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[Debian] ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

This thread is closed. Go to one of the newer threads, either Easy Debian Diablo (N8x0 devices) or Easy Debian Fremantle (N900).

UPDATE: New image, Debian Squeeze with OpenOffice 3.0, etc. See this post!

Finally, Easy Debian is available in the Extras Repository!

OpenOffice, Gimp, Firefox 3 (with Flash), Sun's Open Java, LXDE, all running from OS2008 without rebooting!

I'm also announcing this in my blog as well as ITt. Here is the text from my blog:

TURBO CHARGED EASY-DEBIAN

Finally, "Easy Debian" is no longer just a "circus trick"; you can use real laptop applications on your tablet at not-unreasonable speeds, thanks to a couple of "turbo charging" boosts we've gotten lately, and a lot of polish from the rapidly maturing Debian side.

I was overwhelmed by the huge positive reaction across the Internet when I released the first version of my Easy Debian project back in July on Internet Tablet Talk. But I was frustrated by the speed of the "image file" method I was using, and the Debian "armel" architecture was still missing a few key pieces to make it a stable, trustworthy distribution.

Several things have changed since July. First, the Debian armel architecture managed to pull things together in time for the Lenny "freeze" at the end of July. That means there will be a tablet-compatible version of Debian when Lenny becomes the next "stable" version later this year. It also means things like Java, OpenOffice.org and Firefox (Iceweasel) got some seriously good polishing in the last few months, and it really shows when you run them on the tablet. Also, the LXDE desktop environment came to my attention. It is a really nice, light environment that runs fast on the tablet, and is much more full-featured than the IceWM window manager I was using before.

Secondly, I was given the exciting privilege of Nokia sponsorship to the Maemo Summit in Berlin in September. This motivated me to prepare a new Debian file system with all of the enhancements that had been added in the previous months, as well as some tricks that I had learned since the first version.

Lastly, through the help of others, I found two really effective speed-up techniques that suddenly made the Easy Debian apps really usable! I got down on my virtual knees on the #maemo IRC channel and begged the elite tablet hackers there to help me figure out how to speed up access to the image file that was the basis of the Easy Debian project. Matan came through in a big way; he presented me with some kernel modules and some instructions that accelerated the whole project to almost the same speed as using a dedicated partition (around 2x-4x faster)! I then discovered the ability to set the tablets' processor to "Performance Mode," thanks to lcuk's liqbase project. What a difference that made for processor-hungry apps like OpenOffice and Iceweasel (Firefox)!

So, now that all these pieces are in place, and now that the whole project has "grown up," I felt I needed to push it into the official repositories. I was also getting some gentle pushes from several community members.

Even though the entire project is made from free components (except for one notable exception in the image file), I have released it to the non-free section of Extras. This is because it was too difficult to get all of the contributed binary bits into a form that could be compiled by the autobuilder that guards the gates of the "free" repository.

INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS:

You need to install the easy-deb-chroot package from the Extras repository. Install it with the Application Manager.
http://qole.maemobox.org/images/inst...tton_small.png

When this package is installed, you have to run the "Debian Image Installer" in your Extras menu. This will download and install the big image to the memory card of your choice. It will take about a half hour to download if you have fast Internet connection, and another 15 minutes to extract it on your tablet.

This may take longer... Start the install when you can leave your tablet downloading for a while, maybe just before bed or before going out

Finally, when you get the "Congratulations!" message, REBOOT.

FAQ:

Q: I chose Iceweasel, but nothing happened!
A: Be patient. Iceweasel has no splash screen and a very long startup time. Use Kazehakase for faster startup while retaining the ability to use Java and Flash plugins.

Q: How do I get to the OK button in the huge dialog box that just popped up?
A: If you choose the "Toggle Movable Windows" icon in the menu, you will activate the Movable Windows hack; this lets you move the big dialog boxes used by some Debian apps so you can get to the OK button. When you want to go back to "Normal" OS2008 window behavior, select this menu item again.

Q: How do I get the virtual keyboard to pop up in Debian Apps?
A: Select the "Set Debian HW Keys" menu item; wait a bit, then you can press the minus (-) hardware key followed by the menu hardware key to toggle the Matchbox Keyboard. Press the (-) key then the (+) key to toggle between normal and mini (one-line) keyboards.

Q: How do I make Debian apps fullscreen?
A: Select the "Set Debian HW Keys" menu item; wait a bit, then you can press the minus (-) hardware key followed by the "fullscreen" hardware key to toggle fullscreen for any app.

Q: How do I get the best turbo speed from OpenOffice, Firefox and other big apps?
A: Make sure you have the maximum amount of virtual memory enabled in your Control Panel / Memory dialog. Then select the "Set CPU to Performance mode" menu item and launch your app. Remember to set the CPU to On-Demand mode when you're done using the big app, because Performance mode sucks your battery faster. But it still isn't as bad as the battery life of your average laptop...

Q: English isn't my first language. How do I change this to my language?
A: Please click on the "Debian chroot" icon and type the following command:

Code:

dpkg-reconfigure locales

Choose your language(s).

Note that you should choose the language with no period between the language and the iso code (eg. "en_CA ISO-8859-1"), and optionally, the utf-8 version, too (eg. "en_CA.UTF-8").

Q: I want to install more applications! How do I do that?
A: First, you have to update the repository lists. From the prompt in Debian Chroot menu item:

Code:

apt-get update

Now, you must get some space back! There's almost no extra room in the image file.

Code:

apt-get install localepurge; localepurge

This will get you at least 80MB back. You should probably do this first, before starting to install. Running out of space during an install in Debian is ugly. :(

Also, when downloading packages, remember to frequently use "apt-get clean" to clear out old downloaded packages. That will help with free space.

If you're comfortable with the command line, you can use the technique listed in this post to double your install space.

Even with all of these tricks, you'll still run out of room fairly quickly. You'll probably have to uninstall packages in order to add new ones.

More advanced users can put a minimal system into an empty image and build a custom set of apps using this post. The most advanced and best way: partition your SD card and put your Debian fs there.

Q: What's this "Iceweasel"?
A: Iceweasel is the Debian name for Firefox. It's a long story, but in short, Mozilla and Debian had a philosophical disagreement that ended in Debian renaming Firefox to Iceweasel.

Q: How is this different than Deblet?
A: Easy Debian uses a fully installed Debian system to run applications inside of Maemo. The Deblet project helps you install a bootable Debian system from scratch; Deblet is mainly designed for booting to an alternate OS.

Q: I already have Debian in a partition, or I'm running Deblet. How can I use your package with my Debian?
A: Edit the /home/user/.chroot file to point to your Debian partition or image file. Easy Debian will do the rest.

NOTE: If you are using Deblet, delete the /home/user/.synchroot file before running Easy Debian for the first time, so your Deblet config files don't get overwritten. Remember that you'll need to make a user called "user" in Deblet (with the proper ID) for things to work correctly. Also note that your maemo home directory will be used by default. This can also be changed in the .chroot file.

SCREENSHOTS:
(click picture to see more info and larger sizes)

The Gimp editing a 4 megapixel digital photo:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3058/...e0dcdcb4dd.jpg

OpenOffice Writer editing a document in OS2008, with Matchbox-Keyboard on top:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3128/...7435786424.jpg

LXDE, (the Lightweight X Desktop Environment) running on top of OS2008:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3275/...3298447410.jpg

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Wow thank you! Just when I thought debian on the tablet couldnt get any better, im installing now.

Thanks!

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Thanks!!!

I am usually just lurking around here ... but I *had to* jump in and say Thank You for all your work on this (not to slight everyone else who pitched in). It is *just what I need* to ditch my laptop!

--- and I haven't even installed it yet!! :eek: ... but I have been watching with an eagle eye to all the trials and tribulations you've gone through ... and overcome!

I could not afford the time to "beta test", but it looks like its time for me to jump in. :D

Thanks again, I know I'm gonna love it!

Ken

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

"This will download and install the big image" how many really in Mb?

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Thanks qole this is awesome! I do wonder if it is possible to make a movable windows switch something like:

Code:

sudo cp copy /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs.movable

Then have it do your

Code:

sudo cp copy /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs.orig /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs

And then have a separate switch put back the movable windows like this:

Code:

sudo cp copy /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs.nonmov

then

Code:

sudo cp copy /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.movable /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs

Or ideally a toggle that can detect what mode it is in.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Quote:

Originally Posted by qole (Post 233091)

Q: Why do my windows look weird after I install Easy Debian, and how do I fix it?
A: Easy Debian installs the Movable Windows hack; this lets you move the big dialog boxes used by some Debian apps so you can get to the OK button, but it makes the windows start in the upper left (or lower right) corner of the screen. If this placement bugs you, drag the window to the center. If you really don't want this behaviour, and you're willing to live with the consequences, open a terminal and enter the following:

Code:

sudo cp copy /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs.orig /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs

If you don't mind me saying, but if this is in extras, you should give the user the choice if [s]he wants this hack installed.

In your postinst, putting something like:

Quote:

cat > /tmp/debian_movable_windows_warn.txt <<EOF
Easy Debian installs the Movable Windows hack; this lets you move the big dialog boxes used by some Debian apps so you can get to the OK button, but it makes the windows start in the upper left (or lower right) corner of the screen. If this placement bugs you, drag the window to the center.

Press OK to keep the hack or press Cancel to keep the default behaviour.
EOF

maemo-confirm-text /tmp/debian_movable_windows_warn.txt
retval=$?
rm /tmp/debian_movable_windows_warn.txt
if [ "$retval" -eq "0" ]
then
echo "" || true
fi

if [ "$retval" -eq "1" ]
then
/bin/cp /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs.orig /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs
fi

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Quote:

Originally Posted by qwerty12 (Post 233125)

If you don't mind me saying, but if this is in extras, you should give the user the choice if [s]he wants this hack installed.

Or a toggle, cause adding a book in FBreader with movable windows is a pain. Again thanks for the good work and nice job!

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

A toggle wouldn't be hard to do with scripting but you do have to restart the tablet before the change is re-read. Although I guess restarting matchbox would work but I don't know if it's run via dsmetool which restarts the tablet if the program is closed.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

I wish there was some way to get the movable windows without the giant-windows-problem that seems to occur in some apps (most notably FBreader). But a prompt in the postinst is easy to add... Would have been an (even more) excellent suggestion in the beta testing period, too ;)

Perhaps also an icon to toggle the hack.

I'll have to see if there's some way to restart the WM (and get it to re-read that config) without rebooting the tablet. I'll mess about with it.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Quote:

you can use real laptop applications on your tablet at not-unreasonable speeds

Is there any chance you can make a video to show us the speed of the applications or a browser comparison with the built in ff for example. I know, I'm asking a lot but installing 1.3Gb of data is also a lot to install on my N810

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

I look forward to seeing the videos someone posts.

In the meantime, I've got a solution for the movable window hack. I will no longer install it by default; there will only be a menu icon that toggles the hack on or off (without a reboot, only a screen refresh).

It does this by running the following script (as user, not root):

Code:

#!/bin/sh

. /etc/osso-af-init/af-defines.sh

. /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs

echo dialogmode=$DIALOGMODE 

echo stopping matchbox...

. /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.sh stop



if [ ! "x`grep -i DIALOGMODE=free /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs`" = "x" ] ; then

 echo "free mode: switching to static."

 sudo cp /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs.orig /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs

else

 echo "static mode: switching to free."

 sudo cp /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs.window-hack /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs

fi



. /etc/osso-af-init/af-defines.sh

. /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.defs

echo dialogmode=$DIALOGMODE 

echo starting matchbox...

. /etc/osso-af-init/matchbox.sh start

try it, it works! :cool:

EDIT: It only works if you have Easy Debian installed...

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Just a comment. Firefox isn't going to be able to compete with the highly-optimized built-in browser. This is for people who want all the bells and whistles that come with a full Firefox browser, and are willing to put up with the browser being a bit slower.

I suggest trying the package out; if you have broadband internet, it will take about an hour or less to download and install. I recommend switching the CPU to "performance" before starting the download, it will really help the unzipping part.

If you don't like it, uninstall the package and delete the big file.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

I do have a question can we still use the method described here in this thread?

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Quote:

Originally Posted by D'ohboy (Post 233148)

I do have a question can we still use the method described here in this thread?

Yes, as I said in the beta testing phase, you can untar this tarball into a partition and use that instead.

EDIT: I read your other post more closely. You can use that method (copy everything out of the image file mounted on /debian and into a partition mounted on /opt), but don't mount the image file to /debian yourself, use "debbie" to do it for you. This way, you get the "turbo loop", which is much faster.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Quote:

Originally Posted by qole (Post 233141)

Did you try Midori under Debian chroot yet? It is the speedy gonzales of tablet browsers.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

New version (0.9.6) with auto-installed movable window hack replaced with menu item that toggles movable windows.

The FAQ in first post revised to reflect this change; Iceweasel startup question added to the FAQ because Iceweasel's startup time is embarrassingly slow, even with all the turbo thrusters on full. :o

Thank goodness we have a good browser on the tablet already, eh? ;)

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Stskeeps: Yes, midori rocks the tablet when it comes to speed, and it gets 100/100 on the Acid3 test, too!

However, I couldn't include it in this package because it crashes when trying to use the Java plugin, and I couldn't figure out how to tell Midori not to use the Java plugin. There are several important websites (GMail and YouTube) that don't actually use Java, but they query the Java plugin, and that's enough to crash Midori.

If I uninstall the Java web plugin, Midori works great. If someone could figure out how to trick Midori into thinking there's no Java web plugin, it would be very nice, and I would be very appreciative.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

So we eliminate this step:

Code:

mount -o loop /path/to/currentimgfile /debian

and do what instead?

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Quote:

Originally Posted by qole (Post 233156)

What version of glib is used in Easy Debian? I'm not sure it is related to this bug but with Ubuntu Hardy Midori kept crashing until I updated Glib from v2.16 to v2.18 as mentioned on the Midori faq. You can disable all mozilla plugins entirely for Midori with export MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH="" .

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Great work Qole - I have jumped in, too, and left for now my homebrew chroot. BTW there's now a very nice new version of matchbox-window-manager in the "hacking matchbox" thread, which presents modal windows in the centre of the screen, as it was before hacking.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Quote:

Originally Posted by debernardis (Post 233233)

Yeah, I just saw that, and was coming here to link it.

(I haven't actually tried it yet, but it sounds great.)

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Quote:

Originally Posted by debernardis (Post 233233)

BTW there's now a very nice new version of matchbox-window-manager in the "hacking matchbox" thread, which presents modal windows in the centre of the screen, as it was before hacking.

I'll have to consider this. I'm actually quite pleased with my nifty switcher script; it really seems to make it painless to switch modes.

I wonder how the dialogs that get super-huge with the current matchbox WM hack behave with Matan's version?

PS: posted with Iceweasel. It takes about 1 minute startup time to a usable web page.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Qole is correct about there not being that much room left in the image for adding more apps. I tried installing CUPS, after following Qole's instructions for freeing up space, but unfortunately still ran out of room when attempting to install cups. I ended up having to uninstall Easy Debian and then reformatting the partition on which the image was located, as deleting the image did not free up space in the partition and the image installer stopped working. There may have been a more elegant solution, but there's a lot I don't know:confused:.

Anyways, I reinstalled Easy D and I'm now re-downloading the image. The question is, do I need to remove a lot more from the image using Synaptics so there is sufficient room for cups, or would the apps recognize an installation of penguinbait's cups installation?

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Quote:

Originally Posted by HowHH (Post 233292)

I tried installing CUPS, after following Qole's instructions for freeing up space, but unfortunately still ran out of room when attempting to install cups.

If you insist on installing something as enormous as CUPS (which installs Samba and Avahi etc), or you have installed tons of apps, you can use another trick to get more install space. The Maemo application manager actually uses this trick too.

Start the chroot, and then, from a non-root, non Debian prompt, type the following:

Code:

mkdir -p /media/mmc1/apt-archives/partial

sudo mount -o bind /media/mmc1/apt-archives /debian/var/cache/apt/archives

This will make a cache directory on your MMC card (you can change mmc1 to mmc2 if you want) and then tells Debian to use that to store all of the downloaded packages.

I have tested this trick, and I was able to install CUPS on my stock image file (with 81MB left over). Remember, you need to redo this trick if you reboot the tablet or close the chroot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by HowHH (Post 233292)

I ended up having to uninstall Easy Debian and then reformatting the partition on which the image was located, as deleting the image did not free up space in the partition and the image installer stopped working. There may have been a more elegant solution, but there's a lot I don't know:confused:.

Needing to reformat the partition is a bit shocking. I have no idea what went wrong there!

I think the "image installer stopped working" part is my fault; I used to have lots of files stored in the image installer directory, so I deleted it after a successful install. Now it's tiny, so I should disable the post-install deletion.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

I had the same problem with my image not deleting. I found, after placing the card in a card reader, that there was a file with a weird extension the same size as the image. Unfortunately, I ended up seeing that after I deleted my partition using gparted.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

I used Your previous version without any problem but now that I installed this one it keeps asking me for a password that is not my tablet's user neither root password.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

The "password problem" is actually a bug in the uninstall script of the previous version.

If you were using a previous version (0.6 or older), or you get this error, please do the following:

1. Uninstall all versions of Easy Debian
2. Reboot
3. Install the new version
4. Reboot
5. Try again to start the system
6. Report back; does this work?

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

I will try the cache trick you describe. I take it that means the Debian apps won't recognize penguinbait's cups-experimental? The reason I ask, is that when I installed one of the other alpha Easy D versions (with CUPS), it looked as if that version found my pre-existing settings, and worked out of the box without any set-up. I no longer have peguinbait's cups installed though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by qole (Post 233305)

Needing to reformat the partition is a bit shocking. I have no idea what went wrong there!

I don't either. It appeared as if I was able to delete the image file with the native file manager, but the space it used was still taken up by something. When I popped the card into my Ubuntu box, it still showed that there were no files in the partition, but the partition was not empty. Re-formatting as FAT 32 took less than a minute, and did fix the problem.

And thank you, by the way for Easy D! :D

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

You could probably run penguinbait's CUPS server in maemo, and your Debian apps would print to it... but only if you installed the CUPS client stuff on the Debian side, and I'm not sure you'd end up saving much space, because I think it would still drag in all of the networking stuff...

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Quote:

Originally Posted by D'ohboy (Post 233309)

This problem with unfreed space after delete probably stems from deleting a file while it is used (it is used until losetup or dmlosetup releases it).
The file remaining after reboot is probably the result of emulating this UNIX behaviour (file deleted but still in use) on a file system that does not support this.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Quote:

Originally Posted by qole (Post 233315)

In synaptics, would that be cupsys-client?

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

It should be cups-client, but I think cupsys-client is just a transitional package, which means cupsys-client is just an empty package that installs cups-client.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

A housekeeping question. Once I remove an application with Synaptics, such as GIMP, how do I then remove the corresponding menu item. Also, since Debian Image Installer does not do anything now, can it's menu item also be removed?

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Quote:

Originally Posted by HowHH (Post 233336)

My intention is to build a little app that synchronizes the Debian and Maemo app menus, but until then, you'll have to manually go to the terminal and type:

Code:

sudo rm /usr/share/applications/hildon/image-install.desktop

sudo rm /usr/share/applications/hildon/gimp.desktop

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Good news; Midori doesn't crash in this version! But it's pretty slow on GMail... YouTube is fine.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Quote:

Originally Posted by qole (Post 233312)

Indeed - works - those reboots in the middle solved the problem.

Although I'm bit concerned about n8x0 internal flash speeds.
I'm using large (256MB) swap on mmc1 so I've decided to put easy-debian image on mmc2 (in typical PC based manner).
First feeling is that my previous one (located also on mmc1 - just as swap file) worked bit faster.
I consider starting up OO application like calc.

Anyway - great work Quole! :)

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Hi,
After clicking on the green symbol, I only see a textpage concerning the install and the repo.
In AppMan there's no entry for easy-dec-chroot.
What am I doing wrong?

Karl

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Quote:

Originally Posted by ahli.os (Post 233448)

Hi,
After clicking on the green symbol, I only see a textpage concerning the install and the repo.
In AppMan there's no entry for easy-dec-chroot.
What am I doing wrong?

Karl

Just save it to a file, then open it in the app mgr.....

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Hi, qole! This is really amazing job! Thank you!
But, I have little question: can you make same image, but without OpenOffice, Firefox and Gimp? I think, some users, like me, dont really want this massive applications, but rather just need access to Debain repository.

Re: ANNOUNCE: Easy Debian Turbo-Charged Edition!

Hi Newbie question (so apologies in advance)

You say that the installer can be downloaded to any location, I guess that you will still need to install it on the internal memory card? If so am I better off adjusting my setup so that I boot from my external card?

Thanks

Steve