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[RoboRay]

Yes, definitely don't apologize for not getting everything perfect the first time (or three).  I still haven't had a chance to play around with Deborah, but will.  I don't know enough about linux to help with development, but at least I can test.  I just need to get another SD card to install it on first, as I'm currently overseas for a few months and don't want to risk screwing up my Ubuntu SD card.

[metal.lunchbox]

The panel not relocating from the center of the screen when the screen geometry is changed is a bug with lxpanel. It will move down and resize but it takes a very long time. see here. between that and the font issue and no useful battery monitor, I'd like to replace lxpanel, xfce4-panel is the only contender I know but it requires a 12mb install, a little big

[metal.lunchbox]

I'm getting ready to release 0.3 into the wild and I was thinking a little bit about the process of building and releasing deborah. Presently its pretty chaotic. I have a pristine copy on an SD and a testing/compile copy on usb. I fix bugs and make some improvements with the great help of this forum and I bump the number and call it a new release whenever I feel like there's enough new features, improvements, and bug fixes to be worth the effort.

There are a few problems in this process that get in the way of deborah becoming exactly what its users want it to be. For one, doing a clean install every week and a half is pretty silly, so I've decided to make an update for this one so that 0.2 users can upgrade to 0.3 without losing 3 hours of their life and all of their files/customizations. Second, the whole process is way to centered on me. I'm the only one who is able to make and publish improvements, so things are skewed to my personal preferences and they move really slowly. I'd like to start collaborating more, so I've uploaded all of the scripts and configuration files unique to deborah to the google code project page. Anyone can commit changes, just ask me for an account. You can also use those scripts for your own purposes. There is also the issue tracker, which is a useful way to track and kill bugs and make improvements, track progress etc. I recommend you use that if you feel comfortable doing so.

If any of you have suggestions for how we can improve the process and make deborah better don't hesitate.

[metal.lunchbox]

0.3 is ready, the main post has all the info you need. download the complete install here (246mb) and the update (10mb) here . The update is very quick and easy to use, instructions and details are included in the package readme. There are no big new features in this release, slightly bigger fonts and some bug fixes, most notably the new kernel fixes the power management bug that was causing the d-pad buttons not to work upon resume. Enjoy.

[quickboot]

Nice "Getting Started" intro on your Google Projects page! I like the added Shift key functionality for Muting and Backlight off.

Thank you again for working on making a faster distro!

As far as suggestions requested earlier, here are a few thoughts:

As I think you've identified, our target audience, while initially us, should probably be for G1G1 participants who want to be able to use their XO as a functional, secondary laptop. They likely won't be using their 400 Mhz XO as a graphics editing/RAM/processor intensive machine.
Most likely they'll be using it as a conveniently portable web-browser and ebook reader. I've talked to A LOT of people who said they were thinking about getting one as a small Netbook. While clearly this wasn't the XO's original design intent, the reality is many G1G1 participants would like it to function somewhat as such. Like us, they'll probably eventually be lured into trying to watch YouTube videos and listen to music with it also.

With the most likely user in mind, the mobile web-browser and ebook reader user, I think RAPID boot time and LONG BATTERY life are the most desired features. For us tweakers, we seem to always want faster processing and more and more fancy functionality. So we'll probably want at least two power settings available to us.

Process: If Deborah 0.4(or by then 0.5) seems pretty stable, perhaps start a new thread so that comments immediately following first post are more pertinent for first time visitors.
1. Following in Teapot's tradition, having a link in the first post to a complete clean install of the latest version I think is helpful for bringing more beta testers "into the fold." ie.Minimizing barriers to entry, easiest install possible with all the latest benefits, to help get more people involved.
2. Also the link to simply "update" for us current testers is nice, along with a link to your Google Project's page.

Product: My personal preferences and what I hope to see in Deborah 1.0-

-SPEED!
     - Fast boot time, and minimal background processes to optimize typical user's experience of viewing ebooks or Websurfing. Preferably no password prompts to desktop or wireless networking, but password necessary for software installation, etc. Ability to fit entirely on the XO's internal 1GB SSD so G1G1 participants could live without purchasing additional SD card, etc.
     - Menu items that can launch scripts to add or remove additional functionality (eg. CUPS printing, overclocking, aggressive power management, etc.) So ultra fast booting core won't have camera, printing, etc. enabled by default in order to minimize flash reading, hardware probing and expedite rapid booting. These extra nice features that incrementally slow down the system can be enabled by the end user with easy menu buttons that simply add their respective scripts to the boot files. I think I can help with these.

-LONG BATTERY life
     - Antithetical to Speed, but ability to easily switch to ultra-power-saving mode for long sessions of ebook reading or web reading/writing. (on Teapot's Ubuntu, I've created an "Aggressive Power-Save" button to turn this on/off. Unfortunately it also effectively disables my USB keyboard, so I can't use it for long writing sessions(help anyone? modifying aggressive power save mode), & it does require a reboot to take effect).

-PROGRAMS
     - Office programs for G1G1 participants: PDF viewer, Spreadsheet (gNumeric?), abiWord, Presentation viewer to view .PPT, archive viewer, and a feature-rich (therefore probably slow) web-browser(Firefox/Opera/Chrome?)
     - Small, Efficient programs: FAST efficient browser (I've been using Dillo with font-factor zoom default set to 1.6), Fast launching notepad, ebook reader, Calculator(Galculator?), File Finder(Pfind?),
     - Utilities/Debian Essentials: Package manager, stable wireless manager, Alsa, etc., etc.
     - Multimedia: mplayer, Ultra-low-resource MP3 player,

-ICING ON THE CAKE
     - Thesaurus, Image Viewer (gPicView?), Image Editor (mtPaint?), WINE to enable some Windows programs to run (there goes the small distro footprint! But us former Windows users will be in heaven), Bittorrent client (Transmission?)
     - Tablet mode: Onscreen keyboard with navigation  using game keys & screen rotation.
     - YouTube: Easy install link for Google Chrome? perhaps have necessary Extensions for watching  jitter-free YouTube pre-installed(or some XO settings script that can be launched to tweak it)
     - Perhaps: An efficient IM Client (XChat?), a small FTP Client (gFTP?), A few small games (Tetris, maybe some small 3D games, etc.), tiny POP3 email client, tiny audio note-taking application that saves in MP3 format?, Vector Editor (InkLite?), file encryptor utility, Timer/stopwatch/alarm?, Bus. Contact Manager/CRM?
     - Perhaps Headaches: Skype with some tweaks to get video conferencing to "work", Some camera utility to take advantage of built in camera,  

Okay, I'm done fantasizing. On to trying Deborah 0.3 ! .......

[metal.lunchbox]

Wow thank you so much for the feedback. I think we're pretty much on the same page. Most of the things you mention seem to be already implemented. I definitely agree about having a few helper scripts in the menu. I also am planning on implementing a script to prompt the first time user to make a few settings and install som recommended extra software if they want it - ie. cheese, pidgin, transmission, mtpaint, gnumeric, flashplayer-nonfree, google-chrome.

Also I never mentioned this but deborah plays all kinds of music and video files with no problem, just double click on the file in the file manager to start playing video files in mplayer. Use the gamekeys and d-pad to navigate. lxmusic should handle playing music. Flash player is the only video that presents a problem.

Most of the development so far has followed what I know how to do. I'd like to optimize boot time but I don't know how to do that for deborah, I'd also like to shave some megabytes off of the install but don't know how I would do that. There are also ram problems that I don't know how to fix ( should have more free ram). Together we can hack through these issues for a great 1.0 release.

[metal.lunchbox]

I forgot to mention, if you want to download bittorrents, opera will do that for you.

[RoboRay]

As I think you've identified, our target audience, while initially us, should probably be for G1G1 participants who want to be able to use their XO as a functional, secondary laptop. <snip>
Most likely they'll be using it as a conveniently portable web-browser and ebook reader.

Yep, that's me!  

I've been using Teapot's Intrepid for a few months and have added and removed a good bit of it's default software to better suit how I use the machine.  While the programs I've added tend to require more resources than the relatively slim ones they replaced, they also included features I consider essential.  For example, the PDF viewer in Intrepid always loaded files at Page 1, making it pretty worthless for anyone reading PDF ebooks, so I replaced it with Evince.  While minimizing resource requirements is important on a machine with such limited hardware, it shouldn't be taken so far that highly-desirable functionality is compromised.

In case you're curious, the software that I primarily use on the XO are FB Reader, Evince and Firefox 3.5.  I prefer Firefox because that's what I use on my other machines and for the plug-in support.  Opera may be a better fit for the XO for performance reasons, but FF3.5 is speedy enough for me with AdBlock and NoScript running and the filters configured for my daily-use websites.  I have OpenOffice installed, but use it so little I'll probably remove it at some point.  I believe Abiword and a presentation viewer would satisfy the needs for most users.  Gthumb is installed for image viewing and resizing, but also gets little use.  There may be a lighter-weight application that would work for me, but I haven't bothered looking yet.  I'm still a linux newb!

I've also got WINE and DOS-Box for a couple of oddball programs, but definitely don't think they should be in a default  installation.

I'll try to get the latest version of Deborah loaded up this weekend for testing.  Really.  I promise!

[metal.lunchbox]

Viewing youtube videos seems to come up a whole lot in this forum. Deborah is pretty fast and so flash player works perhaps a little bit better but its still completely useless. I've tried using google chrome with extention to view youtube videos as html5 video elements to by pass flashplayer and this was a big leap forward but still not usable, slow and very choppy and the video quickly lags behind the audio. The only way to do it is to download the video and use mplayer or vlc, and in fact this works flawlessly. I'll see if I can't get something set up for opera to play youtube videos in mplayer. without too many intermediary steps for the user. We'd all love for it to play well in an embeded player but that's not going to work. look for this in 0.4

[metal.lunchbox]

RE: Youtube videos

I'm typing this on deborah 0.4testing and watching a youtube video as I type. It skips some frames, but I'm statisfied. The solution is very simple, using a simple javascript file. I got to youtube, click on the video that I want and instead of the flashplayer in the middle of the page is a link labeled "Download as MP4" when I click it the video pops up and starts playing in mplayer. This is limited to youtube.com but the idea could be applied more generally.

For those of you that have install flashplayer the best solution would be to just make the player disappear. This can be done in a userstyle css . Please post the code if you have css that works for this purpose.

RE: RAM

Dispite running such a lightweight set of tools, Deborah seems to often just not have enough free ram. This is caused in part by the mere 256mb on the xo but that should actually be enough for deborah. There is also a kernel bug you should be aware of that makes 30mb of ram disapear. The biggest problem though actually seems to be with opera. I have caught it eating just about all available ram, more than half the total. To increase browsing speed opera caches webpages in ram by default. This should be disabled on low ram machines. go to preferences/advanced/history and turn off memory cache. Opera will still use alot of ram but it won't take over your system.

[quickboot]

Feedback on Deborah 0.3:

1. I like how it initially feels snappy
2. Seems to boot in almost exactly a minute.
3. Good initial compliment of programs.

Refinements:
-Mouse acts sporadically, even after extensive mouse preference tinkering. I think a script or something going on in the background is seriously hogging resources once in a while. The mouse also seems to have problems for the first 30 seconds, so there may be some backgrounded things still booting up. Which might bump actual cold-boot time to 1:30. The Network application may be one of the culprits.

I wonder if Teapot did something with background process and script prioritization in order to minimize mouse interference?

I don't have much experience using Debian or LXDE. Is there a good Process Viewer or Task Manager GUI program? It would be nice if we could quantify the impact each script/background process has on the boot and overall performance of Deborah.

The way I look at it, Teapot created an impressively stable, streamlined Ubuntu installation that fits a niche for people who expect nice GUIs and robust functionality. I think Deborah could relatively easily fill the streamlined sports-car rapid minimalist niche. So, for example, if the screen resolution script and other "niceties" are taking too big a toll on performance, one approach might be to ditch performance hogs and aim for a more minimalist approach?

Installation:
-Wicd Network Manager does need to have Eth0 changed to Eth1 in order to connect.
-I did a fresh install of Deb 0.3. My biggest problem was getting Sugar Terminal to perform the SD card formatting and install correctly. Took about 3 tries this time. Really makes you appreciate how good Deb 0.3 and Teapot's Ubuntu are!

Congrats on the mplayer YouTube work around in Opera! Please share details. The memory/resource consumption of the newer versions of Opera is why I had stopped using it as my primary browser. I've implemented your "history cache off" suggestion in Deborah.

I wonder where the 30 Mb kernel bug comes from.... Between Deborah 0.1 to 0.2, things seemed to slow a bit. I wonder if some of the parts re-incorporated are the culprit?

Reading the forums here and elsewhere, getting any OS to boot on the XO, let alone function and provide network functionality, is an astounding accomplishment. Kudos again on getting this fast implementation working so well!

[metal.lunchbox]

first , you can use top in the terminal to view resource usage by active processes. 'free' will tell you a little bit about memory. I'm not sure what the culprit is making deborah 0.3  little slower than 0.1. it could be any number of things and I don't have experience tracking these things down. I doubt that screen resoutions has anything to do with it.

the memory bug was there all along, something in the f11 xo kernels. The folks working on f11 for the xo will eventually track that one down and fix it. The mouse performance may be improved by changing x mouse settings, try 'xset m 4 4' in the terminal. I'm considering putting this in 0.4, but I need some feedback first. try it and tell me if mouse performance is better. play with the numbers if you want tell me which you think offer the best mouse settings.

as for youtube, mplayer is already installed, just install a userscript like this one to provide a download link in youtube. 0.4 alraady has a modified version of the above script running and simple stylesheet to never show the embedded video player. I'd like to have it automatically play the video instad of waiting for the user to click the link, but I'm not good with javascript.

RE: minimalism
would you prefer a dwm-based system instead of a desktop environment?

[goney3]

I just installed Deborah v0.3 tonight... looks pretty cool, tiny icons are a little hard on the eyes, and I had to switch the eth0 to eth1 like you mentioned in your first post. No problems with the wireless other than that

Looks promising metal.lunchbox, thank you for your hard work on this.

[mavrothal]

I think that this suggestion will solve the annoying eth1/msh1 "bug" (no chance to try it)

[metal.lunchbox]

That's exactly the answer I was looking for, nice work. I figured it was some little tiny thing. Thanks a bunch. 0.4 here we come.