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jefflunt / glint-box

(retired) This was fun - but seriously, try Lakka instead (http://www.lakka.tv/)
MIT License
21 stars 5 forks source link

The installer destroys the entire home directory. #53

Closed caiwan closed 11 years ago

caiwan commented 11 years ago

After runing the script, it cleans out EVERYTING from my home direcory, maing the OS messed up. If it is the normal behaviour of the installer script there is no warn or anything in the readme, that I sould make a backup from my SD image, or not to run the script.

jefflunt commented 11 years ago

Sorry about that @caiwan - I added what I hope is a clarifying statement to the README on step 3 of this section.

I hope that helps people in the future.

caiwan commented 11 years ago

Thanks, but I think you should make - at least with an alternative installer script - keep the home folder intact. I couldn't figure out where destroys the home folder, but for example you should use /tmp folder, for temporary files intead of home folder, and you should keep the log files intact either. (... and I have lost so many important stuff there:( ) Think for who don't want to make a NES console from their RPI or anyting like that.

jefflunt commented 11 years ago

One of the explicit goals of this project is to provide a dedicated box for emulation. You're correct in the sense that glint should think about existing within the broader RPi and Linux community, but to be honest, right now I'm not going to address that during the beta, and maybe not ever.

I think the suggestions around the tmp folder and being a lot more careful about what to delete are great ones, but at the same time the install script strips out a ton of packages for the purposes of performance and disk space, which from glint's perspective is the top priority, albeit an admittedly selfish one.

The goal, really, is to use this project to turn an RPi into a console-like experience, like the NES. I might be out of touch with users on this, but I'll say that one assumption of the project is that users of glint will dedicate an SD card to it, keeping personal stuff on their own SD card/OS install. Clearly you got caught unaware by that assumption, and for that I am sorry - I'm not out trying to delete anyone's files on purpose.

glint has goals that go well beyond its current state, and doing anything other than having an SD card dedicated to it is going to be very potentially harmful to any other data and software installed on the system, including packages that one might install that will get removed without warning.

I think that glint's stance, which is that it assumes that it's the only thing on the disk image, is directly tied to the idea that SD cards are relatively cheap to acquire, and as such, a RPI can be as many things to a person as the number of SD cards they have sitting around. Usually such a hardliner, not caring about other uses/apps standpoint would be way unreasonable because it violates the concept that the owner of the computer should dictate what it's used for, and no one else. However, I'm using the RPi specifically because the price and flexibility, and the fact that you don't need a hard drive to use it, means it's way more flexible than really anything else I've seen.

This stance is also tied to the history of super-dedicated emulation users in the community who, like myself, have often built dedicated systems for emulation purposes for years, at great cost. I feel that the RPi is the perfect, low-cost solution to broaden the emulation hobby community to people who either lack the technical knowledge or don't wish to spend the money on dedicated PCs. Again, I completely acknowledge that this is a selfish and perhaps even self-centered view of glint's position within the emulation community, but it's the approach I've decided to take in order to make glint accessible, first and foremost, to people who aren't your typical members of the emulation community. The goal is to provide pre-built, downloadable OS images (and perhaps eventually, pre-flashed SD cards) to people who just want to experience the hobby of emulation without needing the technical knowledge and cost that usually go along with it. In order to deliver a project of that nature, I believe, it's important to treat it more like a consumer product than an installable software package that's part of a larger ecosystem of Linux software. The difference between a pure consumer product and glint, however, are twofold. First, we're 100% open source and encourage the brave souls who want to put it on their RPi by hand (via the install script), and perhaps contribute to its features through hacking on the project themselves, do so at their own risk and very possible frustration. Second, while pre-flashed SD cards might become available in the future at a reasonable price, a 100% free option that requires only time and some small amount of reading will always be available via the downloadable OS images.

caiwan commented 11 years ago

I see, and understand your opinion, but I only wanted to have an emulator, not an entire OS dedicated for it.

jefflunt commented 11 years ago

That's cool, I understand. I think the best solution out there for that situation may be retro-pie. I haven't played with it in a long time, but it's very robust, and I believe that it's less invasive. You can selectively install just the emulators your want.

I would still be careful about installing it on an SD card that had important stuff on it, just from the standpoint that you never know what it's going to do, but it might be the right direction for you.

You could also just install retroarch and libretro-fceu by hand, and then tweak the configuration yourself. That's definitely a non-destructive route to take.