2.15CE - My Gripes

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iscraigh
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Joined: Sun 03 Sep 2006, 05:50

#41 Post by iscraigh »

Oops one more.

I have had no success with wireless drivers for my Dell laptop (after installing bcm43firmware.pet). I have always had to use ndiswrapper which continues to work fine....but....It does not save the setting so I have to reload or modprobe ndiswrapper after every bootup. This was not the case in 2.14; it just worked after initial install.


Craig

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Springer
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Location: Austin, TX

#42 Post by Springer »

Three things:

1) Another one of those "irritating pissant things at boot"...

My current Puppy test box has 2.15 Office Beta 1 installed on the HD, and I'm testing 2.15 Std RC1 by booting from CD. When I do that, I always get the following message when booting from CD:
Unable to find swap space signature.
Pausing for 60 seconds...
Obviously, this pretty much kills quick booting. The message does not appear when I boot Beta 1 from the HDD. The disk contains an ordinary type 82 Linux swap partition, which is all I've ever needed for any Linux in the past, so I'm not sure what "signature" it's griping about...

2) Seamonkey themes:

SkyPilot Classic is cheesy and looks like a home hacker built it - definitely not up to Puppy's new professionalism.
The "regular" Modern theme is better than "Venerable Modern", since the latter botches drawing the tabs.
I'm not sure it's worth the trouble to cut the butt-ugly "Classic" theme, but I can't see anyone missing it, and it might save a little bit of space.

Of the SM themes available today for Linux, SeaFox (http://themes.freshmeat.net/projects/seafox) or MostlyCrystal (http://tom-cat.com/mozilla/seamonkey.html) may be the best options. SeaFox doesn't define a tab theme, so sbaguz' otherwise-great "modified H2O-saphire" (sic?) gtk2 theme winds up rendering the tabs as Aqua-like buttons - that's just WRONG!

With H2O-saphire fixed to actually draw real tabs (which probably needs doing anyway), SeaFox could get us by through 2.15, but MostlyCrystal is ready to go out-of-the box today, so it gets my vote. (Whatever we do, it's only for one release, since Barry chose Opera for 2.16 - a good move, until Mozilla Suiterunner ships.)

If we *were* to do our own theme, I love the recently-defunct (no FF2.x) "Crystal Dream" Firefox theme (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1597) - it's clean, clear, small, modern, and professional - just like Puppy!

3) In the just-wondering-about-another-nit dept:

There are two small square artifacts at the lower right of the screen after the WM starts - one of them vanishes when the taskbar is drawn, so it may represent that - the other stays there, but vanishes when clicked on. What are these, and is there a way to "invisify" them in the first place?

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Springer
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#43 Post by Springer »

FWIW, http://www.tom-cat.com/mozilla/seamonke ... hrome.html has a LOT of good info on modifying the look and feel of Seamonkey.

Perhaps a pawprint throbber and the stylized location bar?

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Springer
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#44 Post by Springer »

FWIW, here is the Mostly Crystal theme with the three changes in the userChrome.css file highlighted in the editor window on top in the screenshot (note: tabs are still wrong, but look just a little less like buttons now - at least the aqua button-tabs are gone...):

Not too bad, really.
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WhoDo
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#45 Post by WhoDo »

Springer wrote:3) In the just-wondering-about-another-nit dept:

There are two small square artifacts at the lower right of the screen after the WM starts - one of them vanishes when the taskbar is drawn, so it may represent that - the other stays there, but vanishes when clicked on. What are these, and is there a way to "invisify" them in the first place?
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=16646
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WhoDo
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#46 Post by WhoDo »

Springer wrote:1) Another one of those "irritating pissant things at boot"...

...[snip]...I always get the following message when booting from CD:

Code: Select all

Unable to find swap space signature.
Pausing for 60 seconds...
This is most likely caused by a dirty swap partition or swap file. Boot from the CD, use MUT to make sure the swap partition isn't locked, and then use gparted or cfdisk to reformat the swap partition.
Springer wrote:2) Seamonkey themes:

SkyPilot Classic is cheesy and looks like a home hacker built it - definitely not up to Puppy's new professionalism.
The "regular" Modern theme is better than "Venerable Modern", since the latter botches drawing the tabs.
I'm not sure it's worth the trouble to cut the butt-ugly "Classic" theme, but I can't see anyone missing it, and it might save a little bit of space.
I'm not that worried about the poorly drawn tabs. The consistency of look and feel is more important to me for first impressions of Puppy 2.15CE. That said, I will look at other theme choices suggested before releasing Final.
Springer wrote:Of the SM themes available today for Linux, SeaFox (http://themes.freshmeat.net/projects/seafox) or MostlyCrystal (http://tom-cat.com/mozilla/seamonkey.html) may be the best options. SeaFox doesn't define a tab theme, so sbaguz' otherwise-great "modified H2O-saphire" (sic?) gtk2 theme winds up rendering the tabs as Aqua-like buttons - that's just WRONG!

With H2O-saphire fixed to actually draw real tabs (which probably needs doing anyway), SeaFox could get us by through 2.15, but MostlyCrystal is ready to go out-of-the box today, so it gets my vote. (Whatever we do, it's only for one release, since Barry chose Opera for 2.16 - a good move, until Mozilla Suiterunner ships.)
Yes, it's only for one release, but where did you get the news that Barry was going with Opera for 2.16? We deliberately went back to Seamonkey because he advised he would be using that in 2.16 and we wanted to maintain compatability.
Springer wrote:If we *were* to do our own theme, I love the recently-defunct (no FF2.x) "Crystal Dream" Firefox theme (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1597) - it's clean, clear, small, modern, and professional - just like Puppy!
I would be happy to consider any theme for inclusion, if it was well put together. Maybe that's a contribution you might consider making, given your obvious familiarity with the underlying css?
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Pizzasgood
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#47 Post by Pizzasgood »

The pre-alpha expirimental iso Barry uploaded to show off the new cpio archive initrd.gz uses Opera. My guess is that it's just for fun though.

As for the other box on the screen, the one that disappears, it has to do with screen widgets. I can't think of the name of the package, but it's the one that lets you have stuff like wmpower or the fishes on the bottom right. I have no idea of it can be made to go away automatically (without disabling it, that is).
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iscraigh
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#48 Post by iscraigh »

Another oddity

dougals enhanced remaster closes after the initial box and does not run. I downloaded the one off the forums that supports ntfs and it worked like a charm.


Craig

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Springer
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#49 Post by Springer »

Here's a small, but high-impact issue in RC2: When using the Puppy Universal Installer to install to hard disk, it's very difficult to know what to do, unless you've used it before in another Puppy version.

The Puppy Icon that used to be the actuator button for the installer is MIA, so all you see is a small grayed-out oval that's the degenerate border for the missing icon. (See screenshot with problem area highlighted.) I'm pretty sure the icon was there in RC1.

Personally, I think this installer dialog box is confusing enough anyway with all its (in most cases) superfluous superfloppy info, but this bug would certainly flummox anyone running the installer for the first time...[/img]
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WhoDo
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#50 Post by WhoDo »

Springer wrote:The Puppy Icon that used to be the actuator button for the installer is MIA, so all you see is a small grayed-out oval that's the degenerate border for the missing icon. (See screenshot with problem area highlighted.) I'm pretty sure the icon was there in RC1.
Yep, mini-dog.xpm went missing in RC2 ... probably taking a turn around the territory or something ... but he's definitely back in RC3.

Cheers
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