Spri | Linux. But Faster

The progress with the release candidate is moving along nicely, several new packages have "made the cut" as well as some configuration changes and under the hood tweaks.

Changes so far include

• OU812 has kindly contributed an improved shutdown script, which has been added with earnest.
• The ISOLINUX menu for the Live CD has gone, and has been replaced with a much nice graphical grub screen
• The old default music player, Gejengel, has gone and has been replace by Listen, the default music player in Xubuntu

I've never really been the artistic type, and I'm especially not artistically gifted when it comes to computer art.

I'm currently in the process of creating the next release of Spri, and I need a usplash.

My only need is that in includes the logo (you can find a full size version here) and the slogan, which is Spri | Linux. But Faster.

Other than that, it is entirely upto you how you wish to make it look. Get your creative juice flowing!

You can email any ideas to info@sprilinux.com or register for the forum and post your ideas in this thread.

Thanks in advance for any entries!

I began building the release candidate of Spri today, and has a bit of a shock when installing Midori, the current default web browser.

I spent part of my holiday thinking about where I want Spri to go from here. The people at Softpedia kindly wrote a review of Spri, and opened my eyes to some shortcomings and positive features that Spri has.

I will be away on holiday for the next week, however when I return I will be aiming to work towards a final release of Spri (possibly using incremental beta release, we'll see)

The current beta release have been built on top of each other, adding packages and removing packages here and there. However, the plan will be to start a fresh build, from scratch meaning the final release is clean and efficient. I also plan to add a few more applications (an archiving tool, PDF reader and possibly an instant messenger).

Spri Beta Two Point One is now available for download from the downloads section

The only desktop I really had any trouble choosing when creating the first beta of Spri was the video player. The simple fact is, there is a real lack of good GTK video players in Linux - for a reason known only to the software developers, many have chosen to go the QT route.

I included gXine simply because it was the lightest video player available, however, I have been reconsidering it recently while making the second beta. VLC Media Player depends on QT libraries, however;

• It plays just about anything you can throw at it, including DVD's
• It is only 10mb heavier than gXine

As a result, I have decided to include VLC in the next build of Spri, unless there are any unforeseen circumstances. I would prefer to include a good frontend for MPlayer, however all the ones I have tested have been severely lacking.

If you know of any good lightweight GTK based MPlayer frontends, I'd love to hear them in the forum

EDIT: I've actually chosen to add gnome-player rather than VLC, mainly due to dependencies. More information will be available after Spri Beta 2's release later today.

In order to easily update and upgrade Spri, a spri-desktop metapackage has now been added to the repository.

The current Spri beta doesn't have the updated repository added, although I'll add a symbolic link next week so that it redirects to the correct repository.

In the mean time, to ensure everything is working, you can find instructions on how to add the repository on the wiki

Once the repository has been added, simply do

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install spri-desktop

This will download all packages and dependencies for said packages.

You'll find all the downloads for Spri Linux in here.

The website was in desperate need of a screenshots section, so I've added relevant screenshots to the menu.

I've also created the Spri launchpad page, for bug tracking and so I can set milestones allowing me to keep track of what I need to do and when. I've set the rather ambitious target of the 15th October for the final Spri 1.0 Live CD. I haven't added any dates for the alternate CD because I feel by the time I have the repository up and running and I'm happy with the packages, I'll have to start concentrating on the second release (based on Ubuntu Karmic.)