On Tuesday 08 January 2008 15:22:33 Michael Brown wrote:
> I just looked at your site.  I think I'll give it a try when I get a bit of
> time.  I'll play with it in vmware first, and then set up a flash drive I
> can live-boot from.  I'm preferential to Debian-based distros, so I'll
> definitely give yours a try.

Hi Michael,
thanks for your interest for Piren.

> I have a few questions, though, which you may want to consider putting up
> on the piren.org website.

Your idea to put these answers into Piren website is great. If will do it, but 
when? Whenever time will be my friend again, I suppose. :)

> What is your distro based on?  DSL, or a modified Debian that accepts DSL
> packages?

Piren is based upon the last stable release of Debian: Etch R2.
DSL support is limited to loading extra packages or sort of, as
intended to be mainly used for (but not limited to) already made system
configurations at boot time, thanks to the (provided) "piren-live" DEB
package, located in the ISO within the "tools" directory, and used to
build the shipped initrd image.

"piren-live" is a very simple extension of Debian live-initramfs package,
composed by an additional script executed within the initrd at the
first stages of boot process that checks for DSL packages and, if not
found, generates a simple initial configuration that takes care about
loading Freevo, by a live session user if live-initramfs (and related
packags) are still installed on the main squashfs file-system,
otherwise using root.
It will then check for X.Org, and if it is present it will look for the
simple ratpoison window manager. Then it will generate the appropriate
.xinitrc If ratpoison is found, too; otherwise Freevo is spawned
by xinit, or directly using frame buffer if was removed also X.Org.

The official Piren 8.1 release provides both X.Org and ratpoison, but
can be easily customized to change package base.

> What kernel is your distro running?  Is it running the full module
> selection of that kernel, or a subset?
>
> What are the major software versions on it?  Specifically, Xorg, Freevo,
> Samba, that kind of thing..

As already told, Piren is based on Debian Etch. It uses just the
regular Etch packages and extra repositories for Freevo and his
friends: these are listed in the "/etc/apt/sources.list.d/piren.list"
file on the squashfs root image.
Samba is not installed by default, but Piren is intended to be
remastered to better suite user needs, so it can be added using
piren-remaster, an utility provided within another deb package.

Good Piren hacking,

//Davide


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