DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: My ideas and suggestions for DSL



I have a number of ideas and suggestions for DSL, but would first like to say that even as what it is now, DSL is a great distribution and without it I would not be able to do modern things like running Firefox through a wireless card on my ancient laptop, so DSL is already a lifesaver for old hardware, but there are a number of things I have run into with it that I think not only could, but should be improved.

1) Update the drivers. DSL comes with nearly every driver known to man, but the problem is some of them are out of date. For instance, the MadWiFI Atheros driver module is out of date, and I had to recompile it to use it with my wireless card because I have revision C of my wireless card, and when the DSL MadWiFi module was compiled, revision C of my card was not supported yet, but now it is. I suspect I am not the only person who has run into this problem, but others have probably run into it with other hardware than I did.

2) Provide the kernel source. Currently the kernel-source.dsl does not include the kernel source at all, but only the kernel headers necessary for compiling drivers. It is ridiculous for ANY linux distribution to not provide users with the basic tools necessary to compile their own custom kernels.

3) Provide libncurses-dev and Qt-devel. Anyone who downloads the source to compile even a semi-modern version of the Linux kernel is going to run into a really big problem when they type <<make menuconfig>> because newer kernel source uses libncurses-dev to compile the kernel config menu. Furthermore, if one were to try another route and type <<make xconfig>> that would result in failure too, because newer kernel source uses Qt-devel to create the menu that runs on XFree86, so without DSL providing Qt-devel <<make xconfig>> does not work either. You CANNOT compile a modern kernel without kernel source or the ability to configure the kernel you are compiling. I know you can compile older kernels without these tools, and that DSL purposely uses kernel 2.4 and not 2.6 to keep the kernel small and support older hardware, but that doesn't mean you have to hold the people back who do want to compile a modern kernel on their own.

4) Provide XFree86-devel. A person like me using an old laptop to do their programming cannot even compile simple-window.c because the files necesary for compiling programs that use X are not provided or even downloadable as a .dsl file in DSL currently. Sure you could use apt-get to install it, but if you are like me and moved to DSL from SuSE or Red Hat, what is apt-get? Only people with Debian experience know what apt-get even is, let alone how to use it, and then once we try it we are definately sure we don't know how to use it. Since you have started the DSL trend of naming all packages with a .dsl extension, make a XFree86-devel.dsl for us programmers to download.

5) Provide an ltmodem-x.xx.dsl file. The complaint "I can't use my Lucent WinModem" runs rampant all over the networking section of this forum, and there is just no excuse for it. The ltmodem driver has been around for an extremely long time, and has been well tested and works perfectly and flawlessly if compiled correctly. On SuSE you no longer even have to compile it because it is provided precompiled as an .RPM file. There is no reason why DSL could not do exactly the same thing, but with a .dsl file instead of a .RPM file. Furthermore, there is no good excuse not to. It is just insane that DSL can support drivers for all kinds of modern gadgets like wireless cards, but cannot support the driver for the most common modem chipset known to man and sold in 95% of all modems at every Walmart, BestBuy, and CompUSA all over the US, Candada, and probably most other countries too. The Lucent/Agere WinModem chipset is the most common modem chipset in the world today, and since there has already been a linux driver for it for a very long time that works very well, there is no reason or excuse not to provide ltmodem-x.xx.dsl in the myDSL Browser for any newbie to just click on and install precompiled. SuSE already has it in Yast; now DSL needs to get it in myDSL Browser. I would venture to say that more than 50% of all modem related complaints on the networking forum could be easily prevented by DSL providing this driver precompiled as a .dsl file.
You sound a little upset.

I can give you a few answers from my own point of view...

As far as "providing" goes, I hope you are referring to simply "making it available for download".  Adding these things to the main distribution would kill it.

2) The kernel, as far as I know, was taken directly from the knoppix distribution with no modification. While this isn't DSL providing it directly, it IS available.

3) Qt-devel is pointless in DSL.  DSL has nothing that uses Qt, and it's a waste of resources providing it just so a user can get an X interface for building a kernel.

5) As far as I know, there may be issues with redistributing the ltmodem drivers.  If I'm wrong, so be it.  I can tell you that at least a few of us have attempted to build LT modules, and one person very recently succeeded.  I suppose it's up to the DSL team to decide whether or not it's cool to include it in the repository.

You must understand that DSL is not, and never has been, a development system. It does provide you with the tools to turn it into a dev system.  Regardless of whether you want to learn how to use the Debian package system, it is there and gives you access to everything you need.  

Just because Suse does something a certain way, it does not mean that all distros should.  Suse is 5 full CDs (not including the package sources)...DSL is 1/14 of one CD.
1) Most new drivers will be provided by default with the next DSL kernel update.  I don't know when this will be, but in the meantime you can "do it yourself".

2) Get the kernel source from KNOPPIX version 3.4 date 5-17-2004  This is the kernel used in DSL.  Better yet, download the ISO and use it to recompile your kernel and then copy the files over to your DSL system or use them to build a *.dsl extension.

3) sudo su; dpkg-restore;apt get install libncurses-dev Qt-devel

4) apt-get install Xfree86-devel

5) Someone is already working on a LT modem driver *.dsl extension.  Even if the driver is not open source, if the license terms are "freely distributable" it is possible to add this extension to the myDSL repository.
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Currently the kernel-source.dsl does not include the kernel source at all,


I think you may be right -  it's not the full source + headers as gets configured after a kernel build. I think these are virgin Knoppix sources.

I tried using fakesource on these but no luck.  Via this I inadvertently had flagged a bug in fakesource (or so I was told), which was reported.

Is it possible to download the full source + headers post-Knoppix kernel + modules build?
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4) Provide <whatever>.dsl


The DSL team officially provides only the gnu-utils.dsl and the dsl-dpkg.dsl.

That's it.

The rest are user-contributed. If you are interested in creating these extensions for use in DSL, that would be wonderful.

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Is it possible to download the full source + headers post-Knoppix kernel + modules build?


The source .deb for the 2.4.26 kernel is available on the Knoppix source page (don't have the URL handy, and can't be bothered to google it myself), but many people have found it to be easier to just apply the patches in the kernelsource.dsl to the vanilla 2.4.26 tarball from kernel.org.

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3) Qt-devel is pointless in DSL.  DSL has nothing that uses Qt, and it's a waste of resources providing it just so a user can get an X interface for building a kernel.


Quoted for great truth. QT is fat and ugly as crap.

-J.P.
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