What is UCI?

Forum: myDSL Extensions (deprecated)
Topic: What is UCI?
started by: Hall

Posted by Hall on Aug. 21 2005,07:02

Hi, just want to ask..
What is UCI??

Posted by mikshaw on Aug. 21 2005,10:46

They are compressed loopback filesystems (cloop) which hold a self-contained application (self-contained as far as DSL is concerned...another distro may require additional support files). They are mounted rather than installed. This makes them very light on RAM usage since the only thing that is added to the ramdisk is the mountpoint. Double-clicking a uci file in Emelfm will mount and unmount the file.

Posted by davide on Aug. 23 2005,13:38

me too I have a question:
do they work with all dsl installs, i.e. usb install or frugal?
thanx

Posted by mikshaw on Aug. 23 2005,14:00

Yes. There might be issues if you have an old version of DSL, but nothing serious as far as i can tell. DSL has been improving with each minor release, so it's best to stay updated anyway =o)

Posted by Joat_Mone on Aug. 26 2005,23:27

I would like to chime in... If this way is lighter on RAM then the other ways, why have the other DSL's? Why not make everything a UCI and that should let things run on older machines.

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Aug. 27 2005,03:50

Mostly because not everything will run in /opt

Somethings require additional files in other parts of the filesystem, such as XFree86.

We add to the collection of .uci extensions as we find things that will work with the system.

-J.P.

Posted by dougvega on Aug. 27 2005,22:06

so where should i bee saving extentions such as Xfree86? (maybe thats why I can't get it to work properlly)

Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Aug. 27 2005,23:54

It doesn't really matter where you save them, as they automatically extract to their right location when you install them. Save somewhere you can find them, such as /home/dsl, then in emelfm select the file and hit the "mydsl" button - this will extract/"install" to the correct place.

When making a liveCD, if you put them in the root directory they will automatically load on boot. If you create an "optional" directory and put them in there, you will get a list of available mydsl's in your menu, and you can install whichever ones you want by clicking on their menu link.