Debian5-E17-1.2

This board posts about running linux on your webdt366
quotaholic
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Debian5-E17-1.2

Post by quotaholic »

As some of you know I am now living in the Boston area. Nice area but not to so nice to drive in. So as I gear up to commute via public transportation I made an image that will help a person who is on the go. As I am a job seeker I felt that a certain level of PIM or personal information management was important as well as the standard compliment of mobile apps.

GPE stands for GPE Palmtop Environment. One of the projects active in getting linux on portable devices. The GPE packages in "lenny stable" are dated at this point and some may not work too well but I installed the gpe apps suite on this build. More information here:

http://gpe.handhelds.org/

Some of the GPE apps suite include v-card manager, calendar with alarms and scheduling options, Contacts manager, To do list,  time sheet program, voice recorder (untested) and an expenses program. Some games are installed too but I think they are designed for a smartphones screen size.

Other apps that made their way in to this image are:

directvnc - frame buffer vnc client.
quicksynergy - gui for synergy, mouse and keyboard sharing over wifi
rdesktop - remote desktop
ganyremote - remote control anotehr computer over wifi or bluetooth
audaious - audio player
iceweasel - webbrowser
wicd - network manager
fbreader - ebook reader
epdfview - pdf viewer
exhibit - image viewer
elitaire - card games
btscanner - bluetooth device discovery
xvkbd - keyboard
matchbox window manager (part of gpe)

and of course this image has the E17 window manager / desktop shell by default. Buttons and directional pad should work out of the box as long as you dont have a usb device plugged in on boot. I am a lover of dark themes and I commonly dwell in low light levels. This image has on it my favorite e17 theme, carbon. Feel free to erase it or add your own. in the home folder there is a hidden directory ~.e/e/backgrounds. and ~.e/e/themes.  Head over to exchange.enlightenment.org and see what looks good.

There is quite a bit in here. Hopefully you find it useful. I left about 20 megs free. This image uses a network mirror. md5 is in the archive. 

username - webdt
password - webdt
rootpass - webdt

If you are using a cisco air350 card then there is one setting I suggest you change before you even plug in your card.

Code: Select all

sudo nano /etc/wicd/manager-settings.conf
change wireless_interface from wlan0 to eth0.

control + o and enter will save the file.   Thank you kluut!


wicd is grumpy when aimed at a card that isn't there and does not respond too well. This step avoids an unresponsive gui.


Image:

Download Debian5-E17-1.2.tar.gz from FileFactory.com

I will work on a torrent tomorrow.

Let me know how it goes.

quotaholic
Last edited by quotaholic on Wed Jul 08, 2009 8:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
benteam
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Re: Debian5-E17-1.2

Post by benteam »

hey quotaholic

is there any posibility to install wine on this ans run Internet explorer?

like the IE4Linux that is avaliable for debian?

have you tried wine on this webdt366,  does it run at least?

kind regards
quotaholic
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Re: Debian5-E17-1.2

Post by quotaholic »

Hey benteam,

Wow, of all the things I never though I would be asked here.

Outside of running picasa I have no experience with wine. My experiences with emulation leave me adding up some numbers.

I see near max cpu load and sometimes 25 - 30 seconds until the browser loads from when the button is clicked. This depends on first run and the brand of browser but what you intend to do is... and  correct me if I am wrong.... is to section off a hunk of memory to share with an emulation environment so that you can reformat code on the fly in order to run a non native web browser? All on a 400 mhz cpu and with 256 of ram? What are the system requirements for each app?

Dare I ask why you wish to do this? Feel free to install this image and add wine to see how well it runs. I would suggest removing some apps to make more room.

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sudo apt-get remove audacious iceweasel

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sudo apt-get autoremove
Those two commands should get you about 35 megs to play with.

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sudo aptitude install --without-recommends wine
watch disk usage
I dont see ie4linux in any repos. If you get a deb file install it with

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sudo dpkg -i package.deb
Let us know how you do. I did try to run google earth on the DT. I think that uses wine too. It took 15 minutes to open.

quotaholic
Last edited by quotaholic on Wed Jul 08, 2009 9:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
benteam
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Re: Debian5-E17-1.2

Post by benteam »

sure I did, and remove all the programs i dont need like the elitaire, the bluetooth, and the obex transfer programs.
but i still need some more space to install wine.

after installing the dependencies it says it requires 70 mb,  and I only got 62 MB free.

i don�t know what else to remove....

is there any way to remove the profiles on the desktop like the default , illume minimallist scalable & standard and leave only one or two instead of all ??
or remove something that can giveme 8 MB .
all I need is to run IE on debian, i need the GUI, the wifi the drivers for the touchpad and all that and IE.

let me know if you know about something I can remove.
Kind regards.
serialjoepsycho
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Re: Debian5-E17-1.2

Post by serialjoepsycho »

Dude I'd just install windows if you want IE
volkswagner
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Re: Debian5-E17-1.2

Post by volkswagner »

Benteam,

Do you have access to a CF card?  You can create symbolic links and move folders such as /usr/lib, /usr/share, and more.

I have a CF card setup with sym links on my LXDE.img machine.  I will try wine on that unit when I get a chance.

Volkswagner
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quotaholic
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Re: Debian5-E17-1.2

Post by quotaholic »

The profiles are part of enlightenment. You would have better luck removing gpe. That may free you 20 megs. If you went down the list removing the other applications you may gain another ten or so. Beyond that you would need to investigate sym links, taking a performance hit, or to look in to a larger drive. The CF card is limited to usb 1.1 speeds and by placing folders that the os reads we inherit that ceiling.

Lots of great minds here, possibly someone has run in to your situation before and has a work around. If you let us know why you intend to put ie on linux possibly someone has a solution for the application other than the obvious.
volkswagner
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Re: Debian5-E17-1.2

Post by volkswagner »

OK,

I installed wine, and followed the Debian instructions at IE4linux.
    http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/pag ... ion:Debian

Please keep in mind I have an odd setup.  In part due to laziness I have my apt-get pointed to repros at Ubuntu/gutsy.

I have installed the IE4linux and launched the app.  I do get the home page loading from tatanka.com.  I have not had time to play, but it is not usable in my opinion.  I am not sure if wine or IE4linux is the culprit.  System resources do not seem to be too high (well I guess that was while idle, since I could not get the page to change).  I have seen much higher usage with wicd and even Firefox.

Issues with the touch screen or just unresponsiveness made me quit quickly.  When trying to change the url in the address bar hitting enter or the go button did not seem to do anything.

By the way I tried IE6 only.

So, I am very curious.  Why do you feel the need to run IE on linux, vs.  WinCE?  Well I do understand the IE included with WinCE is very limited....I don't even think I can check my gmail via webmail with it.
Nothing is ever easy, but if it is difficult you must be doing it wrong.
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volkswagner
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Re: Debian5-E17-1.2

Post by volkswagner »

i am posting this now with ie4linux on the webdt.  it can be usable if wineserver does not run out of control or lock up.  one odd thing is i cant use capital letters using 'shift' or 'cap-lock'.  i can't get any secondary functions.  ts entire post was written with 'caps-lock' on.
Nothing is ever easy, but if it is difficult you must be doing it wrong.
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pandrweb
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Re: Debian5-E17-1.2

Post by pandrweb »

Somebody please help, I have the image and I need to know how to install it. I tried to mount the image to a flashdrive but I got errors. How do you go about installing the image to a webdt 366?
quotaholic
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Re: Debian5-E17-1.2

Post by quotaholic »

When I make an image from my DT I use the dd command: "sudo dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/blah-blah.img"

That makes a raw copy of my filesystem. To restore that copy first format your whole flash drive to reiserfs, one partition, with no atime option if it exists. I personally use the slax 6.1.1 bootable usb drive to boot the dt to. We need to use a "live cd" style operating system to transfer the image in. This will require a usb hub, usb keyboard and a live cd of an operating system that reads the dt's hardware correctly. Slax 6.1.1 is the favorite around here. THey have good instructions on the slax website on how to provision a bootable slax usb drive.

Once slax 6.1.1 is on a drive and bootable boot the dt to it.

Press escape at gui to get text prompt

type

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slax vga=771
Now plug in your drive (to the usb hub that you are using) that holds webdt linux image. Do this right after pressing enter from the last command.

At login type root for user and toor for password

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fdisk -l

will list your drive. Mount the drive containing the webdt image if it is not already by

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mount /path/to/drive /mnt
Then transfer image in to dt with

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dd if=/mnt/webdt-e17-1.2.img of=/dev/hda
Do not include the numbers of the device on the target as the number refers to a partition. This is why I used hda for the internal flash.

The tr
ansfer takes about 15 minutes. The computr may indicate that it is finished when there is information still in transfer. Watch the light on the usb stick that you use as that is best indication. When transfer is complete, reboot and you should have linux powered dt.

quotaholic
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Re: Debian5-E17-1.2

Post by shofar guy »

Hello there. I finally got this img working on my dt. I was having trouble with it until I realized you where putting it on the built in flash and not a usb. lol I got it installed on the internal flash. seemd to work ok. boots faster than the nimblex usb install fleegman posted a while back. got wifi working too. I got a question for you guys. I would like to use this for gps in my taxi. I did find some free gps software for linux. whould it be possible to install the gps software and maps to a usb flash drive? I got an 8 gig and a 4 gig. I just need maps my home city, not the entire usa. would this img work if installed to a usb drive, to have more room for the gps? I'm guessing internal flash would be faster for main program, but would I be able to run the gps from a usb or CF card. any thoughts. I need internet surfing, picture viewing, and gps. what could be taken off to make room. and how? lol. thanks for posting this img.
quotaholic
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Re: Debian5-E17-1.2

Post by quotaholic »

Hello and congratulations on getting it installed! A majority of the programs I listed above can easily be removed with this command:

Code: Select all

sudo aptitude purge example-package
after this run

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sudo apt-get autoremove
try

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sudo aptitude purge directvnc quicksynergy rdesktop ganyremote audaious epdfview elitaire btscanner gpe
That will remove all but what you indicated you need. In a terminal run

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df
to see how much drive space you have left afterward. If you do not have enough you can investigave sym linking some directories to a CF card or a usb stick and that will gain you a great deal of space. I have never attempted sym links so I can not advise. I do not know of anyone running gps on linux on a DT so please keep us updated on your progress.
thom
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Re: Debian5-E17-1.2

Post by thom »

Does the touchscreen work in this image?

Or should I stick with the puppy linux image?
quotaholic
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Re: Debian5-E17-1.2

Post by quotaholic »

Yes, the touchscreen does work as well as the hardware buttons on the front. Within the e17 window manager its very easy to modify which button carries out what action. Reports are that my image works a little faster than puppy but both are fully functional with the exception to sound recording. That is on my to do list.

Let me know if there is any way that I can be of help.

quotaholic
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