This is not an official Genesi image so it is not officially supported by genesi

That said I will answer questions on pdo about it if I have time.

I know Squeeze is not new and shiny and it is not armhf
but the current support packages build under it with minor tweaks and the multimedia playback works just as well as on Maverick, also the desktop experience is similar being Gnome 2.x.

I decided to put this image out because of people stuck with maverick and no real upgrade path and no more updates from ubuntu.

If I understand the Debian release cycle correctly this image should get debian updates until about a year after wheezy is released. it works pretty well on my smartbook so I hope it is useful for someone until a better image comes out.

http://steubentech.com/~talon/Efika-MX/ ... 526.img.xz
the md5sum should be ad3e1d28c54010ea00c677a95712f36b

Just treat it like any other image, it works exactly like the maverick installer (because I used the maverick installer image to make the sd card image) you boot it up and it asks if you want to erase the internal disk and install Y/N. if you answer Y it does it's thing and shuts down.

once you remove the sd card and boot up. you will automatically log in(after 5 seconds given for you to change your settings on the gdm screen) to the efika user account. the password is efika. and that user has sudo privs along with gnome set up to handle using sudo rather than a root user. (pretty much just like maverick)

I did just one tweak in that I edited the gconf so that the mixer used for the volume keys is alsamixer:default. so that the volume keys play nice with PulseAudio. the rest is just bog standard Debian.

Since this is not a livesd image you should back up all of your files before you install it. I might post a livesd version a bit later.

this image does support different keyboard layouts on the X login screen. however if you want to use languages other than english you will want to install the locales-all package. I might update the image with locales-all, etc later.

First of all: thanks, finally something stable with security updates. I just erased Maverick from my smartbook...
And my first bugreport: When I run apt-get update I get:

Look inside /etc/apt/sources.list I already commented on this inside there. I gave the packages to markos but they aren't in the repo yet, just comment that line out for now. if you just go to http://steubentech.com/~talon/Efika-MX and click on the squeeze desktop link there is a tar file in the same directory as the image in case you need to re-install any of the packages (or import them into your own private repo, I recommend reprepro for this)

I don't even know if I will ever update these packages to be honest but it's still nice to have them in the repo for completeness. (and to make them easy to install on existing squeeze systems without them)

I will make a post when they end up in the repo.

OK, found it. I don't expect squeeze to change much, so lack of updates from your part won't be a trouble :-) I used it already for a couple of hours, and it feels to run faster/smoother than the old Maverick image. And best of all: there was no Ubuntu sound on login :-)

I have yet to check my favorite EFIKA feature -- sound -- as I use the machine for work now. I'm learning SCB ( https://www.balabit.com/network-security/scb/overview ), where the EFIKA is a perfect thin client! I'm auditing ssh/vnc/rdp connections from my EFIKA smartbook.

After trying to play some video on my smart top I found problems with my HDMI monitor in fullscreen
I thought the version of the kernel I packaged with the desktop image didn't have that problem.

I just posted a new kernel package at http://steubentech.com/~talon/Efika-MX/kernels

you want the armel packages (except for prep-kernel which hasn't changed) in the 33456102+sdmafix directory.

if your videos play just fine full screen then you probably don't need to bother with this. but if you run into problems with HDMI while playing videos please go ahead and install this kernel update.

I should be making a new desktop image soon with the updated kernel + some fixes mentioned in this thread. (I might also do an image that runs off of an SD card as well)

I recently helped track down the kernel bug that kept the back light on even when power management puts the display to sleep. It's rolled into the most recent kernel image at the links in the post above this one. the armel kernel should work on maverick installs as well (and as an added bonus enable you to use the compat-wireless armel packages).

I will have a new squeeze image out soon with this kernel and other minor fixes pre-installed. (including a fixed up upower that fixes the odd behavior of the battery meter on squeeze)

wschaub
Thanks for your efforts!
I'll be looking forward to it.

Is it possible to get 2D and 3D acceleration on this image? What packages do I need to install for that?

all the available 2d/3d stuff should already be inside this image. along with the gstreamer plugins to take advantage of VPU acceleration when playing videos through totem.

Just a question: what exactly happens after you plug a SD card inside a smartbook? Does it load the installer automatically and that's it?
I downloaded this image and dd'ed it to a SD card, but nothing happens when I turn on the smartbook, the installer doesn't come.
Also just before trying to install this Squeeze image I accidentally got rid of the root partition on SSD drive, so as the result it only ends on messages like "mounting /dev/sda2 on /root failed" and so, so I'm not sure if it's dead or something... Can anyone tell me?

OK, I successfully installed it. For some reason, after I used a dd command from a Linux system, the smartbook didn't boot from the card. Then I tried to write the image from Windows using a tool from Ubuntu website, it did work.
I'm really pleased with distribution.. The only thing I don't like is the absence of Firefox web browser. It has Iceweasel instead, but some web pages, including Gmail, keep telling me to update it and some even directly redirect me to Mozilla foundation page. Right now I'm searching for a good web browser. Otherwise, everything seems to be OK.

Is there any chance that Debian guys will update Iceweasel to the most recent version? The lack of an updated browser really hurts me... The biggest reason why I decided to switch to this distribution was the lack of updates for Firefox, but this Iceweasel and other browsers are even older. I won't switch back to Maverick, because Debian just feels better, however I wonder if it's possible to ask them or something...

You could try debian backports. looks like the current suqeeze backport of iceweasel (same as firefox) is 10.0.10esr-1~bpo60+1.

you can learn about how to use backports here http://backports-master.debian.org/

sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

wschaub

Thank you so much!
Now writing from Iceweasel 10.0.10. It's still not the most recent version, but it works much better and faster than other browsers!

By the way, I'm not sure if it's true, but I feel like the audio quality in this distribution is better than in the Maverick.

A question: lately when I'm trying to update my system with "sudo apt-get upgrade" I get the following error:


How I can fix this?

Another question: I want to switch from GNOME to xfce... Can I do this the same way as described on this page: http://library.powerdeveloper.net/index ... imizations ?