In your aerial… and on your hard drive?

Ben Green reports that there is a metapackage available for the forthcoming Bristol Wireless Linux distribution, which is based on Debian’s latest ‘etch‘ version.

The version available for testing, codenamed 0.1.0, can currently only be obtained by people connected to Bristol Wireless network, since it resides on the magico server, which is not accessible to the public. However, those inside the network will be able to try it out by adding the server to their sources.list file and executing the following command:

$apt-get update
$apt-get install bristolwireless

Furthermore, Ben adds that potential testers will need Debian current testing distribution, codenamed ‘etch’ and debian-multimedia.org sources in your sources.list too and that, at the moment, it should just work from a basic etch install with the X11 graphical desktop on it.

As part of the project, Ben has also written a dedicated wiki page on creating a metapackage and Debian repository.

Returning to Ben’s announcement email, it’s obvious he’s put a lot of hard work into this project and now needs the help of others to take the project forward, or as he states: “Please test, test!”

Ultimately, Bristol Wireless hopes to install this, its own Linux distribution, on the refurbished machines it supplies to potential network users and others.