WINDOW MAKER LIVE 0.95.7-3 This is an updated build mainly to address the recently fixed glibc getaddrinfo stack-based buffer overflow as described at https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2015-7547 in more detail. Also includes all official updates released for Debian/Jessie at the time of building these ISO images. As an additional benefit, the included 3rd party programs have been updated to their most current release versions. The main idea behind this project is to apply the Window Maker window manager as default user interface on top of a standard Debian/Jessie Linux base system. It also serves as alternate installation medium for Debian/Jessie. To make the Window Maker based desktop as useful as possible, it has been carefully preconfigured to provide a practical environment with a unified visual appearance. For practical reasons, it includes selected components taken from the XFCE4 desktop environment. We invested only little effort to make this a beginner friendly Linux distribution, but rather took care to make this an admin friendly system. We wanted a worthwhile toolset to work with. We have included lots of useful command line and console tools which usually would require to be added on manually after installation of other Debian based distributions which primarily seem to target novice home users. For example, there is no 'easy to use' editor included, but rather powerful editors like vim and emacs. In fact, wmlive is a rather versatile system for sysadmins. For detailed information and latest news regarding Window Maker and its related projects, refer to the following web sites: http://windowmaker.org http://lists.windowmaker.org http://wmlive.rumbero.org We are maintaining a dedicated package repository to provide bugfixes and enhancements specifically crafted for wmlive at following URL: http://wmlive.rumbero.org/repo For every software related issue not related to any wmlive specific package, everything regarding upstream Debian applies. So feel free to explore the support and information channels at http://www.debian.org for information. Further development of Window Maker Live depends on feedback, critique, suggestions, patches, or any other contribution from its users base. This also includes monetary funding, and therefore we would like to encourage you to consider a donation to support and speed up our work on wmlive. Free software ultimately also depends on the financial appreciation of its users, if they consider a project worthwhile enough to survive. To support our work on wmlive, donate any amount you consider appropriate on https://paypal.me/wmlive if you want to express your appreciation for our work in a meaningful practical way. We also gladly accept Bitcoin via '13uafVXfUE1mfQGbCZFz9NmCpzbmdYhavc'. If you find any issue, want to contribute enhancements, or have any idea for improvement, don't hesitate to send a message to wmlive@rumbero.org to share your thoughts. Your feedback is always welcome! WHAT IS NEW SINCE THE LAST RELEASE? * The latest Window Maker 0.95.7 is used as default window manager. As fallback, additionally a minimal xfce4 desktop has been included. * Thanks to the fantastic work of Jean-Pierre Sutto Bucciol, finally a GTK3 based theme named OneStepBack, approximating the looks of the WINGs widget set, has come into existence. It has been applied as the default GTK3 theme in wmlive. Merci beaucoup, Jean-Pierre! * This release is built on top of Debian stable release Jessie, and contains all updates and security fixes accumulated up until the date this final wmlive release version was built. * In addition to the standard Debian/Jessie kernel 3.16.7, after the system has been installed to disk, the backported kernel 4.2.6 will be available in the i386 variant, and 4.3.3 in the amd64 variant. * The preferred default web browser is now Palemoon, a mature fork of Firefox. It has removed unnecessary bloat recently introduced with upstream Firefox, while still retaining full compatibility. Palemoon actually proves to be the web browser Firefox once promised to be. Older 32bit systems whose CPU does not support the SSE2 instruction set will automatically use midori as default web browser. * Telegram Desktop has been added as mobile messaging application. For further information, see the https://desktop.telegram.org website. Older 32bit systems whose CPU does not support the SSE2 instruction set will automatically default to pidgin as messaging application. * For connectivity, the much more versatile network-manager is used. * Virtual Machine Manager using qemu/kvm and libvirt has been included. A preconfigured virtual machine to run wmlive within itself from its installation ISO has also been provided. * Most wmlive specific components have been modularized as Debian packages. These will be maintained separately, in order to provide future upgrades and bug fixes. Additionally, these packages should also be installable on compatibe Debian based systems. * The wmlive ISO has been created as hybrid iso image, allowing you to simply dd it to an USB stick and boot it directly from there. Check out http://wmlive.rumbero.org once in a while for howto articles explaining advanced usage tricks for wmlive USB sticks. SOME KNOWN ISSUES: * Due to an unfortunate limitation of Debian Installer, installation of grub fails if no network connection is available to update package lists during installation to disk. Because we require grub to also be successfully written to the MBR of the target disk even for offline installation, we replaced Debian Installer's boot loader installation routine with a straighforward script. The original MBR will have been backed up to /boot/mbr_backup.img on the installed system and can be easily restored using the dd command. * The default init system still is sysvinit. For practical reasons, e.g., to serve as a rescue medium, we have avoided to use systemd as init default. In order to enable an easy switch to systemd once wmlive is installed to disk, use the 'wmlive-initswitch' utility. * The binaries for Palemoon/Thunderbird/Telegram shipped with wmlive were directly downloaded from their respective websites and are not managed via the Debian package management system. To upgrade any of these programs, manually run their respective upgrade script (pmoonfetch, tbrdfetch, tlgrmfetch) as root or via sudo in a terminal window. * Dialogs of the main wmlive scripts and menus are only in English. While translation of the user interface is not as complete as users might wish for, further internationalization requires the practical contributions of dedicated helpers. SOME WORDS OF CAUTION Before you start to install wmlive to disk, please be aware of the following constraints: * There is no support whatsoever included for UEFI machines, wmlive was only tested on BIOS based computers. * If you plan to use an USB stick instead of a DVD-R for installation, don't even think trying to create a bootable USB stick from the wmlive ISO image with something like 'unetbootin' or 'Universal-USB-Installer' or any similar tool. These tools don't properly handle isobybrid ISO images. They unpack and copy the ISO contents to the USB stick and thus severely break their functionality. The wmlive ISO images are isohybrid images containing an embedded partition table. They requires to be dumped in raw form to the USB stick to work as intended. In Linux you would use one of these commands (the # sign represents the shell prompt) to write to a USB pendrive: # dd if=wmlive_0.95.7-2_amd64.iso of=/dev/sdx or # cat wmlive_0.95.7-2_i386.iso > /dev/sdx Replace /dev/sdx with the device file name of your actual USB stick. This process will completely erase it, there is no way back. So be very careful to not overwrite your hard drive! If you still depend on Windows, you can use either the dd mode of the excellent 'rufus' utility from https://rufus.akeo.ie or also WinDD from http://sourceforge.net/projects/windd/. * The installation routine does give no choice where to install grub and always writes grub to the MBR of the same disk where /boot is located, without asking for confirmation. A backup of the original MBR can be found after installation at /boot/mbr_backup.img on the booted system. * The installation procedure has been limited to offline installation, so no network configuration will be performed during the installation stage. Network configuration will later be managed exclusively by NetworkManager on the running system after successful installation to disk. If you find any issue, fault, or simply have any idea for improvement, please don't hesitate to send a mail to 'wmlive@rumbero.org' to share your thoughts. We need your feedback to widen our own perspective! Enjoy Window Maker Live!