What do you think about Rox?

Puppy related raves and general interest that doesn't fit anywhere else

What do you think about Rox?

I like it!
32
51%
I don't like it!
9
14%
workz for me
13
21%
not mad about it but will tolerate it
7
11%
i dont love it, but i can understand why people would like it
2
3%
 
Total votes: 63

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LazY Puppy
Posts: 1934
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Location: Germany

#21 Post by LazY Puppy »

Voted for 'I Like it!'.

Especially for the RoxApps.

Without the Rox desktop and Rox filer you can't use RoxApps - which is a pretty good feature/base to create self-contained applications.

On my list of preferred favorite applications types, .sfs files is on top.

RoxApps is 2nd in that list!
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RSH

"you only wanted to work your Puppies in German", "you are a separatist in that you want Germany to secede from Europe" (musher0) :lol:

No, but I gave my old drum kit away for free to a music store collecting instruments for refugees! :wink:

starhawk
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#22 Post by starhawk »

learnhow2code wrote:so if you download an iso to the desktop and click on its icon, what happens?
Single-click selects, double-click mounts.

learnhow2code

#23 Post by learnhow2code »

starhawk wrote:Single-click selects, double-click mounts.
if your pup can do that without rox then im not sure how to define puppy. i always started with rox:

light: yes
.pet support: yes of course but thats not difficult
.deb support: in dpup at least
puppy init: probably?

frugal/squashfs: yes, but so does ubuntu and refracta
live-centric: yes
rox: no?
toram: sometimes, but so does debian and refracta

savefile: probably (but remastering is becoming an alternative for some of us)
various puppy scripts: yes
supported on this forum: yes
uses ____% of some other puppy, or woof-ce: possibly

if puppy was cloned, how would you know its puppy without rox? sorry for taking it ot. perhaps sailor will be kind enough to create another topic :)

musher0
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Location: Gatineau (Qc), Canada

#24 Post by musher0 »

Pete wrote:
musher0 wrote:Well, a "Lisa" used to be the robotic therapist on early Mac 2's. :D
You could ask her anything, and she always had an answer!!!!
Anyone that uses a mac often will certainly be in need of some therapy, robotic or otherwise. :D
LMHO!
musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

starhawk
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#25 Post by starhawk »

learnhow2code wrote:if puppy was cloned, how would you know its puppy without rox?
To answer your question, in your own words --
learnhow2code wrote:light: yes
.pet support: yes of course but thats not difficult
.deb support: in dpup at least
puppy init: probably?

frugal/squashfs: yes, but so does ubuntu and refracta
live-centric: yes
rox: no?
toram: sometimes, but so does debian and refracta

savefile: probably (but remastering is becoming an alternative for some of us)
various puppy scripts: yes
supported on this forum: yes
uses ____% of some other puppy, or woof-ce: possibly
The three things in there which are extraneous are -- forum support, ROX-Filer, and *.deb support. Wary Puppy, and (AFAIK) all versions of Puppy prior to 5.0 (which is to say, all 2.x, 3.x, and 4.x Puppies) have limited support for non-dotPET packages. Heck, 5.x versions of Slacko Puppy get confused by modern (post-12.04 IIRC) *.deb packages! (Whenever Ubuntu switched to XZ compression is when it broke. I have had this happen on older X-Slacko Pups as well.)

There is also one thing you left out -- small ISO size. Note that this is not the same as lightweight! Resource usage and ISO size only very roughly correlate. X-Tahr 1b3 is significantly slower than 'pure' TahrPup 602, because of the added weight of XFCE -- but it's only ~70mb 'heavier' on the ISO. Most slightly older (late 5.x) versions of Puppy can fit on a MiniCD (210 MB) -- and almost all can fit on a standard CD (650/700 MB depending on cost and quality). OTOH, even Mint now requires a DVD -- and it's still considered a light distro! Harrumph.

learnhow2code

#26 Post by learnhow2code »

starhawk wrote:There is also one thing you left out -- small ISO size.
there were always big puppies, at least since puppy 2 or so. it may be a common feature, but its still a pup when its oversized.
OTOH, even Mint now requires a DVD -- and it's still considered a light distro! Harrumph.
i started to have dvds on hand for the following reasons: it was getting rare to find something that wouldnt boot them, it was getting easier to find writable dvds vs cds at stores, and they have the data in the middle, rather than the top.

that said, i dont mind writing 200mb to a dvd. its certainly faster.

musher0
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#27 Post by musher0 »

Can we steer the pony back in the ROX-Filer corral? Thanks.
musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

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bigpup
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#28 Post by bigpup »

"it will do" is why Rox was selected for Puppy in the very beginning.
Also, Puppy was originally designed to be small in size.

Like anything it takes using something to learn how it works.

You can configure it if you take the time to do it.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

learnhow2code

#29 Post by learnhow2code »

out of personal interest, ive looked all over the forum for stuff about rox. ive removed things that were vague or (unintentionally) misleading, ie things that seem like complaints or praise though in context are closer to the opposite. ive also removed anything from the single most vocal critic of rox--

(otherwise it would have an effect of "stuffing the ballot box, although there is no extraordinarily heavy advocacy for or against rox on the
forum.) ive tried avoiding a multiple comments from repeat users for the same reason. nonetheless, this is just a sample:

to avoid easy ad-hom ive removed the names from the quotes.


i had a quote that says "i think rox sux to be honest" and somehow it didnt make the cut, though it wasnt the most vocal critic :)


likes:
i personally like ROX and PCManFM
I'd add "Rox". Once you're used to it, using another file-manager is a pain in the ass.
I love Rox. I use it all the time, doing a lot of programming with RoxApps. They are wonderful.
JWM is as light and fast as it gets. (In Puppy. Because of the Rox desktop setup). I'd give Icewm a good second, with Lxde close behind. Then Openbox. Xfce and E16 next.
Rox is the better File Manager ever created, in my opinion. However i recognize that two panels FM is useful.
ROX is a lot faster than other file managers and has a lot of features for its tiny size

incidental:
I have Rox filer for such work with much more detail given by rox filer
The are draggable and droppable in Rox Filer, in the other file managers not so much.
The puppy installer will use an iso if it is mounted instead of a CD so one could use the universal installer but copying the files with Rox-filer for example is simpler for me.

standard vs. non-standard in puppy:
Not even all Slackos are alike. Which Slacko version -- 5.x or 6.x? which "x"? Does it use Jwm Window Manager & Rox Filemanager; Xfce Window Manager & Thunar File-Manager; Openbox-Lx Window Manager & Pcmanfm File-manager?
Open that ISO with ROX or Thunar (or whatever filemanager)
pupcamera is very rox dependent and uses rox switches that pcmanfm does not support....
[*]Open ROX (or your filemanager)
The XFCE puppies have a distinctively different menu structure and look from a traditional JWM/ROX puppy. The Thunar file manager is also very different from ROX. That's why it's X-. Some of us love it and having used it for a time wouldn't go back for anything. There's always the classic Tahr, Slacko, and Xenial pups for the original flavor, and LXDE based puppies for yet another. Choice is Puppy, Puppy is choice.
A number of recent shots don't look 'puppyish' - as number of modern puplets do follow the rule "the world spreads out way beyond" (c) not only jwm but rox-desktop too.

The power of Puppy is that it can look like big Linux still remaining little, fast and cute Puppy ;-)
The tray icon is part of lxqt-panel. I prefer not to have too much mucking that depends on a particular panel - we already depends too much on Rox.
This is how I've chosen to tackle Puppy's close reliance on rox-filer....these days it should probably be defaultfilemanager in most scripts - but there's a lot to change - and unfortunately the cli switches are not 100% the same for different file managers....

praise for alternatives:
I liked Thunar very much, but Rox filer seems to be the one the developers go with, so I was wondering about refinements in the woof git ce thing..
I think the secret is that it (Lxde) doesn't use Rox. :lol:
I've been using Thunar file manager since having switched over from Puppy (in which I used Rox). Got used to thunar now and like it. Thunar mounts drives OK (rox doesn't) in e17.
Thanks for this. Much better than Rox.
I noticed that some of the file associations were pointing to programs I don't have, like Firefox for opening html files. I change them as I find them..
Is the desktop JWM/rox only? I'm not really a fan (I prefer openbox with a few tools & tint2 - it just looks swell).

points of interest:
I also prefer ROX working the old way - even if it's not so convenient, at least it's less prone to accidental overwrites.
It would be really nice if ROX would revert back to its original behaviour regarding copy/over-write.
With certain files, Rox Filer has a hard time detecting which program must use to open them. The problem seems to be that it checks the type of file not by looking on the file name termination, but on something called "Mime types".

As a result, different kind of files, with different file extensions, can share the same Mime type and therefore Rox will not allow them to open with different programs: if you change the default action for one of them with the "Set run action" option, it will change for both, so one of them will be wrong.

The baseline result is that you cannot open one of those files by simply clicking on them or press enter; it will open with a wrong program and generate a weird error, so you have to select them, press "!" for the execute command, and write the name of the appropriate program time after time. A drag and a continuous source of errors.

Here is a recent way I found to circumvent that problem; for those programs who share the same Mime type, we'll send control to a bash script, which will the one in charge of doing the checking and execute the correct program.
This is largely a proof-of-concept app that addresses the following issue. Suppose you have a batch of files in folder A. You want to copy them to Folder B which contains files with the same names. All file managers will recognize the situation and give you the message "Do you want to over-write this file?". Because you are copying multiple files, there should also be a "Yes to all" option. Unfortunately, this doesn't work properly in ROX, making you answer "Yes" to each file before it is copied.

In some versions of ROX, this problem has been "solved" by removing the "Do you want to over-write this file?" message for ALL file copying. This can lead to dangerous unintended consequences.

The NoWarningCopy tool simply performs the batch copy with no prompting.

step
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#30 Post by step »

I voted "it works for me". I should add "95% of the time". The remaining 5% of the time my usage needs very specific tools, like file/directory comparison, web uploads, packing/unpacking, etc. so I make do with other programs.
I think that 95% usage coverage from such a small and swift program is very good.
I agree with Lazy Puppy that RoxApps are a great feature.
I've been using jun7's modded version of rox (it's on GitHub) for about two months now. It improves usability in many ways, adds some useful new feature, and fixes some legacy bugs. I build it for Fatdog64. If you're a Fatdog64 user, PM me if you're interested -- sorry, I simply have no time to look into other Puppies.
[url=http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=117546]Fatdog64-810[/url]|[url=http://goo.gl/hqZtiB]+Packages[/url]|[url=http://goo.gl/6dbEzT]Kodi[/url]|[url=http://goo.gl/JQC4Vz]gtkmenuplus[/url]

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Pete
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#31 Post by Pete »

@learnhow2code

Nicely researched post.
Taking an average of the quotes you posted, it's pretty much a 50:50 split.
I see the tally so far here is 61% in favour of Rox but it's early days yet.
It won't surprise me at all if it averages out to somewhere between these two figures.

If one takes into account those that "don't mind it", myself included, I reckon it will be closer to 70 or even 75% for.
A surprising figure.

bark_bark_bark
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#32 Post by bark_bark_bark »

A file manager that can't handle simple copy and paste, is simply a terrible file manager.
....

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Packetteer
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#33 Post by Packetteer »

bark_bark_bark
A file manager that can't handle simple copy and paste, is simply a terrible file manager.
I am confused. If you are talking on copying a file or moving a file from one
directory to another I simply left click the file and drag the file to the directory
that I want to copy or move the file to. When I let go of the mouse a dialog
is displayed asking if I want to copy or move the file.

If the file exists another dialog box is displayed asking if I want to over write
the file.

Just tried to right click a file and then "Paste" it into another directory.

Yes I agree with you. That method seems to be broken. Meaning that once I
clicked on copy a dialog box came up that the only way I could paste the file
was for me to change the directory path in the dialog box.
Not a nice way of doing things.

I never tried to copy and paste that way before but the left drag method
I described above is what I have always used and I like that method.

Thank you bark_bark_bark
for getting me to try something I had never tried before.

Best Regards
John

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SFR
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#34 Post by SFR »

RE: Copy/Paste in ROX

I agree it can be a PITA in some circumstances, that's why I wrote this right-click app long ago, to at least partially overcome this limitation.
___________

Ever since I switched to Jun7's fork, which, among other improvements, has ability to forcefully overwrite existing files without confirmation (and IMHO it's implemented in a better fashion than in the latest revision of original ROX - via 'Force' checkbox instead of 'Quiet') I use ROX exclusively.
I am simply much more efficient with it than with any other FM.

Greetings!
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amigo
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#35 Post by amigo »

ROX stands for RISCOS on X. The interface follows a different UI paradigm, where the emphasis is on the users documents and the places where they are stored. The user should drag the desired document/item onto an icon of the program he wants to use the document with or by simply clicking the item which opens the default/configured program with the dragged file loaded.

Under Windows one would instead of open the desired program and then browsing with a file chooser to the place where the item is located. Or, by clicking the item get the same effect as above using ROX.

That said, the two things which would have made the rox interface more palatable to more people are: an expandable tree-based column beside the main display, and a copy/paste from the right-click menu. The thinking under rox is that, you simply open a second window at the desired past location and either copy or move the item depending on whether you left-click-drag or middle-click-drag.

The other big difference between the rox desktop paradigm and other DE's, Window Managers and file managers is that the rox desktop is not a 'location' in the file system. You can't download or move an object *to* the desktop. This is why rox calls it the pinboard instead of the desktop.

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bigpup
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#36 Post by bigpup »

Drag and drop has options.
Ever try using the mouse wheel button?
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The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

musher0
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#37 Post by musher0 »

Hello all.

Never had a problem with ROX-Filer.

If you're used to having multiple panels to do your copy and/or move,
try typing in console:

Code: Select all

rox / ~ /usr/share /mnt
That'll open four ROX windows on your desktop.

From there, you can fine tune the directories, and when the major locations on your
Pup are covered like you want them, you can do all your copy/move activity without
breaking a sweat, just by drag-and-drop.

Really, guys, you're so-o-o-o-o fussy! ;)
musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

learnhow2code

#38 Post by learnhow2code »

musher0 wrote:Really, guys, you're so-o-o-o-o fussy! ;)
gosh, youre right :) im just going to be reasonable and use explorer.exe in wine from now on :P
Pete wrote:@learnhow2code

Nicely researched post.
Taking an average of the quotes you posted, it's pretty much a 50:50 split.
id advise against that-- its a better sample of the diversity of opinion than the proportion.

the thing with windows is, people will (most) often just accept what theyre given. even if they dont like it, they will get used to it and gain a "preference" for a known inconvenience over a possible (but unknown) convenience.

this can be used to defend or critique rox really. only in this thread did anyone ever explain the name (pretty cool.)

but what there wasnt room for was posting everyone talking about how to use rox without an evaluation or comment on it-- rox is pretty standard in puppy land, so i found comments that made it less standard quite interesting. many are recent (2015-this year.)
I see the tally so far here is 61% in favour of Rox but it's early days yet.
It won't surprise me at all if it averages out to somewhere between these two figures.
im surprised it isnt doing better already. but if you really want percentages to matter rather than tallies, there needs to be balanced options-- one style of yay matching each of nay. theres a science of good polling we arent following here, and its too late. but we werent going to gain much from doing it scientifically anyway.
If one takes into account those that "don't mind it", myself included, I reckon it will be closer to 70 or even 75% for.
A surprising figure.
not imo. again, people gain a preference for the things they can stand that they are familiar with. this even applies to svsvinit-- although i think most of the alternatives are pretty awful, or not pre-configured enough for people to find the switch one they can be confident about. this is possibly my favorite quote:
I'd add "Rox". Once you're used to it, using another file-manager is a pain in the ass.
i figure a lot of people will never get used to rox. i did, once. within 24 hours i had it configured for my own use. i used it for months or years.

my favorite fm is pcmanfm, though im almost as happy with xfe, which in some ways is superior and in looks, i can imagine someone turning their nose up. thunar is perfectly good, but it has a lot of overhead. and gnome 2 and mate have perfectly good file managers, but thats almost like another os on top of your os, imo.

not that i can really talk about doubling an os, these days :)

Sailor Enceladus
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#39 Post by Sailor Enceladus »

learnhow2code wrote:im surprised it isnt doing better already. but if you really want percentages to matter rather than tallies, there needs to be balanced options-- one style of yay matching each of nay. theres a science of good polling we arent following here, and its too late. but we werent going to gain much from doing it scientifically anyway.
Yes, mostly just for fun of course. I think most people who "run away from puppy" wouldn't create an account here also, and with any voting system you can't account for every single person on the planet, and even if you could, you would also have to ressurrect humans from the past to make it accurate, and maybe there are intelligent beings on other planets and dimensions who might have different views based on how cultures in their world are formed. You just can't win :lol: I like your posts though!

learnhow2code

#40 Post by learnhow2code »

Sailor Enceladus wrote:Yes, mostly just for fun of course. I think most people who "run away from puppy" wouldn't create an account here also, and with any voting system you can't account for every single person on the planet, and even if you could, you would also have to ressurrect humans from the past to make it accurate
we could clone them and raise them in the matrix, then harvest their data. but if only for the ethical costs i agree this would be excessive and horrific. i wouldnt put it past google.
maybe there are intelligent beings on other planets and dimensions who might have a different opinion based on how cultures in their worlds are formed.
its a lot cheaper to just fix the vote like the democratic primaries.

then we get a clear answer without the fuss! :D
just can't win :lol: I like your posts though!
hey, thanks! this is a fun thread, my personal interest is partly from deciding how much rox is a requirement for a new puppy. that points to a question thats probably too much for one thread to handle.

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