[Dragynn]

Okay, got the first new draft done, looks good! All the previous mentioned progs are installed and configured some where applicable, fully updated as of today, kernel 2.6.38.3 bfs. Didn't remove anything manually other than some docs, and swapped in some smaller jpg's and png's in a couple places, even left in a couple of packages that I had previously deleted. Didn't hack out icons or or extra themes (easy enough to do after install. It is again an english version, have to hit the repo for addlocale for others, left thai-data and libthai as I don't know if those serve a portion of some other purpose. Went through and applied all color schemes and icons, configuration etc. to the root account as well, so if you switch to it, it doesn't look all freaky different Faster than a long-tailed cat in a room fulla rockin' chairs, and this one idles even lower than the smaller iso I made before, around ~115 mb. ram and next to nothing for the CPU.

377.8 mb. install-tested, writing on it now. woo-hoo! If someone wants a copy and ain't deathly afraid of the bork-monster (who's always lurking, much like basement-cat or satan claus), let me know and i'll upload one somewhere fer people to play with.

List of added/removed progs is basically the same as on this thread: http://74.54.219.50/~lxgator/gnome/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3419&sid=64bc83d9dfc6a5e39906f6a3ea8bc8e3

[Dragynn]

[slax]

looking great

[Dragynn]

Anybody want to test?

[slax]

Sure mate!
Send the link

[Dragynn]

Awesome! made the second draft with a few more cutdowns, still have to fully test it, then i'll upload and give the link, very grateful for you and Pat and others testing for me and providing feedback/advice.

[Dragynn]

Editing and testing all done, it's as final as it gets 377.8 mb. iso uploaded.

[Dragynn]

*edit* link removed, this kernel is a bork looking for a place to happen.

[Dragynn]

Now 369.6 mb. Got rid of some icons and cursors and deleted gnome icon cache but created one for Oxy2-Zen since they are default in this re-master, after playing with it for a while, it's definitely a little quicker. Deleted that wallpaper in opt/work/wallpapers seems like it didn't do anything ever. Deleted some docs that aren't really useful even to an advanced user, changelogs from back to early '90s that had turned into novels, etc. Re-sized zen gdm background, was 460k or so, reduced to ~100k, no detectable loss of resolution that I see, every little chunk helps when you're trying to see how far you can go

Didn't seem to compress as much as it usually does, I got rid of an easy 50 mb uncompressed, should have given me at least 10-12 mb reduction, yet only gave me 8.

Still using kernel 2.6.38.3, after I deleted the old partition setup I had, and got rid of the extended partition, I reloaded the zen2011ff8.iso on a new primary partition, keeping just one other Zen re-master on another partition. With extended/logical partitions gone, everything works smooth as silk, the new zen installed fine, recognized my other grub install and added it to menu.lst during install. boots fast on my machine, and no delay in loading icons anymore when I first open the menu since I added the icon-theme-cache for the default icons.

New kernels definitely have issues with Nvidia drivers on my machines, but fly on at least one when used with nv, waiting for the 2.6.38.5 kernel to come out of testing section before I replace the 2.6.38.3. I'm probably way up on the high end of what my older hardware can do here, newer firmware and drivers are meant for newer hardware. But if you've got older hardware like mine and insist on the full convenience of a gnome desktop, the only way it gets faster is running completely in ram, which is next on my list but I gotta get some more ddr-400 first , I have 1.5 gigs on this machine, I believe I can run this re-master now in ram, but want to get another half gig to be safe, ol' Bessie might blow a gasket if pushed too hard.

[radicallymoslem]

Upload it, so we could test it.

[Dragynn]

Upload it, so we could test it.

If you like, i'd be happy to do so, just don't think that many people will like it, it's very sparse and utilitarian, with neutral colors to ease the eye-strain for old guys like me , no real fancy features or anything, just an updated Zen with some fat trimmed out and some basic utilities added (most of which Siamer mentioned would be on the next Zen anyway, gpicview, cdrkit etc.) and movie, media, and CD burning apps added. It's seriously faster than any re-master of Zen i've done since I started using Zen, way fast, the little trick of adding an icon cache for the Oxy2-Zen icons used in it really made a difference in responsiveness when running through menus. Less seek time since the unpacked system is so small, and low resource usage too, about ~115 mb of ram at idle.

Thank you for kind words and support RM

[Dragynn]

Newest one: 369 mb even. Replaced Exaile with Decibel, much smaller program, not much in the way of gadgetry and googaws, so not for those who like a music player to do a lot of different things, but it will fetch tags, has an EQ available, plays CD's and anything from your library, etc. The thing I really like about it, as that nothing extra is enabled by default, you have the ability to turn any and all features off. It fires up very quickly too, as do prettyy much all the progs i've chosen for this re-master, and is a native type app built with gtk specifically for gnome systems. Very much in keeping with the minimalist nature of Zen.

Swapped in the latest kernel too, 2.6.38.6, and changed a couple of Synaptic colors to match the overall color theme i'm using. And added an "Install Zen" icon to the desktop on the liveCD.

Pure old school at it's finest , thanks to all who have continued to help with questions and been patient with me during this learning experience, Slax, Don_Crissti, and big big kudos to Siamer for producing the original i've been working off of. And thanks also to Pat and SixthWheel for testing and feedback.

[Dragynn]

http://www.gamefront.com/files/20331854/zen2011ff11.iso

Last of the gnome 2.32 Zens....

[Dragynn]

Now 366.3 mb

Don, you were sooooo right about the docs section, I went through the entire folder, file by file, and even most of the "README's" were worthless. Some had some useful info and tips/hints/hacks and I kept those, but most were just taking up space. Some were nothing but rants about other developers, wow.

Eliminated some 20 or so extra log-in "faces" in three different folders, pruned the extra languages (manually I might add, file by file) in the desktop-directories file, shrinking it from some 360k to about 17k. Added autologin for guest account on liveCD, faster boot. Since this is english only version, I took a tip from another thread (Thanks again to Obi-Wan Crissti ) and removed the keyboard prompt from liveCD too, even faster boot. Found and removed a small amount of other locale data.

And on that subject, starting to try and figure out what's left in Locales that can be eliminated, Bleachbit removes all but the English versions just fine, but apparently there are a LOT of English versions. I'm assuming it's probably okay to delete stuff like "en_GB" and "en_CA" etc.? Here's what's left if anyone can help:

Code: Select all

/usr/share/locale/be-tarask
/usr/share/locale/CP1251
/usr/share/locale/en
/usr/share/locale/en_AG
/usr/share/locale/en_AU
/usr/share/locale/en_AU.UTF-8
/usr/share/locale/en_BE
/usr/share/locale/en_BE.UTF-8
/usr/share/locale/en_BE@euro
/usr/share/locale/en@boldquot
/usr/share/locale/en_BW
/usr/share/locale/en_BW.UTF-8
/usr/share/locale/en_CA
/usr/share/locale/en_CA.UTF-8
/usr/share/locale/en_DK
/usr/share/locale/en_DK.UTF-8
/usr/share/locale/en_GB
/usr/share/locale/en_GB.UTF-8
/usr/share/locale/en_HK
/usr/share/locale/en_HK.UTF-8
/usr/share/locale/en_IE
/usr/share/locale/en_IE.UTF-8
/usr/share/locale/en_IE@euro
/usr/share/locale/en_IN
/usr/share/locale/en_NG
/usr/share/locale/en_NZ
/usr/share/locale/en_NZ.UTF-8
/usr/share/locale/en_PH
/usr/share/locale/en_PH.UTF-8
/usr/share/locale/en@quot
/usr/share/locale/en_SG
/usr/share/locale/en_SG.UTF-8
/usr/share/locale/en@shaw
/usr/share/locale/en_US
/usr/share/locale/en_US.UTF-8
/usr/share/locale/en_ZA
/usr/share/locale/en_ZA.UTF-8
/usr/share/locale/en_ZW
/usr/share/locale/en_ZW.UTF-8
/usr/share/locale/ISO-8859-1
/usr/share/locale/ISO-8859-2
/usr/share/locale/ISO-8859-3
/usr/share/locale/ISO-8859-4
/usr/share/locale/ISO-8859-5
/usr/share/locale/ISO-8859-7
/usr/share/locale/ISO-8859-9
/usr/share/locale/ISO-8859-13
/usr/share/locale/ISO-8859-14
/usr/share/locale/ISO-8859-15
/usr/share/locale/KOI8-R
/usr/share/locale/KOI8-U
/usr/share/locale/l10n
/usr/share/locale/UTF-8
/usr/share/locale/locale.alias
/usr/share/locale/locale-archive

Testing the 2.6.38.7 kernel now, may swap it in as it apparently fixes some brokens that were broken by the last fix, so the fix was to remove the fix, lolol! May wait and hold out hope that 2.6.38.8 or 9 might fix lingering sound issues on some mobos/sound cards.

[slax]

Thumbs up!