Tag: news

I thought I would update everyone with the current state of all things Lemur…

As you may know, Lemur development has been moving at a snail’s pace lately. To add to the slow development, I’ve had a couple of family members that were sick and in the hospital. I’ve had to work different shifts at my job which threw me out of sync. I’m working a full-time, physically demanding job and trying to run my own business at the same time. It can be exhausting at times! These things have been a big reason for slow development of Lemur. And now… Lemur development is at a standstill. Recently, my PC died. I thought it was the hard drive, but it was actually the motherboard. I didn’t want to put more money into an older PC. So, I got a new-used PC online. It was a nice little machine that could compile code 10x faster than my old one. The graphics card was lacking but I was planning to upgrade it. Well, this PC started acting up so I sent it back. My laptop had Windows 10 on it and I do have a Mac Pro I use for my business. I decided to put Lemur development on hold till I decided what to do. During that time, I needed some files from my external drive (an ext4 drive) for my work. I used a third party app to force Windows to read the ext4 partition. I got the files I needed and disconnected the external drive (properly I might add). Shortly after that, I decided I would use my laptop for Lemur development. I wiped it clean and installed Lemur 3.0. I then attempted to access my external drive to move my Lemur files over to the laptop. The external drive was corrupt somehow and I was only able to save bits and pieces of Lemur. In addition to losing Lemur, I also lost most of my other backups. Luckily about 90% of it was still on my Mac.

So, what did I save? I have the Lemur ISO, the build tools, and some of the custom scripts. What I don’t have is any of the custom Lemur apps, to include the installer, custom Window Maker bits, or any other custom bits for that matter. I was planning to re-code all those apps, but I had hoped to do them one at a time and slowly phase them in.

Where does Lemur currently stand now? Well, Lemur is installed on my laptop. The build tools are in place, but pretty much useless without all the other Lemur bits. My priority right now is to get the custom Window Maker bits back in place and then start working on the custom apps. I haven’t decided if I will code them in Python or go back to Ruby (used in the early Lemurs). I do know I will not go back to Gambas.

My question is…is this all worth it? It seems like there is only 3 or 4 people using Lemur (I use it full time, btw). I know Window Maker isn’t the most popular and a Hybrid Window Maker is even less popular. But it would be nice to get some feedback. So, do I continue or throw in the towel? I would like to hear from people on this…

Thanks!

Ed

Liquid Lemur is working its way back to where it once was, minus a few desktop editions of course. The image above is from the first “official” Liquid Lemur Linux release years ago. This was the release where Liquid OS became Liquid Lemur. This was the Xfce edition (no longer in production). It was built on Debian “testing” and more or less a rolling release. So, why bring all this up? Well, besides taking a trip down memory lane, as mentioned before, Lemur is going back to its roots. To once again be a base distro (OS). To once again be based on the testing branch of Debian and more or less be a rolling release. The Alpha 2 release (coming soon to PC near you!) will complete that transition.

That’s right, From Alpha 2 going forward, Liquid Lemur will once again be a base distro built from Debian testing branch. It will be a rolling release (more or less). The custom Lemur apps are being updated. APEman is getting a major overhaul (under the hood). And after many years of using the LMDE based installer (which I’m grateful to Ikey for sharing) Lemur will be transitioning to the Calamares Installer. I feel that it will better suit my needs for Lemur in the long run.  The default desktop apps suite lineup will change as well, but I haven’t finalized the list yet. Also, you may have noticed I’m bringing back the Window Maker Resurrection Project (WMRP). Check the forums for more details.

I’m working on Lemur as much as I can and hope to have Alpha 2 out soon. Thank you for your support and your patience!

So, I recently released the first Alpha of Lemur 3.0 (Seen in the image above). It actually was more of a pre-Alpha release. I probably should have held it back, but I needed to test the waters on a few things. Yes, it was missing a thing or two…okay, it was missing a lot! However, it was stable enough to use and what was missing could easily be added via Synaptic.

I made the decision to take Lemur back to its roots and the recent release was only partially setup for that decision. This may have led to some confusion for those not familiar with the Lemur of old and I do apologize. Originally, Lemur was a CD based distro but as time passed it became more difficult to keep it CD size and I had to move to DVD. The idea of old Lemurs was to have a base distro that users could build from/customize to their liking. Not everyone likes using the same apps so Lemur provided the base and then via APEman (aka: Easy Lemur, Control Center) users were given options. APEman is back and being updated to work like it did before…giving users the choice. With all that being said, I’ve been asked by a couple of people if I could provide a more complete (stocked) Lemur as I did before. Unfortunately, I won’t be doing that. First, it goes against the concept of being a base distro and makes APEman pointless. Second, the Lemur installer will eventually have the option to install those extra bits during installation of Lemur (which would be the same as me providing a more complete Lemur.). I’m working on the second Alpha release of Lemur 3.0 and it will be more polished and fine tuned. APEman will be updated properly as well.

In other news, I’ve been asked about the Xfce Lemur. It used to be the main desktop in Lemur and some are wanting it to make a comeback as well. Honestly, I’m on the fence with this one. If I did another desktop, I would lean towards a Budgie Lemur. However, Budgie in Debian Stable is old and I would probably end up having to build it from source (which is not a problem…just more work.) or I could pull it from Debian Testing (and deal with dependency issues I’m sure). I started a poll in the forums to get feedback on this. Feel free to vote!

The next release shouldn’t take too long…stay tuned!

It’s hard to believe that Liquid Lemur is over 10 years old! I originally started it back in 2007 (It officially became known as Liquid Lemur in 2009). It started out as Palemoon Linux and later became Liquid OS. I was never happy with those names and those distros were more experimental than anything else. My focus at the time was on DreamStep (built for the Dreamlinux community). When I left the Dreamlinux team and set out to build my own distro I had to come up with a new name (read the About page for more details) — Liquid Lemur was born!

Just as Lemur was working its way up the list on Distrowatch, I had some family issues that caused me to leave the project and hand it off to the other developers/people helping me. It was shortly after that Liquid Lemur faded into the lost distro sunset. I attempted to bring Lemur back a time or two, but my heart wasn’t in it. Last fall I was cleaning up some old hard drives and found a bunch of Lemur stuff on one of those hard drives. The Lemur bug bit me again and here we are — beginning again.

I’ve been working on Lemur for several months now. It has been a slow process, but the new release is very close to being ready. The old Lemur build scripts I wrote do not work with Debian 9 (Stretch). So, for now I’ve been building things by hand. I am working on a “Build-a-Lemur” app that will build a Lemur ISO at the click of a button. Hopefully, I can use that for the next release. It would greatly speed up the build process of Lemur.

I’ve made some drastic changes to Lemur this time around. The biggest change being Lemur going back to its roots of being a “base” distro for users to build on. The custom Lemur app, APEman, makes this all possible. I’m also keeping my focus on a Window Maker Lemur. Xfce is not on my list at the moment. To be honest, the Morpher and Themer apps I created for Window Maker make the Xfce Lemur kind of pointless. I know we had several variations of Lemur (Xfce, Window Maker, KDE, Openbox, etc.) back in the day, but I’m back to being a one-man dev team and I don’t have the time for more Lemur variations. This could possibly change in the future.

Currently, I use the new Lemur as my main OS. I’m running the Hybrid-Lite Morph (seen in the image above and yes that is Window Maker.). I have Solus on another drive as back up for when I mess up Lemur. 😀 I’ve always liked Ikey’s work and appreciate all the help he gave me back in the beginning! Although his selfie pics don’t show it (hehe), he does have a kind heart. 😀

So, here we go again…