FreeMiNT Philosophys (was NetSurf GEM Port)

[jens]

Hi.
I'm not too much into unixy MiNT things, so I shouldn't do such a guide.
I myself wouldn't understand what I'd try tell others. *g*

I really like a Cripple-MiNT install which lets you barely scratch the surface of unix stuff.
Cripple-MiNT can be found on maankes Atari pages which also provide you with anything EasyMiNT.
CrippleMiNT comes with a GEM installer, and after having finished the installation you'll only have to put your NIC driver into the mint folder, scribble in some files, reboot and be happy.
It's MiNT 1.15 still, but it works in the background, lets you use networking (without dhcp), big drives and long filenames.
I like to use it with Gemini (last version, handles long filenames, else go for Jinnee, Thing, Teradesk for that feature), and for multitasking purposes something ancient like Geneva, which I can switch off via the auto-folder.

In fact, this is such a setup as you are using on the FireBee, just a little bit outdated.


Some other point:

EasyMiNT in fact can be installed in a way that it boots directly into XaAES/ Teradesk after the install (and on each reboot).
What you might encounter is a file system check on boot-time after not having shutdown the machine properly.
(Shutdown can be done through XaAES in a GEM window.)
So, EasyMiNT could be adapted to the FireBee to have the full-blown package (or only the parts of it you wish to install).

Btw.:
I'm now booting one of my Falcons and one of my TTs directly into MiNT, login, start XaAES and am presented with a nice Jinnee respectively Gemini desktop. There I can open TosWin2 and start a shell to have a look at unix stuff (that I don't really understand but try to atm).
It was a pain in the *ss to get MiNT to prepare my system for a debian-m68k betatest, but with a lot of help I got it done!

[Mathias]

- a fair deal of developers prefer to have unix tools as standard + a unix file hierarchy, since for them, that means lots of benefits when developing stuff (<---!).

4 people!

Perhaps we can find another 5 ones, …

We are talking about the standard end-user setup! As I said already such a setup for developers existed long before that End-user setup (and you know that!). If it is so important for you, please help m0n0 and Jo Even to do it.

[jens]

- a fair deal of developers prefer to have unix tools as standard + a unix file hierarchy, since for them, that means lots of benefits when developing stuff (<---!).

4 people!

Perhaps we can find another 5 ones, …

We are talking about the standard end-user setup! As I said already such a setup for developers existed long before that End-user setup (and you know that!). If it is so important for you, please help m0n0 and Jo Even to do it.

Mathias, I said in my last post, adopt EasyMiNT, so you'll probably have a setup suitable for developers.

[Mathias]

Mathias, I said in my last post, adopt EasyMiNT, so you'll probably have a setup suitable for developers.

Sorry what for do we communicate?

• There are already 2 setups for developers, and beside jfl everybody has access to it for years! So what are we discussing (especially publicly here)?

• I cannot adopt anything! It has to be done by people who can do it (and joska also told that its a question of ressources)

• As I said already, yes that would be a perfect task for EasyMiNT!

• I begging maanke for more than 2 years (perhaps you read at the MiNT list that he started to do so)

[shoggoth]

Fine. Pack the thing with AHCC, no unix tools, no real unix file hierarchy. For me, such a setup is as useful as a fart-flavoured popsicle... and I'm not alone. Either you understand this, or you don't. Simple as that.

[vido]

I would like to have "full MiNT" instalation on my FireBee as absolute only end user!
I have knowledge to do it myself, but I dont have time to do it. So I would prefer user friendly distribution to install.

I believe Mathias thinks of end users people who would use FireBee for music, DTP, graphics, ...
Me as user and Sysadmin I need full MiNT install, or FireBee is not usefull for 90% of my work. With it is is usable for more than 95%

Curent MiNT setup done by joska is just great, with his GEM tools we got first user friendly setup of MiNT for users like Mathias who lacks some basic computer knowledge from 8bit era of PC DOS era
I 100% support Mathias and joska about their concept!

The other way I see to make unix like distribution of MiNT which would extend existing MiNT setup into "full MiNT setup" for FireBee. Something like EasyMiNT where you can choose what programs (packages) you want to install and which replaces mint and xaaes cnf files with the right ones. That would be awesome! I believe such distribution should be done by someone else with cooperation with joska about config files.

Gentoo MiNT compiled for Coldfire is a great starting point by my opinion.

[Mathias]

Fine. Pack the thing with AHCC, no unix tools, no real unix file hierarchy. For me, such a setup is as useful as a fart-flavoured popsicle... and I'm not alone. Either you understand this, or you don't. Simple as that.

Could you please stop telling the untruth. Please go to the development forum, and download Vincents latest full working FreeMiNT setup from 26th November 2011. It contains a full Unix folder structure with bin, etc, home, mnt, opt, root, sbin, tmp, usr, var. As well it includes 2 working shells, as the applications bash, bunzip2, bzip2, cat, chmod, cp, date, echo, env, gunzip, gzip, iperf, kill, ln, ls, mkdir, mv, pwd, rm, rmdir, sed, stack, sync, tar, uname, unzip, wget, zip and thats just what is inside usr/bin
I am stopping here about this issue, as it is getting absurd. You have access to it from the first day, you have no FireBee and cannot use it right now, you have the knowledge, and could improve it, but you are publicly doing like if we (or I?) would suppress you in some ways. I always respected you - and still do, and would love if you would "influence" the project a little bit more. I do not like to quarrel with you about an issue that is perhaps just because you didn´t see that developer setup, and requesting something publicly that is in existance for a long time.

[jfl]

• As I said already, yes that would be a perfect task for EasyMiNT!

I would be surprised if EasyMiNT couldn't be installed right away on the machine. The problem is that it will install only m68k binaries, which is not ideal for a ColdFire CPU.

To be constructive, I would like to suggest two ideas to the ACP team, to help them cater for the developers -- remember that the 'Bee is still an alpha release, so developers should (or could, if you prefer) be considered a priority target, which means pampered, not aggravated :
- ask Helmut if he can merge his changes in TosWin2 with the version available in the FreeMiNT CVS. His changes provide a big speed increase to text output that is much needed when compiling stuff -- a speedier Videl would help too, of course, but this is more difficult.
- ask Alan to build his Gentoo distrib for the ColdFire (according to him, it's easy).

I think that, as a "collective force", the ACP team might be able to motivate some people that don't feel pressure right now.

I would like to finish on a personal note: I feel like some developers don't use the 'Bee for anything other than testing stuff they wrote/compiled on a faster machine. Nothing wrong with that. On the other hand, I (call me crazy if you will) bought the machine to use it and vehemently refuse to use a cross-compiler. So there you have it. If I can't code on this machine because I don't have the tools, I will sell it, which will end my Atari days.

[jfl]

Gentoo MiNT compiled for Coldfire is a great starting point by my opinion.

Absolutely.

[simonsunnyboy]

I have considered buying a Firebee someday. Atm this is shelved due to lack of free time, not money.

I personally use Linux for almost 15 years by now, i know my way around the file system and found everything in MinT.
I don't need this structure and it is is just an agreed on standard in the Unix world. It is a convention, as bad as "C:\Program Files" to place executables in /bin or the like.

Unix does not enforce any hierarchiy except /bin/init and /bin/sh or very similar which the kernel calls as the first process. Everything else can have a structure as we like on the old TOS side, place everything in one folder and place it anywhere you like. The point is, this convention is enforced by access rights under Unix but not totally enforced. You can always generate your own /programs folder, I personally use /opt and instal everything handcompiled in more subdirectories there.

So the discussion is pretty pointless. The user can run all Unix interface tools from anywhere. You can place the ls executuable in /poof/somefart/crazybins/my-ls and it will work. The same goes for FreeMinT.

All in all, i like a plain setup with just a desktop (which doesn't necessarily have to be Atari-standard alike or Win95 styled, I would love to see an Android sort of GUI for the ST in the background as the Desktop) Unix tools are extra and seperate.

For the Firebee I'd say your current approach is correct: deliver a classic working GEM experience.

Unix addons (if requested) should be shipped for installation as optional. Maybe add a dialogue to the setup "Do you want to install a full Unix infrastruture?" and provide a seperate installer archive. If the user says yes, this archive is installed at setup. If the user says "no, no unix", the package is simply deleted.

This way you have the best of both worlds and can deliver a setup that would please anyone?

PS: i'd like to see this GEM Mint setup for a plain Falcon

[Mathias]

For the Firebee I'd say your current approach is correct: deliver a classic working GEM experience.

Unix addons (if requested) should be shipped for installation as optional.
(...)
This way you have the best of both worlds and can deliver a setup that would please anyone?

Beside the fact that there is no installer, just unpacking, this was always planned!

PS: i'd like to see this GEM Mint setup for a plain Falcon

http://atari.nvg.org/VanillaMiNT/

[simonsunnyboy]

VanillaMint is a very good start but it is just unpack and go. The Firebee setup features some setup GUI IIRC. which desktop, etc...

[Mathias]

I would be surprised if EasyMiNT couldn't be installed right away on the machine.

You could give it a try. But it is done in GFA (without Lonnys patches), so I am not sure.

- ask Helmut if he can merge his changes in TosWin2 with the version available in the FreeMiNT CVS. His changes provide a big speed increase to text output that is much needed when compiling stuff

Good hint! We whould do so. That may be interresting for m0n0 too!?

- ask Alan to build his Gentoo distrib for the ColdFire (according to him, it's easy).

Shouldn´t it work already. At least it was told several times.

On the other hand, I (call me crazy if you will) bought the machine to use it and vehemently refuse to use a cross-compiler. So there you have it. If I can't code on this machine because I don't have the tools, I will sell it, which will end my Atari days.

But to understand you correctly, you are talking about GCC here, right? This would mean such a full blown setup like EasyMiNT or Gentoo. In every case you should talk to Mikro about it! Vincent refused to support it officially.

[jfl]

- ask Alan to build his Gentoo distrib for the ColdFire (according to him, it's easy).

Shouldn´t it work already. At least it was told several times.

It does work, and I've been using it since I got the machine. But it's 68000 software. Nothing is built for the ColdFire. So it's not fast.

On the other hand, I (call me crazy if you will) bought the machine to use it and vehemently refuse to use a cross-compiler. So there you have it. If I can't code on this machine because I don't have the tools, I will sell it, which will end my Atari days.

But to understand you correctly, you are talking about GCC here, right? This would mean such a full blown setup like EasyMiNT or Gentoo. In every case you should talk to Mikro about it! Vincent refused to support it officially.

GCC, yes, but above all as much libraries as possible. Gentoo FreeMiNT comes with a current GCC environment but doesn't provide many libraries. SpareMiNT provides more libraries, but most are outdated. There are literally thousands of programs and libraries from GNU or BSD that are freely available and many can be useful in a GEM environment (like what Qextract does, for example, and zView, etc.). I mean, you can't compile any of that stuff with AHCC.

[joska]

ifconfig and route are not unix-ports, they are written from scratch for MiNTnet and is a part of MiNT/MiNTnet. These tools exists on all systems that has sockets, like Windows. You're not claiming that Windows is unix just because it has ifconfig, route, ping etc?
.

If that's the case then the developer should just have stayed away from using the exact cryptic parameters and cryptic output format that are found in Unix, so long as they do not make it even more cryptic like the Windows counterpart.

They should have stayed to the good simple Atari GUI design.

That wouldn't have made sense. The purpose of these programs is not to be used as interactive applications, but to be run from mint.cnf or a shell-script to configure the network at boot-time.

[joska]

Facts:
- the unix file hierarchy can be stuffed in U: and hence won't get in the way for people who want things "the old Atari TOS 1.0" way.
- having access to unix tools as standard does in no way by definition restrict those who don't wish to use it.
- a fair deal of developers prefer to have unix tools as standard + a unix file hierarchy, since for them, that means lots of benefits when developing stuff (<---!).

And these are not the reasons why the Firebee isn't shipped with "unix". The reasons has already been explained - the GEM-side has been prioritized. You almost certainly will see "unix" preinstalled on future Firebees, don't worry

[joska]

Fine. Pack the thing with AHCC, no unix tools, no real unix file hierarchy. For me, such a setup is as useful as a fart-flavoured popsicle... and I'm not alone. Either you understand this, or you don't. Simple as that.

What did you say about "bull"?

Come on shoggoth, you're not seriously saying that the Firebee is useless because it doesn't come pre-installed with *your* preferred development-tools? What does that make your Falcon then? If it was anything like mine it came with a completely blank harddrive, have you been staring at an empty desktop for 20 years?

You can install EasyMiNT or Gentoo if you like, both have what you need. It's not any more difficult than installing it on your Falcon. However, the decision to focus on a streamlined user experience for people not used to MiNT does mean that people who otherwise wouldn't touch MiNT with a ten-foot pole (because of all the unix-sh*t everybody say you need) now are MiNT-users. But gcc-fans would have to wait a little bit longer if they don't want to get their hands dirty and install it themselves. You can't expect everything to be in place from the start, the man-power just isn't there.

[jfl]

You can't expect everything to be in place from the start, the man-power just isn't there.

I feel like some people forget that the FireBee is still very much a work-in-progress. Even the hardware isn't finished!

[joska]

The other way I see to make unix like distribution of MiNT which would extend existing MiNT setup into "full MiNT setup" for FireBee. Something like EasyMiNT where you can choose what programs (packages) you want to install and which replaces mint and xaaes cnf files with the right ones. That would be awesome! I believe such distribution should be done by someone else with cooperation with joska about config files.

The thing is that doing something like this requires a lot of work. And so far nobody has picked up the challenge.

Technically it's not a problem to extend the current setup. "All" you have to do is to put the actual "unix" file hierarchy somewhere, and then edit (or replace) c:\mint\sys.cnf to set up the symlinks, create environment variables, run startup-scripts etc.

[calimero]

How about *not* turning this into a GUI vs. command line cat fight, we're grown ups.

ok. I must say: TED NELSON!! - some people think like ted nelson, some think like programers.

btw - thanks joska for vanilla mint! thank wongck for guides! @vido GREAT post! "Me as user and Sysadmin I need full MiNT install, or FireBee is not usefull for 90% of my work."

I never understand UNIX like now; after manually installing MiNT on Atari!

[joska]

VanillaMint is a very good start but it is just unpack and go. The Firebee setup features some setup GUI IIRC. which desktop, etc...

VanillaMiNT is the Falcon/TT version of the Firebee setup. The difference is that it's a lot smaller, because it's intended to be installed (well, *unpacked*, which is the way to "install" programs on an Atari IMO) from floppies. So there's only a single desktop and no collection of applications.

Also, there is no tool to select screen resolution, because the one on the Firebee only works with FireTOS in the background. It might work on a CT6x though, I haven't tried that.

[wongck]

I would be surprised if EasyMiNT couldn't be installed right away on the machine. The problem is that it will install only m68k binaries, which is not ideal for a ColdFire CPU.

Sorry I said I will stop in this thread... but

This is a good idea.
You should be able to replace all the RPM that EasyMint installs with equivalent CF builds.
Should not be an issue. May be there is a main text file of the rpm names and you just need to rename the files inside there.
I think I read on MintList that maintainer of EasyMint will update it.

So the installer running at 68K code will be only thing that is slow, after that, all other binaries will be CF.

(for what it worth, you may "cheat" by renaming the CF rpm into 68K names, may be that will do it as a quick hack)

[simonsunnyboy]

VanillaMint is a very good start but it is just unpack and go. The Firebee setup features some setup GUI IIRC. which desktop, etc...

VanillaMiNT is the Falcon/TT version of the Firebee setup. The difference is that it's a lot smaller, because it's intended to be installed (well, *unpacked*, which is the way to "install" programs on an Atari IMO) from floppies. So there's only a single desktop and no collection of applications.

Also, there is no tool to select screen resolution, because the one on the Firebee only works with FireTOS in the background. It might work on a CT6x though, I haven't tried that.

I'm waiting for the 1.18 edition then Great project and it deserves support!

[calimero]

I'm waiting for the 1.18 edition then Great project and it deserves support!

I must ask: different version of MiNT (1.15, 1.16 ... 1.18) are only different version of mint.prg (kernel); right?

[jfl]

I must ask: different version of MiNT (1.15, 1.16 ... 1.18) are only different version of mint.prg (kernel); right?

Different kernel, drivers, AES (at least since XaAES is a kernel module). You can't mix elements of different MiNT versions, if that's why you're asking. Well, maybe you can, but you shouldn't