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wattOS R11 / Re: General Announcement
« on: September 14, 2019, 06:03:17 AM »
On the topic of DEs & WMs:
I happened to be looking into Snaps and saw that some people were using them to streamline testing and development of DEs. Did some more digging and stumbled into Wayland display server, which apparently removes tearing/vsync issues, while having performance similar to Xorg. [Link] Then saw this Wayland port of i3: SwayWM (might be worth looking into.)
Anyway, from all of that i got the following idea:
How about using Snaps/Flatpaks/AppImages to streamline maintenance and installation of all potentially messy system components like DEs/WMs?
However, since running them sandboxed would add overhead to the end system, i would also suggest the following approach:
0. Do most of the testing, debugging & maintenance sandboxed.
1. Use a selection of sandboxed DEs/WMs for preview purposes on a single live CD.
2. Extract only the user's DE/WM choice over to the final OS during installation.
This way there would only need to be one .iso and potentially more DEs/WMs could be supported and/or maintained in less time.
On the Project Direction:
If the Distro's name were to be taken as a mission statement, then shouldn't the main focus be further extending battery life? ...which would imply adding functionality like improved out-of-box support for underclocking/undervolting, which various kernel modules can accomplish for many if not most systems. [Link1]
The main problem with those modules is that they require some manual tuning from the user, which is why they are essentially ignored by mainstream distros and aren't always compatible with their kernels. sometimes you can simply build the necessary module from source, other times you have to configure and compile the full linux kernel because some feature you need was disabled by default; worse still, system updates on mainstream distros frequently break these sorts of configurations.
I think most people here would prefer a system that is extremely minimal by default, while still giving the option of adding recommended and frequently requested packages/features (possibly on a skippable extra page) during installation; especially when this would normally require many additional steps from the user, while also being fairly easy to automate during installation.
For example: adding Web Browsers, Media Players & Codecs, Office Suites, etc. should be optional, as it takes several additional steps to add or remove them afterwards.
I happened to be looking into Snaps and saw that some people were using them to streamline testing and development of DEs. Did some more digging and stumbled into Wayland display server, which apparently removes tearing/vsync issues, while having performance similar to Xorg. [Link] Then saw this Wayland port of i3: SwayWM (might be worth looking into.)
Anyway, from all of that i got the following idea:
How about using Snaps/Flatpaks/AppImages to streamline maintenance and installation of all potentially messy system components like DEs/WMs?
However, since running them sandboxed would add overhead to the end system, i would also suggest the following approach:
0. Do most of the testing, debugging & maintenance sandboxed.
1. Use a selection of sandboxed DEs/WMs for preview purposes on a single live CD.
2. Extract only the user's DE/WM choice over to the final OS during installation.
This way there would only need to be one .iso and potentially more DEs/WMs could be supported and/or maintained in less time.
On the Project Direction:
If the Distro's name were to be taken as a mission statement, then shouldn't the main focus be further extending battery life? ...which would imply adding functionality like improved out-of-box support for underclocking/undervolting, which various kernel modules can accomplish for many if not most systems. [Link1]
The main problem with those modules is that they require some manual tuning from the user, which is why they are essentially ignored by mainstream distros and aren't always compatible with their kernels. sometimes you can simply build the necessary module from source, other times you have to configure and compile the full linux kernel because some feature you need was disabled by default; worse still, system updates on mainstream distros frequently break these sorts of configurations.
I think most people here would prefer a system that is extremely minimal by default, while still giving the option of adding recommended and frequently requested packages/features (possibly on a skippable extra page) during installation; especially when this would normally require many additional steps from the user, while also being fairly easy to automate during installation.
For example: adding Web Browsers, Media Players & Codecs, Office Suites, etc. should be optional, as it takes several additional steps to add or remove them afterwards.
; never worked quite right, but for 1024x600 resolution, it was much better than nothing.