About
by Stephan EmmerichWhat is BeaFanatIX?
There are a lot of descriptions of BFX out there on the world wide web, which refer to BFX as "Debian built on Knoppix", "BeatrIX reloaded", "... based on Ubuntu, Debian, Knoppix, BeatrIX" etc.
BeaFanatIX started off as a remaster of BeatrIX; i.e. we extracted BeatrIX, changed some stuff and put everything back on the CD. So, it still was BeatrIX, with slightly different applications, new looks and some bugfixes.
Now, with BeaFanatIX 2006.2 (BFX2), things change a lot. What's left of BeatrIX is merely the general idea behind it which we sometimes refer to as the "BeatrIX ideals". Well, that's not totally true; there are some leftovers in the form of scripts - customized, though!
BFX2 really is a customized Ubuntu 5.10 "Breezy Badger"! A very small version of it, though. Although Ubuntu comes as a LiveCD, the way it worked was not satisfying. To be fair, Ubuntu's CDs are not meant to be used as a general purpose LiveCD, but rather to try it, getting the feel of it, and then to install it. But for a LiveCD, the boot sequence is much too long. In order to get a fast bootable CD, we used the techniques from Knoppix. But only a small portion of all the dedicated Knoppix packages got into BFX2 and then got customized to match our needs. Some parts were actually replaced by BFX2 packages.
Since there is a big gap between Warty (BeatrIX/BFX1 used Ubuntu Warty - the first Ubuntu release) and Breezy (the third), we had to find new ways to accomplish several goals. One was to get as close as possible to the "mothership" Breezy. One big problem of BeatrIX was that it easily broke if one installed the wrong package - even from the Warty repository. However, in order to create such a system, customizations are essential and unavoidable. Hence, there is a fair chance that a few packages might cause BFX2 some trouble. It only takes one package replacing a customized script or configuration, and something won't work anymore. That being said, we tried our best to prevent this. Putting (almost) all customizations into .deb packages (I intensionally avoid saying "Debian packages" - just using the debian package system doesn't make the packages Debian compatible!) helps achieving that goal. Dependency checking will simply avoid overwriting/replaceing essential files.
One quick comment on Ubuntu: Ubuntu is a fork from Debian. Considering Debian as the point of reference, the further and faster Ubuntu grows, the bigger the distance and actually incompatibility between them gets as well!
Other repositories
I mentioned once that some Debian Sarge packages work with BFX. Unfortunately, some user mistook that as "Sarge upgradable". This is complete nonsence! BFX2 is only truely compatible to Breezy repositories!
What I meant was, because of Sarge's and Breezy's similar age, packages have similar dependencies to specific package versions. Thus some Debian Sarge packages will work nicely on Breezy as well as BFX2 without having to upgrade a bunch of other packages. For example, I made good experiences with the Sarge packages from the Multimedia Debian Packages site. However, dedicated Breezy packages always have higher priority. If your "favourite application" supports several distributions, the Breezy package is the one you want. A good example for that is the Opera web browser.
As for Sid, Dapper, Edgy, these have completely different package versions and depend on other different versions. You can say, if you update one, you'll have to update all, or at least a lot. That doesn't mean that you won't succeed in using packages of those repos. But expect the unexpected...! Asking if you can install package X from repo Y is useless, since we can't predict what will happen. If you are adventurous, go for it, but don't expect support from us.
Bleeding edge
Why? Seriously, if you want such a system, you're in the wrong place. "Bleeding edge" is the opposite of BFX. What's the difference in using the latest AbiWord with Breezy or with Dapper? What's the difference in using the latest Firefox with Breezy or with Dapper, or even Edgy, or Sid, or Sarge - or SuSE, or Mandrivia, or whatever?
Nevertheless, the BFX2 repository might be considered "bleeding edge" when it comes to software versions. So you can expect to get the latest Firefox and AbiWord from it and maybe others in the future. But don't expect a fully fledged repo! I can't make hundreds of packages and maintain them. For now, the function of the repo is to provide updates/bugfixes, without reinstalling - if possible!
Last modified: Mon 11-Dec-06