Debian

[quotaholic]

Debian 5 will cram a minimal install on to a DT. Its installer brings up the aircard which makes a netinstall possible for those who dont have much to do for the rest of the day. No joke intended debian is a contender as we know the penmount driver package exists in their apt packages. While using elive in live cd mode last night I did an apt-get update and then did an "apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-penmount" and something installed.

Knowing this it may only be a matter of getting the right xorg.conf configuration to steer x at the driver.

The below paste comes from the launchpad ubuntu bug that has been reported. However it looks like a good way to proceed

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier    "PenMount"
Driver  "penmount"
Option  "Protocol"    "PM6000USB"
Option  "Device"        "/dev/input/touchscreen"
Option  "PMode"        "1"    # Was 1 initially
Option  "ReportingMode"        "raw"  # disable scaling to screen resolution
Option  "MinX"  "10"
Option  "MaxX"  "1000"
Option  "MinY"  "10"
Option  "MaxY"  "1000"
Option  "ADBit"        "10"
Option  "Beep" "0"      # 0 = no beep, 1 = beep enabled
Option  "PenDownMode"  "0"    # 0=stream mode, 1=point mode
Option  "SwapXY"      "1"
Option  "DebugLevel"  "9"
EndSection

AND, in your ServerLayout section, remember to add:
InputDevice    "Penmount" "SendCoreEvents"

[quotaholic]

Updated:

First time I tried a deban net install minimal I had issues getting the network card up. Well this time I didnt give up. In "more options" from the boot menu choice I selected "expert graphical". When loading components from the disc I had to check all but a few of them. Everything was good this time, Apt loaded and grabbed a freah list time server was there, it was great. Network was smooth and I think it was due to a lot of packages I loaded frm the disc that were needed but not obvious.

Then the partition utility told me that I had no chance for installing "Lenny" on my 534Mb of internal flash. It simply was not enough room. No options were available to continue.

Unless someone knows how to take a few pounds off of lenny in minimal netinst mode I hink deban 5 is out.

[angrymeat]

from what I understand getting debain to run on the flash will eat up all but like 4 megs of the 524 megs on it . The guy who made the linuxmce orbiter for it  is running pretty much what your talking about above. He said the dependencies pretty much kill you.  I am not sure if this helps just wanted to let you know I partially explored this route.

[quotaholic]

The gentleman who has the pallet of DT's as "a lot" on ebay right now has debian working on his. Check the resellers section. When I first read your post I said to myself yup makes sense. However that working lxde desktop photo he has on his auction kinda makes me not want to dismiss the debian thought.

If I am guessing they installed debian on a host computer and trimmed it down as much as they could. Then converted the image on the hd to a live cd with mkisofs or something.

Are there any emulation utilities available that can be configured to act as a WebDT as a host environment that anyone knows about? It would be a lot easier to test any builds on a desktop then making a usb stick each time.

quotaholic

[quotaholic]

After upgrading my flash to one gig and reattempting a debian install I have run it to something worth sharing. The Penmount package in the apt repository for "lenny" does not work well. It just doesnt come with the calibration tools that seem to be needed.

If you are going to install lenny be sure to get the appropriate driver package from the penmount web site. 

quotaholic

[Taltos]

Havnt got mine in yet but has anyone looked into ubuntu mid yet or is it to large?

[quotaholic]

One of my first thoughts actually was Ubuntu mid. The image is big and we are having breakage issues with ubuntu. All ubuntu above 7.04 seems to break upon init. We feel its either GPU or PCMCIA related. Devs are waiting to hear back from us. See posting titled "Attention.....".

quotaholic

[quotaholic]

From replying to your post on mid I went on to see Volkswagners post about Ubuntu cli installs.

As its working for me (still loading) on 7.10 mini.iso  I deceded to break that thread out to a separate topic.

quotaholic

[david_halliday]

Im not sure, but could it be that these things need a x586 kernel (Pentium or higher)? Most of the most recent distributions need a x686 (PIII or Athlon XP or later).

I tried Xubuntu 8.10 over the weekend and it failed to find a suitable kernel.

That said if you have a supported machine, it should still be possible to download the kernel sources and build a 586 version of the kernel.

Dave.

[quotaholic]

Interesting thought Dave. Never approached the idea of building a kernel. Do you have any place you would recommend that I could go to learn more on the subject?

[david_halliday]

Try this

http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/Kern ... HOWTO.html

I wish I had more time to help out with this but we have new baby twins in our household so finding time for anything is real tough at the moment.

Dave.

[david_halliday]

OK over lunch I did some more digging, it looks like the unable to find suitable kernel error has happened to others. One possible fix is to manually set the kernel to install when you reach the 'partition disk' step.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? ... ost7026675

Dave.

[quotaholic]

Oh Dave, you caused some late night dreams of changing up ubuntu's boot script to hit a 586 kernel instead of a 686. Need coffee.......

[david_halliday]

I know what you mean, I left a Xubuntu 8.10 install running when I went to work this morning, can't wait to see if it works.

Dave.

[quotaholic]

Love to know how you make out with that. Everyone has different goals but I am thinking a server install with jwm atop, networking and penmount. See what happens from there. I have basically disqualified lenny as the penmount package identifies debain version 4 as being their most current.

I built a slackware minimal with networking and the links browser today but converting that to a functioning x config may be outside my skill set. It only took up 278296.  Almost posted but I thought about having to guide someone through slackware installs and, no. Slapt-get was not being as friendly as the alternate apt-get. Putting 7.10 alternate to a disc now. I'd better make more coffee...