Black Greyhound Ultra

[_MegadetH_]

Right now I've a fresh puppy installation, I installed Blackbox, and it works!

It is fast but I don't like the way it minimize windows. To swap windows I've to do each time right click / workspace list / iconified windows. It is quite unconfortable :/

1) Is there a faster way to swap windows?

2) When I reboot my pc, It loads default Puppy WM, instead of Blackbox. help !


thanks!

[playdayz]

Hey MegadetH, I have been doing some other things so I just saw your message. Switching windows and minimizing windows are two rough places in blackbox IMHO. You can switch more easily with the two arrows on the taskbar on the right side; they will cycle through the open windows. The arrows on the left side will cycle through the desktops To start up in blackbox you can use the Boot Manager to boot up to a command line (not into X) and then enter xinit /usr/bin/blackbox at the prompt after you log in. By doing it this way you will easily avoid starting any of the extra programs that start with jwm and you can go back to the default jwm just by choosing to boot into X.

[_MegadetH_]

Hey MegadetH, I have been doing some other things so I just saw your message. Switching windows and minimizing windows are two rough places in blackbox IMHO. You can switch more easily with the two arrows on the taskbar on the right side; they will cycle through the open windows. The arrows on the left side will cycle through the desktops To start up in blackbox you can use the Boot Manager to boot up to a command line (not into X) and then enter xinit /usr/bin/blackbox at the prompt after you log in. By doing it this way you will easily avoid starting any of the extra programs that start with jwm and you can go back to the default jwm just by choosing to boot into X.

hi playdayz. don't worry me too I was busy those days. thanks for the informations !

[mrallaire]

I've been experimenting with window managers and blackbox is awesome!!! I love the speed and simplicity of it. I'm interested in getting puppy to boot directly to blackbox, and perhaps eventually removing jwm all together.

Playdayz had an idea of how to do this, but I still can't get it after trying for 2 hours to figure it out - I'm still new. Could someone please tell me how to get the boot manager to boot to the command line? I think one would use the pfix=nox command in the menu.lst, but I don't know where one would put it.

My menu.lst looks like this:
title Puppy Linux 411 Frugal
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
kernel /puppy411/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd psubdir=puppy411 nosmp
initrd /puppy411/initrd.gz

Could one also put the xinit /usr/bin/blackbox command in the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file to have it run automatically? If not, what else could one do.

I'm running puppy 4.11 with a frugal install on a dell inspiron 1501

[playdayz]

kernel /puppy411/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd pfix=nox psubdir=puppy411 nosmp

That's the line.

At the bottom of /root/.xinitrc you can replace "exec jwm" with "exec /usr/bin/blackbox", but you will get some stuff running that you might not want or need. I find it easier to jsut boot to a command line and then use the "xinit /usr/bin/blackbox"--that way nothing else is loaded.

Hint: click the eye in Rox to see hidden files; hidden files are the ones that begin with a period (.xinitrc) (I mention this because I don't know exactly how new you are

[Colonel Panic]

Hi. I've installed and am using this now, with a few extra blackbox themes
and backgrounds from this link;

http://f5nlg.free.fr/download/xwindow/themes_bb.tgz

- congrats on a job well done!

Very impressed with plinej's menu updater as well.

[_MegadetH_]

kernel /puppy411/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd pfix=nox psubdir=puppy411 nosmp

That's the line.

At the bottom of /root/.xinitrc you can replace "exec jwm" with "exec /usr/bin/blackbox", but you will get some stuff running that you might not want or need. I find it easier to jsut boot to a command line and then use the "xinit /usr/bin/blackbox"--that way nothing else is loaded.

Hint: click the eye in Rox to see hidden files; hidden files are the ones that begin with a period (.xinitrc) (I mention this because I don't know exactly how new you are

@playdayz,
the stuff might not want or need is related to JWM? Do you know If I uninstall JWM with exec /usr/bin/blackbox line will it run only the blackbox without loading unwanted stuff?

Another two question:
what is the button on the upper left corner? when I click there the windows disappear. I can't see any difference with "X" button.

Some apps I installed like games disappeared from menu. Is there a way to restore links in the menu?

Ps: lately I re-installed blackbox to play with it. It's light! I will play to personalize it:)

thanks in advance

[`f00]

<snip> Is there a way to restore links in the menu?

menu->refresh menu is quick and painless

You can also 'personalize' BB's menu quite easily by editing /usr/local/share/blackbox/ .. either the 'real' menu (which gets overwritten by a script when you "refresh menu" to current whatever-you-have) or menu.base (which can edit the blackbox section on the bottom) - be kind of careful with hand-editing since if you edit not so well, you can have interesting experiences (like restarting in fvwm95 if I recall an odd thing that happened to me correctly ) .. commenting/uncommenting is usually fairly safe

on the headerbar for windows to the far left is an 'iconize' button - yah, that surprises many! If your maus has a middle button (or scrollwheelpress works also), click it and a workspace/windowlist will come up - your iconized window has been minimized to there (quite tidy it is) .. I think it also is accessible from the menu under workspace list or similar.. not sure if windows really minimize to the taskbar or not since I'm in win32 atm and I'm relying on memory-such-as-`tis

[Anniekin]

Mega,

Akin to Windows, puppy seems to have issues with uninstalling applications, as references and traces of the program are left scattered throughout the files and directories.

A past uninstall of blackbox undoubtedly left references to /usr/share/blackbox, while the one installed referred to files in /usr/local/share/blackbox, which then could not be found.

I understand you have resolved the issue, yet am reporting my findings in hopes that the insight may be valuable to this community, in terms of development work.

[playdayz]

@_MegadetH_, In .xinitrc I checked there is absvolume but blackbox will not display it, also pup_event_frontend starts in .xinitrc, which you might not want (since I think it is keeping track of the desktop drive icons which blackbox also doesn't use--among other things).

[playdayz]

@_MegadetH_, In .xinitrc I checked there is absvolume but blackbox will not display it, also pup_event_frontend starts in .xinitrc, which you might not want (since I think it is keeping track of the desktop drive icons which blackbox also doesn't use--among other things). However, there are also some things about fonts which it might be better to keep--maybe that is why my fonts are not so pretty You can always prefix the lines that you want not to run with the comment character #

Code: Select all

## absvolume &#v3.91 volume tray applet, thanks to hairywill... v3.96 MENU_BG variable...
#if [ -f /usr/bin/absvolume ];then
# if [ "$MENU_BG" = "" ];then
# absvolume &
## else
#  absvolume -bg $MENU_BG &
# fi

#fi

[Dougal]

Code: Select all

killall -9 xload
killall -9 blinky
killall -9 asapm 
killall -9 freememapplet
killall -9 absvolume

You don't need to kill these, they are either started by JMW (in jwmrc-tray) or in xinitrc, where you can just comment out the relevant lines.

Code: Select all

killall -9 udevd               
killall -9 inotifywait
killall -9 klogd
killall -9 syslogd
killall -9 pup_event_frontend_d
killall -9 pup_event_frontend  
killall -9 pup_event_front

is it really worthwhile to mess with these? I'm not sure about Barry's pup_event things, but syslogd, klogd and udevd?
It's the gtk applets that take up memory.

[playdayz]

Hey dougal, thanks for the ideas. You know, the original Freak Out was the first album I ever bought (when it was released, yikes).

On topic, the black greyhound ultra is intentionally extreme (even over the top)--kind of a theoretical experiment, that also happens to run nicely. The kill commands were to try cutting some things out of jwm if you wanted it to restart next time with no changes--all of the greyhound experiments try to leave a system that would revert completely to its previous state just by rebooting.

I do like the way that Barry, mainly, questions some aspects of "linux orthodoxy," such as (not) running in root. I myself question the usefulness of the logs, for instance, simply because I find that I never use them--and if I need them for troubleshooting I can turn them back on. As I recall, I did notice an improvement in a bulkier distro by turning them off.

[Colonel Panic]

And here is my current desktop with lxpanel, beep media player, gkrellm and rainlender calendar.



Fullsize

Returning to this after a while (trying to save on system resources);

That looks great, especially the full size (and transparent?) gkrellm.

[trapster]

Download the invisible theme:
invisible.tar.gz

Unpack it in /root/.gkrellm2/themes

Gkrellmlaunch plugin is also handy to rid the desktop of some icons.

Many plugins can be found Here

[bugman]

i'm playing with this, it's fast and all, but am getting tired of launching all my apps in a terminal

how do i get my old jwm menu items into blackbox? [apart from doing it all by hand]

there was some reference to 'menu->refresh menu' but i am not seeing that...

ALSO - is there some reason why geany has stopped working? [EDIT] i figured out the geany, i'd shrunk the window, and it is gone forever? it shows up in top but i cannot for the life of me figure how to get it back...

[EDIT AGAIN] oh, never mind, i'd installed the official version as i was having trouble downloading the one from this thread, tried again with wget, everything clearer now, even the 'iconified windows' bit in the menu...

hmm...now if i could figure out how to get rid of the 'slit'...

[playdayz]

hey bugman, good to hear from you did i ever ask you if you lived on the pine ridge; i don't know how that got in my head. anyway, i think i can help you but it has been awhile since i played with the greyhound so i will have to refresh myself, and i am a little under the weather today. best.

OK. I set up Black Greyhound Ultra in Puppy 4.2.1. Do I recall that you are using a 1.x series Puppy? I have never used that and did not test with it. What is supposed to happen is that after you install the blackbox.pet and then exit to a prompt and start "xinit /usr/local/bin/blackbox" then blackbox will start (sounds like that happens) and a right-click should give you the same JWM menu as always (as it shows on the picture in the first message of this thread).

I do have a two series I can test with. I assume that the pet installed correctly without an error message--I have been having trouble for some reason. I am afraid that if you are not getting the menu then somehow the program that creates the menu is not working with your Puppy--that menu program was written or adapted by plinej and then hacked by me but I don't know enough to figure out why it would not work with a particular Puppy version.

The slit. There is an option in the right-click menu to manage the slit. big help if you are not getting a right-click menu. I wouldn't think greyhound would be very useful if that right-click menu wasn't working--i know it would frustrate me to death.

[vg1]

To get rid of the slit start with 'xwin blackbox' instead of 'xwin startblackbox'. Or remove [or rename] /root/.bbdockrc [slit's configuration file]. Verify with top that slit [bbdock] is not running,

vg

[bugman]

hey bugman, good to hear from you did i ever ask you if you lived on the pine ridge; i don't know how that got in my head.

cos i used to give my locale as republic of lakotah, still there, but wearying of their politics, anyways that is a lot of turf, and me at the very edge of it in eastern montana

OK. I set up Black Greyhound Ultra in Puppy 4.2.1. Do I recall that you are using a 1.x series Puppy?

have gotten modern, using 4.12!

most of the trouble was [as per usual] of my own making, rtfm type stuff

figured out the slit eventually, emptied .bbdockrc [should have commented out, but...], now in the neverending process of trying to figure out if i actually like the damn thing

playing with fluxbox a bit too, which seems slightly slightly more intuitive

so far, my main complaint is that the themes look so nice--stuck on top of ugly gtk themed apps

i'm sure i'm missing something, somewhere...

[`f00]

Got a passle of 'em from Colonel Panic's (link-to-file) http://f5nlg.free.fr/download/xwindow/themes_bb.tgz some time ago .. they fair easy to mod or create (actually I did 'fix' a couple of the older ones since they had blank white parts due to not being more 'done' with all the geegaws). True that, nice gtk in dimmer/darker values that are easily legible seem less common than vanilla/pastel ones.

I just like BB for the straightforward config and simplicity - , the iconize='disappear'/hide surprises almost anyone at 1st (although I marginally like how OB does it by fading items in the middlebutton workspace-list too). Super easy to add stuff to the menu.base and it almost spoils one with the quick refresh/restart