(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Pete wrote:Hey Billtoo, that is impressive.
Perhaps I should give Xslacko a whirl too and I see it's based on Slacko 6.3.2 32 bit so most/all of my programs should be compatible although I'm a bit concerned about the devx.sfs.

I used the Display section of the xfce4 control panel to setup
for 2 monitors and it was working but as soon as I shut down and
rebooted later I found that the settings weren't saved and I had to do
it again, even restarting x loses the setting.

I tried the xrandr command in the terminal and found out what works for my
system,copied the command to geany and saved it as 2monitors.sh, then
made the file executable and put it in /root/startup.
This is working on my system.

Thank you Billtoo, much appreciated.

I installed Slackware-14.2 to my COMPAQ Presario desktop pc.

Computer
Processor 2x Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz
Memory 1537MB (335MB used)
Operating System Slackware 14.2
Date/Time Tue 16 Aug 2016 12:40:03 PM EDT
Display
Resolution 3840x1080 pixels
OpenGL Renderer Gallium 0.4 on ATI RV530
X11 Vendor The X.Org Foundation
Multimedia
Audio Adapter CA0106 - CA0106
Kernel Linux 4.4.14-smp (i686)
Desktop Environment XFCE 4
OpenGL
Vendor X.Org R300 Project
Renderer Gallium 0.4 on ATI RV530
Version 2.1 Mesa 11.2.2
Direct Rendering Yes

I compiled Mplayer-1.3.0,Smplayer-16.8.0,Smtube-16.7.2 and did
slackbuilds of Geany-1.28,Geany-plugins-1.28,Hardinfo-0.5.1,and
Mtpaint-3.40

It's working well on this 12 year old computer.

It';s good that it's working for you Bill, but for some strange reason I can't get networking to work on Slackware 14.2 although it worked just fine on all earlier versions including 14.1.

Was there anything different you had to do to get it to work this time?

Colonel Panic wrote:It';s good that it's working for you Bill, but for some strange reason I can't get networking to work on Slackware 14.2 although it worked just fine on all earlier versions including 14.1.

Was there anything different you had to do to get it to work this time?

I just chose automatic network setup during the installation, it found eth0 on first boot.
There is a use DCHP or something like that but I went with the other option.

I compiled wine-1.9.16, that took quite a while but it's working well, running XBMC Gotham-13.2.

@Billtoo

Interesting screenshot.
Did you "merge" them together or does the software automatically grab both screens and includes them into a single picture?

Billtoo wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:It';s good that it's working for you Bill, but for some strange reason I can't get networking to work on Slackware 14.2 although it worked just fine on all earlier versions including 14.1.

Was there anything different you had to do to get it to work this time?

I just chose automatic network setup during the installation, it found eth0 on first boot.
There is a use DCHP or something like that but I went with the other option.

I compiled wine-1.9.16, that took quite a while but it's working well, running XBMC Gotham-13.2.

Thanks, I'll give it another try soon.

Pete wrote:@Billtoo

Interesting screenshot.
Did you "merge" them together or does the software automatically grab both screens and includes them into a single picture?

It takes both screens into a single picture, can also select a region or active window.

Thank you Billtoo.

i'm posting from the live disk of Crunchbang Monara, which is based on crunchbang but using openbox and tint2 with a sans serif font similar to comic sans and using a number of pastel blue-grey shades. It was developed by a guy called Tim Fatt.

It's got quite a nice aesthetic, and it's an interesting choice for those who like Crunchbang but found the original distro a bit too sombre. One problem though is that the caps lock key doesn't work; you have to press the shift key to get capitals.

Colonel Panic wrote:.... One problem though is that as standard in the live version, the caps lock key doesn't work; you have to press the shift key to get capitals.

Who in their right mind releases something like that?
Heck why did they even bother with a keyboard driver then when users could rather click their mouse buttons to create morse code.

That is one distro I will definitely not be trying.

Pete wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:.... One problem though is that as standard in the live version, the caps lock key doesn't work; you have to press the shift key to get capitals.

Who in their right mind releases something like that?
Heck why did they even bother with a keyboard driver then when users could rather click their mouse buttons to create morse code.

That is one distro I will definitely not be trying.

Fair enough, but I think there's a certain amount of "YMMV" with distros, as witness the fact that I struggle to get networking in Slackware 14.2 (or any distro based on it) to work whilst no one else seems to have the same problem.

When I point out problems I've experienced with a distro, it's to inform people of the problems they may experience with it, not to tell people not to try it. I did that once (with a Greek distro called Slackel) and was quickly put in my place by other posters here who informed me that they hadn't had the same problems with it that I'd been experiencing.

Colonel Panic wrote:think there's a certain amount of "YMMV" with distros, as witness the fact that I struggle to get networking in Slackware 14.2

one thing that i think is really missing in the distro world is some way of testing more distros/features in an automated way.

im not expert on automating such a thing; i think its an idea worth exploring and considering, but the idea of testing everything by sending it out to users (while reasonable and itself a time-tested method with its own advantages) seems very old-fashioned for what could be possible these days.

not that automation would replace by-hand-testing, simply augment it. i also think theres a cultural shift in what users want to do, which doesnt make them any less entitled it does make the jobs of distro builders that much more interesting. im sympathizing mostly with the distro builders this time-- it would help users, too.

exlight http://exlight.exton.net/?p=4

I used the

cp xxx.iso /dev/sdf

approach to write the iso to USB and then booted that USB (login either using exlight userid and no password, or root userid and 'root' as password).

Some interesting animated wallpapers in a e17 (Enlightenment) style desktop (similar to macpup). Includes google chrome ... so good for netflix etc.

Colonel Panic wrote:....
When I point out problems I've experienced with a distro, it's to inform people of the problems they may experience with it, not to tell people not to try it.....

Fair enough point taken and of course they are free to try it although I certainly won't.

Pete wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:....
When I point out problems I've experienced with a distro, it's to inform people of the problems they may experience with it, not to tell people not to try it.....

Fair enough point taken and of course they are free to try it although I certainly won't.

Thanks, although part of the problem for me is that I don't like the thought of having that much (negative) power. Someone can spend hundreds of hours putting a new distro together, and I might spend an hour or even thirty minutes trying it before I decide I don't like it and another five to ten minutes saying something critical of it on here.

There's an imbalance in that which bothers me. It's like the old theatre critic situation; a drama group spends months putting on a play, doing rehearsals etc., and a critic can take a couple of hours at most to write a withering review in the paper after the opening night, which can have a bad effect on the takings at the box office from then on.

I'm not saying that one shouldn't say anything negative about a distro (or that there shouldn't be theatre or for that matter film critics); just that it's important to keep a sense of perspective. I am one person with one computer trying something out, and other people may (and from what I see here and elsewhere, sometimes do) have different experiences.

Colonel Panic wrote:Someone can spend hundreds of hours putting a new distro together, and I might spend an hour or even thirty minutes trying it before I decide I don't like it and another five to ten minutes saying something critical of it on here.

There's an imbalance in that which bothers me.

fairness is important, and we are unlikely to agree on what it entails in every detail.

1. on the one hand, people do put a great deal of time and effort into creating a distro-- at least if they stick with it (i did not, at first.)

2. on the other hand, it takes a certain amount of trust and effort just to try that distro-- in some cases the distro will do something that creates problems for the person using it.

3. being specific helps fairness "this sucks" may be true, or it may color other impressions of a distro in a way that is not really fair. "i think at least caps lock should work-- but here it doesnt" is specific. if you say why, then by all means, let people know you think it "sucks." at least they know what you mean and can decide if they agree.

4. not everyone is cut out to maintain a linux distro. i dont know if im the best person to put a distro online, im trying to find out. certainly people can look at my script and decide if they want to run it. if they dont want to run it, ally was kind enough to run it and put the result on the archive.

5. some people will just think "x sucks" because they "like y better." so if you compare the two, you can guess what matters to them.

it's important to keep a sense of perspective.

it sure is. and its surprisingly rare

its good advice youre giving.

Thanks for the advice and the kind comments.

One of my first ever distros (even before I tried Puppy for the first time in 2006) was one called Featherweight, and I still recall its developer Ron Meinsler's response to a critical review on a blog somewhere.

He ended up telling the reviewer that he looked forward to seeing the reviewer's own distro sometime. Somehow that never happened...

In other news; I've been trying a couple of Slack-based distros recently

The first one was the release candidate of Salix64 14.2 XFCE (the final version of which the devs have said will be out very soon, around the end of the month). It works well except that the taskbar inexplicably disappeared at some point and I wasn't able (or didn’t know enough) to get it back. As I've said before in previous reviews of Salix, it also needs a bit of fiddling about with to make it work.

In my experience also of past versions of Salix, the user forum and the installation messages can be somewhat condescending if not actually insulting, "shouldn't you be watching television?" or some such, and people who don't know their way around either Linux or a distro which doesn't allow you to log in as root may encounter this.

All the same though, Salix in my experience is a pretty competent distro and the final version of 14.2 will be worth waiting for.

The second one was ConnochaetOS 14.1, a distro composed entirely of free software and made for older computers although it still needs 128 MB of RAM. Like Salix it's not a live disk and needs to be installed to the hard drive.

When I'd done so I got a persistent error message 240 on bootup; “Couldn’t mount (the partition it's installed on) because of unsupported optional features.

Colonel Panic wrote:The second one was ConnochaetOS 14.1, a distro composed entirely of free software and made for older computers although it still needs 128 MB of RAM. Like Salix it's not a live disk and needs to be installed to the hard drive.

+1 i havent tried it in years. the author submitted it to the fsf list of free software distros and they mucked it up somehow. he refuses to resubmit it until they explain why they wont give him the same response next time seriously though, that list is never going to grow. they dont manage their initiatives very well, its really too bad (i used to help fund them.) i do like the ryf list.