LighterSpec

Summary

Provide fluxbox and/or IceWM as alternate environments in Xubuntu, for hardware where even Xfce is too heavy.

Rationale

Xubuntu needs 128M of RAM to run comfortably. Other distros such as feather and puppy go much further running even in 32M, albeit with a reduced functionality environment.

Use cases

Flux would like to try out Ubuntu but the Desktop CD does not complete booting on his 64M box.

Ice has an LTSP setup which runs on Xubuntu. He'd like to add a few more clients but the server would only cope if he used a ligher WM instead of Xfce.

Jani is ashamed that there's no maintainable _and_ friendly linux distro he could offer to his friends who are still using Win98 and has to mumble 'you need to upgrade your hw if you want linux on it' when the subject is brought up.

Scope

Design

Implementation

  • Need to see how to make an installer/desktopCD option to allow the user to chose these instead of Xfce (same as with LTSP option on current alternate CD)
  • We will focus on IceWM at first, unless the community is so helpful that there are resources for fluxbox as well.

Code

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

BoF agenda and discussion

talked to LTSP people and they say iceWM makes sense for them (one of them uses it by default for his deployments) sent a call on the forums to see if there are interested people in helping out.

  • An issue is that ice and the things it may rely on are in universe. If there is actual interest in the community

for this to happen, Martin Pitt won't mind _that_ much promoting this in main.

* xubuntu lighter design - help request : http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=200316 (UbuntuDemon)

Comments

It might be interesting to see what these guys are doing with Fluxbox (just discovered the site) : http://www.fluxbuntu.org/index.php (UbuntuDemon)


CategorySpec

Xubuntu/Roadmap/Specifications/Dapper/LighterSpec (last edited 2012-07-17 21:25:43 by nblzone-227-162)