Remember EasyPeasy? Would you like it to live on?

[MG&TL]

I plan on learning linux and teaching myself python on django.

Quick tip: learn python first, then django. Learning a language and web development at the same time is not a pretty combination.

[el_garicimo]

Thanks for the tip MG&TL. Still no answer though from Chdslv as to whether or not his awesome no version of Easy Peasy is available for other people to try out...or is it available, and I'm just too much of a novice to know where to find it?

[mcdel]

..Glad to see there are still people interested by the old netbook interface!

I found this topic while looking for infos about the EasyPeasy distro and saw that I wasn't the only one trying to make it live on..
I haven't found better than Ubuntu Netbook / EasyPeasy for my Dell Mini 9 and actually, I've been spending the last days researching on it and messing with it as well, without knowing about Chdslv efforts.. It's funny discovering that we've been doing the same thing at the same time!

The thing is, as I do regularly, I wanted to get a "fresh" system again, making a new clean install of EasyPeasy 1.6 - and then getting it up to date.
But Ubuntu 10.04 / EasyPeasy 1.6 came out almost 3 years ago, with all the updates & customizations (removing older unwanted programs and installing newer ones - for example replacing Openoffice with LibreOffice, installing the broadcom wireless driver that was not included, etc..) and many small tweaks suiting my needs, and the quest for newer better looking themes & icons.. doing all that takes quite a lot of time!

So I thought it would be cool to have an updated version of this distribution, that could be installed directly, to simplify things instead of going through the same long updating / configuring process everytime I want to refreshen my system. It's the same logic Ubuntu has, when the install isos are updated (for example now we have 10.04.4 instead of 10.04 - just in case, I looked if it had been done with Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04, but the Netbook version is totally gone and forgotten by Canonical...)
Well, I thought it could be the same with EasyPeasy, with a "definitive edition" including all the updates and upgrades before the long term support stops.

Disclaimer: I'm not a programer, not working in computers at all, just someone who tries to be a power user - (and I should actually start writing my Master thesis about Intercultural Management instead of spending too much of time being picky on things that are beyond my capacities.. *sigh*)

So yeah, let's cut short the report about the time-consuming process to get a new install with everything up to date and settle on something I'm satisfied of. While doing that, I also did intensive reading about Ubuntu, EasyPeasy, the netbook-interface itself, the creation of custom isos.
In the End, I managed to create an iso of this customized EasyPeasy system, using Remastersys.
I had read that remastersys had problems with Ubuntu netbook, but it somehow worked anyway. I got an iso, put it on a usb key with unetbootin, and managed to boot in "live-cd" mode (although booting took a bit longer than with the normal EasyPeasy), and there was an option to install. I stopped there for now and didn't try installing, don't wanna wipe my system out again, now that I'm satisfied with it

So, long story short, it's kind of possible to make EasyPeasy live on.

The difference between my strategy and what I've read from Chdslv is that I intended to stay with the 10.04 basis and repositories, but bring the most of the 10.04 and the packages/programs that have been released between 2010 and now. I was afraid of bumping into compatibility problems, particularly with gnome/GTK, if I tried to be "too modern" - the recent updates of several programs seem to be targeted at GTK3, for example.
After the release of Unity, someone did a repackaging of the older netbook-launcher, but it wasn't available anymore from 12.04, due to "huge changes in Gtk, Gnome and Ubuntu" ( more here http://askubuntu.com/questions/18025...book-interface).
That's why I decided not trying to go too far, not going up to the next LTS version, and chose to keep it simple by staying with the same 10.04 version that EasyPeasy had.
But now I've read the "EasyPeasy on PrecisePangolin" experiments with great interest, and I'll be following this

[mcdel]

And here is how it looks so far:

[Hylas de Niall]

Hmmm.

Mebbe i'll just install 1.6 and point the updater to 'old releases'.

[mcdel]

Results from an experiment I did this weekend:

On a fresh 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) install, using older repositories, I managed to install both the "old" netbook-launcher and the launcher written in EFL, on top of gnome-session-fallback.
Both launchers kinda "work" (here a screenshot of the EFL version with the alternative theme)


There are howewer a few glitches ("classic" netbook-launcher: doesn't launch on startup despite configuring the additional startup programs, wallpaper not showing, a few visual glitches with file names / efl launcher: default theme not as good-looking as the "classic" netbook-launcher, the alternative theme looks better but the wallpaper has to be coded directly in the .edj theme file)

Both are usable on this 12.04 system, the EFL launcher more than the classic launcher, but it's not as perfect as the "old" Netbook Remix / EasyPeasy experience, and on my Dell Mini I find Precise a tiny bit heavier and slower than UNR / EasyPeasy.
And although I liked the idea of having a more modern ubuntu base, supported until 2017, something doesn't quite satisfy me: on the more recent Ubuntu versions - or should I say, since Unity - many options and other stuff are hidden, more complicated to reach, or even absent. (The kind of things that, added to the controversial Unity interface, made me switch from Ubuntu to Linux Mint for my laptop)

With all that considered, I'll probably stop my experiences and stick to the old UNR or EasyPeasy now, I've never found better for my Dell Mini. whatever if it's not supported anymore, it works.

[chronos0]

I installed several linux distros on my hp mini, crunchbang, linux mint, puppy, meego, xubuntu, ... and the best was easypeasy. It looks I´m not the only one who thinks easypeasy should be back, so we can ask via twitter to @jonramvi to #getepback

[el_garicimo]

hey guys, checking in on this after a while...any progress?

[mips]

hey guys, checking in on this after a while...any progress?

There does not seem to be any updates to this project since 2012.

Might want to look at Manjaro Netbook edition (custom xfwm) which also has the option of a custom Atom kernel.
http://forum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=7319.0
http://sourceforge.net/projects/manj...tbook/2014.02/