Weekly Gentoo Live ISO Announced - Available Now

[figueroa]

Edited/Added: I now see this is also a post on the "News & Announcements" forum, though I don't think people look there since the "News & Announcements" forum has fallen into long-term non-use. I'll just leave this here, subject to the will of the moderators.

New Gentoo LiveGUI ISO and artwork / branding contest!
Apr 3, 2022

After a long break, we now have again a weekly LiveGUI ISO image for amd64 available! The 4.7 GB download, suitable for DVD burning or an USB stick, boots directly into KDE Plasma and comes with a ton of up-to-date software. This ranges from office applicactions such as LibreOffice, Inkscape, and Gimp all the way to many system administrator tools.

Now, we need your help! Let’s make this the coolest and most beautiful Linux live image ever. We’re calling for submissions of artwork, themes, actually anything from a desktop background to a boot manager animation, on the topic of Gentoo! The winning entry will be added as default setting to the official LiveGUI images, and also be available for download and installation.
Details at: https://www.gentoo.org/news/2022/04/03/ ... ntest.html

The announcement is currently featured on the home page at: https://www.gentoo.org/

Disclaimer: I haven't tried it yet.

Stuck by NeddySeagoon.
I just knew that someone would start a discussion. Thank you. Its linked from the announce too.

[MoonWalker]

I just wanted to take this one for a spin but surprise surprise when I tried to burn the ISO to a DVDRW the burn was aborted with a "not enough space available on the media" message!

I wonder if someone made a mistake as a DVD-RW (I don't have any DVD-R, so cannot tell) has 4.37 GB only, not 4.7 as typically printed on the label, which is a cheat as it refers tp the available 4,700,372,992 available bytes as 4.7 GB

The ISO has 4.71 GB = 5,064,622,080 bytes

Can still be burned to USB of course, but suprisingly not all boxes boots from USB, like my Lenovo ThinkPad L540

[NeddySeagoon]

MoonWalker,

That's a bug. Its supposed to fit on a single layer DVD. That's 4.7 salesmans GB.
Please report it at bugs.gentoo.org

[MoonWalker]

Done!
https://bugs.gentoo.org/837494

[figueroa]

0. I agree, it's too fat. I think there is just too much junk installed, and not a single game.

1. Is it a secret what the passwords are? I find that kind of dysfunctional.

2. I find user gentoo logged into every tty + pts/0 and pts/1. That just seems messy. Is that a bug?

3. The raw iso boots fine with VirtualBox 6.1.32. The vboxguest module is installed and running, which is nice.

[NeddySeagoon]

figueroa,

Contribute bugs and if you can, patches.
The passwords are/were scrambled on boot, just like the liveCD.

[MoonWalker]

Done!
https://bugs.gentoo.org/837494

Unfortunately, the ppl involved with the LiveGUI DVD/USB opted for solving the bug by making a Dual Layer DVD a requirement. I don't want to criticize the producers of the ISO as I know they have put a lot of their otherwise free time into this, but it appears as if no one even tested to make a DVD from the image, which is kind of an omission. I don't think it's that common you have a DVD-R/RW DL laying on the shelve at home... On the other hand, as this is supposedly to be a weekly reoccurring release USB may be the better choice of media anyway.

The only real need for a DVD option would be for (older) boxes that doesn't support Boot from USB, which raises the question if these is such case meet the HW requirements for KDE Plasma. I don't know what they are.

I found another problem, which in my view is more alarming. I was unable to use the ISO image to create a bootable USB on Windows 10. I tried with Rufus, Unetbootin and also with DD for Windows but they all failed. Unless this is due to some local issue on my Windows box, I would say this is quite a big mistake, unless we are only interested in pleasing the local fan club.

Personally, I run Gentoo servers and have done for 20 years, wouldn't even dream of touching Windows server (I tried ones 20+ years ago) but when it comes to workstation/desktop Windows has been the convenient choice for me, mainly because of work requirements but also for personal needs. Last time I tried it, it simply didn't measure up to my needs and I stayed on Windows, but that was quite some time ago now and I feel ready to give it another shot. Not all Windows users are lucky enough to have a networked linux but standing in the corner to be booted up and create a bootable Gentoo LiveGUI USB stick on.

So I was able to boot it on my a bit oldish ThinkPad and it looks really nice. I will try it like that for a few weeks before I decide to trough out Windows 7 that is running there now. I'm not much of a notebook user so it probably won't be a hard call to make. My point though, I think there are many Windows users that wait for a good "excuse" to ditch it for something else that offer a similar or even better experience. I think the LiveGUI version could work as a promoter of that excuse. For that reason I think the size could even increase towards 8GB, or even offer 2 images, 1 lightweight and 1 loaded with stuff (including games maybe - I'm not a gamer so don't know).

[figueroa]

MoonWalker: "Drop 4.7G limit, adapt announcement text" from the BugZilla is a big disappointment and just adds to the long list of things that I found dysfunctional.

As a teaser for Windows users, I think this is closer to 1 than 2 on a scale of 1-10. To start with, the Gentoo bar for Windows users who are not already experienced Linux users on the side is just too high. The decision to scramble the passwords on what is an immutable, non-installable live-USB GUI means one cannot even log out and log back in without first temporarily setting a password.

Although the choice of KDE and the look and feel are not to my personal tastes, I'll enjoy poking around and I'm sure I can learn some things from it.

[NeddySeagoon]

MoonWalker,

Just for entertainment value I put the ISO onto a 4.7G +RW blank using cdrecord -overburn.
Yes, I know I'll lose about 700Mb but I wanted to see where from.

The boot code vanishes, so the truncated system can't get started. I didn't look at the squash.img.

[MoonWalker]

MoonWalker: "Drop 4.7G limit, adapt announcement text" from the BugZilla is a big disappointment and just adds to the long list of things that I found dysfunctional.

I don't disagree with you there, and the resolve is certainly "an easy way out" and maybe there is some pride involved as well. I don't know, but when I worked as a radio produces many years ago we had an expression and also function as a rule - kill your darlings - to slim and improve the output format in a way that made it easier to consume.

As a teaser for Windows users, I think this is closer to 1 than 2 on a scale of 1-10. To start with, the Gentoo bar for Windows users who are not already experienced Linux users on the side is just too high. The decision to scramble the passwords on what is an immutable, non-installable live-USB GUI means one cannot even log out and log back in without first temporarily setting a password.

Here I don't agree with you though. You are looking at it from the point of a linux user and as such you want something that satisfy your already developed needs. For a Windows user, it's a question of getting a taste, maybe mostly the GUI part, and he can do it right on his current Windows machine, without any risk. That's a big + and may not lead to that they end up with Gentoo, but some may do, some another distribution more fitting their personality and others will stay home looking out through their Windows.

Although the choice of KDE and the look and feel are not to my personal tastes, I'll enjoy poking around and I'm sure I can learn some things from it.

Been out all day so haven't had a chance yet to test it really, just a quick peak and too me it looked nice but I don't have a fresh cue on the Desktop offerings Linux has now.

[MoonWalker]

MoonWalker,

Just for entertainment value I put the ISO onto a 4.7G +RW blank using cdrecord -overburn.
Yes, I know I'll lose about 700Mb but I wanted to see where from.

The boot code vanishes, so the truncated system can't get started. I didn't look at the squash.img.

So I was able to make the USB stick on my "backup server", and then found out I was able to boot it on my Lenovo notebook after all. So I'm all good, but yes I think it's a mistake it doesn't fit on a single layer DVD

[sebaro]

How do I create a bootable USB memory stick if image.squashfs is 4.9GB and FAT32 max file size is 4GB?

Code: Select all

cp: error writing '/mnt/gentoo-usb/image.squashfs': File too large

[figueroa]

How do I create a bootable USB memory stick if image.squashfs is 4.9GB and FAT32 max file size is 4GB?

Code: Select all

cp: error writing '/mnt/gentoo-usb/image.squashfs': File too large

You have the wrong kind of file. As of two days ago, you should have downloaded:
https://bouncer.gentoo.org/fetch/root/a ... 71236Z.iso
It's an ISO file. You can use wget to retrieve it.

You can use dd, one of i.e.:

Code: Select all

dd if=pathtoiso.iso of=/dev/USBDEV && sync
if=image.iso of=/dev/sd_ status=progress && sync

CAREFULLY. A typo here can ruin your day.

The sync at the end will ensure you don't get the cursor back until writing is complete.

[sebaro]

Thanks figueroa, it works.

[sergiotarxz]

I would like to see how this livecd is built. Is there maybe some kind of script we can change to make our own livecds with more packages?

[sam_]

I would like to see how this livecd is built. Is there maybe some kind of script we can change to make our own livecds with more packages?

Yep! It's all done via Catalyst. It has a git https://gitweb.gentoo.org/proj/catalyst.git/]repo (github mirror too).

The config files for Catalyst used to build e.g. the livedvd are in the releng repo (github mirror too).

Please do file bugs if you have tangible feedback, we do welcome it.

[_kopsu_]

I tested the "new" livedvd few months back and then again few weeks ago. It superb! Kudos to those behind that!
I didn't think that I love plasma/kde but theming and backgrounds and everything looks so good on it.
What would be the best way to adopt the livedvd configs to new installation if I would do one... just copy over Gentoo related world config and /etc to fresh stage3 installation?

My main installation has been on XFCE last 10-15 years now. It's over 20 years old now (yeah, hardware have been changed lot, now running Ryzen 2600X+32GB+500GB NVME, but i could think about installing new Gentoo to one old surplus Amd Ryzen 1500+8GB+250GB NVME set... (LiveDVD works fine on it!)