The Debian-Stretch-Live Starter Kit

[fredx181]

Here's for XFCE lovers (includes me :) ) an alternative "Starter Kit" with full XFCE desktop.
Made with mklive-stretch using Desktop choice "Xfce4 with whisker menu" but without browser installed.
Included are some more apps (compared to rcrsn51's Starter Kit), e.g. remaster tools, conky and more.
The main 01-filesystem.squashfs is xz compressed (resulting in ISO's that small)

32-bit ISO:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/0gq ... 6.iso?dl=1 Size 160MB
64-bit ISO:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/myp ... 4.iso?dl=1 Size 156MB

EDIT: Forgot to mention:
password for root = root
password for user puppy = puppy

Fred

[greengeek]

Here is a trio of applets that give you fast, one-click access to the command-line tools sync, umount (all) and diff.

I keep shortcuts for them on my desktop.

A "sync" shortcut should be mandatory on every new pup i reckon. Especilly if booted from usb or keeping a savefile or savefolder on usb.

[rcrsn51]

Here is a trio of applets that give you fast, one-click access to the command-line tools sync, umount (all) and diff.

I keep shortcuts for them on my desktop.

A "sync" shortcut should be mandatory on every new pup i reckon. Especilly if booted from usb or keeping a savefile or savefolder on usb.

Thanks for testing my project.

[rcrsn51]

Fred's repo has a new version of PeasyWiFi. It contains some rfkill functionality in case your machine experiences a WiFi block.

[anikin]

It's a shame I haven't yet tested PeasyWiFi but I will in the nearest future. A quick question (and please pardon my stubbornness) - will it work with dash?

Thank you in advance.

[rcrsn51]

will it work with dash?

I have a no-bash version. But PWF has a learning curve. It would be preferable to test the standard version first in one of the current Dogs.

Its startup mechanisms may not work the same in pure Debian.

[rcrsn51]

Here is PeasyPrint ported from Puppy. The instructions are here.

Update: V3.1 has a new Fit tool. It determines in advance how you should up-scale an image to fit the target paper without overflowing the page - by width or by height.

Update: V4.0 is a complete rewrite that works without Ghostscript. The "To PDF" option sends the image to a PDF file instead of your printer.

Update: For a tool to crop photos into a size suitable for printing, read here.

Remove the fake .gz extension.

[rcrsn51]

How to install Stretch-live on a UEFI computer

Users with Win8/10 machines or new motherboards are familiar with the issues of UEFI, GRUB2 and Secure Boot. Here is a recipe for dealing with them.

1. At bootup, you need to access the UEFI setup menus. On old BIOS machines, you would see a message like "Press Del to enter setup". But Windows now has "Fast Startup" that hides these messages. So you need to know the "hot key" like F2 in advance. By pressing it repeatedly as the machine boots, you can get into the menus. Some googling may yield the hot key for your particular machine.

If not, let Windows start, then find the back-door into the UEFI firmware settings. There are instructions here and here.

Hint: On most machines, click the On/Off icon, then shift-click on Restart. Select Troubleshooting > UEFI firmware settings > Restart.

2. Your first task in the UEFI setup is to disable Secure Boot. Most PC's have this option located somewhere in the menus. (It may be in a "Boot" submenu.) Then look for any Fast Boot options and disable them too. This will give you more time at bootup to press the hot key.

3. Note that we are leaving the machine as a UEFI boot device. We are NOT switching it back to "Legacy" or "CSM" mode. Any settings like Load Legacy Option ROM should (usually) be set to Disable.

4. If you are planning to dual-boot Windows, you MUST also disable its hibernation feature. Do this from within Windows - read here.

Hint:
- Right-click the Start button. Select Command prompt (admin). Type: powercfg.exe /h off
- Right-click the Start button. Select Power options > Choose what power buttons do. Set "power button = shutdown".
- Confirm that there are NO options for hibernating.

5. Build a UEFI-bootable flash drive. You can do this from either Windows or Linux.
a. Get a flash drive formatted as FAT32.
b. Download the uefi-grub2.iso from here.
c. Click on the file to mount it. Copy its contents onto the flash drive. There is a folder named EFI and three files.
d. Download a Stretch-live ISO and click-mount it. Copy the entire "live" folder onto the flash drive.
e. Also copy the whole ISO file onto the drive. You will need it to do a hard drive install.

6. Boot the flash drive.
a. Press the hot key to open the UEFI menus.
b. Locate the boot priority list and set USB first. If you cannot find the list, read the Update below.
c. Save and exit.

7. With any luck, the flash drive should boot. There will be a brief menu about locating a grub.cfg file. For now, ignore it.

8. The main GRUB2 menu has two choices. Try "Porteus boot" first. If it fails with a "cheat code is incorrect" error, reboot and try "live-boot" instead.

9. Please note that neither of these boot setups allow for persistence - having a save file/folder on the USB drive. The intent is to do a frugal install onto the hard drive. You will need a Linux-compatible partition there.

a. Stretch-Live has Gparted in its Preferences menu. In my experience, you can safely shrink a Windows main C: partition by 10-20GB. Then make a new ext4 partition in the empty space. YMMV.

b. Your flash drive has the stretch-live-frugal-install tool. Read here for instructions. Do a frugal install into the ext partition.

c. Run the GRUB2 converter tool to generate a menu entry for your frugal install.

10. You have two choices for how the system will boot:

a. Dual-boot with Windows. The safest procedure for Linux is to boot off the flash drive, then jump to the hard drive. Copy/paste the GRUB2 entry from above into your flash drive's grub.cfg. This will be a Porteus boot with a save folder in the ext partition.

Or add an entry like this to your flash drive's grub.cfg:

Code: Select all

menuentry "Hard drive installs" {
set root=(hd1,2)
configfile /grub2.txt
}

Also: See the example here.

b. Scrap Windows and start an all-Linux system. Using Gparted, delete the Windows partitions. Make a FAT32 "UEFI boot" partition and one or more ext partitions. (If there is already a FAT32 partition, leave it but delete the contents.) Set up the boot partition for UEFI with the same content as your flash drive. See the Update for how to replace the UEFI Windows boot entry with your own.

11. Is everything working? There may still be a small bug. If you re-boot off the flash drive, GRUB2 may find your hard drive's grub.cfg instead. Unlike Grub4Dos, GRUB2 searches all the available drives for a grub.cfg, NOT just the boot drive. At the brief initial menu, select "Manually specify location". In GRUB2 syntax, your flash drive will probably be drive 1, partition 1. Enter:

Code: Select all

(hd1,1)/grub.cfg

Update: Some UEFI setups don't have a conventional boot priority list. So you have to press another hot key like F12 in order to boot from USB.

This is awkward if you need to do it each time. Here is how to add a permanent USB boot option.

1. Press F2 and open the Boot section.
2. Select: File browser add boot entry
3. Select the cryptic entry that looks like your USB drive.
4. Drill down and select the file: EFI/boot/bootx64.efi
5. Name the entry: USB.
6. Select Boot Option #1 and set it to USB. Windows should become Option #2.
7. Save and reboot. If the USB drive is present, it will boot instead of Windows.

--------------------

[rcrsn51]

In rare cases, you may be unable to find a working video driver. For example, the i915 modesetting driver may fail with some Intel chipsets and give a black-screen-of-death.

The only solution may be to use the Xorg vesa driver instead.

1. In your GRUB menu, add "i915.modeset=0" to the kernel line (if needed).

2. The Starter Kit (prior to release -71) does not have the vesa driver OOTB. You have two choices:

a. Download and install it on-the-fly from the console prompt (assuming you have a network connection).

Code: Select all

apt-get update
apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-vesa
startx

b. Get the squashfs module from below and drop it into the "live" folder of your install.

Remove the fake .gz extension.

-------------

[rcrsn51]

Fred's repo now has updates to the BT4Stretch Bluetooth system and the Batterup laptop battery monitor.

See Page 1 for links.

[rcrsn51]

Here is the Starter Kit on a Gigabyte Brix GB-BXBT-1900. It has a Celeron N2807 SoC and 4GB of RAM. Note the current CPU frequency.

It boots via a standard UEFI setup with both legacy CSM and Secure Boot disabled.

Everything works OOTB, including WiFi, Bluetooth and HDMI.

This is a silent fanless unit, aside from the internal 2.5-inch HDD.

Of all the bare-bones kits I have tried, this was the simplest by far. But it requires DDR3L low-voltage RAM.

-----------------------

[rcrsn51]

Here is the Starter Kit on a 2008 Lenovo single-core Atom netbook with 1.5GB RAM.

This is a legacy BIOS boot via Grub4Dos.

These early Atoms prefer the Xorg "intel" video driver over the "i915" modesetting driver.

It has Broadcom WiFi and uses the vendor wl driver. The touchpad works fine with tapping enabled, but it's tiny.

It can run Firefox Quantum 61 with YouTube video+audio (at 360p). Also Chromium 66.

Batterup works reliably as the battery monitor.

Unlike XP, where the fan ran constantly, this setup quiets down when it is not under load.

-------------------

[rcrsn51]

Here is the Starter Kit on an HP-Compaq 6005 SFF desktop box with an AMD CPU and 4GB RAM.

Xorg uses the "radeon" modesetting driver here. It requires firmware, which is included in the Starter Kit. Everything works OOTB, including the DisplayPort video output.

The unit has an additional PCI sound card, which is handled nicely by Sound Card Selector.

Originally, this was a Win7 machine with standard BIOS boot. It was upgraded to Win10 but kept the BIOS setup (no UEFI/Secure Boot). I split off an ext4 partition for the Starter Kit. It boots by running Legacy GRUB from the Linux partition boot sector. Win10 boots from the GRUB menu.

[rcrsn51]

Here is the Starter Kit on an Asus C200MA Chromebook. It has a Celeron N2830 SoC, 2GB RAM and 16GB eMMC.

Like all Chromebooks, you need three skills before starting.
1. How to put the unit in "developer" mode so you can install a Linux.
2. How to install the legacy BIOS firmware (if needed) so it can boot off a flash drive.
3. How to revert the unit back to ChromeOS if something goes wrong.

The eMMC drive was wiped and switched to an MS-DOS partition table. The Starter Kit was installed to the eMMC and boots via Grub4Dos.

Like some other SoC chipsets, this machine has trouble with ALSA audio. Luckily, it has Intel WiFi/Bluetooth, so you can send audio output to a BT speaker via BT4Stretch. Or connect to an HDMI display, or use a USB sound card adapter with headphones.

Everything else works well. Touchpad control is excellent.

[rcrsn51]

Here is the HP-6005 with an NVIDIA GeForce 710B PCIe card. OOTB, it uses the Xorg nouveau modesetting driver, which works fine.

It is connected to a 19inch TV via HDMI. Lxrandr finds the right monitor and Sound Card Selector picks the HDMI audio.

Instructions for installing the vendor "nvidia" driver are here.

[roadkill13]

fredx181 wrote:

There is deb-mutimedia repository which can be activated by uncommenting it (remove the "#" ) from /etc/apt/sources.list, so becomes this:
Code:
#Debian Multimedia
deb ftp://ftp.deb-multimedia.org/ stretch main non-free

Then, in terminal:
Code:
apt-get update

EDIT: And install deb-multimedia-keyring:
Code:
apt-get install deb-multimedia-keyring
apt-get update

Wouldn't work for me. Apt refused to update due to lack of pubkey. It could not download the multimedia keyring.

I resolved the issue this way:

wget http://www.deb-multimedia.org/pool/main ... .1_all.deb

I installed this file from the right click menu then ran apt update.

[rcrsn51]

@roadkill: Thanks for this update. I have added a link on the main post.

[fredx181]

@roadkill, thanks, your method should work OK, but strange... for me it works when I type "y" when it asks to install without verification, it didn't for you ?:

Code: Select all

root@live:~# apt-get install deb-multimedia-keyring
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  deb-multimedia-keyring
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 37 not upgraded.
Need to get 10.7 kB of archives.
After this operation, 25.6 kB of additional disk space will be used.
WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
  deb-multimedia-keyring
Install these packages without verification? [y/N] y
Get:1 ftp://ftp.deb-multimedia.org stretch/main i386 deb-multimedia-keyring all 2016.8.1 [10.7 kB]
Fetched 10.7 kB in 0s (33.7 kB/s)           
Selecting previously unselected package deb-multimedia-keyring.
(Reading database ... 44777 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../deb-multimedia-keyring_2016.8.1_all.deb ...
Unpacking deb-multimedia-keyring (2016.8.1) ...
Setting up deb-multimedia-keyring (2016.8.1) ...

Fred

[roadkill13]

[rcrsn51]

I did a fresh install of the Starter Kit and followed fred's instructions. They worked for me.