I have spent this weekend trying out the Debian live-helper package this weekend. It is the official package for creating Debian live CD's and is used to produce all of the different versions: Gnome, KDE, Xfce, Lxde and several CLI versions. It can provide a standard Debian installer or a Live CD installer which copies the live system to the hard drive. This tool provides a lot of options not available with remastersys such as a choice of syslinux or grub (on the CD), several pre-defined package lists for a Gnome desktop or KDE desktop etc. It allows you to pretty much change any aspect of the Live CD. The one thing is does not allow you to do easily is to change the user settings, to provide accessibility out of the box. In order to do this you have to boot the iso, make the changes manually and then copy the user area to /etc/skel, which is what I already have to do with remastersys. So in this sense there is no advantage over remastersys, as the changes either have to be done manually or by a script anyway. So on the one hand the Debian Live helper offers a lot more options than remastersys, but still requires a manual configuration. So the easy option would be to stick with remastersys because the script is already well developed and relatively simple to use. However in the long run, once the config files are created for Debian Live Helper it would become a lot easier to use and offer many improvements in functionality etc. This is a tough one! On the one hand I really want to go with the simplest option, but if I could get the Debian Live Helper configuration sorted out this would give a more powerful and sustainable solution. Maybe I will persevere with Live Helper for a few more days and see if I can get the user settings sorted out...
Sunday 15 November 2009
Debian Live Helper v Remastersys!
I have spent this weekend trying out the Debian live-helper package this weekend. It is the official package for creating Debian live CD's and is used to produce all of the different versions: Gnome, KDE, Xfce, Lxde and several CLI versions. It can provide a standard Debian installer or a Live CD installer which copies the live system to the hard drive. This tool provides a lot of options not available with remastersys such as a choice of syslinux or grub (on the CD), several pre-defined package lists for a Gnome desktop or KDE desktop etc. It allows you to pretty much change any aspect of the Live CD. The one thing is does not allow you to do easily is to change the user settings, to provide accessibility out of the box. In order to do this you have to boot the iso, make the changes manually and then copy the user area to /etc/skel, which is what I already have to do with remastersys. So in this sense there is no advantage over remastersys, as the changes either have to be done manually or by a script anyway. So on the one hand the Debian Live helper offers a lot more options than remastersys, but still requires a manual configuration. So the easy option would be to stick with remastersys because the script is already well developed and relatively simple to use. However in the long run, once the config files are created for Debian Live Helper it would become a lot easier to use and offer many improvements in functionality etc. This is a tough one! On the one hand I really want to go with the simplest option, but if I could get the Debian Live Helper configuration sorted out this would give a more powerful and sustainable solution. Maybe I will persevere with Live Helper for a few more days and see if I can get the user settings sorted out...
