Using Linpus xfdesktop on Fedora

After briefly looking at Linpus and becoming really dissatisfied with the way it handles things (especially updates), I installed Ubuntu 8.10 + Netbook Remix. However I soon found that I really liked the simpleness of Linpus default XFCE desktop application - the one with sliding sections. IMHO it's more intuitive for the first time users than the UNR desktop, and since the netbook is intended as a present for such person, I'd like to try to get Linpus xfdesktop running on Fedora 10 XFCE spin.

Before I start to delve into this, maybe someone already tried to do this? Is it really possible without having to pull the whole mess of other Linpus changes?

 

I think it is going to be hard, well just for my opinion. Acer did a lot of mods in that version of Linpus, and that just involves everything. It's kernel is even better than the new one on Fedora 10, thus making everything run smoothly and perfectly.

However, if you are in the know, then it might be worth figuring it out and sharing it here, that way, you could help a lot of people get updated system with the default acer desktop.

And in case you need it, Acer released the source code for their Linpus- modified OS.

 

I'd never say the old kernel is better. However, it is customized for the hardware, which is a good thing, especially for newbies. You can use the Linpus kernel with an updated Fedora system by copying the relevant files from /boot (vmlinuz, initrd, System.map and config) and all of /lib/modules/2.6.23.9lw to your Fedora system. No guarantees that it'll play nicely with pulseaudio, the latest version of Xorg, plymouth, and who knows what else.

 

I actually looked over the changes Acer applied to the stock kernel, and they aren't that involved - they backported DRM from 2.6.25.4 with small changes (removal of detection code for various non-Intel adapters), added a bunch of drivers, including absolutely irrelevant ones such as Intel WiFi (maybe they considered it for the Aspire One?) and sk98lin, and they also added bootsplash, squashFS, aufs, and fastpoweroff patches. Ah, and there is also TuxOnIce 3.0-rc5.

I also agree that their kernel definitely isn't better than the default one on Fedora 10, especially considering compiled in configuration - for one, they didn't CONFIG_NO_HZ (tickless kernel)! And I don't want to start on the hairy mess that is their boot up process...

 

Well, after beating F10 to shape so it would run semi-adequately, I tried to install xfdesktop-acer-lp-1526.no_spot.mcs_patched.i386.rpm. It had some conflicting files with gnome-menus package, force removing the latter and a few depending packages, xfdesktop was installed. But when I run it, it crashes with some undefined symbol in gtk. So it at least Linpus/Acer patched GTK is needed.

 

On my linpus, as delivered out of the box, in /boot/config_080627 I see "CONFIG_NO_HZ=y".
I believe this indicates the tickless kernel is enabled.

 

If you run "powertop", it complains that you should enable that option and recompile the kernel, so the option isn't enabled in the running kernel. It means that the supplied config file isn't the same as the one used to compile the kernel.

 

An update on this: I actually downloaded the source Gtk RPMs for Linpus and Fedora 10 and tried to apply the Linpus patches on top of GTK 2.14 (Linpus has GTK 2.12). Unsurprisingly, the patches didn't apply cleanly. After spending half an hour on the first patch, I gave up - it was too much time wasted on something I wasn't sure would work with GTK 2.14.

Of course having xfdesktop-acer in the source form would make things much simpler, but the "source" RPM Acer provides in fact contains a precompiled binary blob.