How much of desktop-recommends-amd64 can be passed to desktop-amd64 to get just a minimal Unity experience? I mean without games, libreoffice, some fonts, cheese, evince, gedit, shotwell, transmission, thunderbird, totem, rhythmbox, ubuntu-software, etc. All these apps can be installed later on.
Khurshid,
Could you paste a link for the correct mini.iso I need to download.
That’s what I did. I modified ubuntu-meta instead of gnome-meta. But neither of them have unity listed and also the order is important. I added those in desktop-amd64. But that’s just amd64, We still need to test this for i386 and s390x. The branch i talked about is in wip.
Yes.
You can find it here:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/artful/
But it’s only available for releases. Also you need an Ethernet. So if you wana give a try, first install it, create a user, then change it to bionic, install ubuntu-standard, then you can start installing packages one by one mentioned in desktop-amd64 and desktop-recommends-amd64. If unity starts after that then we can assume those packages are correct. The difference will be few gnome related packages which comes with default iso.
After that we can concentrate on ubiquity and unity branding. But all these requires only if Unity becomes official flavor. Atm, default.iso+cubic is probably most simple method to create our iso.
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Yes you can filter those (or any apps) out. But rest of the packages (gnome-keyring, policykit-desktop-privileges etc) are required for even minimal Unity.
Do you know how to create a meta package? If so, can you tell how?
You’ve asked a question about suspend on lid closing. I don’t find any problems in having the laptop suspending and waking up clearly after in both your ubuntu-unity and my Bionic Unity install (https://community.ubuntu.com/t/unity-7-continuation-call-for-developers-and-supporters/736/123). It just goes to sleep and wakes up.
That was Khurshid who asked that question.
There is no ubuntu-standard in the install list. There is Basic -ubuntu-server? but all the rest are Mate , Budgie … etc…
edit: Chose Basic-ubuntu-server for now.
edit: ubuntu-standard gets installed automagically after /sources/list change to bionic, apt-get update apt-get dist-upgrade.
Have to start over with different machine.
If the mini.iso already have ubuntu-standard installed, then you only need to upgrade it.
Normally you can do that with a simple debain/control where package a depends on package b. But Ubuntu uses germinate to do that. It simplifies the entire process from generating meta packages to auto-build live iso with all necessary packages.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Germinate
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SeedManagement
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/Seeds
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/wily/man1/germinate-update-metapackage.1.html
No. It installs ubuntu-standard after you change the sources list and sudo apt-get update, sudo apt-get dist-upgrade.
Thanks!
I’ll read the links to try to get the hang of it.
We have to use terminal with mini-iso. That was not made clear … but I had done this before during 12.04 dev … so I am in progress install those packages. Very tedious at the terminal 
As you are good at coding, once you do all the steps in the terminal, you could make a bash script to get the work done in one shot.
I manually entered the files Khurshid had proposed into terminal on mini.iso and we got a good-to-go unity desktop on bionic. I left some of the files like libre. totem, thunderbird, simple scan … etc… and it it working just swell from start to stop,
The network indicator is not working etc… small stuff like that. So we are very close to meta_package. Typing from this new install…
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Good work!
Mini iso works only in MBR, so you may have to try the server iso too just to check how things are. Actually the live/install part is out of the squashfs-root section. This part, you can get off the normal iso.
I have created ubuntu-unity-meta source here: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-unity-meta
Source code (git): https://code.launchpad.net/~unity7maintainers/ubuntu-unity-meta/+git/ubuntu-unity-meta
PPA (Binary): https://code.launchpad.net/~unity7maintainers/+recipe/ubuntu-unity-meta-daily
After adding ppa, you can simply install unity desktop with sudo apt-get install ubuntu-unity-desktop. The version number is same as ubuntu-desktop. Later, I will write a small wiki how to contribute with launchpad git. For the time being you can look at https://help.launchpad.net/Code/Git.
Note: If you look at update.cfg in the source code, seed_base url points to bzr+ssh://bazaar.launchpad.net/~unity7maintainers/ubuntu-seeds/ which obviously doesn’t exist at the moment.
Also we may later moved unity development (if started) to github as @3v1n0 pointed out in other thread but, for now I prefer Launchpad.
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Hmm…Could it be the issue with kernel or ethernet? Does wifi work? Or may be we are missing something else…What does log say?
First, I am glad that finally a meta-package had arrived as a ppa. Now, you, Dale, Trevino, Will and others can get together there to discuss matters. I like the idea of github too.
Maybe this link should also be shown here, https://code.launchpad.net/~unity7maintainers/+archive/ubuntu/unity7-desktop as it is usually hard to find where the ppa is in Launchpad. Maybe, the heading should changed from "Unity 7 Testing “Ubuntu-Unity-18.04” or "“Ubuntu-Unity-18.04-Testing” so it would clearly tell people,what they are getting. Also, when you are making the wiki, don’t put in the standard line “this unstable ppa…” People, who try it would be those, who are not afraid to try.
I did not install all the files. Just the ones that would get it up and running so perhaps there is something there. haven’t tested it on wireless or lappy. I’ll check on it later.