So far, I've managed to create a minimal install from RPMs, created a package list from that install, compare it with a package list from my production TinyMe, and I was able to free up over 150MB of space on the hard drive!

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Sometimes in development it feels like you're doing nothing but hitting one roadblock after another. That's what working with TinyMe has felt like for the past few weeks.

The most recent frustration is with the GTK themes. I can only get the Murrine based themes to function, and I can't figure out why– all the proper GTK packages are installed. What's more, I don't have this problem on my main machine. I very stubbornly refuse to release even an alpha if GTK themes don't work.

Ultimately, it's issues like this which leave me throwing my hands up in the air and starting over from scratch.

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I am proud to announce that TinyMe 2009 “Acorn” Alpha 2 has been released! Even though it's called Alpha 2, this is our first Unity-based release and as such will benefit from heavy testing.

This is a rather rough release. Really, the only thing I'm concerned about is hardware compatibility. This does not have a lot of the spit 'n shine you would normally see as a result. You should note these things:

• As Unity does not currently have a 2.6.30 legacy kernel, this release is for Pentium 2 or better computers. Some old AMD K6-based processors may not work. I will have a legacy build of the kernel ready as soon as it's ready upstream at Unity.
• Logging out is done by right-clicking on the desktop.
• Shutting down and rebooting are done from the login screen.

You can expect these improvements in the next release:

• Shutting down, rebooting, and logging out available from the main menu.
• SLiM as login manager instead of GDM.
• We may have a different menu layout. I brought up a discussion where I said I didn't much care for our current menu layout and that I liked the menu layout from PCLinuxOS 0.92 better. As it just so happens, I still have the PCLinuxOS 0.92 LiveCD, and so we should be able to poke around in it.

As you folks may have noticed, the website has a familiar look once again. I had installed Joomla because I wanted a more unified look 'n feel to the website, as well as the ability to merge login information between the various pieces of software. However, Joomla's registration system is very spambot-friendly, and so I ended up locking down registration (for entirely too long). Then I found a patch for Joomla which would add in CAPTCHA. Unfortunately, when I tried to install this patch, all that happened was that registration and logging in ceased working altogether. So I took Joomla down and here we are back with DokuWiki as the CMS. As of this writing, I plan to create an obscure folder deep within the bowels of the TinyMe website, away from the eyes of users, and re-install Joomla there. Its sole purpose in life will be to keep member information synced between all the software.

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