Archie

Took me much longer than i've expected, but at least i've resumed work on Archie, which is the good news so far.
Ive repackaged all packages to latest versions, dumped the kernel package (im planning a head to be able to leave the project so i won't be needed and package updates wont require much work from others) and packaged the squashfs-lzma as a separate module. im also now using the aufs package from Arch repositories so thats another package down the drain :)

finally i got an Archie iso booting, and im in the process of removing lshwd detection and simply using sed/awk on /sys to get the information i need to auto-create an xorg.conf file. i also dumped gensplash (i always hated it anyway) and working on adopting splashy instead (when on earth will Arch developers finally adopt splash support to the initscripts? i've read the ML with all the pros/cons discussions but it doesn't seem to go anywhere...i got a good laugh when i read some of the developers rejected splash support because a users' misconfiguration can damage the system... well, lets drop fstab support too then! ;) ). I'd like to use Arch default init scripts instead of Archies' patched scripts (less things to maintain) but i don't know if this will work with splash and i don't want to use the initscripts-splash package since they are not maintained/updated.

anyway, i've been through a lot in the last month - my laptop got fried so i had to buy a new laptop (got an LG E500 - great laptop, but ar5007eg wifi keeps getting "irq disabled" on Arch with both madwifi and ndiswrapper, which requires me to shutdown (reboot doesn't help) the computer each time, and battery meter & ACPI seems screwed up atm for this hw...), and also im moving to a new house in the next few days, and having a job interview this week (i hope they'll let me keep working as self-employed cause i enjoy the freedom it allow me to have). in anyway, i'll keep working on Archie, and hope to update you soon enough.

I'll try and post an update every couple of days so people will know what is going on with Archie development.

After couple of days struggling with mksquashfs/lzma patches i gave up and decided on using the patches from www.squashfs-lzma.org instead of making my own although i still use my own patches on the kernel squashfs/lzma module. All seems to be working fine, and i'll create an iso tomorrow to test the entire live system. I've also updated all the Archie packages to latest versions and once the iso works i'll update the repository too.
I guess some things won't work on the iso since much have changed since my last work on Archie, so there will be some bug-squashing todo, but i don't think it will be much work (cross fingers). The only main issue is dropping lshwd (damn this obsolete tool...) and adopting mkxcfg to use a newer method.

Here is the over-due update:

5 months ago, due to numerous reasons i've decided to step down as the Archie project leader and gave dtw the complete control over the project. Alas, since then dtw was gone with no trace, and the Archie project hit a stall. I've invested too much work into the project to see it go down like that, so i'm going to do my best and revive it, at least for the long-promised 0.6 version.

Some points i'd like to clear over the project -

1. Since day one, Archie was able to either 'livify' your existing Arch system or you could install a new Arch system from scratch and 'livify' it - those options matured in latest versions and nowdays you can select which type of desktop system would you like to install (if your choose to do so) from several Archie modules (e17/xfce/kde/openbox) or create your own module.
2. When the Archie project first began, the most important software pieces which were used to create a live system were not part of the Arch default kernel (unionfs/squashfs). Nowdays those programs are part of the default Arch kernel which basically means Archie _could_ use the default Arch kerenl, but we don't for two reasons - we now use aufs instead of unionfs and squashfs/lzma instead of squashfs/gzip because of a _much_ better performance with those replacements. Reason two is because the default Arch kernel maintainer still havn't decided if he'd like to optimize the kernel for desktop usage or server (timer frequency is set to 300hz which is not optimized for neither desktop nor server usage - a bad choice imho, and a worse choice for desktop/live usage). until this issue will be resolved (and my guess - it won't) i prefer using an Archie customized kernel.
3. One of the major goals of the Archie project was to create a standard way for any Arch linux user to 'livify' his system and allow users to create customized Arch distributions since in my eyes Arch is not another distro - its actually a base system to allow others to create their own distros upon it. There were some discussions with Arch developers on doing so, but nothing actually progressed. i still hope to see that happens.
4. About the Archie site - for a long time im not allowing new users registration due to massive spam attacks - if someone is willing to take over the site administration and take care for this stuff, please email me.
5. As a last note, i want to apologize to all the contributers of the Archie project who continuously assisted, developed, tested, and contributed to the project and trusted me to release Archie latest version more than a year ago, in which i havn't. I truly am sorry, and i hope it's better late than never.

We've uploaded a beta test release for the most recent version of Archie. You can download it here:

archie-mini-xfce-2007.08-beta.iso
archie-mini-xfce-2007.08-beta.iso.md5sum

Please provide feedback here if you can.

Pending upload we are ready to release a beta of our latest ISO, version 2007.08, for testing.

The beta release will be a single 300Mb ISO built on a mini XFCE install.

Since it has been so long since our last release we are keen to ensure that our support for various GFX cards, and other improvements, are working as expected on as a many machines as possible.

Once we've squashed the obvious bugs we'll make major releases of all our main module versions, including KDE, XFCE and the command-line only variant.

A new release of AEGIS, my pet GIS project, should follow shortly afterwards.

In case you have not noticed we've switched versioning schemes, not because Arch Linux itself has, but because ISO releases will no longer be made off the back of updates to the build scripts. And there is also no need to imply that Archie 1.* will be a stable release; as we are based on a rolling release distro we're "as stable as we'll ever be" (tm)

Well, its been a LONG time... But we can't say its been boring.

Although 0.6 release was LONG due, we have continued working on it, crafting it, and basically, adding and fixing tons (and i mean TONS of stuff). The changelog will reveal much more information once we release, but changes include usb-boot fix, grub splash boot, readahead (yey!), gui installer (yey again!), squashfs-lzma (did i hear yey?) and much, much more.
We are currently waiting for the next kernel 2.6.21 release, which iphitus will make a new 'beyond' patch for it and all the modules. only then we can release 0.6. In the meantime, im working on adding beryl support to the xfce iso - it might work on the kde iso as well (or any other user's iso, as long as mkliveiso is in charge...) - still need to make it automatic...

The squashfs-lzma proves to be an outstanding addition, in both terms of size (isos are ~20% smaller) and speed (everything works a tad faster). Im guessing the new use of aufs also contributes to the speed factor. We had to build our own squashfs-lzma patch and not use the ones from squashfs-lzma.org since those cant be built into the kernel tree and we wanted the squashfs-lzma to be integrated into the kernel package.

Also, for those who kept an eye on the project, you might know the 'modules' addon which dtw introduced (each iso type is a 'module' thus allowing you to create an iso using our own 'modules' or your own home-made 'module'). I have completed another mini-xfce iso module which creates a 255mb iso for using a 256mb pendrives (at least they will be useful something now...) - the iso consists of a complete xfce WM plus some list of selected software: gparted, firefox, abiword, graveman, exaile, to name a few. I hope it will prove useful for some.

All in all, as you can see - we're not dead yet, but live and kicking. Some screenshots will be posted soon or maybe along the release itself, depends on the release date ofcourse...

That is all for now. Hope we'll have a successful release in this life time :-)

Thanks to dtw, the work on Archie had a great progress over the last few months while I've been away. Many changes had took place (automatic graphics modules recognition on the live-cd, modularizing the xfce/kde/etc iso's creation, localization, and more). We are now in the process of testing the isos, finishing up the customization (layout, installer, and final package list), and getting ready to release. If you have a request (a package to be included in the final iso, etc) this is the time to tell us.

We also have a new contributor - swogs - who is working on an openbox iso - hopefully he will submit the OB package list before release time so we can release the OB iso along with the rest (xfce,kde).
Another iso which is on our todo-list, is E17 which we have been talking about long ago. Mr.Green agreed to work on it, but he can't guarantee when it will be ready.

Stay tuned for final release - hopefully by next week or so!

Blessings,
z4ziggy

You can get it here.

This morning I have uploaded the final release candidate of the archie-scripts package. This is a very minor update from rc4.4 (how crazy can this version numbering get?) and includes fixes for locale and the addition of xterm, as requested.

I will build a release ISO this evening and upload it over night.

Ziggy is now back in action after an extremely hectic period but I am determined to release 0.6 and draw a line under this period of development before he can find too many things to change!

Personally I feel that the work that has gone into the Archie ISOs between 0.5 and 0.6 has been worthy of about 6 major milestone releases and I don't think this has been reflected in the versioning nomenclature, which is a shame. Conversely, the changes to mkliveiso, while extensive, simply merit a major release at this point so it's easy to see how our versioning gets so messed up! Therefore, I think that is important to focus on the changes to mkliveiso as the yardstick for release.

In truth, we should only discuss changes in this version of Archie in terms of the advancements in the mkliveiso scripts themselves. mkliveiso, after all, is the meat and gravy of the Archie project; the ISO releases are just meant to be showcases. However, we do tend to talk about the ISO releases in terms of progress too.

To sum up I hope that those of you who follow the development of the mkliveiso scripts will find them more powerful than ever and those of you that are purely here for the ISO releases will find one of our most polished offerings yet. We've worked hard to shake out minor bugs that we could have let slip so I hope you all enjoy it. We've also had some great feedback on our release candidates and I think we have put together an excellent selection of pkgs that will suit just about everyone. It's also worth noting that Xorg 7.1 has made it into this release ;)

If this RC gets the nod it will go straight to release; I'll leave the distrowatch announcement to Ziggy...

We are now putting the final finishing touches to the Archie XFCE ISO user interface pending our final RC release. We have made some extensive bug tests and I hope we have knocked out all of the main ones. We have also enabled hal and dbus support, preparing the way for an eventual release of XFCE 4.4. We'd like to thank everybody involved in the testing of this release for their patience, hard work and support.

Final UI Preview

P.S. We have one remaining bug: gaim really doesn't like unionfs and if an upgrade to gaim2 beta doesn't fix it we may have to drop it all together. We'll be looking for an alternative...