The following is a wishlist for a new flavor of slitaz 5, once it's finished. I think it could be made as the main flavor for slitaz, although making it the main flavor isn't essential; simply making it downloadable via tazlito list-flavors is also sufficient. I find that a new flavor/changed list of installed programs is however essential, as the core flavor of slitaz has too much programs, and the gtk+ and justx versions are missing important slitaz-specific programs for changing settings, ... A new version that has just enough programs, keeping the essential control programs is really needed for the community (especially beginners), as adding more programs is rather easy, but deleting them isn't (at least not when making a customised slitaz version using tazlito). Hence the request. Besides the programs, I would also like to suggest that changes are immediatelly done to the boot menu (allowing persistence when booting from writable media). Also, the flavor should be a simple flavor, not having multiple in one flavors (for convenience and simplicity; especially when the user needs/want to customise the distro further and add additional programs for making a modified flavor/iso; (this way, there are no additonal gz files present).
Please note that my suggestions are just my own thoughts of how the main flavor of the new slitaz version should look like, and other people may have different thoughts. So, anyone that wants to see some things differently, please mention it here, and webmaster: please make this post a sticky post so we can discuss things thoroughly and have everyone had their say.
Some prior posts/ideas that led my to post this request can be found via http://forum.slitaz.org/topic/slitaz-5-rc2-problems
http://forum.slitaz.org/topic/making-user-and-root-account-at-splash-screen
Features requested:
single boot screen on startup; currently in the RC2 and cooking versions there are 3; one where you select language, then a screen where you can type extra parameters in (disappears quickly) and then another screen to select whether one wishes to start the justx, core, or another flavor, or a memtest, ... Only the last screen should be kept and preferably made to show:
* log in as root
* log in as root + persistence
* log in as user (tux)
* log in as user (tux) + persistence
* install SliTaz to HD
* help and options
* Command line
* PXE boot
Note that, obviously, the login accounts with persistence will only be of use with writable media (so not when booting from livecd (cd-r))
That said, if the user wants to only use it with non-writable media, he can easily remove these login accounts and make an updated new Slitaz LiveCD. The same goes when the user has installed slitaz to HD and wants to remove the "install to hard disk function".
no slim login manager; instead when logging out, the user should get back to the DOS-like login screen (aka the screen that displays "Welcome to your box", ... This change would allow using FAT32 as a filesystem for slitaz liveusbs.
Instead of lxpanel, adeskbar. Adeskbar is equally lightweight, but sits in the center, looking more as a "dock". It's also better for people that have screen troubles (video driver troubles) as the apps have less the chance of being "out of screen" then. In addition to the new taskbar, we also then need a pager to allow people to switch desktops easily. The pager can be placed at the top of the screen (center), whereas the taskbar can remain at the bottom center.
For the programs to include, see the text file in annex. The program list was composed looking at slitaz 4 (core live), but will probably be similar to how it is with slitaz 5 now, so the required changes should be minimal. Note btw that the mountbox isn't standard with slitaz 5 RC2, this really needs to be included again; it's listed in the text file as well.
Additional packages to avoid graphics problems; note that these were standard in slita 4 final yet there are not standardly present in slitaz5 RC2:
* xorg-xf86-video-intel
* xorg-libXvMC
* xorg-libXv
* mesa-dri-intel
* mesa
* mesa-dri-ati
For the keyboard, a 2 year old problem seems to persist in the current slitaz 5 RC 2 version, I hope this can be solved by the final slitaz 5 version (see http://forum.slitaz.org/topic/how-to-switch-a-keyboard-layout-in-slitaz ).