[sclug] XKB Questions + Oldest (supported) Debian

[Sebastian Malcolm]

Hi Jason,
I wouldn't run any version of Debian older than current stable version
4.0r3, codenamed *etch* :
http://www.au.debian.org/releases/stable/

There may be people clinging onto using *oldstable*; currently, this is
version 3.1, code name *sarge* but as of last month that's not receiving
official security updates so please don't package anything for an
unsupported version of Debian (unless someone pays you? *grin*)
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Linux#Releases

I have an old Thinkpad with Dapper Drake installed (and some Backports) that
I shall be *reinstalling* to Hardy Heron. For your reference to XKB on older
(but supported) distributions, here is my "ls -l" output for Ubuntu's Dapper
Drake release:

smalcolm at thinkpad:/etc/X11/xkb/rules$ ll
total 813
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     91 Mar 21  2006 README
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  37324 Mar 21  2006 base
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  19727 May 18  2006 base.lst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 749522 May 18  2006 base.xml
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   3246 Mar 21  2006 sgi
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   2341 Mar 21  2006 sun
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      4 Jun 29  2006 xfree86 -> base
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      8 Jun 29  2006 xfree86.lst -> base.lst
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      8 Jun 29  2006 xfree86.xml -> base.xml
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    781 Mar 21  2006 xfree98
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    840 Mar 21  2006 xkb.dtd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      4 Jun 29  2006 xorg -> base
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      8 Jun 29  2006 xorg.lst -> base.lst
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      8 Jun 29  2006 xorg.xml -> base.xml
smalcolm at thinkpad:/etc/X11/xkb/rules$ cat README
This directory lists sets of rules which can be used to obtain an exact XKB
configuration.

Cheers,
 --Sebastian.

P.S. I'm emailing at 4.30am UTC time because I'm safely back in Perth for a
few months (so *hi* to everyone that recall seeing me say *bye* at a SCLUG
meeting a couple of months ago).

2008/5/6 Jason Rivers <jason.rivers at gmail.com>:

> Hi all.
>
> I've written some XKB extensions for APL Characters, and have worked out
> how
> to set this up on Ubuntu, and on Suse, but I have some questions.
>
> I have to edit 3 files:
>
> /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base
> /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst
> /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.xml
>
> however, on Ubuntu linux, the base.xml file is actually a symbolic link to
> /etc/X11/xkb/base.xml
>
> can people just let me know if this is true on other distributions, just a
> post of your Linux distribution / version and the output of an ls -l on
> the
> rules directory would be greatly appreciated. - mainly I need to know
> about
> Debian (which should have downloaded by tomorrow for testing) and RedHat
> aswell, as this is what most of our customers will be using.
>
> also I'm wondering what the oldest supported version of Debian is - or
> what
> people would generally use (on servers aswell as workstations - though
> workstations for the "user" tend to be more up to date) - this is for
> building the DEB packages without running into too many issues on the
> older
> versions.
>
> Jason.
>