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Blacklight OS

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Blacklight OS

Kernel: Linux
Includes: GNU Core Utilities, Musl C Library, Polkit

Cool Features: Features a troubleshooter, powered by Blacklight AI

Installation (inspired by openSUSE)

Basic Installation

Installation Format

  • [ ] Wipe system
  • [ ] Manually Configure Partitions

Choose Preset

  • [ ] I'm a soccer mom who wants to watch YouTube
  • [ ] I'm a gamer who wants the system set for gaming with a performant kernel
  • [ ] I'm a system administrator
  • [ ] I'm an engineer
  • [ ] Advanced installation (Also I'm a control freak)

Advanced Installation

Optional Choices

  • [ ] Replace GNU Core Utilities with Toybox? (Blacklight OS uses GNU Core Utilities out of respect for the GNU Project)
    • [ ] Use Busybox instead of Toybox? (If you prefer it for some reason)
  • [ ] Include Musl C Library? (With Musl C Library, you can reduce the size of downloaded files by sharing libraries)
  • [ ] Exclude Flatpak from installation? (Flatpak is an application store framework, for easily distributing applications without restrictions from specific Linux operating systems. Blacklight OS enables the Flathub repository by default)
  • [ ] Use a different kernel? (Blacklight OS uses a kernel with proprietary modules removed, called the Linux-libre kernel)
    • [ ] Zen Kernel (Optimized Kernel patched for gaming)
    • [ ] Mainline Kernel (Complete with all features)
    • [ ] Xanmod Kernel (Kernel patched by Garuda Linux team)
    • [ ] Realtime Kernel (With PREEMPT_RT patch)

Additional Components

Compatibility

  • [ ] Enable support for X? (old applications may utilize the X windowing system)
  • [ ] Enable support for GNU C Library? (Some 3rd party software may require GNU C Library to load)
  • [ ] Enable support for systemd? (Some applications have systemd as a hard dependency, so if you don't use it as your background service manager, Blacklight OS will package it as a separate environment)

Proprietary / Legally Grey

  • [ ] Include support for proprietary multimedia codecs? (This includes codecs from MPEG-4 like H.264, H.265 and containers like MP4, AAC, etc.)
    • [ ] Use GStreamer instead of FFmpeg? (GStreamer is a complete framework for media processing, while FFmpeg is a library that handles encoding, decoding and conversion of media)

Interface

  • Choose your desktop environment:
    • [ ] Blacklight OS 13
    • [ ] KDE Plasma 6
    • [ ] GNOME 45
    • [ ] Headless Installation (Choose this if you would like to install a custom compositor)

You can install these additional components later from settings.

Choose Default Application Packs

(Pre-select what's already chosen by presets)

  • [ ] Gaming Mode (Wine, Lutris, Steam)
  • [ ] Multimedia Editor (Audacity, GNOME Pitivi, KDE Kdenlive, Handbrake, Openshot)
  • [ ] Creative Mode (Ardour, LMMS, ZRhythm, Krita, Blender)
  • [ ] Common Utilities (7-Zip CLI, 7-Zip GUI, GNU Gzip, TAR Archiver)
  • [ ] Fancy Programs (xPlorer File Manager)

Additional System Changes

Troubleshooter Warning Example

Warning

Read this warning carefully to understand.

This program is trying to install itself to /usr/bin. This is expecting a standard Linux style filesystem layout, or the FHS.

Blacklight OS does not use this system layout. Programs are installed to /Programs and Libraries are installed to /Libraries.

To install this package properly please modify the references to those directories accordingly. It won't be hard usually.

For convenience, Blacklight OS can also attempt to automatically do that task for you.

- [ ] Attempt to automatically reconfigure the path declarations? (A backup of affected files will be placed in an archive called backup-<Current Date>.zip in the current folder)

> Open this to see the list of affected path declarations, and what you should replace them with.

NOTE:
Blacklight OS will not let you install packages in this manner via this package manager (unless you hack it). You are however free to manually copy the files into the aforementioned directories, in which case you will have to deal with getting the libraries right.

Blacklight OS recommends that you just build such packages only locally, if you can't set the paths correctly.

GNU Automake Installations (see above warning too)

Warning

This Makefile makes use of the /usr/lib directories. But Blacklight OS stores libraries in /Libraries. Do you want to edit the paths in the Makefile?

Without setting proper paths in the Makefile, the libraries cannot be loaded.

Anyways, the idea is that the system should never let a user install in such a way that the package breaks the system. There's no problem in installing to the unused /usr directory itself.

  • [ ] Suppress warnings for these issues (may break the system)
  • [ ] Attempt to automatically configure paths

Wizards

Package Manager Templates

  • Allows setting flags by their complete description rather than as hyphenated flags
  • Declares dependencies in a readable fashion (with their custom name)

Blacklight OS Desktop

  • The App Launcher lists applications by their customized name (Web Browser for Mozilla Firefox)
  • But the "All Programs" view lists it by it's name
  • If using Dash View (rather than the Menu View), make the choice toggleable.
  • The compositor has Frutiger Aero style effects and animations
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