Refacta 9.0 Released

fsmithred · 2019-02-08 00:30:06

Refracta GNU/Linux has a new stable release (9.0) and a new Home Page at
https://refracta.org/

Refracta-9.0 is based on Devuan-2.0 (ASCII) and provides a lightweight
desktop with software for most home computing needs.

Features:
- kernel 4.9, sysvinit, eudev, elogind, XFCE4 (4.12.3)
- The desktop is installed as individual parts rather than from a metapackage, making it easier to remove individual parts.
- Utilities for diagnosis, rescue and repair.
- Refracta Snapshot and Refracta Installer allow you to easily make your own custom live-iso from the installed system.
- Boot to high-contrast/accessibility theme with second item in boot menu.
- All free/open-source software installed. Non-free wireless firmware packages are included in case you need to install them.

Download stable version: https://get.refracta.org/files/stable/

stanz · 2019-02-08 04:24:02

Howdy fsmithred, & congrats on your new homepage (website?)!
Did you get it on a cd? Xfburn sezs it to big, for my 700MB cd-rw's.
I've not seen any - but heard of 800MB cd's? I'll duck-it again.
Again - a big hello at`cha, and,
you & miyo have the BEST readme's I've seen...in awhile!
asta ~

fsmithred · 2019-02-08 12:38:58

Hey dude, welcome back. I made some isos back in October that still fit on a CD. Updates since then bloated the system enough to push it up over the threshold.

No usb where you are? Can we find you a 21st century computer and a 1G usb stick? (I'm guessing we can't find the latter - they're all 8G and up now.) Seriously, if you really need the smaller iso, I'll figure out how to get it to you. Or, if you wait a little while, there might be a preview beowulf iso.

stanz · 2019-02-09 01:28:17

They got 8G usb's???
ROFL
That made me laugh ~ Thx fsmithred
I just came from reading your website when I typed...saw your mention of cd - and did not even check size of iso! lol
Yeah, I'll use usb & spare partition to 'finally' check out your derivative. No virtual machine.
And I'll be ready for that preview beowulf iso!
21st century computer...HA
Type ya later~
asta

Update:: Installed on partition, and working fine!

Last edited by stanz (2019-02-09 21:56:12)

Panopticon · 2019-02-09 09:38:55

Congrats, i will give it a test drive tonight.

Regarding usb sticks, ive noticed the dwindling of 8GB stick as well. All my local tech store had left was one brand. It was cheap, only $4 for a usb 2.0 with backwards compatibility to usb3.0 but i miss the old days of 1 and 2gb usb sticks, i think i even had a 512mb at one stage.

PedroReina · 2019-02-09 20:10:32

Panopticon wrote:

i miss the old days of 1 and 2gb usb sticks, i think i even had a 512mb at one stage.

I drop by aliexpress.com once in a while and usually find some sticks of small capacity, although they are priced very similar to the bigger ones.

Panopticon · 2019-02-10 10:41:28

PedroReina wrote:

Panopticon wrote:
i miss the old days of 1 and 2gb usb sticks, i think i even had a 512mb at one stage.
I drop by aliexpress.com once in a while and usually find some sticks of small capacity, although they are priced very similar to the bigger ones.

Yeah i could probably find some online i was just talking about local tech stores that sell office products etc.

Panopticon · 2019-02-10 10:44:11

I got this latest release installed today, working great on a bare metal install, really snappy desktop. One minor gripe though is i cant seem to get xdg-user-dirs-update to work, it should populate $HOME but does nothing? Is there an extra step needed for refracta?

Last edited by Panopticon (2019-02-10 10:44:43)

fsmithred · 2019-02-10 12:34:59

Pan, look in /etc/xdg/user-dirs.defaults and uncomment the dirs you want.

PedroReina · 2019-02-10 12:53:23

Panopticoni wrote:

was just talking about local tech stores that sell office products etc.

Sure, agreed.

Panopticon · 2019-02-10 13:07:29

fsmithred wrote:

Pan, look in /etc/xdg/user-dirs.defaults and uncomment the dirs you want.

Thanks for that, i havent had much to do with that side of gnu/linux in the past, usually just set and forget but might be worth looking at further to learn a few nix tricks. Do you leave most uncommented due to refracta snapshot when creating the iso for refracta?

fsmithred · 2019-02-10 14:55:23

I disable all those dirs because it annoys me to have them in my home. I make my own directories, in some cases with names I've been using since win98. Whoever sets the default user-dirs doesn't know how I want to organize my files. (...and they can get off my lawn!)

Panopticon · 2019-02-10 15:57:51

I see, as a base set of directories they seem ok to me, although i do find myself adding in build/ tmp/ bin/ among a few others. Doesn't take much to manually add them in either so good point.

stanz · 2019-02-11 01:42:57

fsmithred wrote:

Whoever sets the default user-dirs doesn't know how I want to organize my files. (...and they can get off my lawn!)

My door mat sez's "buzz off!".

xfce - I don't reallly like it much...but you did give it a good look...kewl.
I figured out my cd burning issue..
I'll ditch gimp and do a snapshot that'll get me my refracta9 iso on cd!

asta~

fsmithred · 2019-02-12 22:19:05

Here's the distrowatch link. I should have included this in the first post. They dressed up my dry announcement a bit.
https://distrowatch.com/?newsid=10460

stanz · 2019-02-12 23:07:34

fsmithred wrote:

Here's the distrowatch link. I should have included this in the first post. They dressed up my dry announcement a bit. https://distrowatch.com/?newsid=10460

Good`one!
I had to type in a review, but tried to blend-in... lol

Panopticon · 2019-02-13 08:35:02

^ Same, did a short positive message.

Last edited by Panopticon (2019-02-13 08:36:52)

fsmithred · 2019-02-13 19:47:26

Thanks!

stanz · 2019-02-17 23:44:08

Howdy fsmithred..
I'm in a fresh install & now tweaking refractasnapshot.config.
Line # 55-57

# Set to yes to create boot files for uefi.

make_efi="yes"

Is this creating both 'uefi' and 'efi', boot files?
Well, I hope your giggling - at least... I just know its 2 boot methods - no more!
thx..

line 73:

# rsync -av / myfs/ ${rsync_option1} ${rsync_option12} ${rsync_option3} \

might miss line 77

rsync_option2=" --delete-excluded"

I'll stop now..

Last edited by stanz (2019-02-17 23:50:29)

fsmithred · 2019-02-18 18:34:17

Oh! That typo has been there for a long time. Good thing it's just a commented example. I'll fix it in next version.

make_efi makes the files needed to boot the iso on uefi hardware. For that to work, you need to have grub-efi-amd64-bin installed (it already is, unless you removed it.)

dzz · 2019-03-07 01:29:13

Great work fsmithred, thanks for the latest Refracta ISO!

I made a rebuild. Used xz compression for the initd's, removed initrd.img_pre-snapshot from the original fs root, removed .pyo and .pyc files everywhere (they get regenerated). Same (as far as I know) package list, no other changes except to add the old refracta-lang live-config script which still works (sorts locale and keyboard simply)

Rebuilt iso is down to 687MB! The bad news is that won't be enough to get a similar beowulf ISO <700MB

Testing using installation's grub menu to boot the iso on HD..

fsmithred · 2019-03-07 02:02:49

Thanks, for that. I can make those changes in a point release. I had made a couple isos in October that were under 700mb, but then I ran update/upgrade and the snapshots grew. The initrd should have already been xz compressed unless it somehow reverted during upgrades.

Package list is mostly the same. Dropped atril and all the mate system utils and put in xpdf. Forgot to add noscript in the i386. Probably forgot something else, too.

I thought refracta-lang was specific for lightdm. I switched to lxdm mainly because I was getting better results with other languages.

Speaking of beowulf, I had to make a couple of custom live-config scripts for it. One for lxdm so that it doesn't expect lxde, and one for openssh-server, which hangs on boot while waiting for enough entropy to make the host keys. That one is here - http://distro.ibiblio.org/refracta/file … sh-entropy

dzz · 2019-03-07 02:47:27

Hazy memory here too but the refracta-lang config script was meant to set the system locale and automatically sort the user keyboard layout for xfce, nothing to do with lightdm. It was meant to avoid long-winded typing at the boot menu. I saw it working with lxdm.

I do remember, newer lightdm was not very good with the language selector at the login screen. That would affect multiple users on the same box who might prefer different languages and was a different issue.

RE iso size.. might there be a way to avoid having two copies of initrd (one in /live and one in the squash, 25 M each as gzip)?

fsmithred · 2019-03-09 01:50:57

refracta-lang works in beowulf (no X)

RE iso size.. might there be a way to avoid having two copies of initrd (one in /live and one in the squash, 25 M each as gzip)?

Yeah, that would work. It's not needed in the squash. Just have to make sure that update-initramfs runs during the install.

fsmithred · 2019-04-13 18:41:42

Refracta 9.1 (13 Apr 2019)
https://get.refracta.org/files/stable/

WHAT'S NEW -
- Added gvfs-backends.
- Atril replaces xpdf. (So I could print my boarding pass.)
- Added fontsnaps (For larger/smaller desktop fonts and icons)
- Added gnome-system-tools.
- Added refracta-lang for easier locale settings at the boot screen.
- Security updates through date of iso.

Atril added 124mb. I give up on the 700mb limit.
It still fits on a 1gb usb stick!

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 2019-02-08 00:30:06

Refacta 9.0 Released

#2 2019-02-08 04:24:02

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#3 2019-02-08 12:38:58

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#4 2019-02-09 01:28:17

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#5 2019-02-09 09:38:55

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#6 2019-02-09 20:10:32

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#7 2019-02-10 10:41:28

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#8 2019-02-10 10:44:11

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#9 2019-02-10 12:34:59

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#10 2019-02-10 12:53:23

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#11 2019-02-10 13:07:29

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#12 2019-02-10 14:55:23

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#13 2019-02-10 15:57:51

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#14 2019-02-11 01:42:57

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#15 2019-02-12 22:19:05

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#16 2019-02-12 23:07:34

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#17 2019-02-13 08:35:02

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#18 2019-02-13 19:47:26

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#19 2019-02-17 23:44:08

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#20 2019-02-18 18:34:17

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#21 2019-03-07 01:29:13

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#22 2019-03-07 02:02:49

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#23 2019-03-07 02:47:27

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#24 2019-03-09 01:50:57

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

#25 2019-04-13 18:41:42

Re: Refacta 9.0 Released

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