Custom carpc distro

**djpyro** · 12-12-2006, 01:23 PM

hey monkeybox id be interested in helping in anyway i can test it and help with suggestions and anything btw i think the "monkeybox" logo is the logo you have of "monkey" from dexters lab

**bpierce815** · 12-19-2006, 02:11 PM

Currently, There are 2 projects that look interesting for US Navigation. RoadNav and RoadMap. Both of these work off of US Census Data so would be useless to those outside of the US. However, I know that there was a version of Navigator4 for linux that included Europe maps. If someone could find a copy of that, maybe hooks into that program, if it has been purchased and installed by the user, could be an option?

**bpierce815** · 12-19-2006, 02:14 PM

I have an EPIA system that I can test with. Something I would like to be able to do is load this onto a CF Card or USB flash and boot to RAMfs. You can already do this with Minimyth so I doubt that this would be a problem.

**mccdeuce** · 12-21-2006, 02:10 PM

i have been watching your thread for a bit (as well as many other threads which we all do) these are my thoughts.

Streetdeck, RoadRunner, AMP, pyCar..... are all good programs they meet the needs of their users.

All of them have one fundamental problem in my mind. They are all FrontEnds - they all run on some other code set.

My friends love my CarPC (running on an epia with RR) and a couple have though about starting their own solutions. For them I reccomend a TomTom. When I look at the new TomTom it cost 600 bucks has a 20 gig hd supports bluetooth phones and can play mp3's.

But my carPc is modular and i can do a whole lot more - but will always be inferior to a TomTom or any other device in its ability to load the system.

Why do people buy linksys routers, or a slingbox when a small linux pc can do the same thing - dedicated systems.

What we need for this community is a simple, professional looking, operating software.

I would base this software on a linux kernel but it needs to be just that (I think that this is similar to your plan)

RoadRunner is somewhat similar to how linux but in the sense that it is a FrontEnd. A few people started it and other continually add to it. It is a great system but would be inferior to a CarPC operating system.

So this has rambled way too much but what we need is a unix or BSD or linux kernel based operating system. (doesnt necessarily have to be freeware) Essentially build a Windows for the CarPC.

If this is your plan I would like to help in anyway that I can. My linux programming skills are small I use mainly macs but I do program some stuff that is cross platform.

**tripzero** · 12-23-2006, 05:03 PM

For the past couple days I've been messing around with minimyth. I started the build for version 0.20-20 but it failed. Possibly something wrong with the build system as it couldn't fine the file "file-4.17.tar.bz" on their server. I'm currently in the process of building the 0.19-20 version. I'll let you know how it goes. I hope to see this project go up on SVN.

Here is what I've noted so far:

Minimyth already has mysql setup and running
It also uses mplayer's latest 1.0RC1 that is patched up with the openchrome stuff
xorg with the openchrome driver

All this works for a pretty sweet setup and should be pretty powerful. I don't think it will take much to get nghost up and running on it. I'll try to keep you updated with any success/failures that I have.

**tripzero** · 12-24-2006, 04:16 PM

/cheer

I've successfully built the minimyth from scratch (only took 8+hrs to build). I had to go in and change the makefile in the /scripts/utils/file folder to read file-4.18 because 4.17 no longer exists from the download site. I also updated the checksum file. This problem probably doesn't apply to the SVN of minimyth but I made a post on their forum just in case.

Now the questions is... what do I do next? the completed build didn't create a .iso file that i could burn so I don't really know what to do next. Maybe I could copy the built root file system to a usb drive and use syslinux to make it bootable. Nevertheless, I included that question in my post to the minimyth people. Hopefully I'll have more updates soon.

**Toe** · 01-03-2007, 02:15 PM

Originally Posted by mccdeuce

What we need for this community is a simple, professional looking, operating software.

I agree with mccdeuce completely. Making an os be the frontend would be better than making another os with a small footprint to run frontends. We all want similar features, so a decent skinning system should be adequate enough replace the desire to have multiple frontend support.

Is this the direction you are planning to go with the distro? I'm not sure I completely understand the goal yet, but I have a feeling it could easily morph into something I'd be willing to put time into.

**tripzero** · 01-03-2007, 05:46 PM

I agree with mccdeuce completely. Making an os be the frontend would be better than making another os with a small footprint to run frontends. We all want similar features, so a decent skinning system should be adequate enough replace the desire to have multiple frontend support.

The idea was (according to my interpretation) just that. This car PC specific OS would boot up to X and whatever frontend was decided to run. It wouldn't have a window manager like gnome or xfce and the capabilities would be limited to what the frontend could do and what the user could do in the command prompt. Minimyth (the OS that was decided to use as the blueprint) was just that. It was an operating system built around running the mythtv frontend. You could even say that mythtv was the OS if you really wanted to super generalize things.

I think monkeybox wanted multiple frontend support because as of right now, IMHO there isn't a real suitable solution. He knew that the OS would be flexible enough that it could support whichever frontend was decided as THE frontend. Blk and myself (others are welcome to help too) are working on a solution for that.

**Eubey** · 01-09-2007, 09:44 PM

would be cool if we included all the available linux front ends with the distro, and have a settings window where the user could choose which one they wanted.

**Geese** · 01-10-2007, 12:19 AM

I've read this thread in it's entirety, and I've come to these conclusions:
- There is an abundance of Hardware, Linux, and Programming talent in this forum. This is great.
- There is a common consensus that "we" the mp3car.com Linux forum need a solid platform on which to build solid, usable, free, open carpc solutions.
- We can never agree on the requirements.

Monkeybox, or whomever wants to lead the effort, should decide the supported hardware, distro, software/libraries, and frontend that will be used. If feature X isn't included, it goes on the to-do list. If it doesn't go on the to-do list, contribute or develop your own distro.

After the distro reaches a state of being able to be built repeatably and quickly, the frontend developers can begin to write apps that will run on a known-stable platform.

This natural separation leads me to my final point: we would need two leaders that would work together. One to lead the initial distro creation process and another to lead the frontend process. As long as the dependencies needed by the frontend are in the distro, the two could work independently toward stable releases.

I really wish I could take my original ideas and make them a reality on the distro side, but I can't in the near future. Instead, I only offer my thoughts on how I would approach this from my experience. If the leaders kept each effort focused and on track, it could really make for an interesting carpc experience.

Thanks for reading