Phoenix CE - Revised Base available DEVELOPMENT STARTED

[ttuuxxx]

Hi All, glad to see this thread has had so many additions. A text editior is more of a development tool than something a "linux newb" would require on a day to day basis, for that reason I think a desktop icon would distract rather than be useful to a normal day to day user.

Sorry I already was uploading when you typed this:) The icons/themes can all be changed/removed at anytime, usually the last thing to do is tidy the desktop look and feel. Plus if we use ezpup it will change/kill all the default desktop icons anyways, I would like a ezpup without the icons, or any other programs, a barebones version, including the higher taskbar, icons for menu items, and maybe 1 icewm theme, if were using icewm, because it would be nice if we went and found all new themes for this release, so it stands out from the rest of the icewm based puppies. Plus the size, Regular ezpup is over 20MB install where icewm is around 1MB and a couple of themes would bloat it to 3-5MB.
ttuuxxx

[ecomoney]

not to worry, Im sure it will be sorted out.

Just a word about something I observed with new users. Package names are not familiar with them (its the first time they have tried linux!), so its really helpful to them to put as a label what the package does, rather than what it is called. For example, abiword is labelled "write" and gNumeric labelled "Calc". I think as a rule developer tools should not have an icon on the desktop (I know this isnt going to be popular, but were not developing for developers).

Perhaps Ttuuxxx, just so we know where we are, you would number your "releases", so things arnt overwritten (if there is the server space).

Thanks again for your hard work and starting this off.

[canerigal]

Hi ecomoney

Eric says the server space is no problem......All we have to do is get ttuuxxx to quit using up all the bandwidth. lol

Regards,
Canerigal

[Lobster]

its really helpful to them to put as a label what the package does, rather than what it is called. For example, abiword is labelled "write" and gNumeric labelled "Calc".

Agreed - under Setup, we have "Software package manager"
Add Software would do it

Which is the menu descriptions file?
A modified one can be added here - anyone up for that?
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/TalkingStickCodeSnippets

[ecomoney]

I have started a new thread to address the useability issues of the standard puppy menu here.

[BarryK]

Hi guys,
regarding Glipper becoming a Python app, there is another GTK2 clipboard manager that has gone the other way, from a Python app to a C app. I can't recall it's name though, but I found it at www.gnomefiles.org. It doesn't need Gnome, just GTK.

[SirDuncan]

http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwesl/egw/jones/differences.htm

You know, back when I was learning to spell I spelled all the things in the "-dg vs. -dge" box the British way (and I still find myself spelling them that way sometimes). My teachers yelled at me and told me I was spelling it all wrong. Turns out I was just spelling for teachers on the wrong side of the pond.

As for Phoenix, I am downloading the ISO now. Hopefully I will have enough time to give it a good testing.

[ecomoney]

English is so many languages, is almost like BASIC lol

SirDuncan, would be very interested to hear about your views on Phoenix so far in this very early stage.

[SirDuncan]

Well, I burned the CD and booted it in my desktop. I just gave it a brief test, because I really should be studying for my calc midterm, but I just couldn't resist.

Skipstone seems like a nice little browser. I didn't give it any real stress testing, but it displayed all the pages I went to correctly (I should probably have gone to a site with some complicated scripting, but I didn't think of it). Are there any glaring problems with Skipstone that prevent us from just tossing Seamonkey? Many people will replace Seamonkey anyway, so if Skipstone doesn't have any major issues I think we might just want to stick with it.

Why is Qiv the default image viewer instead of GQview? GQview has no issues with any format that I know of and it's already installed, so why not use it?

I noticed that Abiword has a working spell checker. That is definitely a good move. It's a bit of a pain to get your term paper written and realize that you need to upload you doc to Google Docs in order to check the spelling. Yes, I could install the spell checker myself, but that's me, not the computer illiterate grandmother. Besides, most people just expect the spell checker to be there.

I didn't have any issues with Geany, but I didn't really do very much with it. I do have a programming project to do over the weekend, so maybe I will get a Phoenix install on my flash drive and write the program in it. That should be a good test.

The only real gripe I have right now is that the menu structure is largely the same as 2.14R. I (and probably many others) have gotten used to having "Setup" towards the top and "Multimedia" towards the bottom, etc. That's not a big deal, but something to think about.

I need to head to class, so I will post more when I get more testing done. SO far it seems like a good job.

[ecomoney]

Thanks for testing SirDuncan, Skipstone uses the "headers" from seamonkey (or firefox I believe also), so on of these must be installed first (correct me if Im wrong). Seamonkey also has a mail reader, address book and composer. Skipstone was chosen becuase it just uses the web browser part of seamonkey and is *very* fast to load (even though I think the UI could do with some improvement).

With regards the menu structure, its already been earmarked for improvement, based upon Richard.a 's work with 2.10r . You can read the thread here

[floborg]

I put a setvol command in my rc.local file and it doesn't seem to be applied when the system starts. setvol is present and will work from the console.

[ttuuxxx]

I tried to add icewm a few different ways and nothing, I even tried to reinstall rox, and that really messed it up. If we keep 2.14r as the base I don't think any of the end users will be able to change the window managers, which would be a shame. Maybe the the author of 2.14r could revert back to the original layout?
ttuuxxx