The wiki is gradually being updated to reflect the preference now for
most models to use the standard Squeeze installer. Here are my thoughts
on how things should look once Squeeze releases:
1. we will no longer support debian-eeepc.img (custom lenny installer)
2. eeepc-acpi-scripts should be present in standard install images, so
there is no need for any user to use our custom image (see 4) to install
Debian on any model of Eee PC
3. eeepc-acpi-scripts should therefore also be present in standard
debian-live USB images, which will also include live-installer and
live-installer-launcher
4. we will provide a custom eeepc-installer live USB image with a few
things tweaked for convenience (likely only one edition, LXDE-based)
It's 4. I've been working on for the past couple of months. Here are
the issues remaining to finish the work:
a) The cdrom-detect udeb does not properly support
cdrom-detect/try-usb=true, causing it to fail to locate debian-installer
on the USB image and look for a CD-ROM instead. My workaround: tell it
'no' when it prompts to load from external media, but proceed to select
drivers manually, choosing 'none' and then specify /dev/sdb1, or
whatever your USB device is for the installer as the CD-ROM device.
I've been discussing this with the debian-live team on irc and hope to
have something to test soon. Ultimately this is an issue the
debian-boot team needs to resolve, not debian-live itself.
b) The 'lxde' metapackage Recommends gdm which causes a whole chain of
other dependencies to be dragged in, eventually bloating the image with
most of GNOME! Ideally lxdm should replace it, but it needs more work
upstream. Slim has been suggested as a possible replacement, so I'm
using that in my test images, but we haven't yet settled on that as
*the* solution. In particular, I want to ensure that slim is really
release-ready, and it has been pointed out to me that there are some
security issues listed at
http://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-package/slim that
should be addressed (at least the second one). We'll have to talk to
the security team about that.
c) Obviously, we want to finish items 1 and 2 from the list above to go
into the image. Finishing the eeepc-acpi-scripts integration branch
that Luca Niccoli started (see
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-eeepc-devel/2010-May/003595.html
and the discussion that follows in that thread) is necessary to make
this work.
d) The WPA support I mentioned again in my previous post today is a
candidate to add to a custom image, should it fail to make it into
Squeeze proper.
e) The misbehaving battery applet in lxpanel mentioned here
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-eeepc-devel/2010-June/003644.html
needs to be fixed.
f) wicd fails to default the wifi interface to 'wlan0' and fails to meet
our expectations as a lightweight alternative to network-manager-gnome
(measuring ram consumption shows NM is actually lighter!) Given that NM
in Squeeze now surpasses wicd in terms of features and 'just works' with
LXDE, I have discussed with the LXDE team upstream and we agree that it
should be installed by default. (Of course, die-hard wicd fans can
switch this after installation.) This isn't really an outstanding issue
because I have already had a patch accepted in git for live-helper to
make this change in the lxde packages list. All we need now is to wait
for the next release to be uploaded.
g) live-installer-launcher needs more work. i've been discussing this
on #debian-live with the team and am working with them on some finishing
touches. a) is a big blocker for me making progress, as the workaround
I mentioned fails in that case (probably because /dev/sdb1 is already
mounted -- I thought maybe I'd try using the 'toram' option at boot to
work around this, but haven't yet tried it).
h) some key mappings that used to 'just work' with eeepc-acpi-scripts
(notably the sound hotkeys) will be dropped, as the kernel input layer
now handles these as ordinary keysyms, so the WM/Desktop Environment
should just be configured to respond to the appropriate keys instead.
Just this week I discussed this with the LXDE team and they agree we
need to provide openbox key bindings by default. All that remains is to
see this accepted into the upstream codebase and a new package release
uploaded. I haven't yet thought about how the LCD/VGA toggle will be
handled.
As you can see, there is lots left to do for Squeeze, so if anyone has
been itching to help with the release but doesn't know where to start,
pick something that looks like you could help with and dive in.
If editing the wiki is more your speed, I've already mentioned in prior
posts (which you can find in the archives) some tasks that need to be
done, or you can bug me here on the list or in irc for tasks to do.
That is also important work, and there's lots of it.
Ben
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