[RULE] Proposal/Vision: The Rule Desktop

[C David Rigby]

M. Fioretti wrote:

> My general "vision", if you will, about what RULE must become is:
> 
> a method to always install the *current* Fedora Core (now that RH
> Linux ceased to exist) which:
> 
> 1)       uses as much as possible official FC packages
> 2)	 can install on everything with at least a 386 and 12/16 MB
> 	 RAM

We still have the issue of getting a working kernel.  I have recently 
installed FC 2 test 1 on a PC here, though I have not had time to look 
at it closely.  However, the available kernel RPMs are (on disk 1):

/cdrom/Fedora/RPMS/kernel-2.6.1-1.65.i586.rpm
/cdrom/Fedora/RPMS/kernel-2.6.1-1.65.i686.rpm
/cdrom/Fedora/RPMS/kernel-smp-2.6.1-1.65.i586.rpm
/cdrom/Fedora/RPMS/kernel-smp-2.6.1-1.65.i686.rpm
/cdrom/Fedora/RPMS/kernel-utils-2.4-9.1.115.i386.rpm

kernel source is available on disk 3:

/cdrom/Fedora/RPMS/kernel-doc-2.6.1-1.65.i386.rpm
/cdrom/Fedora/RPMS/kernel-source-2.6.1-1.65.i386.rpm

So, we will need to consider "rolling our own" kernel package, as was 
the case with RH9.

Also, we had this post a while back from Jason Bechtel:

 > RULE fans,
 >
 > You may be interested in this work being done to
 > collect patches to make the 2.6 kernel run better
 > on small (as low as 4MB!) systems:
 >
 > http://lwn.net/Articles/62858/
 >
 > Here's the LWN write-up, but it's for subscribers
 > only until next Thursday:
 >
 > http://lwn.net/Articles/63516/
 >
 > Jason

A 386 with 12/16 MB of RAM was a personal computer 10 years ago.  Today, 
it is equivalent to an "embedded system!"  So, I think it may be 
beneficial to consider diverging from standard FC to the extent that we 
will need to create our own kernels.  The tricky question is: do we 
break something critical relative to the FC distribution by doing so?

> 3)	 uses as little disk space as possible (base at 200/250 MB)
> 4)	 doesn't give up functionality (yes to IMAP, gnupg, the next
> 	 kdrive, fontconfig...) if the bare minimum ram and Hd are
> 	 there
> 5)	 makes it easy/teaches how to tweak and configure apps for
> 	 maximum performance
> 
> 6)	 can give you a nice, fast and safe server, but is primarily
> 	 focused on desktop for home, student, schools, NGO, SME
> 7)	 contributes, by giving new life to old computers for the
> 	 users above, to reduce pollution and digital divide
> 8)	 supports, giving a baseline product, people working in the
> 	 field to bring Free SW and in general equal opportunities to
> 	 the users above
> 
> Points 1-5 are the "hackish" face of RULE, and are enough to make it a
> damn good pet project, just for the sake of it, for any hacker. The
> others are what personally interests me the most, the reason why I
> took the time (and hope to start again) to put the project together
> and make it grow. All this without denying for a second the fact that
> *Michael* is the one who actually wrote all the code and made it work,
> and being really grateful to him: without Michael we might just be
> still here looking at our navels.
>
> VUM has built on RULE a desktop for schools speaking French and
> Lingala. Richard Kweskin (Richard, are you still around?) did
> something similar in Greece (another alphabet!!). I've been asked if
> RULE could be used for hospital and lab inventory workstations.
> 
> My opinion is that RULE proper should be the foundation to build all
> such projects, and provide by itself some kind of english desktop for
> students/one man businesses (Ingo, is this what you called
> "Rule-desktop" made from vumBOX?). Starting from there, VUM, and all
> other groups could build their semiautomatic "ISO customization
> process"
>

In complete agreement here.

> To make this happen we need to make more documentation available, make
> website contributions easier (both pages and packages) and make the
> whole slinky/iso creation process more modular, so the base is more
> solid and customization is easier.
> 
> The lack of the first two things, docs and website, is mainly my
> fault. I got an offer from a guy to help with PHP and MySQL, and I'll
> contact him immediately. If VUM can help RULE merging back all what
> they did, it would be wonderful, and then we might start building the
> next version.
> 

Something we might want to consider is to use one of the many website 
"kits" now available for PHP+MySQL.  For example, there is the Drupal 
project at http://drupal.org/.  I recently worked with a derivative of 
it to create a website for advocacy of a political candidate.  It was 
relatively easy to set up, and did not require extensive knowledge of 
either PHP or MySQL in order to use it.

> Ingo, is this what you had in mind? If I was just so sleepy tonight to
> have read one thing for another, don't hesitate to scold me. Any
> feedback is welcome.
> 
> Thanks for your patience,
> 
> Marco
> 

CDRigby
cdrigby at 9online.fr


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