Virgin (noX, i686) Release News

[machinebacon]

I am extremely proud and happy to announce the immediate availability of the coolest no-X release in Debian country, that’s the 32-bit version of LinuxBBQ “Virgin”, sporting a pure tmux session with all productivity CLI applications an average virgin-lover needs:

alsa
bc calculator
abook address book
tina personal manager
wordgrinder text processor (yes, .doc stuff)
sc spreadsheet (yes, .xls stuff)
bbqradio radio player (“bbqradio”)
shell.fm last.fm frontend
streamripper
moc music player
mpg123 command line mp3 player
sox swiss army knife for audio
mc twopane file manager
ranger file manager
wikipedia2text wikipedia lookup
unp unpacker (incl. unzip)
lynx web browser
elinks web browser
newsbeuter RSS fetcher
mutt mail client
dvtm tiling window manager
ceni network configurator
bbqstart application launcher (“start”)
bbqsnapshot image creator
zsh shell (bash disabled, “ins bash” then “chsh” to change)
sudo enabled

All BBQ apps are reworked and slightly polished. The kernel in question is still coming from siduction in version 3.7-1. systemd is now slightly optimized: no more RAID (mdadm) as service, no DHCP (at first run please use ‘ceni’ to configure the network). There are a couple of upstream annoyances:

systemd and kernel debug spams into the login message (bug is reported, fix is promised for 3.8)
on certain screen resolutions ‘Ceni’ complains that the terminal window is too small. Reason: seemingly curses needs fixed positions. Workaround: sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup -> UTF -> VGA -> choose font size 8×8 -> run ceni again -> configure network -> change fonts back if wished. Annoying, yes. Predicatble? No. Another option is to pick one of the other boot menu entries and edit the dimensions there (see nomode, i915 etc).

Now the end-user info that you should please scribble down:

login: bbq, password: bbq (remember, the login is probably buried under systemd’s puke)

After logging in, you find yourself in a tmux session. Run ‘bbq’ for a quick overview of starter tools. Run ‘bbqfix’ to get networking and to adjust alsamixer. Run ‘start’ for the application launcher. The BBQ tools link to each other, so you won’t get lost (hopefully). You want to look into ‘tmuxhelp’ to find out how to navigate in tmux. Give yourself a few minutes, it is definitely worth it. A nice (side) effect is that the mouse works, so you can use copy-paste (with middle-mouse click) like in graphical terminal sessions. The display of images or videos is not enabled, but doing so is easy and a nice way to dive into the beauty of framebuffer imaging.

What it is:

a bare-virgin system without X
~920MB in installed size
the BBQ base in perfection
the base system for future 64-bit BBQ releases with version >1.0.5
offering more comfort and functionality than a Debian netinstall
a fully-functional desktop
very 1980s hacker style

What it is not:

a competitor of Ubuntu, Linux Mint, the Other Distro or anything that comes with an X session
a one-click solution for lazy users
beginner-friendly

If you think want to pop the cherry, feel free to dd it to a stick or burn a CD (<4x) and have a ride. The system is installable (bbqinstaller) and a produced bbqsnapshot will contain the traditional live-installer (GUI) as well as the CLI installer. But you don’t want GUI anymore, I promise.

(Edit: do not use cli-installer! The tested installer is bbqinstaller)

Direct download: http://linuxbbq.org/releases/noX/linuxbbq-virgin.iso

md5: 7d499cc1ebd25658b47a43e86ff8862c
size: 283,115,520

[rhowaldt]

BAM! http://linuxbbq.org/wiki/index.php?title=Virgin
great stuff. wux will be happy (i hope!) :)

[wuxmedia]

Nice as pie, sorry I jumped the gun earlier 8)

<kidding>one problem, flash doesn't work</kidding> 8P
looks like a happy New year after all!!
downloading - once i kick the kids off youtube.

thanks.

[wuxmedia]

having probs installing the virgin, 8(

on the ancient 128Mb RAM vectra, 8D
tried the cli-installer as root. pass longer than 6 chars.
this terminates politely but way too soon, no errors. only +/-60Mb copied. no grub.
tried Bqqinstaller (as root) it stalled halfway. something about a child sacrifice...

remembered i needed SWAP :faceplam: , so i did that, as instructed by you for oyster.
surprised to see neither installer work after one Gb of swap enabled 8(
swap confirmed with free -h. and gets acessed (but not full)
bit stuck now as previous install of Pithje, was actually nearing the same 'level' as virgin. through sheer boredom. although not as sweet as a virgin.

thoughts, apart from dump the computer 8)

edit, thought this felt familiar.
http://linuxnoob.freeforums.org/post5270.html#p5270

i did, get something installed, i did... honest, how i cannot recall..

[pidsley]

wux, wux, wux. why? you were lucky to get anything installed on the evectra, and then you had to change it? if you were that bored, you need a new hobby. try pipe smoking.

i'm installing virgin now, will report if i have any ideas.

[wayne]

you need a new hobby. try pipe smoking.
.

hi pidsley,

do you mean like this?

http://i50.tinypic.com/2m5z8lz.png
taken from my last trip to China.

[wuxmedia]

^ nice pipe. 8)

pidley. well i can't smoke in the house, and pithje installed happy and smooth last night using the same(?) cli-installer.
i think i'll just play with that base. as people installing it on 128mb machines are pretty rare.

re; boredom, who was it, that pulled out some of their memory to see if (oyster) installed ok? he gave me the idea to try the lean install. 8)
that was defintely time spent learning.. about swap memory/files, 8D

[machinebacon]

Update: Please use the bbqinstaller to install this release.

[wuxmedia]

yay! thank the 'Q for that, finally got it installed, I mucked about with this and that, swap on, swap off. played with the bbqinstaller.conf... no idea what did it in the end, maybe loads of half spawed htops and tmux seessions being sacrificed instead of sync... everything went beautifully, with bbqinstaller
thank you

[wuxmedia]

couple 'o minor points, for any virgins like me 8)
1, using 'usermod' is a bit hard when the user also starts tmux, even logged in a 'root'
(sorted out using by recoverymode) isn't *user* fun 8)

2, the chroot tut is great, my install needed /usr to be mounted too to update- or maybe install grub.... kinda simple once one gets the hang of it - and copy/paste with the mouse is a luxury 8D

3, btw a 'virgin' new user (useradd, copying from etc/skel (i think)) drops into a 'normal' bash session this is obviously what you want as a base system, it's what i wanted too, yay! (for those who can't deal with tmux (me)) OK chsh to zsh makes tmux come back. It won't go away....OK OK /etc/zsh/zprofile global file OK it's gone 8)

[pidsley]

Nice work getting it all sorted out, wux.

What it is not:
beginner-friendly

You are not a beginner :)

[wuxmedia]

thanks pidsley, means a lot, i'm really still a beginner. had to look up user* stuff... but it's nice.
framebuffer is eluding me, very old hardware 8( i'm on 640x480x8 right now... so not much point having split windows 8)

must add, although byobu is (c)canonical 8( i do like it 8) no winding up C-b @ " (which is a shift keypress for us GB keymaps...)

[pidsley]

thanks pidsley, means a lot, i'm really still a beginner. had to look up user* stuff... but it's nice.
framebuffer is eluding me, very old hardware 8( i'm on 640x480x8 right now... so not much point having split windows 8)

must add, although byobu is (c)canonical 8( i do like it 8) no winding up C-b @ " (which is a shift keypress for us GB keymaps...)

You can always remap C-b to C-a, or whatever you like, and then use C-a (or whatever) + s to create a new window. Or just start another console.
Put this in .tmux.conf to change the control sequence

Code: Select all

set-option -g prefix C-a

See this post for some other ideas for tmux
http://linuxbbq.org/bbs/viewtopic.php?p=1068#p1068

Check out fbcat and ppmtojpeg (in the "netpbm" package) for scrots.

Code: Select all

fbcat | ppmtojpeg > 1.jpg

You can use links2 -g for a "graphical" browser, but you will need to start it in a separate console (it will not work in a tmux session-- it needs to own the framebuffer).
http://linuxnoob.freeforums.org/post8003.html#p8003

[rhowaldt]

*cough* http://linuxbbq.org/wiki/index.php?title=Tmux_%28wm%29 *cough* ;)

glad to hear you're having fun wux!