TSClient LEGACY GNU/Linux

TSClient LEGACY is a GNU/Linux distribution with emphasis on efficient, dependency-based package installation.

Goals

• Allow for minimal installations
• Binary packages shall be as atomic as possible while not splitting packages that always need to be installed as group
• System upgrades are regular package upgrades — this makes system upgrades seemless and efficient
• Pure dependency-based installation ("runtime systems") — this allows for bootstrapping and updating an entire system by just installing a single package
• Packages conflict if and only if they have a file in common (though directories might be shared)
• Building packages and the package manager are decoupled (i.e. the package manager does not know how to build a package)
• Make creating and distributing site-local packages easy
• The simplest repository type must be really simple
• The "installation problem" is NP complete - solve it by creating package versions that yield easy scenarios
• Rebuilds that require reinstallation of packages shall usually trigger new versions (s.t. no reinstall is required)
• Treat the distribution as a single entity — this allows for packages to interact, and to perform transformations on the entire distribution (like moving a specific class of file that every package has into a auto-generated new package for each source package)
• All parameters of a package shall carry a timestamp of last change, and of the last time an entity (e.g. a part of the build system, or an external user) concluded that the current value is still valid — this allows for "questioning" automatically if e.g. build instructions might be outdated
• Packaging software should be simple, and as many dependencies between packages as possible should be identified automatically
• Stay close to upstream versions
• Rolling releases, but allow for "strict snapshots" of a state by installing a specific meta-package

Downloads

• Live boot image (BIOS/UEFI bootable; can be used in a (virtual) DVD-drive or block-copied to a USB-drive or other disk)
• Live boot image with repository (includes the latest package repository to enable simple installation of TSClient LEGACY)
• Binary package repository
• Repository signing key
• All downloads

Installation instructions

This section must still be written, but here is the process in a nutshell:

Download the livecd and repo (or the iso with embedded repo), boot from it, format a disk, create a package manager config, install desired packages (usually simply one of the tsl-* meta-packages, which then pulls more packages in as dependencies), chroot, finish installation, install a bootloader (BIOS grub, UEFI grub, or UEFI stub booting).

The TSClient LEGACY Build System

The distribution's build system, which supports a multi-build-node cluster can be found at https://git.tsclientlegacy.de/tslb.git/ (and https://github.com/erbth/tslb). It uses a PostgreSQL database, Ceph storage, and the following custom components:

• A centralized lock manager: TCLM
• A TCP-based message bus: YAMB
• The distribution's package manager: TPM2

About the name:

It's probably a bad name, but the first intended usecase for the distribution where terminalserver clients, and they should have been small and efficient. This requires to allow for fully functional installations without frameworks like e.g. the Python programming language's runtime, or other "modern" approaches to writing UI software like Electron.js, which can require substantial resources. Therefore, an installation providing a full terminalserver client should use only what some might call "legacy" technology today (even small programs are written in C++ etc.). However note that other software can of course be installed - it should just not be required by the distribution's core.

Contact