LiveContent 1.0
First run of LiveContent initiative, to be debuted at LinuxWorld 2007, San Francisco. The iso is being hosted at http://cc-livecontent.dreamhosters.com.
To burn and test a copy of LiveContent v1.0:
- click on the most current iso image (titled "ccLiveContent-LATEST.iso") and download to your computer
- burn the iso onto a CD
- reboot your computer with CD inside
- while computer is rebooting, hold down "boot from disk" key ("C" on Macs, "F12" PCs) - note: the LiveCD can only boot from Intel-architecture machines
- at boot menu, choose "run from CD"
LiveContent will boot and run directly from the CD. Please feel free to test out the interface, applications and cc-licensed content. We truly appreciate your time and effort in logging comments, concerns and suggestions here. +
Contents
contents
Fedora 7
Fedora 7 is the Linux operating system that will be running live from the CD. Fedora 7 can be customized by creating "spins." Spins are custom builds of the CD with applications and features that meet the users' needs. A specific spin can be documented by including a "build date" on the CD and its packaging. Any user who has installed Fedora on their machine can spin custom LiveCDs.
You can create your own LiveCD! with Fedora
- Graphical User Interface (GUI) - Revisor (comes loaded in Fedora)
- Command Line Interface (CLI) - livecd-creator (creates liveCDs)
- Pungi creates installation discs
- users who wish to contribute to Fedora's internal build system need an account **http://admin.fedoraproject.org/accounts
- Koji is Fedora's server that tracks recent builds
FOSS Productivity/creativity/entertainment apps
- Openoffice - Complete version
- FireFox - web browser
- Gimp - raster graphics editor
- Audacity - audio editor
- Inkscape - vector graphics editor
- VLC - video and audio viewer, transcoder, streamer
- Worldlabel.com Blank Opendocument Format Label Templates and collection of pre-designed label templates: address, shipping, filing, CD - licensed public domain
- Totem - audio and video viewer
- gThumb - image viewer
- Evince - PDF Viewer
- note that all these FOSS applications are also available for installation on machines running proprietary operating systems (windows, osx), not just linux machines
Creative Commons-licensed content
We want to provide examples from each category (audio, video, text, image, education) to showcase on the LiveContent CD. We will develop a system that can automatically pull top content from the sites that we choose (and these sites can change as well).
We'll feature one website/service/cc-content provider from each of the 5 categories for this initial run. We should provide examples of cc-licensed materials from each. don't know how many--we'll see how much room is left on the cd:
- audio - jamendo
- video - blip.tv
- image - flickr
- text - lulu
- education - connexions
- what about cc-videos?
- possible inclusion of a CC plugin pre-installed in Openoffice.org
- inclusion of CC plug-in for Firefox?
Documentation
- promotional information
- http://why.openoffice.org/why_nfp.html
- would be nice to develop documents for the promotion of FOSS for other applications as well - Why Gimp, Why Inscape, etc.
- http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLiveCD/
- http://opendocumentfellowship.org/
- explanation of licenses like from the Free Me DVD - http://questionsplease.org/freeme/free-culture/the-licenses/
- we should provide a pointer to our new "licenses explained" visual
- tutorials
Interface and Display Options
v1.0 screenshots
Themeing
- Gnome with cc boot splash, cc desktop, cc content icons
Informational Pop-up Screen
This screen will be loaded upon booting the CD to welcome users and give an overview of the LiveCD.
v1.0 testing feedback
Please help CC make LiveContent the best it can be! Provide feedback under the following categories, or create your own!
interface
- desktop icons look like part of the background- they should somehow be raised or otherwise be made to look like an icon, rather than part of the background.
- (DONE) not clear that using two desktops makes sense; just one more thing for people to click on and be confused by. Make it only one desktop by default, and remove the applet from the panel.
- make CC the default search in FF. (this may be confusing to users used to Google as default)
- if there is a global CC ical file, the calendar should be subscribed to it so that it shows up in the calendar in the panel clock. (none right now)
- (DONE) folders that are 'bookmarked' show up in the 'Places' menus; would be good to bookmark the various Audio/Video/etc. folders, I think.
- nautilus thumbnails certain media types. The thumbnails should be pre-generated so that there isn't excessive drive access and clock icons when people open the folders for the first time. (They are in .thumbnails, I believe.)
- nautilus can put icons on individual files. I suggest that perhaps nautilus should include icons representing the licenses, and then each media/content file can have the license represented as an icon on the file. (Either as a supplement to, or a replacement for, the ugly license.txt file. The license.txt can be hidden with by placing it in .hidden, as in http://svn.gnome.org/viewcvs/livecd-project/trunk/locales/en_US/home/Desktop/Images%20from%20GNOME%20community%20events/.hidden?view=markup) (liblicense will address these concerns, with emblems in the works to denote the license)
- nautilus can reorder and remember the order of files; would be good to order the content directories something like content / web links / license.txt. (That information is stored in ~/.nautilus/metafiles/ if you need to back it up.)
- (DONE, but also we should find a way to represent this so that titles do not appear to cluttered) the pictures should be titled with names/author ('foo by Steve Bar.jpg'), instead of 1.jpg, 2.jpg, etc.
- web icons should have the globe replaced with the sites favico or something like it. (There is a way to do this, but I admit I don't recall what it is.)
content (audio/video/image/text/education)
- no Free Culture in Texts? :)
- in Education, probably a link to Curriki would be good. Ditto perhaps http://www.introecon.com/ ?
- perhaps the various CC comics, both http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/ and http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/comics1/ ? Not sure where those would go.
proposed additions/deletions to applications
- would remove DOM Inspector plugin from FF, and add the MozCC plugin.
- why OpenOffice? Abiword and Gnumeric fit onto a liveCD much, much better- could fit another several dozen megs of content, at least, if you made that swap. (I seem to recall the difference was over 100 megs when I was working on the old GNOME liveCDs.)
- I'd remove gnome-terminal, at least from the final build. No need to have it clutter up the iso or the menus for this target audience.
- the screensaver should be turned on, and set by default to use the pictures in the Images directory.
- For Kids (possible inclusion in future releases)
- Collection of clipart from Open Clip Art Library
bugs
- wireless is not supported on all machines [not fixable by CC]
- system time is incorrect [system does not know the timezone, so never going to know it correctly. Perhaps remove the clock altogether?]
- is there printing support?
- I have many error of logical block at the boot of the cd. I can't view the main interface.
comments/questions
- note - productivity and creativity apps cannot be independently installed without first installing Fedora - aka liveCD doesn't support application installs before full OS install
- however, most of the applications have been developed for a variety of operating systems in addition to Linux