Hello everybody,

The Microlinux Enterprise Desktop (MLED) is back. It's entirely reworked from the ground up. And it's here to stay.

http://www.microlinux.fr/mled.php (english version)

http://www.microlinux.fr/mledfr.php (french version)

MLED is now based on the latest Xfce 4.12, with many additions and improvements under the hood.

The project page provides links to a wealth of updated information: Installation Guide, Migration Guide, FAQ, Release Notes, ChangeLogs, etc.

The new software repositories have moved here:

http://www.microlinux.fr/microlinux/

Have fun,

Niki

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that was fast,

got bored/problems with the package managers of those other distributions ?

No, not bored. And no problems. Earlier this year, I've been a 100 % Slackware user. Now it's more like 90 % Slackware and 10 % CentOS. It took me some time to find the right balance and to realize that Slackware is still my favorite base for the vast majority of use cases. I do know my way around RPM, Yum and systemd, though. But Slackware's simply more fun.

3 members found this post helpful.

Glad MLED is back. Good to have you home again, mate.

2 members found this post helpful.

1) Is the migration guide new Niki? I looked at MLED some time ago but it seemed to me at the time that it was meant for new installations.

2) Roughly how many megabytes of data are transferred? My mobile broadband connection can be spotty sometimes. I presume I can archive the transferred MLED-packages if I need to re-install later?

I wrote the MIGRATION-HOWTO some time ago, for folks who don't want to reinstall from scratch. Tell me if everything works as expected if you follow the guide.

MLED packages without the extras are 550 MB.

1 members found this post helpful.

Lookin' good Kiki.

Thank you. The lack of a migration option was holding me back.

550 MB? I think my mobile broadband should be able to handle that around 4 in the morning!

;-)

forgive me if my question seems amateurish
why you don't provide MLED as a single iso file so that every newbie to slackware can download and install it without need to configure pure slackware installation?

2 members found this post helpful.

I definitely like the look of MLED as it saves me time and effort to set up my own stripped XFCE based install, so will give it a try as clean install.

One minor comment having browsed through the upgrade documentation. The trim.sh script you have written checks packages to install and remove. However it being an upgrade route I find it surprising that the script appears to work without asking for confirmation once it has established what needs to change. Although that might be done by slackpkg itself I just want to be 100 sure before I would run it.

If I would be upgrading a system I would expect that a script can first show me which changes it is going to make without actually making changes yet. Hence it might be worth to either put a safeguard in the script or make it clear that it wouldn't make changes?

edit) fixed typos and grammar.

1 members found this post helpful.

Because MLED is essentially Slackware under the hood, and the user is supposed to do things manually: add a user, configure the network, switch to the generic kernel, configure X11, switch to init 4, etc. It is not MLED's scope to be another drop-in replacement for Ubuntu or one of its numerous spinoffs. On the other hand, once MLED is installed, it's equally easy to use. To administrate it, on the other hand, you have to do your homework.

I don't provide a separate ISO for a few reasons. The main raison being that there are already way too many Linux distributions out there, in my not so humble opinion. MLED is explicitly an add-on to an existing distribution (Slackware), so providing a separate installation support would be an unnecessary redundancy. It's also a manner of paying respect where respect is due.

Cheers,

Niki

4 members found this post helpful.

A prior version of the script used removepkg and wiped packages from the disk without asking. Several users complained about this behavior, so I altered the script to use slackpkg instead, which asks for confirmation.

In short, if you use the script now, it will ask for confirmation before removing/installing any packages.

I indeed missed that slackpkg takes care of this aspect. Thanks for clarifying.

Package that the trim.sh script tries to remove on my system looks sensible; only obvious problem I would have had after running is that it would have broken Texlive by reinstalling tetex and tetex-doc (expected behavior). However it might be that the guide recommends to remove all third-party packages, but that isn't completely clear to me from the the guide which reads:

This to me reads as if I shouldn't remove these packages at that step, but in the rest of the guide they don't get removed. Probably a bit confusing?

I have everything set up and it's working nicely on my laptop.

1 members found this post helpful.

Is it possible to do a migration of vanilla Slackware with already-downloaded MLED packages Niki? I downloaded the whole lot assuming it would be possible, and also assuming I might want to re-install at some point in the future. While I'm at it, is it possible to do a standard install with already-downloaded packages?

And here's another question for you, not strictly MLED-related but I think your README should add the information anyway: the standard installation method assumes the user has an ethernet connection. Is it possible at this early stage of installation to bring up an encrypted wireless connection instead? It's something I've never tried since I always install from DVD.