Third look at Ubuntu 17.10: spicing up Artful

For this look at the latest daily build of Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) I've not only respun the ISO with the latest kernel and wifi/bt drivers together with some additional useful packages but I've also added the Cinnamon desktop.

The result is rather nice.

Canonical may be concerned about people's reaction to their decision that Ubuntu 17.10 will drop Unity and use GNOME 3.0 for the default desktop as they recently ran a poll to collect data on usefulness of some GNOME Shell extensions including 'Dash to Dock'. They have just published the results from the 18,330 responses (https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/06/12/ubuntu-desktop-gnome-extensions-poll-results) which show an overwhelming interest for 'Dash to Dock'.


They suggest "Perhaps we work with upstream GNOME to provide a setting we could override which shows the dash outside of just the activities view".

• Based on the Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) Daily Build from 19th June
• Upgraded with the latest Ubuntu mainline v4.12-rc6 kernel
• Includes the packages ssh, openssh-server, inxi and Google Chrome
• Includes the RTL8723BS and Broadcom wifi/bt firmware
• Includes the ALSA UCM files
• Configured with Cinnamon 3.4 desktop
• Has a persistence partition of 200MB
• Uses the rEFInd boot manager (with GRUB for 32-bit BIOS devices)

1. Fetch the Ubuntu 17.04 ISO
2. Respin the Ubuntu 17.04 ISO with Cinnamon
3. Extract the file system from the ISO
4. Capture all the packages that were installed in the ISO
5. Identify which packages in the Cinnamon repository were actually installed in the ISO
6. Download those installed Cinnamon packages
7. Fetch the Artful ISO
8. Derive the package dependencies required by the Cinnamon packages in Artful
9. Prepare a configuration file to boot a Cinnamon session
10. Download the Google Chrome package

Using the following commands:

wget http://releases.ubuntu.com/17.04/ubuntu-17.04-desktop-amd64.iso
isorespin.sh -i ubuntu-17.04-desktop-amd64.iso -r "ppa:embrosyn/cinnamon" -p cinnamon -p blueberry
mv linuxium-ubuntu-17.04-desktop-amd64.iso cinnamon-linuxium-ubuntu-17.04-desktop-amd64.iso
mv isorespin.log cinnamon-17.04-isorespin.log
sudo mount cinnamon-linuxium-ubuntu-17.04-desktop-amd64.iso /mnt
sudo unsquashfs /mnt/casper/filesystem.squashfs
sudo umount /mnt
mv squashfs-root cinnamon-17.04-squashfs-root
sudo chroot cinnamon-17.04-squashfs-root dpkg -l > all-packages-in-cinnamon-17.04.txt
for PACKAGE in $(grep Package  cinnamon-17.04-squashfs-root/var/lib/apt/lists/ppa.launchpad.net_embrosyn_cinnamon_ubuntu_dists_zesty_main_binary-amd64_Packages | sed 's/^Package: //'); do echo "'ii  ${PACKAGE}'"; grep "ii  ${PACKAGE}" all-packages-in-cinnamon-17.04.txt; done  | grep -v "'" | sed 's/^ii  //' | sed 's/ .*//' | sed 's/:amd64$//'> cinnamon-packages-in-cinnamon-17.04.txt
isorespin.sh -i ubuntu-17.04-desktop-amd64.iso -r "ppa:embrosyn/cinnamon" -d $(cat cinnamon-packages-in-cinnamon-17.04.txt) -o /usr/src
rm linuxium-ubuntu-17.04-desktop-amd64.iso
rm isorespin.log
sudo rm -rf isorespin/usr/src/linux-headers-4.10.0-19/ isorespin/usr/src/linux-headers-4.10.0-19-generic/
mv isorespin cinnamon-packages-isorespin
wget http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/artful-desktop-amd64.iso -O artful-desktop-amd64.iso
isorespin.sh -i artful-desktop-amd64.iso -f cinnamon-packages-isorespin/usr/src -c "mv /usr/local/bin/src/*.deb /var/cache/apt/archives" -c "rm -rf /usr/local/bin/src" -c "apt-get install -y /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb" -c "rm -f /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb"
rm -f linuxium-artful-desktop-amd64.iso
mv isorespin.log cinnamon-package-dependencies-for-artful-isorespin.log
sed -z 's/or\n/or /g' cinnamon-package-dependencies-for-artful-isorespin.log | tr -s '' | grep 'Depends: ' | sed 's/.*Depends: //' | sed 's/ but it is not installable//g' | sed 's/(.*)//' | sed 's/.*or \([^ ]*\) or.*/\1/' | xargs > cinnamon-package-dependencies-for-artful.txt
sed 's/ubuntu/cinnamon/' cinnamon-17.04-squashfs-root/usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-ubuntu.conf > 50-ubuntu.conf 
wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb 
As I had already copied the other required local package and script files into the directory I then respun the Artful ISO using the command above creating the following (abridged for readability) log file:
Script '/usr/local/bin/isorespin.sh' called with '-i artful-desktop-amd64.iso -u -p wmctrl bluez-tools gnome-icon-theme-symbolic gir1.2-keybinder-3.0 gir1.2-javascriptcoregtk-3.0 gksu python-imaging python-gi-cairo python-pexpect st
reamer gnome-panel gnome-icon-theme gnome-icon-theme-symbolic inxi gist -p ssh openssh-server inxi -l google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb -l rtl8723bt_4.12.0_amd64.deb -f cinnamon-packages-isorespin/usr/src -f 50-ubuntu.conf -f l
inuxium-install-UCM-files.sh -f wrapper-linuxium-install-UCM-files.sh -f linuxium-install-broadcom-drivers.sh -f wrapper-linuxium-install-broadcom-drivers.sh -c mv /usr/local/bin/src/*.deb /var/cache/apt/archives -c rm -rf /usr/loca
l/bin/src -c apt-get install -y /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb -c rm -f /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb -c mv /usr/local/bin/50-ubuntu.conf /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d -c wrapper-linuxium-install-UCM-files.sh -c wrapper-linuxium-
install-broadcom-drivers.sh -c sed -i 's?/usr/share/themes/Adwaita/backgrounds/adwaita-timed.xml?/usr/share/backgrounds/warty-final-ubuntu.png?' /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/org.cinnamon.desktop.background.gschema.xml -c glib-compile
-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas -s 200MB' ...
Work directory 'isorespin' used ...
ISO '/usr/src/development/linuxium/isorespin/test/v7.1.0/artful-desktop-amd64.iso' respun ...
Bootmanager 'rEFInd' added ...
Kernel updated with mainline kernel version '4.12.0-041200rc6-generic' ...
Package 'wmctrl' added ...
...
Package 'gist' added ...
Package 'ssh openssh-server inxi' added ...
Local package '/usr/src/development/linuxium/isorespin/test/v7.1.0/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb' added ...
Local package '/usr/src/development/linuxium/isorespin/test/v7.1.0/rtl8723bt_4.12.0_amd64.deb' added ...
Directory '/usr/src/development/linuxium/isorespin/test/v7.1.0/cinnamon-packages-isorespin/usr/src' added ...
File '/usr/src/development/linuxium/isorespin/test/v7.1.0/50-ubuntu.conf' added ...
File '/usr/src/development/linuxium/isorespin/test/v7.1.0/linuxium-install-UCM-files.sh' added ...
File '/usr/src/development/linuxium/isorespin/test/v7.1.0/wrapper-linuxium-install-UCM-files.sh' added ...
File '/usr/src/development/linuxium/isorespin/test/v7.1.0/linuxium-install-broadcom-drivers.sh' added ...
File '/usr/src/development/linuxium/isorespin/test/v7.1.0/wrapper-linuxium-install-broadcom-drivers.sh' added ...
Command run ...
# mv /usr/local/bin/src/*.deb /var/cache/apt/archives
# rm -rf /usr/local/bin/src
# apt-get install -y /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb
Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
The following additional packages will be installed:
  build-essential dpkg-dev fakeroot g++ g++-6 gcc gcc-6 gir1.2-gkbd-3.0
...
  python-pam python-pyinotify python-setproctitle python3-setproctitle
Suggested packages:
  cinnamon-screensaver-x-plugin cinnamon-screensaver-webkit-plugin
...
  python-pam-dbg python-pyinotify-doc
Recommended packages:
  cinnamon-bluetooth