SalineOS

[Aging Technogeek]

Anyone try this OS yet?

It is based on Debian Stable, is available in 32 and 64 bit versions, features the Xfce desktop and Chromium browser, and,even in Virtualbox, boots fast.

Haven't played with it much yet, but there are some features I like. One is a button on the panel to do apt-get update and apt-get upgrade with one click. Another is the default inclusion of Remastersys Backup. ( The installer icon is even labelled Remastersys)

It comes without the non-free copyrighted codecs needed for commercial videos and audio, but these can be installed with a single terminal command. I installed the codecs and tried a few youtube videos, etc. Worked fine. It uses Parole video player which I have no experience with. Will try it out over the weekend.

The Xfce desktop implementation is well done, with a top panel and an autohiding dock at the bottom with most of the popular apps preinstalled.

The user guide is on the live desktop along with the installer so it is easy to read the procedures before you install.

Home page is here

http://www.salineos.com/index.php

[vrkalak]

The Saline OS project was started in order to deliver a complete operating system based on Debian using XFCE as the graphical desktop environment. Saline OS includes many things that most people using a Debian GNU/Linux based system would most likely want or need, but are not included or not setup on a default Debian install for various reasons. This includes sgfxi for installing proprietary graphics drivers, Debian repositories that include software that does not conform to Debian's strict free software guidelines, WINE repositories, Remastersys backup utility, binary firmware for common wireless network cards, the Debian backports repository and a script to install potentially patent encumbered multimedia codecs with one command.

As any good Distro-Hopper / Xfce fanatic would be doing . . . I downloaded the x64-bit version of Saline OS.

I put SalineOS on a small partition . . . I'll play with it and let you know how it is.

[Aging Technogeek]

I have the 64 bit .iso on file and the 32 bit running in Virtualbox. So far, I am favorably impressed.

[MALsPa]

So far all I've done is boot the live DVD a few times, but I like what I've seen so far. I'm going to try a hard drive installation within a few days.

[wayne128]

I tried it on live.
It load very fast, which is what I like. However, could not get wired LAN thus no internet.

My NIC is broadcom 57788
Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM57788 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 01)

did the three lines as below, typically can get it work on those kernels and OSes that had trouble previously.
but these three lines did not work on saline os
modprobe -rv tg3
modprobe -v broadcom
modprobe -v tg3

anyone has idea how to get my broadcom internet to work?
thanks in advance

[Dyfi]

Hi,

I downloaded and gave it a spin. Unable to connect to internet (wireless network).

Saline uses wicd and LMDE uses network manager - which works every time.

With enough effort I could probably get wireless to operate by replacing wicd with NM - but why bother when LMDE is painless!

Also, we should all know by now how to run LMDE as stable or testing.

A good alternative to LMDE is Parsix OS which I have found to be excellent - very under rated Debian based system (also uses network manager).

Dyfi.

[cristobal]

SailineOs is not an OS at all. Its a script kiity's version of debian. remastersys is an application that makes a bootable image from whatever someone has done with their ubuntu or debian installation. In this case it comes as debian squeeze with xfce as the sole desktop environment with several completely unnecessary scripts added to the /usr/local/bin/ folder.

I found the remastersys installer to be adequate for what it is, an image creator for backing up or sharing a personalized version of debian/gnu linux. It should never be used for installing an operating system, but as I've said saline is not an operating system. Remastersys' maintainer is in the process of providing opensource goodies like firefox and thunderbird to his repository since debian doesn't, but these must be added post installation, that is, if you realize that they are there. Oh yes, you will be told to "RTFM" constantly on the forums whenever you ask a question that may allude to something that was hinted at in the work in progress user manual.

The scripts are pretentious, paranoid, insulting and asinine. One reloads the user sources.list to the original installed version every time its run. I guess this is to insure that the multimedia repository is there. Then it chooses your media apps and codecs for you. Another cleans chromium's cache, cookies, passwords and history. Have fun redoing all those next time you run chromium, another uses aptitude rather than apt to update installed packages as well as install whatever the author wants you to have at any time and yet another decides that you want to install the latest proprietary video drivers from the manufacturers sight rather than a debian repository, probably because the author believes that debian will eventually use wayland.

I installed saline because its image had a syslinux signature required for my machine to boot an image from usb. I removed everything installed by default and replaced it with what I should have been able to choose during the installation, deleted all the scripts and replaced my sources.list with Linuxmint and debian testing repositories. Thats my version. Maybe I should promote it as an OS

[Beardedragon]

SailineOs is not an OS at all. Its a script kiity's version of debian.

I installed saline because its image had a syslinux signature required for my machine to boot an image from usb. I removed everything installed by default and replaced it with what I should have been able to choose during the installation, deleted all the scripts and replaced my sources.list with Linuxmint and debian testing repositories. Thats my version. Maybe I should promote it as an OS

Wow. Cristobal, a bit harsh for all the time you spent over there. Remastersys makes a decent installer, a bit tricky when it comes to partitioning. Since every system comes from somewhere and all of Linux goes back to Unix you could say the same about Mint, sorry guys, grounded in Ubuntu and then tearing up Debian to suit yourselves. The fact remains to get a Xfce desktop from scratch you chose to download Saline then butcher it to suit yourself. We all change things. That is the freedom of Linux. If you wanted Testing to begin with, why not add Xfce desktop to LMDE and remove everything Gnome? This is one guy making a difference in a world of varied interests. I am using my freedom and using both, side by side.

[linuxviolin]

http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20110207#feature

While the project is off to a good start, I do find myself wondering what it is trying to be. The Saline website seems a bit vague on the point of where the distro fits. It doesn't feel user-friendly enough to compete with the Ubuntu & Mandriva families. The distribution comes on a DVD, so it's not targeting old hardware, and it's based on Debian "Squeeze", which means it's not catering to the latest-and-greatest crowd. Maybe it's too soon to tell, but I don't feel Saline has a firm identity yet. The best label I can come up with for it is a simplified (from the end-user's perspective) Debian.

[cristobal]

You're right. I was a bit harsh. I spent lot of time on the saline forum beating my head against the wall, trying to get the founders to have more of an open approach to their project. Their response was usually "we know what's best, deal with it."

That gave me the impression that saline was basically a personal project with the founders' taste in debian the only one considered. They'll end up with a following of like-thinkers about 1/100th the size of Linux Mint, who's founder is all about giving the people want they want.

I think the package repo for mint is what makes it more of unique distribution. LMDE's installer "was developed from scratch with Debian in mind. It’s configurable and it can be re-used by other Debian-based distributions". I would have loved to have installed LMDE from the get go, but unfortunately its image doesn't have a syslinux signature.

[SalineOS]

You're right. I was a bit harsh. I spent lot of time on the saline forum beating my head against the wall, trying to get the founders to have more of an open approach to their project. Their response was usually "we know what's best, deal with it."

That gave me the impression that saline was basically a personal project with the founders' taste in debian the only one considered. They'll end up with a following of like-thinkers about 1/100th the size of Linux Mint, who's founder is all about giving the people want they want.

I think the package repo for mint is what makes it more of unique distribution. LMDE's installer "was developed from scratch with Debian in mind. It’s configurable and it can be re-used by other Debian-based distributions". I would have loved to have installed LMDE from the get go, but unfortunately its image doesn't have a syslinux signature.

Hmm, I am unsure what I did to offend you so.

I don't know who you are quoting here, but it isn't me --> "we know what's best, deal with it." In fact I have admitted to being wrong more than once and will do it again (Really read my forums). I am only human after all. I don't believe you spent enough time on my forums in order to get frustrated enough for banging your head against a wall. If you really are that upset perhaps you should seek professional help. If you have any issues with the way I do things or suggestions on how to improve SalineOS, you are more than welcome to email me or come to the forums for civil conversation.

The entire reason I started SalineOS was simply because I wanted a distribution that was Debian Stable with backports installed automatically and nobody was making it. Yeah, I accomplish this with a script in /usr/local/bin with a button to run it pinned to the panel. This doesn't actually install anything it just configures apt to update a package if you have it installed. The configuration file itself will undergo an extra testing period as well as all packages it will install. I have been a Debian user for years and a heavy user of backports. I like this setup far better than running testing and I assume I am not alone in this regard. If you want to run testing and GNOME Mint LMDE is the right place. I have been good about not telling people to RTFM even if the question is how to install proprietary codecs. I do mention that it is in the user manual to encourage people to actually read it. The user manual is now up to 20 pages long and should help users new to the more traditional Debian ways to get started. New Linux users should be able to get started rather easily too, if they don't run away screaming with all the terminal commands I mention.

I include sgfxi to install proprietary graphics drivers because it will install the most up to date version and make updating the drivers easy. All users of SalineOS are more than welcome to open up Synaptic and grab the driver in the repositories. The user manual does only give step by step instructions for using sgfxi. I may consider mentioning the use of Synaptic, but I can think of no reason anyone would want to do so (Except possibly legacy cards but sgfxi supports those too). This has nothing whatsoever to do with Wayland as I am based on stable + backports. I would actually love to have Wayland for Wheezy so I can thoughtfully consider whether it would benefit users of SalineOS if I used it. Choice is a good thing and Xorg is a real pain sometimes.

Other general record setting straight:

Fragedelic is a great guy and you do in fact have his repository enabled if you run SalineOS. You can download Firefox and LibreOffice from it right now in fact and they will run perfect, but he only builds binaries for i386.The Mint menu and Remastersys are available for "all" (this is technically a lie Remastersys only works on i386 or AMD64). Remastersys installer can be used on pretty much any Debian based system too as long as its i386 or AMD64. I would rather help work on a pre-existing project than go off and write yet another installer.

Unlike Debian Xfce I don't use any QT on the images, but I don't stop anyone from downloading it from the repositories. I do actively discourage it as the system is pure GTK for a reason. I don't always know whats best for every user nor would I ever claim to, but the less libraries used the better really.

I am continuously shocked at the random packages I find to include all the time. SalineOS was an install from a Debian live DVD , which lacks quite a few stupid little things. So many issues on my forums have been fixed with a package. I will continue to add packages to make as many things work out of the box as possible. Within the confines of the law that is.

I completely rebuilt images to bring the changes to the Remastersys installer within 24 hours of its release. Its undergone a lot of work in the past couple weeks.

If you don't want to run Xfce then you don't really have any reason to use SalineOS. I am ok with this. There are not that many distributions that specialize in Xfce and Xfce alone. None of them scratched my itch so to speak.

"One reloads the user sources.list to the original installed version every time its run." The user manual goes over installing restricted codecs directly after installing the system. And, the script only needs to be run once. I didn't even consider that people would immediately modify the sources list, this was stupid I will admit. It has also been remedied as of the SalineOS 1.2 image builds.

Basically if you start using Debian you get whatever they have in the Repositories and access to all sorts of other community projects around the internet. You will be left to your own devices to Google and find these projects and learn to use them. SalineOS condenses the community projects into a single package (For distribution if you will) and includes documentation on their existence and how to use them. One of the reasons I made SalineOS was to raise awareness and money to help support some of these projects. These include:
Remastersys
sgfxi
winetricks (My winesetup script will download winetricks and use it to install some extras for wine automatically)
WINE repositories to keep WINE up to date.

Remastersys also allows me to distribute configuration files. There are about 30 or so that have been modified from the stock Debian install I began with. Yeah, anyone can modify configuration files, but why if they are already done for you. To answer distrowatch's review SalineOS is designed for someone who wants an efficient Debian based system that updates through backports with a button, includes "non-free but legally distributable" files, extra repositories, a couple of scripts for convenience and things you may have never known existed if you downloaded Debian. If you come from a background of any other Linux distro you should be able to grab my user manual and know exactly what you need to do to get your system up and running within a very short period of time. If you never used Linux before, that time period will be much longer, but you have a reference of what is what and a linear sense of progression presented before you.

http://www.salineos.com/Downloads/UserManual.pdf if you are interested. I am always taking suggestions and feedback on my forums.

[Beardedragon]

Hmm, I am unsure what I did to offend you so.

Well said Anthony.

[cristobal]

The Online slang dictionary defines bang my head against a wall as "to face difficulties while trying to solve a problem."

Its an expression. I hope you don't think that you drove me to literally bang my head against an actual wall, you didn't. I don't like your version of debian and I said what I don't like about it on both your forum and this one. I also said what I liked about it on your forum.

I can say it here too, so as not to hinder your recruitment of Mint users. I couldn't have done a better job downloading debian and configuring it with Xfce as well as providing packages not found in debian repos, but I think LMDE does an even better job and that is why I am back here.

I may have misremembered some of what was said on your forum and I'd rather not connect my computer directly to your servers to find out. Funny things happen to my computer when I do that, but I remember thanking you for not telling Beardedragon to RTFM and your response was that you only told me because I deserved it.

I think had about 160 posts on your forum in 3 months. Notice how many I have here and I've belonged to this forum longer. There's a reason for that, and its what I'm doing right now, arguing with you. I see you joined this forum to answer my post. I hope that's because you don't want Mint users to get the "wrong" impression of your project and not just to continue an ongoing argument with me.

[cristobal]

Remastersys also allows me to distribute configuration files. There are about 30 or so that have been modified from the stock Debian install I began with. Yeah, anyone can modify configuration files, but why if they are already done for you.

Could you be more specific. Which files? Why? Was it just your personal config files that became part of the remastered image?

[cristobal]

Hmm, I am unsure what I did to offend you so.

Well said Anthony.

I was not offended. I thought that the a large portion >160 posts I made (typed) with one finger on the saline forum were just waste of time.


"I just got back from the saline forum and boy is my middle finger wore out!"

Edited to add (typed)

[Beardedragon]

"I just got back from the saline forum and boy is my middle finger wore out!"

Crude and unwarranted.

[cristobal]

It was a joke or rather a take on a joke "I just got back from New York City and boy is my middle finger wore out" which is a take on another joke "I just flew in from New York City and boy are my arms wore out"

I type with my middle finger, get it?

[cristobal]

This is my last post on the subject*

Why I don't like Saline:

On their forum I was told that re-installation was suggested for ongoing major releases rather than apt-get dist-upgrade and that there was a workaround for keeping a home partition unformatted using the installer, but it became clear that to keep up to date, I would be re-installing.

I asked for the installer to set a boot flag, give more partition options and allow package selection. I need a boot flag set for my machine to boot, I like to have my own partition table and don't want to do a post install removal a bunch of packages while adding a bunch of others every time I re-install.

Their response was "use gparted", "we don't think that's a good idea" or "why, you can select packages after installing" (and you know you said this). That says to me that I was not going to enjoy re-using their installer since they won't be making changes to it unless they agreed with them. In other words "we know whats best, deal with it" What else could I take from it?

Discouraged, I came back to LMDE, which doesn't need to be re-installed once you've configured it the way you want it, and this forum to find a post on titled "SalineOS". I gave my opinion of it. That's my right. Other people gave their opinions too and they were different from mine. That's their right.

If I offended anyone in the process, I'm not sorry. You need to limit your opinions to the topic in the thread, and not to the people posting in it. If what I said offends you, you have perception issues.

My comments on scripts come from my loathing of them, not the people who wrote them. Again, this is my opinion on scripts and no one has to agree with it. Just don't be hatin' me for hatin' scripts.

*Responses to this post are discouraged as they will not be answered.

[SalineOS]

Yes, when Wheezy and by extension SalineOS 2.0 comes out I recommend a fresh installation. I will be writing a script to automate the upgrade process in order for people who wish to go this route can. Failed upgrades are a fact of life in ANY distribution. Just because I recommend fresh installation doesn't mean you can't use dist-upgrade. Backports sometimes have exceptions to their policy of clean upgrade path, so the script for dist-upgrading will pin Wheezy repositories to 1001 and go to town (If you installed any of the exceptions from Lenny to Squeeze this was necessary).

Actually the installer now has an option not to format /home and the user manual has instructions on setting a boot flag. You can only have one boot flag set on a hard disk, automatically setting one with the installer seems like a bad idea in case they have one set they needed. The installer also now uses dynamically sized windows instead of static. Some of this was requests on my forums some of them are upstream having good ideas and implementing them. I don't add/remove software with the installer but I most certainly could. In fact easier code to write there isn't, but I have no intention of making the installation process longer.

If you don't like scripts you won't like me or SalineOS. I like scripts, they complete a task quickly and easily without fuss. They are also easily readable and modifiable by the end user, which still carries weight in my opinion.

You seem to believe me to be arrogant and un-reasonable. Two things I do in fact take offense with, but to each their own. You are more than welcome to use any distribution you so choose. The great thing about Linux is having so many fine choices.

[altair4]

I mean no disrespect to any of the current moderators of this distribution but it's times like this that I really miss Husse.