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avbox

Member

Registered: 2019-09-03

Posts: 105  

Say hello to AVMultimedia, Debian, Knoppix and Ubuntu

I would like to thank again all those who have helped to improve AVMultimedia. I meant that the current status is very impressive. All items reported at the first announcement (and many more) have been fixed.

Now that everything is going the way I want it to, I've made a few measurements. In about 18 seconds AVMultimedia started virtualized (last week it was a good 30 seconds). With the start of AVMultimedia and LibreOffice it takes about 24 seconds.

So this afternoon I compared it with some Linux distributions (aside of AVMultimeida there is to my knowledge no other Devuan Beowulf LiveCD with integrated LibreOffice). Therefore I took Debian, Knoppix and Ubuntu in the current desktop version and did the tests. The result is a 4 minutes long video, which you can find here:

https://youtu.be/wexJw3gWp5M

P.S: This video is also about SystemD. Actually it should start faster with SystemD, right? Sorry, just a joke! But take a look for yourself.

Last edited by avbox (2019-09-21 21:38:33)

avbox

Member

Registered: 2019-09-03

Posts: 105  

Re: Say hello to AVMultimedia, Debian, Knoppix and Ubuntu

AVMultimedia is now even faster! Around 10 seconds to start the full desktop (about 6 GB of uncompressed software ready to use). So, why is it made? Just use LZ4 compression all around and you will get very good results (even starting of apps is normally faster then with full RAM mode). Have a look here:

https://youtu.be/sbDpZUgil1w

As it now boots much faster, I had to recut the video 'hello world to linux' (version 2):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh4CesttE94

If you want to see the difference, just start AVMultimedia without the flag 'superlow', then you get the old method to start it (completely in RAM). Acutally only the very base system fits in RAM, the rest comes directly from iso/stock, but again with this very fast LZ4 uncompression. And yes, ISO are around 15 to 20 percent bigger, but YES, AVMultimedia now works on Computers with just about 1 GB of RAM. Enjoy!

avbox

Member

Registered: 2019-09-03

Posts: 105  

Re: Say hello to AVMultimedia, Debian, Knoppix and Ubuntu

If you want to see the difference, just start AVMultimedia without the flag 'superlow', then you get the old method to start it (completely in RAM).

I changed the mode to start it completely in memory. Instead of 'superlow' (wich does not any longer exist), you just can add 'memonly' to start it completely in RAM (memory). Thies behaviour is easier for those who start without uefi, just add the flag to the desired starting mode, ie 'ehd memonly' (does mean starting in English with harddisk and competley in memroy).

Last edited by avbox (2019-09-26 13:12:41)

avbox

Member

Registered: 2019-09-03

Posts: 105  

Re: Say hello to AVMultimedia, Debian, Knoppix and Ubuntu

I had to publish a new release due to a small bug in update process (squashfs file lib.os was not updated). Now this is fixed. Enjoy!

avbox

Member

Registered: 2019-09-03

Posts: 105  

Re: Say hello to AVMultimedia, Debian, Knoppix and Ubuntu

There is another new release, better support for english language and keyboard (english keyboard is choosen if english languages is choosen at the frist screen). Later change for any other language via keyboard tool in panel (bottom right).

avbox

Member

Registered: 2019-09-03

Posts: 105  

Re: Say hello to AVMultimedia, Debian, Knoppix and Ubuntu

There is another good new release of AVMultimedia, it know works on intel compute sticks (2gb version), has kernel 5.3.x (new grapic devices), bluetooth support (finally) and does boot up more nicely. Version is 2019/X, you can donload it from:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/archivista/files/

https://osdn.net/projects/avmultimedia/

Special note: The widely tested intel compute stick is BOXSTK1AW32SC  and yes, you don't need power supply, it just runs on a usb port (even playback of 4k videos). If you are interest in (and do live in southern part of germany, eastern part of austria or switzerland, there will be a presentation (in german) tommorrow at linuxday.at, more information see here:

https://www.linuxday.at/avmultimedia-18 … -dem-start

avbox

Member

Registered: 2019-09-03

Posts: 105  

Re: Say hello to AVMultimedia, Debian, Knoppix and Ubuntu

There is another new release. Due to a bug in gtk, the menus did not any longer work on tochscreens, see "ugly" bug here:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/issues/945

There you also will find possible solutions to avoid it. In one sentence said: In mate use package 'mate-applet-brisk-menu' or then go to budgie-desktop.

I too added all infos to put AVMultimedia on a intel compute stick, see FAQs:

http://archivista.ch/cms/en/support-2/avmultimedia-2/

Enjoy! Feedbacks always welcome.

avbox

Member

Registered: 2019-09-03

Posts: 105  

Re: Say hello to AVMultimedia, Debian, Knoppix and Ubuntu

Again, some more days of hard testing and adjusting. The intel compute stick STK1AW32SC had two issues: Sleeping display did came up with a black screen and mouse pointer (no chance to get back desktop). There is now a background script (xorgreset.pl) that sends an xrandr command to get the screen back (needs up to 30 seconds). The sound card on STK1AW32SC had the problem that from time to time after booting sound was not available. I adjusted pulseaudio to setup now corectly. And yes, display only works with uxa flag in xorg.conf (make the whole thing a bit slower). Working with 4K is not fully recommended (FullHD is putted to the stick by default).

Over the weekend, I tested too STK2M364CC (intel m3 with 4 GB RAM). Yes, I know price is nearly twice, but if you want full 4K, the 2G variant is (at least at current stage) not fully recommended. Worked nearly out of the box, the only thing I had to add was that sound is always going for 48000k (see /etc/pulse/daemon.conf).

During testing it wideley I saw that Firefox is slow playing viedoes. I first wanted to add falkon (which was faster), but realized that there must be some problems (I assume it is dbus, but not shure). Then I checked for Iridium. Beside of the fact that it does need more space on the iso, it is quite perfect. It is a fork of Chromium (removal of sending tracking infos to the "Chief"). Now, watching videos is quite fast. Especially on the "chiefs" channel. And yes if you don't like the "chief", go via duckduckgo, then the "chief" should not be up to you.

Have a nice time.

Last edited by avbox (2019-10-28 11:11:10)

avbox

Member

Registered: 2019-09-03

Posts: 105  

Re: Say hello to AVMultimedia, Debian, Knoppix and Ubuntu

There again is another new release. I added some new fonts (noto), included youtube-dl for command line download of videos, added a fix (see /systemd) for monitors not to go automaticially to dpms off (with older mohandlingnitors, you don't get it back) and added english kodi defaults if AVMultimedia is started in English.handlinghandlinghandling