[Fsf-friends] [Fwd: [Fwd: Dine in geek heaven with Dyne:bolic]]

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Sunil Abraham <sunil at mahiti.org>
Reply-To: sunil at mahiti.org
To: asiasource-l <asiasource-l at lists.tacticaltech.org>
Subject: [Asiasource-l] Dine in geek heaven with Dyne:bolicII
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 18:04:24 +0530

Dear Sourcers,

Some exciting news from Jaromil.
Thanks,

Sunil


http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1693674882;fp;16;fpid;0
Dine in geek heaven with Dyne:bolicII 
Dahna McConnachie

21/10/2005 08:58:34

Multimedia producers and artists will have the power to fully customise
their own tailored GNU/Linux environment on a bootable CD with the
release of Dyne:bolicII by the end of the year.

That is the aim of core developer, Jaromil, who says the new system will
give users unprecedented flexibility and control.

Aimed at multimedia producers, artists, activists, and content creators,
the Dyne:bolic multimedia platform on a bootable CD offers a vast range
of software for multimedia production, streaming, 3-D modelling, photo
editing, Web browsing and publishing, peer-to-peer file sharing, and
networking. 

It also includes games and a world navigator. Dyne:bolic is capable of
automatic clustering - joining the CPU power between any other
Dyne:bolic on the local network. 

It can recognise a variety of hardware devices (sound, video, FireWire,
and USB) and works on several types of machines from Windows through to
"modded" Xbox consoles.

Jaromil says the main addition to version two, currently in beta, is
that it will include all the compiler tools required in order to modify
it.

"So far live meant demo, now live really means live, so you'll be able
to adapt your own version of the live CD wherever you want," he said.

"You can boot a RW CD, copy a directory on the hard disk, modify its
contents and burn it back, without repartitioning anything, to have a
Dyne:II system customised for your needs. You can install things from
almost any available binary packages (deb, rpm, tgz), plus with new
systems like Zero Install and Autopackage."

Dyne:bolicII will also have additional modules that you can drop into a
directory before booting, with collections of more software not included
in the core. Other changes include increased security for user
interaction, the ability to write modifications in the "usr", advanced
thin client functionality and modular design to be easily combined with
other software.

"It's also faster than the previous version, taking full advantage of
most recent developments in desktop technology for GNU/Linux," said
Jaromil.

There are many differences between Dyne:bolic and distros like Ubuntu
and SuSE, according to Jaromil.

"The differences exist from the ergonomic design, to the focus on
providing a desktop environment, to the special dyne functionalities of
docking and nesting which lets you run the system from the hard disk and
have your data stored without the need to repartition anything," he
said.

Other differences, he said, included all scripts being rewritten from
scratch, hardware recognition is not the same and there are no big
frameworks like Gnome or KDE being used.

"They consume too many resources for a desktop that runs on a Pentium 1
with 64MB of RAM," said Jaromil.

"In fact one of the focuses I kept with dyne is keeping requirements
low. I think this is an important ecological issue, by looking at the
quantity of hardware waste produced nowadays and the consumerist rush
that is pushing it."

Other than occasional small donations, Dyne:bolic is not yet funded, but
by the end of the year, Dyne.org will be registered as an official
foundation valid in Europe. 

"[Though we are] starting with no money, we have a lot of ideas and
software that works already, so we might find a good sustainable
situation," said Jaromil.

"But it's way better to have people liking your activity, knowing your
story, than to be a billionaire donating more cash than you can spend to
make a branded product out of your software."

Avid Linux user Tom Russell, who has written a generic version on
customising Dyne 1.4, said the new version of Dyne was "geek heaven" and
definitely worth downloading.

To use a stable version of Dyne:bolic go here: www.dynebolic.org. To get
involved in the beta of Dyne:bolicII go here: http://dev.dynebolic.org
Alternatively, for something different, going to Russell's How To page
explains how to http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/14628.html
customise Dyne 1.4 to run his 'SCOOL application from a bootable CD. 

"I had to rewrite 'SCOOL a bit to suit the squash module approach," he
said. "This actually only involved changing some shell script variable
assignments and changing the Runtime Revolution transcript for the same
reason, as it originally resided in $HOME. Now it can support multiple
users on the same system, which is a much better approach."