Custom Debian Distributions

Custom Debian Distributions

Debian-Junior

Debian-Med

Debian-Edu

DeMuDi

Debian-Desktop

Debian-Lex

Debian-NP

Debian-Accessibility

Overview

• What are Custom Debian Distributions?
• Debian - adaptable for any purpose?
• Technology
  • Meta packages
  • User Menus
• Future

What is Debian?

• Linux is just the kernel of your operating system.
• You need a lot of applications around.
• Those collections of software around the Linux kernel is called operating system or distribution.
• Companies who build such distributions are called distributors.
• They make money by selling their distribution in boxes, doing support and training.
• You might know Mandrake, RedHat, SuSE^H^H^H^HNovell and others.
• Debian is just one of them.

What is Debian? (next try)

• Web of trust
• Differences to other distributions

What are Custom Debian Distributions?

• Debian contains nearly 10000 binary packages
• General users interested in a subset of those packages
• Care for special groups of target users with different skills and interests
• Not only handy collections of specific program packages but care for easy installation and configuration for the intended purpose.
• No fork from Debian

→ Basic idea: Do not make a separate distribution but make Debian fit for special purpose instead

Looking beyond

• Commercial Linux distributors sell certain products
  • Enterprise (Corporate Server - Mandrake, Advanced Server - Red Hat, Enterprise Server - SuSE)2
  • Workstation or home editions, Office desktops
  • Special task products
    • Mail server (SuSE Linux Openexchange Server)
    • Firewall (Multi Network Firewall - Mandrake, SuSE Firewall on CD)
    • Cluster (Mandrake Clustering)
    • Content Management System (Red Hat)
    • Portal Server (Red Hat)
• These products address specific user interests

→ Debian uses Custom Distributions

Motivation

• Support of target users with common profile:
  • Less technical competence
  • Not able to install upstream programs with acceptable effort
  • No interest in administration
  • Interest in defined subset of available free software
  • Need for easy usage
  • Defined security profile
• Support of administrators with common profile:
  • Limited time frame
  • Seeking for time saving in often repeated tasks
  • Lack of specialist knowledge

Status of specialized free software

• Hard to install
• Hard to maintain
• Hard to use because of lacking GUI
• Strange Licenses
• Orphaned upstream
• Porting issues (architectures, byte order, 32 vis 64 bit)
• Data format not exchangeable
• Parallel development of the same functionality
• Used tools or back ends are not intended for those applications

→ Lack of an integrated framework

General problem

• Free Software development is kind of evolutionary process
• Needs a critical mass of supporters which are
  • programmers
  • users
• Specialized software has a limited set of users (specialists)
• Results in a limited set of programmers
• We have to attract both groups to get it working ...

→ We are the missing link between upstream developers and users

History of Custom Debian Distributions (1)

• Debian-Junior
  • Start: beginning of 2000
  • Initiator: Ben Armstrong <synrg@debian.org>
  • First Custom Distributions - in fact the idea of Custom Distributions was born
  • Released in the current stable Debian code name Woody
• Debian-Med
  • Start: beginning of 2002
  • Initiator: Andreas Tille <tille@debian.org>
  • Adapted ideas from Debian-Junior and added some stuff
• Debian-Edu
  • Start: end of 2002
  • Initiator: Raphaël Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org> → Skolelinux
  • Bringing back a fork from Debian
• Demudi
  • Start: not really started yet
  • Initiator: Marco Trevisani <marco@centrotemporeale.it>
  • Bringing back a fork from Debian

History of Custom Debian Distributions (2)

• Debian-Desktop
  • Start: October 2002
  • Initiator: Colin Walters <walters@debian.org>
  • Many common issues with other Custom Distributions
• Debian-Lex
  • Start: April 2003
  • Initiator: Jeremy Malcolm <Jeremy@Malcolm.id.au>
  • Debian for lawyers
• Debian-NP
  • Start: July 2003
  • Initiator: Benjamin Mako Hill <mako@debian.org>
  • Debian for Nonprofit Organizations
• Other possible projects:
  • debian-accessibility (suggested by Mario Lang)
  • Authorities
  • Office
  • Enterprise / accounting
  • ???

Debian-Junior

• Make Debian an OS that children of all ages will want to use
• Making it so nice that they like it
• Making it a playground for children experiments
• Not only providing games but care for their quality
• Main target are young children, teens should become comfortable with using Debian without any special modifications

Debian-Med

• Integrated software environment for all medical tasks
• Special care for the quality of program packages in the field of medicine which are integrated in Debian yet
• Building packages of medical software which are missing inside Debian and inclusion of those packages
• Caring for a general infrastructure for medical users
• Efforts to increase the quality of third party software

Debian-Edu

• Make Debian the best distribution available for educational use
• Federate many initiatives around education (which are partly based on forks of Debian)
• In fact SkoleLinux now is more or less Debian-Edu
• Integrate changes from the French Debian Education distribution into Debian
• Cooperate with other education-related projects (like Seul, Ofset, KdeEdu)
• Just started, mailing list and web site in preparation

DeMuDi

• Currently not announced as official Custom Distribution but coordinator is in touch
• Oriented toward music and multimedia
• Make GNU/Linux a platform of choice for the musician and the multimedia artist
• Part of a project funded by the European Community, called AGNULA
• Initiator is not yet Debian developer but you are able to work on Debian without being an official developer

Debian-Desktop

• best possible operating system for home and corporate workstation use
• Motto: "Software, which just works"
• Desktops like Gnome and KDE should coexist well in Debian and work optimal
• Easy usage for beginners without restrictions of flexibility for experts
• Easy configuration (hardware-detection)
• Internationalisation

Debian-Lex

• lex originates from latin word for law
• Complete system for all tasks in legal practice
• Add value to existing packages by providing customised templates for lawyers
  • OpenOffice.org
  • SQL-Ledger
  • Sample database schema for PostgreSQL.

Debian-NP

• Adresses requirements of small non-profit organizations
• Desktop use in non-profit organizations
• Non-profits often familiar with Free Software
• Many common tasks with other Custom Distributions
• Specialized uses:
  • Fund raising
  • Developing membership lists
  • Conference organisation

Debian Accessibility Project

• Debian accessible to people with disabilities
• Special care for
  • Screen readers
  • Screen magnification programs
  • Software speech synthesizers
  • Speech recognition software
  • Scanner drivers and OCR software
  • Specialized software like edbrowse (web-browse in the spirit of line-editors)
• Making text-mode interfaces available
• Providing screen reader functionality during installation

Why not just forking from Debian?

• Separate distribution would cost extra effort
  • Would be hardly better than Debian
  • Continuous work to keep base system, installer etc up to date
  • Nearly impossible to get security fixes as fast as Debian
  → Forking would be a bad idea.
• Integration into Debian has advantages
  • Huge user base all over the world thus becoming public on the back of Debian
  • Secure and stable system without extra effort
  • Bug Tracking System for free
  • Infra structure (HTTP-, FTP-, Mailserver, PKI, ...) for free
• Bringing back something to Debian
  • Enhancing quality of packages by making them more user friendly

Debian - adaptable for any purpose?

• Developed by about 1000 volunteers
• Flexible, not bound on commercial interest
• Strict rules (policy) glue all things together
• Common interest of each individual developer to get the best operating system for himself
• Developers have children in real life or work in the field of medicine etc.
• In contrast to employees of companies every single Debian developer has the freedom and ability to realize his vision
• Thus single developers have influence on development - they just have to do it

Technology (1): Meta Packages

• Collection of specific software
  • No research for available software necessary
  • User is not forced to browse the whole package list of Debian
  • Easy comparison between software covering the same task
  • Safety against accidental removal of dependencies
  • Conflicts to incompatible packages
  • Easy installation
  • Low effort for administration
• Adapted configuration inside meta packages
  • Care for special needs of project users
• Documentation packages
  • Packaging and creating of relevant documentation
  • Translation

Handling of meta packages

• Overview over
  • Command line tools
  • Text user interfaces
  • Graphical user interfaces
  • Web interfaces
• Hints for administration
• Future development

Command line tools

~> apt-cache search med | grep '^med-'

→ Not really straightforward currently

~> grep-dctrl -r ': med-' /var/lib/dpkg/available | grep -v '^[ SIMAVF]' | grep -v '^Pri'

→ Also a bit cryptic

~> sudo auto-apt update
~> auto-apt -x -y run

&rarr Cool! But you do not really want it on a production machine ...

Text user interfaces

• Provides no special help for installing meta packages

• Debian Task Installer
• End-user section contains entry for each Custom Distribution
• Easy installation

• Better replacement for dselect
• Searching for and grouping of packages

Graphical user interfaces

• Package -> Search -> "junior-*"
• Reasonable overview about meta packages of project

• Synaptic's filters are a great tool here.

• Similliar to both above regarding features
• For KDE lovers

Web interfaces

→ Also not really straightforward currently but becoming comfortable with the Package Tracking System is an extra plus here :-)

→ Not yet a tool but a start of it

Future handling of meta packages

• Obviously there are no nifty tools as you might know them from Debian available yet.
• Tools which grep the apt cache directly for meta packages have to be written.
• Policy agreement about additional flag for debian/control file
• Find a set of keywords for each Custom Distribution and write a tool to search comfortable
• Make use of Debian Package Tags

Tools to develop meta packages

• Building a meta package is more or less equal for each meta package
• Those stuff should be parameterised and supported by tools to
  • Make it easier
  • Reduce probability of bugs
• There is no common agreement about this but at least Debian-Med is using the med-common-dev for package building
• Each Debian-Med package build-depends from this package which provides templates and tools for meta package building and some examples

Technology (2): User menus

• Define a list of sub project users using debconf to manage groups like junior and med in /etc/group
• These users are provided with an extra menu
• Do not bother other users with those additional menus
• Provide script update-subproject to update user menus after new package installation or additions of users to those groups
• Current Debian-Med packages give an idea of the look and feel

User menu tools

General menu rewrite

• Currently Debian menu system is completely rewritten
• Debian packages update general menu after installation automatically
• Key features like user roles and translation will be added
• Plan: Meta packages contain role specific menu entries which are updated on a per user basis
• Enabling clean administration of multi user systems

Documentation

• All Custom Distributions care especially for documentation and translation because target users have big need for this
• Have a close look on <project>-doc packages!
• Ben Armstrong has started a Debian Subproject HOWTO:
  http://people.debian.org/~synrg/subproject-howto.html/
  It explains how to start and maintain a Custom Debian Distribution in general

To do

• Create a common mailing list (#160229)
• Update tasksel (#186085)
• Debian Package Tags
• Integrate Knoppix build system into Debian
  • Might be an Custom Distribution for itself
  • Enabling easy creation and customisation of Knoppix derivatives from native Debian mirror
    • debootstrap
    • Install Knoppix stuff into chroot environment
    • Customize chroot environment for intendet purpose
    • Create ISO image from chroot environment
    • Make use of Jigdo
    • Fabian Franz is working on this stuff

Future

• First Custom Distributions evolved
• Tools for better support have to be developed
• Spreading the idea to developers and users
• Provide customized Knoppix CDs of projects

Further Information