//... later ...//
...on this machine, if you need wifi connectivity, that's going to happen via USB, and the moment you need to include non-free firmware here to get things working, is the moment you loose GNU purity ~ you are now a whore to the hardware so to speak B) Only way around this, is to stipify something like "only works with wifi dongles with direct linux kernel support and no non-free firmware needed"...nice idea, not really practical.
When I purchased the optiplex, it came with a 'sweetener' in the form of 'free' a USB wifi dongle ~ and as I probably expected, it's chipset is some weird flavour of realtek rtl8188, that isn't directly supported by the current linux kernel stock drivers ~ so I had to use an out-of-band driver from github, which works but taints the kernel. That doesn't matter so much, you get used to bending over for the hardware ... but the rest of the wifi stuff was a doddle ...
...I think if I was on the text console, I'd leap to wicd ncurses wifi configurator, but seeing as the aim is to boot straight into X, and because qt5 is around, the wpa_supplicant tarball can build the 'wpa_gui' interface, which works and is easy to use (it even managed to pop some XDG files in the right place, so ICE-wm automagically added that to the network submenu....which I didn't expect and found most civilized).
In one specific regard, I get really pissed about the fact certain parties won't entertain the idea of making a magnanimous gester to the world's computing community, by releasing (at least) the Kickstart 1.3 romfiles 'into the wild'... it just sucks imo (
https://www.amigaforever.com/kb/13-122) Regardless of what I do here, I know it's up to the end-user to divine where they stand, and how they obtain, the Kickstart romfile of various versions. Why can't they just be like Linus, and just give it away for free...('coz $$$, that's why)...sigh, the world was a simpler place long ago...
It actually turned out to be a good choice to use ice-wm for this ~ I've set it to boot to prompt 'old sckool' style ~ it boots to login prompt, you login, type 'startx' and hit enter -- if you blink, you'll miss it, no joke...I'm not even sure my finger leaves contact with the enter key, and ice-wm/X are in your face. There are only 3(4 now) menu-items/programs to choose from in the menuing (aside from essensial things like prefs, xterm, logout etc), and they are of course fs-uae, fs-uae-AROS and fs-uae-launcher. (note to self; add links2 menuentry)...and that's it =) This'll of course just boot straight to nologin xinit in the live USB case.
It's easy to give a linux build, that truly 'retro' flavour, without having to do very much ~ having links2 (lynx is also installed), takes you back to a time before the mighty Mozilla was born, pre $netscape times. Normally speaking, having a text based web browser would be a problem, but in reality for the sake of the machine in front of you and what it's used for, your perhaps first choice of visit would be the Aminet site, which works fine ; one might also like to browse other Amiga related archive/scene sites with adf/dms/lha files you can download...no ad banners, pictures, popups, just straight to the file you need/want for the emulator...(you just pre-configure bookmarks in links2 to help facilitate this adventure).
I'm just fussing about with boot config now ~ once that's all set, I can straighten the fs-uae staging out ~ idea at this point, is for the fs-uae menu item to launch whatever 'normal use' Amiga Workbench you want to use -- the menu item fs-uae-AROS does the likewise obvious thing, and the fs-uae-launcher does everything else, including arcade mode...
....proftpd is running in the background (as is sshd) - so best to lock these down at the firewall to $localnet only. Most of the netconf stuff is done via dhcp, but you can lock the firewall down to https and be done with it just about...
...bootsplash is fickle ; you have to bootstrap it from grub...so instead of the grub menu you get the bootsplash, which you hinge on fbcon (or efifb), and relinquish once X pops from an exec call..something like this...I'll figure it out (currently on the RT kernel the 'quiet' switch has it head off into lolly land and not boot, and I'm not real sure why yet =). I want some kind of semblance with Amiga Workbench, when ice-wm pops up...ie; an Amiga wallpaper, push the menu bar to the top, only 1 active desktop....stuff like that...
...and that Dell UEFI bios is freaking close to being a pre-emptive OS in it's own right <grin>... I keep wondering if there's a special key sequence that results in it popping an easter-egg game of space invaders of something... lol... that'd be an idea... 8)
...on the side, I'm doing a build of retroarch and the libretro-PUAE core, just to see how that compares to the fs-uae setup. Retroarch compiled, but gagged on Qt5 for some reason, so I just disabled qt5 widgets in config, and you have to specifically enable libusb/HID or it won't make those modules. The specific puae_libretro.so core built straight out of a github clone, and the makefile sets $cflags to -O3 as matter of course. Considering I didn't have to add anything to the $system build to hit the libretro/retroarch target, it's worth checking out as a possible alternative emulator 'presentation'.
Right at the now though, it's pretty much all built, and I just have to finalize the configurata.
I should mention the VJ clips I link to on YT, are the work of aussie artist Tom Ellard... I lot of this stuff is not in the wild. Some of it was saved from Tom's old sev-com site/BBS, and some bits are taken from SBSD or The Illustrated Family Doctor. If for a moment you detect there's something Amiga-esque about that stuff, Tom used to use Amigas for various tasks (music & video) back in the Amiga heydays, and a good deal of this stuff is cut-up/sampler, and the things one can do with veejay are limited only by your imagination.
...and now, that funky pervert from des moines... and people with cars for heads ..( warning: loud, decrease vol before play)
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