Create your own "Edition" using Reconstructor.

[Lantizia]

Hey Folks,

I'm brand new to the forum but I have been using Mint for quite some time now, and very recently I've started to warm up to KDE with the KDE 64 Community Edition. Mint is a refreshing change from Ubuntu as it's better at giving me applications I'm more likely to use out of the box than Canonical "thinks" I'll use, and we don't have to suffer from Canonicals "deal making" arrangements with Yahoo! either but still get the freedom of their repository and access to removed and PPA's.

I would like to further tweak Mint however, I'm thinking of stripping down the KDE 64 Edition even more, swap a few applications over... preset some KDE specific defaults (like widgets, to include an Up button, turn off single click icons, etc).

I realize that Mint is created using the Reconstructor program (http://www.reconstructor.org/) just like several other "derivatives-of" distributions are, although I think Mint still uses version 2 rather than the newer web interface according to Reconstructors author.

Are the project files created (including post-scripts) for use with Reconstructor for the Main and other Editions on file somewhere for download? If they are, then this would be excellent as I could simply import Ubuntu 9.10 on Reconstructor, load in the project file the Mint developers use to put together a distribution, edit a few things, and roll my own (for personal use only however).

Thanks for any ideas.

Steven

[Kendall]

We use a spin of reconstructor called mintconstructor which will give you the option to load any iso and then give you a chrooted terminal to work out of.

Code: Select all

apt install mintconstructor

KDE is rather complex to deal with regarding setting up the default configuration as far as I've experienced. You'll probably want to talk to Boo.

[Lantizia]

OK mintconstructor looks interesting... but I was after the project file that you guys use to create Mint from Ubuntu in reconstructor/mintconstructor.

I just feel it would be easier to create the Mint I want out of the original than picking apart Mint itself.

[Webtest]

Where is the documentation on Mintconstructor? The evidently are no Man pages for it and --help actually runs Mintconstructor. I found that very odd. I'll keep looking.

If anyone could give us a step-by-step guide to do something simple ... like set "UTC=no" in rcS in the LiveCD distro ... and burn a new ISO, that would be really great! From there we would have some positive experience from which to work.

Thanks in advance for any and all comments, suggestions, and assistance.
Blessings in abundance, all the best, and ENJOY!
Art in Carlisle PA USA

[Kendall]

I don't know that there is any documentation for mintconstructor as it's primarily used as an internal tool for us Mint devs. Basically in the chroot you use "apt install" and "apt purge" to add/remove packages. You can manually copy packages from the host system into the chroot environment and then use "dpkg -i" to install them. You could use nano in the chroot to edit any files you want, but this is generally frowned upon as there wouldn't be a proper package with a proper source to reflect those changes. Basically any file changes are done with either new versions of a package, or with a settings package that backs up the original files and restores them using the postinst and prerm scripts in the package's /debian directory. To keep track of what packages are installed you can use "dpkg -l" and if you need to you can have the "dpkg -l" output sent to a text file to be more easily worked with. Make sure that before you spin an iso run the following commands to ensure the system is properly cleaned up: "apt clean", "updatedb", "aptitude unmarkauto ~M", "aptitude keep-all", then go to the following directories and delete anything that ends with "old": "/var/cache/debconf", "/var/lib/aptitude", "/var/lib/dpkg", then clear your history with "history -c" and check that it's clean by pressing up, then do "history -c" one more time for good measure.

I hope this was helpful.

[JelleV]

Optionally you can try using debootstrap, you can chroot into a debootstrap aswell and its very possible to run GUI programs inside a Chroot. So its not even necessary to use apt-get and guess what packages you want to install its possible to run synaptic or any other variant (as long as its installed that is) and install programs through a GUI. This way its also possible to re-theme it inside a chroot without using terminal all that much, just run the gnome-appearance program - make the changes and copy the files from /root/ to /etc/skel - this is to preserve the changes you make. Anyways, just telling you there is more then 1 way to create your own flavour And I personally use debootstrap so you don't need to use ISO's pre-loaded with the stuff the developpers added. Goodluck with it !

[lorinkundert]

I have seen many posts all over in regards to modifying the GDM themes and such through Mintconstructor. I have been working on it for a little while and have so far a solution that works so you can avoid copying files over to the skel directory. Of course you will need to substitute names of files with whatever you are using.

All of this can be done from the chroot environment

# This sets the default GDM look by changing the background and icon themes a well as the color scheme

sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename --type string "/usr/share/backgrounds/kdlnet1.jpg"
sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/interface/icon_theme --type string "gnome"
sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_color_scheme --type string "fg_color:#101010101010
bg_color:#d8d8d8d8d8d8
text_color:#1a1a1a1a1a1a
base_color:#ffffffffffff
selected_fg_color:#ffffffffffff
selected_bg_color:#44449191dada"

# This will produce the same modifications on the desktop as were applied to the GDM

gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults --type string --set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename "/usr/share/backgrounds/kdlnet1.jpg"

gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults --type string --set /desktop/gnome/interface/icon_theme "gnome"

gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults --type string --set /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_color_scheme "fg_color:#101010101010
bg_color:#d8d8d8d8d8d8
text_color:#1a1a1a1a1a1a
base_color:#ffffffffffff
selected_fg_color:#ffffffffffff
selected_bg_color:#44449191dada"

If you are really ambitious this will change you Plymouth theme

sudo cp -R MIB-Ubuntu/ /lib/plymouth/themes/
sudo update-alternatives --install /lib/plymouth/themes/default.plymouth default.plymouth /lib/plymouth/themes/MIB-Ubuntu/MIB-Ubuntu.plymouth 100
sudo update-alternatives --config default.plymouth #here, choose the number of the theme you want to use then hit enter
sudo update-initramfs -u