advice, building livecd for translators

[Peter Garrett]

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:17:11 -0500
anthony baldwin <anthony.baldwin01 at comcast.net> wrote:

> Greetings gentle colleagues,
> 
> Going way beyond the scope of my previous use, experience and
> knowledge of Linux (even after 8 years use), I am attempting
> to put together a LiveCD (but installable) based on Ubuntu,
> with specific tools for translators.
[snip]
.
> I want something that is at least mildly friendly to windopes users, 
> but, at the same
> time, isn't as fat as Aunt Gertrude.
> I don't think that black box or fluxbox are quite what I want, although, 
> I dig 'em.
> I don't know...perhaps I should just be looking at Xfce/xubuntu.
> I know xfce is supposedly lighter than gnome and kde, but, gosh, it's so 
> pretty
> and configurable and all...can it really be that much lighter?
> So..I am looking to y'all for your advice.

It does sound like what you want is very similar to Xubuntu - and the live
Xubuntu CD is about 560 MB so you have some room to add things.

Personally I'm a Fluxbox fan, but I agree that the average Windows user is
going to bbe thrown by its interface ( pity really since it is hugely
configurable and can be made rather pretty - see for
example http://fluxbuntu.org ( unfortunately that is an installer disc, not
a live CD, though).

> This is what I want on the disc:
> must haves-
> Openoffice

Should be OK.
> Omega T
Don't know this one...
> Firefox &
> Thundebird

no problem...
> Sunbird or lightning ext. in tbird for calendar

should be fine, although I have never tried this.

> a dictionary (like dict or kdict or something)

I just spent a few minutes doing the little script below :-)  
It works, but you might want to refine it somewhat. Should blend in well
with any gtk desktop... and use very little disc space!

#!/bin/bash
# Save this somewhere sensible, like /usr/local/bin/dictionary 
# and make executable, of course. Add launcher / icon to taste.
# A tiny on-line dictionary - install the "dict" package  and 
# "zenity" to use...

	WORD=$(zenity --entry --title Dictionary)
	if [ $? -gt 0 ] ; then
		exit
	else
		dict $WORD  > /tmp/dict
		zenity --title Definition --text-info < /tmp/dict
		exit
	fi

################################

> xpdf

Not a problem either - evince looks nicer, but xpdf works well :)

> a calculator (kcalc, gcalc, xcalc, yo mama´s calc...I don't care)

You're spoilt for choice here...
> Kopete or gaim

Probably gaim ( now known as Pidgin) if you go with Xubuntu
> a terminal (duh)

The xfce4 terminal is nice. For soething really light, try wterm.

> a gui ftp client (gftp or kftpgrabber, I don't care)

There's also filezilla, if you like it. I don't use graphical ftp much...
> Knotes

You probably want to stick as much as possible to one widget set/ library
set to keep space use low on the CD.
> xmms

Have a look at "audacious" - xmms with gtk2 and what have you.
> gimp for editing images
> maybe a solitaire game, but not a slew of games, no.

[snipped bits I know nothing about )
> an html editor like Quanta (I hesitate here, since I am trying
> to stay lite, and OOo has an html editor).

For some value of html editor... OOo used to produce some horrible html
( I haven't used it for that for ages, so it might have improved)
Bluefish is nice. For wysiwig there's the Seamonkey/Mozilla "Composer."
> 
> I want a pretty basic, but useful set up to demonstrate FOSS,
> and be able to hand out CDs (not DVDs) to people at a demonstration.
> I don't even know if the machines where I am to give this demo
> even have dvd readers.
> 
> Is it possible to fit all of this on one live cd? Or am I trying to canoe
> upstream without a paddle, here?

i think it's possible - you might have to juggle your app choices a bit,
of course. For what you are attempting, I think the Xubuntu live CD would
be a good starting point for remastering.

Peter
-- 
"INX Is Not X" based on Ubuntu 7.04 Live CD: http://inx.maincontent.net
Screenshots slideshow: http://inx.maincontent.net/album/1.png.html
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