Custom Debian Distributions

Custom Debian Distributions

A new approach to cover interests of specialised users

Overview

• What are Custom Debian Distributions?
• Currently existing Custom Debian Distributions
• Debian - adaptable for any purpose?
• Meta packages
• User roles
• 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 specialised 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
• Specialised 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

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/edu, Ofset, KdeEdu)
• Very active
• Integration of LliureX, LinEX, Guadalinex, ... ?

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
• Latest move: Care about more up to date software

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

• Addresses requirements of small non-profit organisations
• Desktop use in non-profit organisations
• Non-profits often familiar with Free Software
• Many common tasks with other Custom Distributions
• Specialised uses:
  • Fund raising
  • Developing membership lists
  • Conference organisation
• Morphix based Live CD

Debian Accessibility Project

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

Debian Enterprise

• Apply the UserLinux Manifesto
• Establishes the benchmark in world class Enterprise operating systems engineered within an industry driven shared-cost development model
• Vigorously defends its distinctive trademarks and branding
• Develops extensive and professional quality documentation
• Provides engineer certification through partner organisations
• Certifies the Debian Enterprise GNU/Linux operating system to specific industry

Other possible CDDs

• Debian-eGov
  → Government issues, administration, authorities office, accounting
• Debian-Geo
  → Geographic information systems (GIS)
• Debian-Physics
  → Simulation, statistics, numerics
• Debian-Bio
  → Care for biology related stuff which is currently in Debian-Med
• ???
  → Suggestions?

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 = "Doocracy"

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

Meta Packages - Developers point of view

• Dependencies from other Debian packages
  • Depend from packages to do a certain task
  • Recommend further interesting packages
  • Suggest others or non-free packages
• User menu entries (recommended)
  • in /etc/cdd/<cdd>/menu/<pkg-name>
  • maintained via role based tools
• debconf questions or pre-seeding (optional)
• cfengine scripts (optional)
• Special meta package: <cdd>-common

Meta Packages - Users point of view

• 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
• Documentation packages
  • Packaging and creating of relevant documentation
  • Translation

Handling of meta packages

• No special help by usual package handling tools
• Tricks to obtain informations about meta packages
  (Mentioned in Custom Debian Distributions paper)
• Target of future development
  • Searching for existing meta packages
  • Overview about dependencies
  • Enhancing tools like aptitude, synaptic, etc.
  • Special tasksel section
  • Web tools which keep meta package information up to date
  • 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

User roles

• Role based user menu system
• User with role <cdd> is provided with additional menu
• Currently implemented: UNIX group based role system
  • Define a list of users in group <cdd> in /etc/group
  • Using debconf questions in <cdd>-common Package
  • Users in this group get extra menu
  • Do not bother other users with those additional menus
  • Either user has to call update-menus or this can be done in package postinst script
• Implemented in current Debian-Med packages
• Roles system is implemented by flexible plugins

Tools to develop meta packages

• The package cdd-dev provides development tools
  • Scan packages list for available packages
  • Build control files from meta packages according to templates
  • Build menu entries for user menus in meta packages
  • Contains examples how to build meta packages
• cdd-gen-control
  • Builds debian/control file from templates in tasks directory
  • Checks sources.list file for available packages
• cdd-install-helper
  • Moves menu files from menu directory into right place
  • Moves documentation files from docs directory into right place
  • Creates <cdd>-common package
  • Take care for general config file /etc/cdd/<cdd>/<cdd>.conf
• Usage of these tools is strongly recommended
• Debian-Med packages provide a working example

Common dependency package

• Creates common registry for all CDDs in /etc/cdd
• Configuration file /etc/cdd/cdd.conf
  • Set DBBACKEND (currently only unixgroups implemented)
  • Settings can be overridden by /etc/cdd/<cdd>/<cdd>.conf
• cdd-role: add/remove roles in registered CDD
• cdd-update-menus: add menu to all CDD users
  (users have to call update-menus if not done in postinst script)
• cdd-user: add/remove user to role of a registered CDD

Documentation & Translation

• All Custom Distributions care for documentation
• Have a close look on <cdd>-doc packages!
• For quick information about Custom Debian Distributions in general there is a Wiki page
• There is a detailed general Custom Debian Distribution documentation
• It is also available as Debian package cdd-doc
• Translation is an important issue for target users
• Make use of Debian Description Translation Project

Communication

• Project on Alioth
  • CVS for every CDD and documentation
  • Released files
• Common mailing list (developer related)
• Mailing lists for most CDDs (user related)
  http://lists.debian.org/debian-<cdd>
• Web pages for most CDDs
  http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-<cdd>

To do

• Create common web page about general CDD issues
• 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
    • Customise chroot environment for intended purpose
    • Create ISO image from chroot environment
    • Make use of jigdo
    • Fabian Franz is working on this stuff

Future

• More Custom Debian Distributions
• Tools for better support have to be developed
• Spreading the idea to developers and users
• Provide customised Knoppix CDs of CDDs
• New way to distribute Debian
• Provide extra Packages file for each CDD

Further Information