Post by: themacuser on 29 September 2005, 13:01
It's based on Slax, we use Windowmaker as a window manager. It looks very cool so far. I'll do some screenshots soon. It has firefox, emacs and X-Chat installed. More apps to come.
I threw out irssi because it needs perl. I threw out links2 because it doesn't want to render to X in graphics mode.
Here's the isolinux bootscreen:
I'll upload more screenshots later. And maybe even a download link.
(http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/9821/flyingchair6xu.th.png) (http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/9821/flyingchair6xu.png)
Oh, and if you wonder why it's called "Flying Chair Linux", think Steve Ballmer.
And I didn't make the graphic in paint, I made it in photoshop. It has to be 16 colours for isolinux to display it :(
Post by: xyle_one on 29 September 2005, 23:07
Post by: piratePenguin on 29 September 2005, 23:23
Website?
Post by: Aloone_Jonez on 30 September 2005, 00:18
Quote from: xyle_one
That graphic is terrible :(
I agree it looks like something from game written in qbasic. :thumbdwn: wow this is very impressive! :rolleyes:
Post by: Lead Head on 30 September 2005, 01:27
Post by: WMD on 30 September 2005, 02:13
Quote from: xyle_one
That graphic is terrible :(
Actually, I think the point is that it DOES looks like something computers could draw 20 years ago. Ever hear of "so bad, it's good?"
Post by: Kintaro on 1 October 2005, 03:15
I suggest you make sure it has perl, anything without perl really sucks. Everything uses perl, perl is awesome. Hell, even most minimal distro's have perl. Except those single floppy distros.
What is your aim with flying chair?
Post by: themacuser on 1 October 2005, 04:37
The aim is to have a small, light, easy to modify distro that looks l33t, and can be used on stupid people's windows machines :P (it's a livecd)
OOps, I removed perl when I got rid of irssi... :S
I'll put it back then, and kill X-Chat.
As for pakage managment, it uses the slax managment system for livecds. Download a slackware tgz file, run tgz2mo on it, and then remaster the CD with that package in the main, packages or optional directory. Very simple.
Yet another edit:
Quote from: Lead Head
how much can you do with 16 colors?
Yeah, stupid isolinux only gives us 16 colours. Should i not use pixel shading on the glass? Would that make it look better? We can only have 16 colours, but we can have any 16 in the world we want.
Post by: Kintaro on 2 October 2005, 20:10
Post by: Aloone_Jonez on 2 October 2005, 21:17
Quote from: Lead Head
how much can you do with 16 colors?
The Windows 3.x bootscreens used only 16 colours and they looked much better than this.
Apart from the crap boot screen what's differant about this distro? What separates it from the 1000s of other distros out there?
Post by: Firefoxfanphill on 2 October 2005, 21:53
Can't you go bug fix or submit patches or at least, not release this Linux distribution on the web.
God I hate how their so many of them, it makes people not want to use Linux it seems...
[Sorry For the rather harsh reply]
Post by: skyman8081 on 2 October 2005, 21:57
Quote from: Firefoxfanphill
Is this another one of those "I'm leet I hacked linux lolomfg omfg lolroflf hax0r 1337" crap? I mean, are you going to work on it for a week or two then go, ok, I'm bored and walk away?Harsh? Nah. It's like a dead fish across the face to slap sense into somebody.
Can't you go bug fix or submit patches or at least, not release this Linux distribution on the web.
God I hate how their so many of them, it makes people not want to use Linux it seems...
[Sorry For the rather harsh reply]
Juuuust right.
Post by: Bazoukas on 3 October 2005, 05:27
Let him release it if he wants to.
I am coming to the conclusion that most forums on the net are formed by people who are just too lazy to interact with real people and hide behind a monitor to be e-tough.
Go for it man and fuck these assholes.
I agree with kinatro though. Worry less about the boot screen and worry more about the inner workings
Post by: themacuser on 6 October 2005, 12:58
I'll get some packages into it and fine-tune it over the next week or so and get it ready for a first alpha.
Post by: themacuser on 18 October 2005, 12:22
(http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/9599/fc17cu.th.jpg) (http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/9599/fc17cu.jpg)
Running, with all stuff minimized.
Running X-Chat and Firefox. Works well.
X-Chat is deprecated and may be replaced with irssi depending on what you think.
(http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/3378/fc21zq.th.jpg) (http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/3378/fc21zq.jpg)
Emacs has been removed and will be replaced with vi - I was an emacs fan, but I'm switching - once I know how to use vi, it's not all that bad. Damn, why did I learn emacs first!? And emacs is a lot larger.
We also have no filebrowser yet. The root menu works fine. And if it's too big to fit onscreen, you can tear off menus, like you can in blackbox.
(http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/1444/fc36dv.th.jpg) (http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/1444/fc36dv.jpg)
Oh, and about the strange background: it's a cracked LCD screen scanned in. It was from digg, a while back. I thought it might fit flying chair, Ballmer might have hit a monitor as well :P
I'll definitely change it when I have a real background. I was just testing with that.
On second thought: thumbnails were added for dialup users... not everyone has broadband.
Post by: Aloone_Jonez on 19 October 2005, 11:16
Ever considered adding Opera for the default web browser or do you want this to be a competely open source distro?
Post by: themacuser on 21 October 2005, 10:56
As for abiword, yes definitely. I was going to throw that on there earlier. X-Chat is definitely being thrown out. irssi rocks! And, we can keep perl for something :D.
ssh and all those apps are there... sshd is there for those who want to set it up.
I'll make a new desktop image now.
And then I'll throw in some more apps.
Edit: the image involves Tux throwing stones at a windows logo. It looks much better than the boot screen, don't worry. I rendered it in Bryce. Pic coming soon.
Edit 2: whoops, tree was in the wrong place. Re-render!
Post by: Narf Man on 21 October 2005, 12:54
Post by: themacuser on 21 October 2005, 13:11
(http://img459.imageshack.us/img459/8961/tux1tr.th.jpg) (http://img459.imageshack.us/img459/8961/tux1tr.jpg)
How's that?
I used the tux model from http://www.stack.nl/~fidget/pguin/penguin.html
Now, to put that jpeg into flying chair.
Post by: themacuser on 21 October 2005, 13:54
(http://img479.imageshack.us/img479/224/flyingchair15bz.th.jpg) (http://img479.imageshack.us/img479/224/flyingchair15bz.jpg)
(http://img479.imageshack.us/img479/496/flyingchair21um.th.jpg) (http://img479.imageshack.us/my.php?image=flyingchair21um.jpg)
It now doesn't look boring and grey, does it?
X-Chat has been cut out in this build, irssi is being put back, along with perl.
Module list so far is
Base:
kernel.mo - kernel and sbin stuff
core.mo - core bits and pieces, drivers
wmaker.mo - WindowMaker
xorg.mo - X server
Depend packages:
atk.mo
gtk.mo
libtiff.mo
libungif.mo
cairo.mo
libjpeg.mo
pango.mo
libpng.mo
Application packages:
firefox.mo
Config package:
config.mo
So yes, at this point in time, it is just a fancy firefox loader :P
Post by: Aloone_Jonez on 21 October 2005, 15:29
Post by: MarathoN on 21 October 2005, 20:28
Quote from: themacuser
Edit: the image involves Tux throwing stones at a windows logo. It looks much better than the boot screen, don't worry. I rendered it in Bryce. Pic coming soon.
Bryce maybe? ;)
Post by: themacuser on 22 October 2005, 06:24
irssi wasn't running, so I redownloaded and converted the perl module. I went to delete the old one... and it wasn't there. Slax already has perl, but it's 5.8.6, not 5.8.7. So I just deleted the /usr/lib/perl/5.8.7 directory and symlinked it to /usr/lib/perl/5.8.6 and irssi runs fine. Now to make a rc script to do that at boot time. Slightly hackish though. I might incorporate 5.8.7 it into the module, or wait until slax updates it.
Current package list:
irssi.mo
04_wmaker.mo
abiword.mo
11_firefox.mo
glade.mo
fribidi.mo
libxml.mo
gucharmap.mo
06_libungif.mo
atk.mo
cairo.mo
gtk.mo
01_kernel.mo
02_core.mo
03_xwindow.mo
libjpeg.mo
libpng.mo
libtiff.mo
pango.mo
fc_fullyconfigd.mo
Some of them are prefixed with numbers, so they load in the right order. The missing numbers are packages that once were there, I'll fix the numbers soon. Gaim will be added soon. We already have gtk and perl, we only need tcl iirc.
It's slightly tricky to do all this, this is what people had to do before apt-get...
How I do it:
1. boot up flying chair in vpc
2. find program i want
3. download slackware package of program i want
4. sftp to mac from flying chair
5. get tgz package from mac
6. convert to module
7. sftp module back to mac
8. on mac side, throw in the slax directory
9. do uselivemod on the module, if it freezes, goto 13
10. run program, if it works, go back to 1.
11. if it doesn't work, find what it needs and goto 3
12. if any configuration changes were made, configsave to a module and sftp it back to the mac
13. copy all modules to base directory on slax dir
14. call the make_iso.sh script from the mac (you just need makeisofs on the mac, that can be found anywhere)
15. eject iso from virtual pc and replace with new one
16. goto 1.
Complicated but it works well, and if you keep two xterms open, it's not that hard. uselivemod occasionally freezes the entire system, this is a known bug in the linux live scripts. (not my fault).
Only problem so far that I know of is that the USB driver causes a segmentation fault when loading on virtual pc, but this doesn't happen on real hardware afaik. Flying chair still boots fine and runs.
Post by: themacuser on 22 October 2005, 12:53
Perl should work now with irssi
Edit: it doesn't. I'll just install perl 5.8.7 until slax updates.
And I changed my mind about vi, nano is going in instead.
Edit again:
New configs:
- New title bar font - Luxi Sans
- abiword added and runs now
- irssi runs (but must make it not run as root, see screenshot)
- firefox still working
And here's a screenshot:
(http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/7540/flyingchair9pi.th.jpg) (http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/7540/flyingchair9pi.jpg)
Oh, and one of the advantages of this distro is that it will run on very dodgy machines - it runs fine on virtualpc on my powerbook g4 - which emulates a pentium II with MMX... about 233MHZ actual performance iirc. It's not too slow and laggy like Win2K runs.
Probably even faster for a HD install (you can, but why?).
This distro is really starting to look nice.
I'll fix up the desktop a bit - I'll render the desktop pic at full bryce quality settings, 1600x1200 (will probably take 8 hours, full quality is really OTT...)
Edit again: irssi runs as guest. Must fix the fact that the xterm says sudo, but that should be simple.
(http://img470.imageshack.us/img470/5007/irssirunning0wi.th.jpg) (http://img470.imageshack.us/img470/5007/irssirunning0wi.jpg)
Another edit: Going on a rampage. Adding vlc, gaim, and maybe a few games.
edit: maybe not vlc.
edit: gaim runs:
(http://img457.imageshack.us/img457/1170/fcwithgaim4ic.th.jpg) (http://img457.imageshack.us/img457/1170/fcwithgaim4ic.jpg)
Post by: Firefoxfanphill on 22 October 2005, 21:45
Keep up the good work, it looks to cool to die :D.
Post by: themacuser on 23 October 2005, 01:47
You might think that from just the bootscreen, but I posted that because it was the only finished bit.
I'm going to add some dockapps soon, like a clock, load meter, net monitor etc...
That bryce render (started when my last post happened: is still going on the last pass, then has to antialias) could really be a while. I did it on the maximum settings at 1600x1200. Damn, I should have done it as a tiled network render, it could have been so much faster. I mean, a dual 1.25 G4, another 1.33GHZ PowerBook G4, a 250MHZ 3400 and a 333MHZ G3 all helping... that would make it so much faster. 4 times :S
Edit: I cancelled it. It looks no better than the one on standard quality. And I need some CPU to get some work done...
I could have reniced it but it still would have taken ages.
Edit again, when the G4 is not being used, I'll boot it into 10.3.
And as for a media player, I think i'll keep vlc...
(http://img481.imageshack.us/img481/1143/picture33ai.th.png) (http://img481.imageshack.us/img481/1143/picture33ai.png)
New desktop in progress: how do you like it? Tux holds this gun and shoots the hell out of a target practice picture of Gates and Ballmer...
Edit:
(http://img472.imageshack.us/img472/1690/newdtop3il.th.jpg) (http://img472.imageshack.us/img472/1690/newdtop3il.jpg)
There. Now to add gates and ballmer...
Those shell casings drove me insane though, it took ages to get them all in the right place - I randomized their positions with bryce and then put them in place one by one so they weren't underground or levitating...
Edit again: And damn, there was a whole other side to that gun...
Edit again: w00t.
Two 1600x1200 desktops:
(http://img488.imageshack.us/img488/3861/tux4vu.th.jpg) (http://img488.imageshack.us/img488/3861/tux4vu.jpg)
And the new one!
Edit YET AGAIN!
Damn, forgot to antialias it. Rendering it again WITH antialiasing.
Edit YET ANOTHER EDIT again:
Here's that antialiased version. Have fun...
(http://img477.imageshack.us/img477/7837/tux2aa3sx.th.jpg) (http://img477.imageshack.us/img477/7837/tux2aa3sx.jpg)
Bloody hell, another update!
Two gamma corrected versions. I'm not going to bother uploading them, they only have to be used inside flying chair.
Ok, another update:
(think how much higher my post count would be if I had hit reply instead of edit)
(http://img475.imageshack.us/img475/8632/blackxterm8hf.th.jpg) (http://img475.imageshack.us/img475/8632/blackxterm8hf.jpg)
Xterms are now the l33t standard, that is green text on black. A minor change. Makes me feel more at home. Shame they don't do transparency though. (my Mac OS X terminals are semitransparent green on black).
Post by: themacuser on 29 October 2005, 12:34
In reverse chronological order. Now to actually get some decent stuff working ON the software to put over the top of these desktops...
Edit: Huh? (fixed order)
Post by: themacuser on 30 October 2005, 02:41
Edit: w00t, it works!
Post by: ballmer_is_a_whore on 31 October 2005, 09:16
Windowmaker reminds me of NextStep... brings back memories...
I used to love NextStep.
Can't wait to see those dockapps working though.
Post by: themacuser on 31 October 2005, 09:18
Windowmaker would remind you of NextStep because it's made to look like it.
I'll get the dockapps working in the next few days.
edit:
(http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/7710/dockapps7hy.th.jpg) (http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/7710/dockapps7hy.jpg)
Damn, probably bad design to throw what you want on the bottom of the picture :P
Ah well...
Post by: ballmer_is_a_whore on 31 October 2005, 12:48
Post by: themacuser on 31 October 2005, 12:55
Oh, and compiling dir2mo, mo2dir, tgz2mo etc... on OS X would really help. I got mkisofs on os x, that's a BIG help... the ISO making shell script works, that's the first thig i did. It would be all hell otherwise.