[Inx] INX is a good idea.

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "D.J.J. Ring, Jr." <n1ea at arrl.net>
Date: Dec 8, 2012 3:08 AM
Subject: Re: INX is a good idea.
To: "Ian Rowan" <imrowan at gmail.com>
Cc: "Peter Garrett" <inx-one at optusnet.com.au>

Hello Ian and Peter,

If I remember correctly to enable framebuffer I had to remove the blacklist
for framebuffer and install certain libraries - I cannot remember which.

But what I have is a Wheezy / Testing Command Line Interface - without much
of the beauty of INX but which can use links2 -g to put color in the
framebuffer, use alpine for mail, use emacspeak with integrated IBM text to
speech (that's not "free" so I cannot distribute it).  I have a few feeble
(my fault) scripts to help the hapless user.

If he types at the prompt:

dvd

mplayer and the correct libraries for content swing into action and
activate the dvd and play a movie.

bbc1 gets bbc1 etc.

Hope this helps.

DJ Ring, Jr.
Green Harbor, MA
USA

David J. Ring, Jr., N1EA <http://www.qsl.net/n1ea/>  Radio-Officers
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=30=



On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 11:15 PM, Ian Rowan <imrowan at gmail.com> wrote:

> (Apologies for replying off of the mailing list - if this bears significant
> fruit I can subscribe and continue discussion there.)
>
> First my thanks to you, Peter, for an admittedly minor but in my eyes more
> than a little significant Linux distribution, which in more than one way
> offered something I'd always thought would be a good thing, and brought
> back
> every bit of my misty-eyed nostalgia for a world before Windows. When I saw
> your recent exchange with DJ on the mailing list, I remembered I had a copy
> of the last INX alpha, and set to beating my head against it. I'm still
> exploring various alternative ways of building a fresh INX based on Ubuntu
> or Debian (obviously a long-term goal would be to make it more distro-
> agnostic). Unsurprisingly, many of the problems I've run into have been
> framebuffer- and ALSA-related, but I also face the daunting task of not
> being a programmer and barely capable of interpreting even the most basic
> shell scripts. In the last 48 hours alone I've looked at Debian simple-cdd,
> remastersys and who knows what else. (I was actually able to get buildinx
> to generate an INX ISO using us.archive.ubuntu.com, but that ISO
> completely
> failed to boot. Then again, I did bypass the debootstrap version check :)
>
> Right now I have Ubuntu Server 12.10 installed in a minimal virtual
> machine;
> I was able to edit the INX selections down enough that dpkg generated no
> warnings, but I can't figure out how to install from that package list and
> not screw up my existing system. Sigh, that's what VM snapshots are for. Or
> I suspect, what chroot is for? Ah, yearning once more for the simplicity of
> Slackware... Really, at this point I'd settle for just the cli/curses
> aspect
> and save the framebuffer for a separate project if possible -- for me, the
> package selection is half of INX, the other half is that small but crucial
> amount of shell script and menu glue holding it all together. (And some
> sensible default dotfiles, am I right? I haven't delved that deeply yet.)
> Anyway, DJ, if you could describe how you put together your Wheezy ISO with
> working framebuffer, that would be very helpful for me; I'm doing all my
> builds in Xen VM's, but will soon again have access to bare metal again if
> that helps.
>
> I've also been in various IRC channels during this process including #inx,
> but no activity there besides my own chatter.
>
> -ian
>
> PS: While I'm no kneejerk anti-Lennart Poettering type, and systemd has
> given me no problems yet on my personal Arch box, the general direction
> being taken by most Linux distributions is enough to give me concern and
> increase my search for viable alternatives. The text-only ecosystem is
> showing signs of neglect, sadly, once one wanders outside of the basics
> (as with any desktop, I define 'texttop' basics as browsing and email).
> NetBSD currently has ncurses bugs, etc...but this is already long and
> rambling enough. Thanks again for your time and fine work.
>
> --
>
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