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Overview

Rationale...

 INX is not intended for experts, although experts might enjoy it. The idea is to make a painless introduction to the console/command line. To this end, it is a live CD, since thus no damage can be done to the users' data except by deliberate use for example of "sudo", or perhaps using sshfs.

How it "Works"

 INX uses bash to make menus. That is the underlying strategy. The menus are colourful and require only the selection of numbers or letters, in almost every case.

The scripts are divided thus:

In general each menu has a generic executable script in /usr/local/bin which calls the "main-inx" function in /usr/local/lib/inx/ . The "generic" script adds /usr/local/lib/inx to its PATH.

For example:

#! /bin/bash
PATH="$PATH:/usr/local/lib/inx"
. main-inx
CALL=menu
main-inx


"main-inx" is a kind of "switchboard" that directs flow to whichever menu function is required. This means that all functions are read for each "menu" invocation, which is somewhat inefficient, but ensures that, for example, all menus are able to link with other menus, and be "colour aware"

The colours are sourced from "f-colours" in /usr/local/lib/inx/ .

The choice of /usr/local/ for the INX scripts and functions is deliberate - the system is otherwise entirely Ubuntu 8.04.1 (hardy), and theoretically for example, it would be possible to use a hard-drive install of INX as a basis for a complete Ubuntu system. Using /usr/local/ segregates the "INX Specific" parts, making them both easier to find and less likely to interfere with the Ubuntu system.

(For example by running

"apt-get install xubuntu-desktop" or "apt-get install ubuntu-desktop"

and so on, one could make INX into Ubuntu with a graphical X desktop interface, on a hard drive install)

The scripts and functions are mostly quite simple, partly because that makes them more easily ubderstood by those interested enough to delve into them, but mainly because the principal author is learning as he goes along ;-)

Since the focus so far is on the "Live CD learning sandbox", no great emphasis has been placed on installing to a hard drive, but installs have been made using the Inxtaller

Alternatives include virtual machines like Virtual Box and qemu - bzipped versions are available in the /devel directory on this server.

You can find the latest development snapshots in the
"devel" directory. A better option is to use Bazaar (bzr) with the team at INX on Launchpad

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