The Plasma Netbook Reference Platform is a full system image that makes it easy to test and improve the Netbook workspace shell. It can be downloaded and installed on a USB memory stick for easy testing on netbooks, tablets and other devices with similar hardware form factors.
Our goals are:
We strive to accomplish all of these things in an open manner that embodies the precepts of the KDE Community Code of Conduct.
Note: The following procedure creates a persistent installed filesystem on a USB stick. This is not comparable to a classical live CD system where everything resides in memory and changes are lost on reboot. The disk image system performs faster than a live CD. The first time you boot the stick, if there is sufficient free space, /swap and /home partitions will be created. All changes will be saved on the stick and will still be there on your next reboot.
Weekly build images are made available at the following address:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Netbook/images
To extract the image to a stick, follow these simple instructions.
Short version:
bunzip2 Plasma-Netbook-Reference.i686-0.1.0-*.raw.bz2
dd if=Plasma-Netbook-Reference.i686-0.1.0-*.raw of=/dev/sdX
You can also use
bunzip2 -c Plasma-Netbook-Reference.i686-0.1.0-*.raw.bz2 > /dev/sdX
Long version:
cd /home/user/Desktop/Plasma-Netbook-Reference.i686-0.1.0-Build16.1.raw/
dmesg
in the terminal and note the 3 letters between the brackets in the last lines (i.e. [sdb]. This is the actual code of the device that you just plugged in.
dd if=Plasma-Netbook-Reference.i686-0.1.0-Build16.1.raw of=/dev/sdb
Hit <Enter>. (Replace "sdb" with your 3-letter device code and the .raw image name with whatever downloaded).
You can use the .raw file directly in qemu. VirtualBox is faster but requires you to create a virtual disk image from the .raw file.
VBoxManage convertfromraw --format VMDK Plasma-Netbook-Reference*.raw PRNP.vmdk
This .vmdk file can then be added as a disk using the Virtual Media Manager dialog.
To start making your own changes, you need to login to the Build Service website. An OpenID login is being worked on.
The configuration files for Plasma Netbook Reference Edition are stored in the KDE:Netbook OBS project here:
https://build.opensuse.org/project/show?project=KDE:Netbook
Here you can perform most tasks to access builds and update the configuration.
To work efficiently with the OBS, you can use the osc command line client. To build your own images, you need the kiwi command line tool, and the 'build' package.
A full list of repositories is at the osc link below, but some common ones are
The Build Service contains a branch/merge mechanism that allows you to make changes in a branch then submit your package modifications back to the main project in the same manner as a git tracking branch. This allows changes to be reviewed by the Plasma team.
Once you have the tools installed, create a branch of the basic packages with:
osc branch KDE:Netbook plasma-image osc branch KDE:Netbook plasma-netbook-config
then check out your branch with the command output by 'osc branch' above.
Since image builds consume a lot of resources, only the main KDE:Netbook project builds on the server. You can build your branches locally like this:
osc build images i586 kde-four-live.kiwi
On debian the signature of the packages cannot be verified, so we turned that off (needs to be fixed): osc build images i586 kde-four-live.kiwi --no-verify --linksources
(--linksources saves disk space by not copying packages to the build chroot but linking them.)
The first build will take a long time to fetch the base packages from the server, but these are cached.
You can tweak the resulting image by either modifying the package list in the file kde-four-live.kiwi from plasma-image, modifying the packages themselves, or by changing the configuration files in the plasma-netbook-desktop package. You already have a checkout of these packages in your branch.
After changing something, rebuild the image and test it on a netbook or in a virtual machine.
When you have changes in your branch that you want to merge back to KDE:Netbook, osc submitrequest
will create a request to merge the changes. When the request is accepted, your branch will be rebased on the updated original
A short description of what we have in the project.
Most packages used to build the image come from openSUSE. By declaring additional or replacement packages in KDE:Netbook, or your branch, we customise the image.
As a base we use KDE Four Live. The Build Service package for this is here.
The description what will be built in the end is in the .kiwi file.
Find it in your checkout in KDE:Netbook/plasma-image/kde-four-live.kiwi
For more documentation about KIWI, see here: http://en.opensuse.org/KIWI http://en.opensuse.org/Build_Service/KIWI/Cookbook On the project page: we can configure whether to publish at the 'Flags for Experts' link .
The status of the build can also be seen on the project page: https://build.opensuse.org/project/monitor?project=KDE:Netbook
there are some build repositories registered for the project:
The openSUSE repos are needed when we create custom packages.
You can download the finished binary image whether or not publishing it using osc (or the web interface): osc getbinaries images i586
See http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/Network_Adapters_(Wireless)/Broadcom_BCM43xx - either use the native b43 driver or the Broadcom STA driver from the Packman repo if b43 doesn't work.
iwl3945 requires module unload/reload
TO BE DONE: because of Hal.Device.PermissionDeniedByPolicy: ...storage.mount-fixed auth_admin_keep_always