[sword-devel] Re: Christian Debian distro talk / Report

[Raphaël Pinson]

Hi all,

Well first of all, something weird happened, for I got pastor Ed's
last message only through all your quoting it... Never receive the
original message :(

Secondly, we're on the way to creating a mailing list for the project.
It will be available soon.

Thirdly, about the live CD, I have released a new version 2 days ago,
including some small changes (mostly graphics and some settings), and
it is now available on ftp thanks to Daniel
http://www.crosswire.org/~dglassey/ichthux/ .


> ok for editors, but NOT the developpement packages, for if one wants to install
> Ichtux to hd and later one wants to add .tgz packages, it won´t build ! It is
> like cutting the arms away of a man ...
 
Agreed. This is indeed terrible for a linux advanced user to find a
distro without developping packages installed. I'm not sure this is
needed on a live CD though (but the editors ARE needed, at least a few
ones, and if I didn't remove most of them, it's because they took very
few place indeed, or were bound to useful libraries - of KDE for ex
-).


> > 2) During the HD install, the script has LILO as the default, but LILO is not
> > nearly as flexible/recoverable as GRUB. Any chance we could switch the two?

I agree that GRUB is better than LILO. Knoppix comes with LILO though.
We might try to change it later, but I have not even tried the HD
install ever, so I couldn't ever tell there was LILO instead of GRUB
:(


> > 3) Since this is going to be an OUTREACH tool that will be given to people
> > who
> > are unfamiliar with Linux, we should probably spend some time naming things
> > so that non-Linux users won't get overly confused. For example:
> >
> > In the KDE menu, what does KNOPPIX mean? Since I'm a fairly experienced Linux
> > user, I know right away what it means. But what if we give this disk to
> > someone who has never even SEEN Linux, let alone the KNOPPIX distro. It will
> > just confuse them.

Yeah not easy. I guess this is one of the reasons why SynrG proposes
to work directly on a Debian live CD instead of using Knoppix. Anyway
my idea in using Knoppix was mainly to do something, with the few I
can do, and Knoppix is very easy to remaster. Now based on this, we
can well do something different, based on Debian.
 
> > The entire KDE menu structure is WAY too complicated. It should be
> > streamlined
> > down to just a few menu entries, with organized submenus. I know this is
> > possible, because the Multimedia menu is subdivided into Sound, Video, and
> > Viewers. This is excellent - let's continue this all the way through and
> > SIMPLIFY.

I have thought about this, but not tried to modify it yet. You say
this is possible, and of course it is possible, even easy, to modify
the KDE menu. There is just one thing you don't take in consideration
: localization. I don't want to give up the 10 or so other languages
available, cause many people in Europe don't speak english good enough
to use an entirely english-based distro. Therefore if the menus have
to be modified, I would like to find a way to modify them so they are
modified in all languages, instead of having english menus in the
middle of a german version. I think we have to use i18n to achieve
this.


> > 4) Raphael: excellent job on pre-configuring Xchat to have Christian Forums
> > right up front. That is GREAT. Can you put a DESKTOP shortcut that says
> > something like "Live Christian Chat" which links to Xchat?
> 
> brilliant job indeed : please add a link to sword and the other christian tools

Done in 0.4.3


> > 5) The graphics. That little kid coloring book version of Jesus makes my skin
> > crawl. Do we really want to portray our Lord as a cartoon character? I would
> > much rather come up with something that looks a bit more professional and has
> > our theme built into it.

Sure, that's why the wallpaper is still in the ToBeDone list on the
wiki. I'm not a graphic designer myself, although I could try making a
wallpaper, but I'm surely willing to have our own wallpaper for the
distro. I had just put this wallpaper cause it's nicer than the
knoppix default one, which is all black and red (not very nice for a
christian distro imo).

> >
> > We could create a series of themes, and keep the cartoon Jesus picture for
> > the
> > kids, along with the excellent Everaldo Kids' Icon theme. But PLEASE - not
> > for the default install.
> 

Anyway, this wallpaper is from the crossmap site, and it should be
verified whether it's ok to keep it :S


> > 6) Right now, it looks as if Raphael is doing the lion's share of the actual
> > work on configuring the distro. Is there any way we could spread out this
> > development process so that we could all work on the project?

I think that would be a good idea that we gather and decide what has
to be done and who can do it. Then organize staffs and fix goals and
an agenda.


> > Perhaps we could upload customized IchthuX packages to be included during the
> > iso build process... all we need is a place to store them.

Crosswire is willing to host them. Scribe might open us an account
where we can store our work (packages, etc...).