New ubuntu-unity iso

@dale-f-beaudoin was uploading the ISO. I myself do not have access to people.ubuntu.com. I asked several people in the team. But none of them were interested in doing this.
And you are right, for 18.04, you don’t need the ppa. I will update the PPA for 18.10 soon (see 18.10 testing thread) .

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@chanath

Can you now build a ubuntu-unity-iso from xubuntu image for 19.04 ?

@khurshid-alam At the moment, the Xubuntu 19.04 daily cannot be installed in either an MBR or EUFI laptop. The installer crashes. Doesn’t install the initrd.img to /boot and so on. Don’t feel like installing this Xubuntu manually, so would wait for sometime, until they get the installer right.

For the moment, installed Xubuntu 18.10, upgraded it to Disco, installed ubuntu-unity-desktop from the PPA, uninstalled xubuntu-desktop and most of xfce apps. I kept some, like the wallpapers and icons.

Can build an iso from the installed one, but it is too early.

If your PPA can be kept to a minimal, without as much as possible gnome shell stuff, installing over Xubuntu would make it much more snappier.


Idling with only system monitor open. Memory 760.5 MiB (797.44MB).

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@chanath

I plan to add a ubuntu-unity-desktop-minimal, but that requires some dependency cleanup in each component.

For now try with

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends unity-lens-applications unity-lens-files zeitgeist-datahub unity-session

sudo apt-get install indicator-session indicator-appmenu indicator-power indicator-sound indicator-datetime indicator-session

On top of fresh Xubuntu if you run first command what packages it wants to install ? Can you provide a list? Does it try to install thunderbird ?

That brings another question… what are top minimal distros based on ubuntu free from unnecessary packages ?

Xubuntu actually install many such packages. For example

speech-dispatcher

espeak
espeak-data
espeak-ng-data
libespeak-ng1
libespeak1
libsonic0
libspeechd2
python3-speechd
speech-dispatcher
speech-dispatcher-audio-plugins
speech-dispatcher-espeak-ng

Cups and printer drivers

bluez-cups
cups
cups-browsed
cups-bsd
cups-client
cups-common
cups-core-drivers
cups-daemon
cups-filters
cups-filters-core-drivers
cups-ipp-utils
cups-pk-helper
cups-ppdc
cups-server-common
hplip
ippusbxd
libcupsfilters1
libfontembed1
libgutenprint-common
libgutenprint2
libgutenprint9
printer-driver-brlaser
printer-driver-c2esp
printer-driver-foo2zjs
printer-driver-foo2zjs-common
printer-driver-gutenprint
printer-driver-hpcups
printer-driver-m2300w
printer-driver-min12xxw
printer-driver-postscript-hp
printer-driver-ptouch
printer-driver-pxljr
printer-driver-sag-gdi
printer-driver-splix

atk, gail

libatk-adaptor
qt-at-spi

Others

brltty
hplip
libbrlapi0.6
libsane
libsane-hpaio
printer-driver-postscript-hp
python3-brlapi
sane-utils
xbrlapi
hplip-data
bustle
appstream + libappstream3
snapd + snap-coafine + Ubuntu-core-launcher
kerneloops (safe to remove)
whoopsie

If you try to remove them best remove them altogether otherwise it will break the dependency.

That’s why I feel it’s much better to install minimal unity on top mini.iso (or some other slim ubuntu based distro) and then try to create a iso using bodhi-builder or customizer from hard-disk.

After 18.04, I tried to install minimal unity from mini.iso but I encountered some error. (Also it’s not very convenient for me as I don’t always find a machine with fast Ethernet port.)

I will try again.

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All these ready made Ubuntu derivatives have some unnecessary packages. Even though it is said not to upgrade from the earlier release to the newer, that’s what the devs do anyway, hence all kinds of unnecessary packages. For example, if the dev has a HP printer, he forgets to uninstall the drivers and so on from the final release. No one is going to start fro the very beginning to create the “next” release. In different derivatives, it is the filesystem.squashfs that (really) differs, The rest is same files with different distro names and different backgrounds for live booting. In the UEFI live boot, even the grub background is the same.

So, the idea to use the mini iso and add a minimal Unity to it. If the Ethernet is a problem, why not copy the Unity specific deb packages from one of your 18.04 Unity install. If you’ve not autoremoved and cleaned the system, some of them should be in /var/cache. Or, when the Ethernet is OK, just download all the Unity specific debs and dpkg them. That way, you’d create a clean Unity install.

The roundabout way, install Xubuntu 18.04 in minimal, then install Unity on it. Reboot and uninstall lightdm-gtk-greeter and reboot to Unity greeter. Then uninstall whatever unnecessary stuff left. You have to install Synaptic before uninstalling all that. You can see what is there and what is not needed in it.

You can use Lubuntu 18.04 instead of Xubuntu, but there you have to uninstall lubuntu-desktop and all lubuntu, LXDE stuff and Openbox, after installing Unity there. It is a lighter in size distro than Xubuntu. It is actually LXDE over Openbox so much lesser bloat there.

By the way, don’t touch Lubuntu 18.10 or anything newer, for they are bloated. You can see my trip to Plasma. Btw, I didn’t have ANY troubles in doing that, even though there is a suggestion at the end. The idea was to move it to Unity, and I’ll still do it.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/22648882

The guy is asking for money…and, the work is done by others. It is not a big deal to create the iso…free. The new Ubuntu-unity live installable iso (19.04) will be here in time, and without buying some guy “a coffee!”

The problem with the mini iso is that it doesn’t do UEFI, which is a big problem.

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True, you need to have an mbr computer to install it. You can use the server variant, which does UEFI. Withe the server variant, you’d have to uninstall some unnecessary stuff.

You use the mini iso or the server variant to install Unity plus whatever needed to get a leaner/cleaner install. You an, of course use Xubuntu or “older” Lubuntu and uninstall what’s not needed, after installing Unity.

The previous ISO we had used normal Ubuntu’s installer but installing unity instead. That would work this time around just fine I reckon.

I am now working on resolving this. Currently an 19.04 ubuntu daily.

Hopefully up by tomorrow.

18.04.1 may follow.

@chanath @dale-f-beaudoin

I have created a wiki for minimal unity installation from netboot/mini.iso. Take a look.

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Change the link, to this. Also, this is only for mbr systems. Maybe, have a look at this post about mini iso on UEFI systems. Also, maybe better give the step by step instructions on how to install.

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Thanks for links.

Why ? The wiki is for all supported version (>= 18.04).

I will put those links in the wiki, but I won’t put step-by-step installation there. The purpose of that wiki is to install minimal unity and create ubuntu-unity iso from there.

I am talking about the netboot link in the wiki. It is dead.

I was thinking of 19.04, not really interested in 18.04. And, what about adding unity7 maintainers ppa?

The link is fixed now.

Thank you for this minimal install tutorial. I used that for my system not for iso creation.

In sublime text I didn’t have the global menu, libatk-adaptor fixed that.
(interestingly after I removed that package global menu still works, so it should be some config file left on my system)

I also added indicator-applet for network indicator

Two typos in wiki:
here an s missing at the end:
apt-get install xfonts-100dpi xfonts-75dpi xfonts-base xfonts-scalable xfonts-util
and here:
sudo apt-get install apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dri mesa-utils

Thank you!

Yes, libatk-adaptor installs /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90-atk-adaptor which adds gail & atk-bridge to GTK_MODULES env variable. Without it installed env | grep GTK_MODULES should give

GTK_MODULES=unity-gtk-module but it does not. However after installing it it gives

GTK_MODULES=atk-bridge:gail:unity-gtk-module

I guess some apps depend on that variable whether to export menus or not and hence fails. Though it shouldn’t be. I will update that in the wiki.

Thanks. Fixed now.

Since 19.04 I also have this issue with opening dash with super key (tried f10 with same effect) when no application is running, the dash does not open. Tested in virtualbox, and natively on a hp laptop.
Is there any solution for this since?

UPDATE: I found out that if I install the nemo package that somehow solves this issue. I hope this helps find out what the problem is. @khurshid-alam ? (I am still on the minimal ubuntu setup)