(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Geoffrey wrote:xfce4 whiskermenu plugin

Damn, that's what I wanted to do.. a Mint/xfce style menu
Looks like you beat me to it. Actually I haven't even started, but it was on my mind ever since I saw the awesome xfce menu in Linux Mint.

I have been quietly following this thread on and off, since it began. (too little time these days)

X-Slacko is very nice, keep up the great work!

A minor annoyance that has cropped up. I didn't have this on the netbook, so I think it's one of those weird hardware-software interaction things that's hard to track down, but we'll see... if it's a real PITA to fix, I'll live with it.

My Acer 5532 laptop (main system) has the Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys built into the numpad. Unlike the Ins/Del keys (also part of the numpad) they are not duplicated elsewhere. Note that on this keyboard, there are no indicator LEDs for NumLock and CapsLock. (ScrollLock isn't present... just as well, I've never needed to even know what it's for!)

When NumLock is OFF...
Numpad 7 = Home
Numpad 1 = End
Numpad 9 = PgUp
Numpad 3 = PgDn

...the arrow keys are also duplicated there (8,4,2,6 as up,left,down,right) but I never use them for that.

The problem is that the NumLock key seems to randomly toggle on/off every few seconds to minutes. I press the Home key and often get a 7. Even when it's "working" it's not working right -- for instance, putting the cursor at the beginning of a line of text, then doing Shift+End (hold down Shift, press Numpad 1) moves the cursor without highlighting most of the time... if it doesn't just print a "1" at the start of the line!

Normally, I'd attribute this to the fact that, on this laptop, the keyboard connector is so loose that, as you're taking it apart, the cable practically leaps out of the connector with glee -- it takes NO force to remove the cable, even with the connector in the latched position.

However, there are no other keys that act like this, and the keyboard itself doesn't just randomly completely cut out (it's a PS/2 keyboard, internally to the system, so it'd require a reboot to work again if that happened). A keyboard, electrically, uses what's called a switch matrix to sense keypresses -- each row of keys is electrically connected, and each column of keys is electrically connected. When you press a key, it joins a row and a column, and the keyboard controller does the rest. If it were a stuck key, the BIOS would pick up the issue and actually disable the key (it would not respond at all to the keypress codes for that key, as sent out by the keyboard controller) and therefore NumLock would be (depending on the on-at-boot setting in BIOS Setup) either on or off but not changeable except in the BIOS.

...so, near as I can tell, it's *got* to be something in software that's goofing up, either as an odd interaction with the hardware, or as an actual bug. Since nobody else is complaining about this (it gets very old very fast) my money is that it's to do with some quirk of this laptop's keyboard controller (or the BIOS parts that control it) that the software (Puppy) is interacting with in a crappy manner.

1. Downloaded PAE V1.1 ISO and booted LIve pristine.
   
2. Restarted X desktop
3. Opened Filemanager (FM) and clicked a partition on the FM's left pane for mounting. got the following error message:
   
4. Closed FM...Clicked the partition's icon on the desktop. Got the following error message:
   
5. Reopened FM and found that the partition I wanted opened I can now see in FM, but,files are in read-only mode.
6. Closed FM...Opened a terminal window. Issued mount command and found the partition is mounted read-only.
7. I unmounted and remounted the partition to get read-write mode.

This is a cause for confusion that may need review.

Everything else working as expected from PUPs, thus far. Nice. Very nice.

@starhawk

I doubt I can be much help without a similar keyboard/issue, and even then I'm not so sure. With a loose cable it sounds like a hardware problem, once a ps/2 keyboard is detected it can be replaced by another one and will function properly.

@ gcmartin

I've never seen that before but I have had one drive (also ntfs) become randomly read only. Sounds like an ntfs problem, I fixed mine by running chkdsk -f on a windows machine.

rg66 wrote:@starhawk

I doubt I can be much help without a similar keyboard/issue, and even then I'm not so sure. With a loose cable it sounds like a hardware problem, once a ps/2 keyboard is detected it can be replaced by another one and will function properly.

I really can't imagine, given how keyboards work (as described in my post) that it's a hardware issue... particularly because the controller in a laptop keyboard is actually on the laptop motherboard -- the cable mentioned is the output of the switch matrix with no other circuitry involved (except for, in some cases, diodes in series with the switches, to enable more than a single keypress at once). Logically speaking if it were the loose cable, it would affect an entire row or column of keys at once -- and most likely it would just disable them temporarily, rather than triggering them as seems to happen here.

PS/2 is not hotpluggable -- and, at least in the case of desktops, removing a PS/2 keyboard from a running machine (whether or not a replacement is inserted later) can actually damage the motherboard circuitry. (USB-to-PS/2 adapters are unaffected by this, mostly because USB *is* hotpluggable.) In the case of a laptop I'm not sure how much room for damage there is... it's a different connector entirely so it affects the circuit differently.

@ starhawk

I just booted my comp with a ps/2 keyboard, plugged in a different one and it worked. No reboot, no damage.

That's kinda lucky, actually. Inserting or removing a connector, because of the metal-on-metal friction, actually causes a small static discharge. Many if not most non-hotpluggable ports don't bother with putting protection in for that, because the manual says don't do it, and that's supposed to be good enough

Although it wouldn't reboot the computer on you (dropping eg a netbook on the side that has a flash drive plugged in, will shut it off -- I've done that ) it could potentially fry the controller chip on the motherboard... which happens these days to be part of the "southbridge" which is an integral part of the motherboard... you fry that, it's new motherboard time.

Also, FWIW, it's been quite a while since I heard that info -- it may be that (a) it's one of those "once in a while is OK but don't do it every day" sorts of things, or (b) users have gotten less adept and manufacturers now include the protective components simply because they got tired of dealing with warranty-replacing "dead" boards or losing customers over stupid stuff like that.

Either way, I wouldn't make a habit of it... there's at least a chance you'll fry the port and/or the southbridge (or on an older computer, dedicated keyboard controller chip). That would kinda suck, you know?

Regardless...

If the issue I'm having was in hardware, an entire row or column of keys would be affected, and in an entirely different way.

A simplified explanation of matrix keyboards & keypads, and how they work.

...if you read that, you'll see what I mean about rows and columns -- although in a laptop, the controller is on the motherboard, and the cable we're talking about therefore goes in between the motherboard and the key matrix itself, rather than to an internal-to-the-keyboard controller that turns it into a USB or PS/2 interface. A wire on the laptop cable making intermittent contact with its connector on the motherboard would disable an entire row or column (depending on /which/ wire) of keys. It would not produce this random toggling effect. Further, a /stuck/ key would be always on or always off (again, not randomly toggling) -- but if it were always on, the BIOS would detect it at boot, and disable the key by instructing the system not to accept the relevant output from the keyboard controller. (As an aside, this output is in the form of what are called "scan-codes", and there's one for each key press, and one for each key release, along with special combinations for certain special keys.)

So this kind of /can't/ be a hardware problem. It's entirely the wrong kind of behavior for that. That said, it sounds like it's too much of a PITA to track down, so whatever, I'll deal. It's kind of annoying, but it's certainly not a showstopper like that Petget bug was. That one was a real doozy.

You know, it occurred to me that there's a lot of me b*tching in this thread, as of late, and I figured I kind of ought to add something else.

X-Slacko is a really good Pup. I like it a lot. Really, I do. It looks quite nice right out of the box, it feels familiar, and (for the most part) it runs great.

For example... keyboard shortcuts. I use those a lot, since I'm almost always on a laptop and I rarely have an external mouse attached (I can only justify the desk space when it's a must-have, for example when doing graphic art). Keyboard stuff is easier, to a point (I don't like Terminal or CLI stuff much at all) and in X-Slacko, unlike literally every single other Pup I've used EVER, all the familiar keyboard shortcuts are there. Delete is DEL (instead of CTRL+X, as it is in ROX-Filer... whose stupid idea was *that*?!), SHIFT+DEL is erase permanently from the universe (aka delete forever), CTRL+X cuts, CTRL+C copies, and CTRL+V pastes. You get the idea.

Another. Looks. My mother's first real comment regarding Puppy was that it looked like the mid 1990s all over again. She was using a JWM/ROX Pup at the time, and I do believe I agree with her remarks. Appearance does not seem to be one of Puppy's priorities, which is a shame. On the other hand, XFCE is awesome looking. It's sleek, it's fairly modern, and you can customize that look basically as much as you want. In the hands of a good artist (I'd like to think I'm one of those, lol) it can get really, really pretty -- really, really fast.

Most importantly, X-Slacko is (again, for the most part) a stable Pup. It has its quirks, sure (the NumLock thing, for one) and it had that one nasty PetGet bug (which, of course, is now fixed) -- but, by and large, it is a stable, good Pup for fairly modern hardware (which I define as anything from "built yesterday" through about 2008 or so).

So, as they say around where I live (Southeastern US, specifically NC) -- rg66, you done good Thank you for making a great Pup!

AssuaultCube version 1.2.0.2

I installed this on a clean Xslacko, only the one dependency openal was found to be missing.



assaultcube-1.2.0.2.pet 52.4 MB

openal-soft-1.14.pet 171.8 kB

More bitching. This time I started a thread in Beginner's Help... I figure that this is a software problem but not an X-Slacko-specific software problem...

Thread here --> http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=93597

@rg66: this is mostly so you're aware, but if you want to help out (and have the time) drop by that other thread. I'd love to hear your input...

I'm currently working on X-slacko-2.0 based on Slacko-5.7-NO-pae. I'm not planning to do a pae version, so it will run on everything. I've used the Xfce pkgs from the slackware 14 repo so I'm hoping it will fix the P3/AMD Athlon issue.

This time I did a remaster and I have to say it leaves a lot of stuff out. It didn't put in any of the user installed pkgs as built in files which is going to be a pain in the @$$, and didn't remove any built in files from uninstalled pkgs. Also, removed pkgs still show in ppm as being installed, this has to be a ppm issue.

The base is finished so am just adding/removing/fixing some stuff manually and testing. I'm hoping to have it released by next weekend at the latest.

rg66 wrote:I'm currently working on X-slacko-2.0 based on Slacko-5.7-NO-pae. I'm not planning to do a pae version, so it will run on everything. I've used the Xfce pkgs from the slackware 14 repo so I'm hoping it will fix the P3/AMD Athlon issue.

This time I did a remaster and I have to say it leaves a lot of stuff out. It didn't put in any of the user installed pkgs as built in files which is going to be a pain in the @$$, and didn't remove any built in files from uninstalled pkgs. Also, removed pkgs still show in ppm as being installed, this has to be a ppm issue.

The base is finished so am just adding/removing/fixing some stuff manually and testing. I'm hoping to have it released by next weekend at the latest.

Great! On board for testing. I even have a (seldom used) Athlon in the cellar I can kick to life.

Marv wrote:Great! On board for testing. I even have a (seldom used) Athlon in the cellar I can kick to life.

Thanks Marv, I'll send you a link after I sort a few things out.

I've got it to not show my removed pkg's as installed in ppm and have edited remove_builtin to fix future removed built in packages from showing as installed. Probably not the greatest fix and it could have issues, I'll have to test it in RAM but someone with more experience should probably have a look.

rg66, I hope you'll create an alt version of X-Slacko 2.0, with PAE. I like having four gigs of RAM and being able to use all of it on a 32bit OS

Also, how would you feel if I released an ISO of a slightly tweaked X-Slacko 1.1 PAE...? I'd incorporate the installpkg.sh fix and possibly (depending on what a friend of mine can do) a way to fix another issue that mikeb told me about in a thread I've got in Beginner's Help. (Basically, Puppy in general does not unmount [properly, or at all] either the savefile or the partition on which the savefile is stored, upon shutdown.)

starhawk wrote:rg66, I hope you'll create an alt version of X-Slacko 2.0, with PAE. I like having four gigs of RAM and being able to use all of it on a 32bit OS

Wasn't planning on it, but who knows.

starhawk wrote:Also, how would you feel if I released an ISO of a slightly tweaked X-Slacko 1.1 PAE...? I'd incorporate the installpkg.sh fix and possibly (depending on what a friend of mine can do) a way to fix another issue that mikeb told me about in a thread I've got in Beginner's Help. (Basically, Puppy in general does not unmount [properly, or at all] either the savefile or the partition on which the savefile is stored, upon shutdown.)

Not a problem, I actually made an X-slacko-1.2 ISO but decided to go with slacko-5.7 and v2.0

X-slacko-2.0 has been released

This version is based on Slacko-5.7-NO-pae and features the Whisker menu.

The ISO is available for download here: http://carolina-linux.com/rg66/X-slacko/iso/

Thanks to Geoffrey for making the custom whisker menu, wallpaper logo, testing, general help and uploading the ISO

Thanks to Marv for testing. Confirmed working with AMD Athlon

Xfce theme manager, gives the ability to create and save custom window manager theme's

Xfce-Theme-Manager-X-Slacko-0.3.5-i686.pet

X-slacko v2.0
Magic! Thanks. Testing.
Later:
Stunning. Confirms my first impressions - the best of the best. Well done, chaps.

I've compiled and uploaded some panel plugins as well as thunar-1.6.3 and xfce4-taskmanager-1.0.0 without the root warning. Geoffrey has compiled Xfce-Theme-Manager-X-Slacko-0.3.5

Right click pets and save link as

http://carolina-linux.com/rg66/X-slacko ... -X-slacko/