To demonstrate my carefully constructed environment to interested third parties, I have cobbled together an arch-based iso file that is a replica of my environment that is easily redistributed and produces the precise environment I intend in virtual machines or on bare metal just like that.
In order to speed up the build times, I have leveraged Docker (inspired by brinkOS's use of Docker primarily) and wrote a wrapper script to enable a single command build process, create-iso.sh which interested parties may run to build a local copy of the ISO file on their own systems, regardless if it is Arch based or not thanks to the power of Docker.
Plenty of other repos exist of profiles using mkarchiso to derive an ISO file, what makes this unique is the following:
1. Docker based build process - can be run on non-Arch systems the same as on Arch based systems. Faster build times due to caching of build artifacts by Docker.
2. Separately Hosted Repo - Also reduces build times as the AUR packages don't need to be git clone'ed and then built in a local repository at build time. I have already taken care of that and hosted it in a separate repository.
3. Extensive customization of GUI - The whole point of building this thing, it features a live variant of my dotfiles, specifically those involving AwesomeWM. Additional configurations exist for zsh, Xresources and a whole lot more. Some of the scripts may be of interest to users, including the beep scripts that I have disabled at boot (unlike locally to irritate my girlfriend :3)
4. Custom Branding and Artwork - all of the branding and artwork was also my personal work or has some indication otherwise for a couple of backgrounds for my awesomewm configuration included for the r/unixporn crowd... and no I don't even have that much free time on my hands.
5. Multiple installers - I have included several means of installing Arch on your system pending the completion of my calamares fork that should be able to install this same system locally and make my life much easier when need for reinstallation arises. Included is abif and archfi, both of which will provide you with a basic installation of Arch. In the latter case, the script enables the downloading of archdi to further install relevant software locally without branding it like the Anarchy Linux installer, which is why I opted to include it. If you have never manually installed Arch, you probably should but once you have a time or two, these sorts of installers make more sense than going through that tedious process again.
This live demonstration of my environment has some caveats to consider that result from its presence within an easily distributed LiveUSB environment. 1. Certain widgets are not present - In order to test the environment out in virtual machines, the battery widget and some of the widgets relating to the sensors had to be culled. 2. Software Included - Being that this will function as a rescue environment, there are some additional packages included I don't usually have installed locally. Additionally, some of what I do install locally that is a bit too heavy I have left out of the system for purposes of keeping it reasonable in size. 3. Fonts - locally I have some absurd number of fonts in varying formats, something to the effect of 15,000 (yeah its crazy) and not wanting to include them all here, I left those out as they make for slow fc-cache commands and laege ISOs 4. Systemd - originally I intended to use a systemd-free distro to serve as the basis as I had moved to them and enjoyed their use, however either the ISO building tools available were so badly documented as to render my heavily customized environment impossible (or the devs "not in the business of custom ISO consulting") or were based on musl, which prevents me from using software I have need for in my workflow, though am impressed with the speed of. So I moved back to systemd, which to be fair isn't really all that slow once you get the experience of how init systems work by using another for a period of time, but eventally I hope to rebase this project on either Void Linux or Artix (because the AUR is hard to give up even if most software can be installed with a simple "make" then "sudo make install", someone already working that part out is awfully nice). 5. Opinionated AwesomeWM Configuration - this is either a positive or a negative depending on your opinions, but as my personal configuration it is a highly opinionated one that suits me and my opinions but may not work so well for you depending on what your opinions are specifically. Too ease this, I have provided a tutorial that annoys the hell out of me debugging the ISO that will indicate how to work with the environment, inspired by TOS' TDE having a similar functionality. This may eventually expand into an entire welcome application, or it may not, we will see.
While the finished product with just the AwesomeWM configuration finally situated on the ISO is enough for my use cases, there are a few points I will be addressing when my irritation level with this particular project reduces to the point of being able to work on it again, pull requests welcome, they are:
- [ ] (Extremely High Importance) Get the configuration for awesomewm to function as-is to function within the VM test environment
- [ ] (High Importance) Move the awesome configuration to a submodule of this repo to prevent needing to maintain two configurations (which is annoying)
- [ ] (High Importance) Move other configurations not needing heavy modifications (anything outside dotfiles, since no need to symlinks that way)
- [ ] NeoVim - include running its build command in the customization script run by archiso
- [ ] Bin - probably best to drop it in the system's /usr/bin since I don't want to include all of /usr/local/bin in it. User only makes less sense in this context
- [ ] ZSH - leaving the tooling in place for zshrc and zshenv preventing the need to add it into the customize script.
- [ ] chhinamasta icon theme - unlike the GTK theme Dhumavati, which would require an excessive build time to include from the repo, this is in constant flux as I add more icons, a simple process that eats a lot of time but is easily done (pull requests appreciated).
- [ ] (Medium Importance) Finish and add as a submodule the calamares project, for ease of install/reinstall in a reliable way based wholly on the ISO (finish the submodules first).
- [ ] (Medium Importance) Liberate more of the optimizations tricks to make the Live System run smoothly and on a flash drive from other similar arch based projects.
- [ ] (medium importance) Move to Artix or Void Linux base (if actually desirable, given the utility that systemd has shown now that I have worked with init systems and seem more competent with it from the experience)
- [ ] (low importance) create and then situate a qtile configuration for those days I hate awesome too much
- [ ] (lowest importance) same as above except with a gnome extension
- [ ] (abysmally low importance) include something about the power of the Linux/OpenBSD desktop and its relative low barrier to entry to customize a user's interface for those interested in having a desktop under their control. As well as the need to offer such as an open source repository to benefit the community since there is 0% chance anyone wrote any complex Linux GUI from the documentation of their window manager which is often patchy at best in its coverage and descriptive quality. Maybe this will spin into a whole book about the ricing scene as it relates to awesome to give the kiddies a guide into how they can get their systems to its peak levels of customized goodness and provide the community a quick answer to the constant questions for a thorough guide.
In theory, the name of the container could be anything but I like using "tantrik" referring to a practitioner of a tantric tradition's sadhana (itself a reference to a spiritual practice and the lifestyle that goes along with it). Run the below commands within this repo after cloning it locally to build the system locally, which would be the next step to making your own when using this system after modifying the releng subdirectory to represent your system's ideal configuration.
# First build the system and cache the packages for the run command, which will take a while the first time
docker build -t tantrik .
# Now run the container containing the releng subdirectory and the build script already to build the iso in a new directory called iso
docker run -i -t --privileged -v /home/tlh/Samsung/Work/electric-tantra-linux-iso/iso:/iso --rm tantrik
The script that builds the ISO is a wrapper around the program doing the heavy lifting, archiso that I wrote to give the process a bit of visual flare that helps reduce the time it takes to figure out what when wrong if it fails and make its steps clearly titled. It uses a common set of print commands that I utilize in the installation scripts for my dotfiles, upon which this whole effort is based as that's what I am intending to demonstrate ultimately.