I stepped in a turd? Oooh, no it's just XFCE...
 
TitanUranus said:
I suppose you can make pretty looking shapes out of a crap, but at the end of the day, it's still just a lump of shit.

What's that smell, have I stepped in a turd? Oooh, no it's just XFCE...

Ok... you have an LXDE build, along with some help on how to add PND support by Xopher, and the two little additional fixes I did to the XFCE build.
Or, you have the entire Debian on SD wiki page that I've spent godknows how long on to go and do the whole thing yourself with whatever packages you like from scratch.

I personally don't have the time to do this ( I sat on Xopher's updated rootfs for a while due to lack of time, for instance, ) but have offered space on my server to host it should someone else step up, which if you can't be arsed to do, kindly keep comments like that out of this thread.
The whole point of this is to give you choice with Angstrom, Debian, Arch, Gentoo, whatever else... I started work on Debian because I needed it for something, and then thought it'd probably be useful for other people so documented it and release bits and pieces now and then. Such comments like that really don't help, and make me wonder if I should even really bother releasing my dodgy hacks in the future.

You don't like XFCE? Fair enough, use the LXDE build, or build your own, or use something else. But don't go posting superfluous comments like that where people have actually gone out their way to do something a bit different.
 
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TitanUranus said:
I suppose you can make pretty looking shapes out of a crap, but at the end of the day, it's still just a lump of shit.

What's that smell, have I stepped in a turd? Oooh, no it's just XFCE...

To each their own, don't use it then. Thanks for stopping by.
 
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Sorry - seems you guys took some offence. I absolutely love the work you've done here and I totally agree that everyone has a different opinion. I was not suggesting that any developer does what I want instead of what they want. For a while I've been using the official firmware with LXDE installed as per instructions from chris_c. I have no problem at all installing LXDE myself - a few weeks ago I'd probably have buggered it up though, but it's all good learning experience. I was simply voicing my agreement with those that prefer LXDE, especially on a memory resource tight device like the Pandora. Perhaps there could in future be a choice of minimenu/LXDE/XFCE in debian - not so much for myself cause I'm happy to tinker with it to get it the way I want.

So please, accept my apology for not being more clear. I wasn't making any criticism, just voicing an opinion. I was NOT asking for help or advice or saying "gee, you guys didn't do it my way and it pisses me off".

Now, can I just say I finally got round to trying the new version and I like it a lot - it looks great (and doesn't hog nearly as much ram as I was expecting). Good work everyone. And please keep in mind not every comment posted is aimed precicely at you or your work, and not everyone is asking you to sort something out for them. No doubt I will ask for some help at some point, as I've done so for various things before - you'll notice this symbol:

-> "?" <--

This is generally an indication that I am making an enquiry and require some assistance. If there is no "?" in my post it's fair to assume I am replying to a question, or feel I have something to say. It may or may not be relevant. Also you'll know if I am criticising your work as I'll be very explicit and most likely leave you needing therapy.

I will play with this OS some more and give you some proper feedback when I have made an assessment, or need some help. Please keep up your efforts and most importantly enjoy what you are doing.

EDIT: Looking back I did ask if LXDE was included as an option, which was just cause I was curious and thought someone who tried it might give a quick "yes" or "no". There was also a question in my last post, but it was clearly rhetorical, and no answer was expected nor would it have been welcomed.
 
Apologies, I've been a bit snippy recently due to rather large amounts of stress with work ( we're on the verge of releasing our game, so it's a bit hectic just now! ) ... as people on the Wiki will attest to as they've bore the brunt of it recently when some of the pages I created got edited without a great deal of information as to why, and I had a bit of a knee-jerk reaction.

I'm not a fan of either LXDE or XFCE to be honest ;)
I rather like Fluxbox ( and seeing as Debian's SID release has just buggered up GNOME recently, I've actually gone back to it on my Desktop ) so I might target that instead.. and you can't say Fluxbox isn't lightweight ;) also bypasses this XFCE/LXDE debate - which I find amusing as I always thought it was KDE/GNOME.

At any rate, the 1.1 release is going to be a bit different, as it won't resort to the dodgy hacks that the 1.0.x series has, so some suggestions on how to handle this would be good.

Should I provide some base images with pre-installed LXDE, XFCE, Fluxbox, whatever images? Though if I miss out a package, someone'll likely be unhappy.
Or an installer so that people can make their own decisions? Though that does lock out the people who don't really care/know much about the lower level stuff and just want to muck about.

To be honest, I might do both.. as then if people complain, I can politely tell them to use the installer and roll their own. Or beat them about the head, whichever I feel like at that current moment in time ;)

Anyway, again, I was perhaps a bit snippy, so my apologies to Mr Tighten, and I look forward to any critisizing you may bring - as long as it's useful!
 
No problem. I actually like fluxbox too. As far as I'm concerned, the less flashy a desktop is whilst remaining functional the better (minimenu is great for people who don't want to piddle about, but it's not a desktop). I tried fluxbox on my netbook a little while ago and it was a pretty good basic interface. I definitely noticed a speedup on the pandora when I switched to LXDE from XFCE.

My frustration with XFCE is not entirely it's fault, it just has the unfortunate distinction of being the friendly face of all that gets on my tits with the official firmware. Thunar is unusable unless you enjoy not being able to see any file details whatsoever. And what imbecile created an interface where a trashcan is mandatory? Trashcans and recycle bins have bugged the hell out of me since I first encountered the pointless little baskets in Workbench on the Amiga. If you are the kind of dolt that deletes a file and regrets it later, you deserve to lose data. We've all done it, but how will people ever learn if their stupidity is catered for? OK that's harsh, but they annoy me greatly. If I delete something I want it GONE, and I want the space that was wasted by it's presence available for newer, more exciting porn (or whatever I happen to be working with).

Take it easy. Once you get the stress out of the way I hope you get some time to enjoy yourself, and of course treat us all to an exciting new release with tiny resource usage and maximum compatibility!

EDIT: Forgot to ask, what's the game?
 
Hey Titan, no hard feelings. Just felt frustrated cause I had a bit of trial and error with that and it took a bit of time so I did take it a little hard, my bad and apologies. Now, let's get more things to work :)
 
xopher said:

Hi xopher,

Thanks for the image, you've put plenty of work into it, it's great to see you're using and configuring "Debora". A bit of feedback:

• Personally I'm not a big fan of the font style/size and transparencies, they reduce legibility considerably. I can hardly see what's going on in the taskbar.
• The nub settings dialogue isn't displaying correctly (all that shows up is a bunch of squares)



Edit: Bleh, I didn't realise we're now using emdebian. Unfortunately synaptic quicksearch doesn't work anymore
 
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quartercast said:
xopher said:

Hi xopher,

Thanks for the image, you've put plenty of work into it, it's great to see you're using and configuring "Debora". A bit of feedback:

• Personally I'm not a big fan of the font style/size and transparencies, they reduce legibility considerably. I can hardly see what's going on in the taskbar.
• The nub settings dialogue isn't displaying correctly (all that shows up is a bunch of squares)



Edit: Bleh, I didn't realise we're now using emdebian. Unfortunately synaptic quicksearch doesn't work anymore

I'll play with that a bit later, may be the font/size.....regarding transparencies....go to Settings in the menu, then Window Manager Tweaks, you can turn of the Window Composition and that will get rid of all transparencies or you can manually adjust the opacity for each of the elements except the XFCE bar, that setting is available if you right click the bar and select Customize Panel. The Opacity bar is only available when Composition is selected in Window Manager Tweaks.

EDIT: Nope not the font...the other pandora scripts seems to work, wonder what is different
 
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quartercast said:
Edit: Bleh, I didn't realise we're now using emdebian. Unfortunately synaptic quicksearch doesn't work anymore

Emdebian Grip cuts out so much cruft that it'd be silly not to use it, really.
Though I have noticed a few oddities with their binaries.. you could always temporarily disable the Grip repositories and just use straight Debian if need be, however :)
 
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Thanks xopher and Stuckie.

For any noobs like me, I want to point out the following entry needs to be made in the Synaptic->Settings->Repositories:
Code:
deb http://www.emdebian.org/grip squeeze main dev doc java
You might want to disable the other entries as well so don't create any unresolvable conflicts when installing new libs and binaries.

Additionally, if you want Synaptic to run from the menu in XFCE you need to edit your synaptic.desktop file

Code:
sudo pico /usr/share/applications/synaptic.desktop
Replace this line
Code:
Exec=su-to-root -X -c /usr/sbin/synaptic
with this
Code:
Exec=gksudo /usr/sbin/synaptic

Then log out, and log back in, hey presto you can now run Synaptic from the menu :)

Edit: Oh yeah, and if you want to install the usual dev tools you'll need to resolve some conflicts by downgrading several packages (libpulse, libice, libavahi) to emdebian versions via Package->Force Version->Select Package name em1(stable)
 
quartercast said:
Additionally, if you want Synaptic to run from the menu in XFCE you need to edit your synaptic.desktop file

Code:
sudo pico /usr/share/applications/synaptic.desktop
Replace this line
Code:
Exec=su-to-root -X -c /usr/sbin/synaptic
with this
Code:
Exec=gksudo /usr/sbin/synaptic

Then log out, and log back in, hey presto you can now run Synaptic from the menu :)

Agh, I've fixed that thing so many times.. seems to keep reverting back to the su-to-root variety.
That said, I tend to just use apt on the command line rather than synaptic.. keep forgetting not everyone's as used to using Linux!

quartercast said:
Edit: Oh yeah, and if you want to install the usual dev tools you'll need to resolve some conflicts by downgrading several packages (libpulse, libice, libavahi) to emdebian versions via Package->Force Version->Select Package name em1(stable)

That's odd, as by default I've set the apt sources to look at both mainline Debian and Emdebian Grip repositories... I'm guessing your change to Synaptic's got it to only look at one of the repositories.
Only reason I had it looking at both was more that there's a number of packages not yet in Emdebian, some of which were needed to actually boot and install Debian in the first place. Though you will get some issues like that where they conflict a bit, so it's down to you as to what you want to do in that situation, as I'd likely get moaned at if I didn't provide the facility to be able to grab all the stock Debian packages as well ;)
 
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Stuckie said:
That's odd, as by default I've set the apt sources to look at both mainline Debian and Emdebian Grip repositories... I'm guessing your change to Synaptic's got it to only look at one of the repositories.
Only reason I had it looking at both was more that there's a number of packages not yet in Emdebian, some of which were needed to actually boot and install Debian in the first place. Though you will get some issues like that where they conflict a bit, so it's down to you as to what you want to do in that situation, as I'd likely get moaned at if I didn't provide the facility to be able to grab all the stock Debian packages as well ;)

Well I installed the 1.0.5 image and there were only debian repos listed in Synaptic, I added emdebian myself. Originally I wasn't able to install gcc or libSDL-dev hence I "downgraded" the conflicting debian packages. Anyways, it's all a bit of a mind-game :)
 
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This is all very mental. I wanted to try to further PND functionality within (Em)Debian. I'm going to sit back and wait for Stuckie's 1.1
It's exciting seeing things work when you have somewhat of a clue. Still wish I knew what the Nub Utility doesn't display the font properly in the UI modified version I shared, that's irking me.

Thanks for the other tips quartercast.
 
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