(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Posted: **Fri 14 Apr 2017, 00:28**

Moat wrote:Just tried the new Ubuntu Gnome 17.04, released today. Ugg. USB live session, and Wifi detected but wouldn't connect. Fail!

I don't at all "get" Gnome 3 - everything is so "dumbed down" - too-big icons/titlebars

In Debian Gnome you use either system-settings or tweak-tool to change those sorts of things. First off I didn't like the 'standardisation' myself, but after a while you get a better feel for commonality being a good thing.

clumsy finding/accessing applications via the dash/menu/launcher/whatever

Windows/special key then type the first letter or two of what you want to run, Windows/te for instance will show the Terminal icon.

If you go into tweak-tool you can add additional extensions by downloading .zip files and installing those. I added one to make the top left hot corner with less resistance. I also added a bottom panel as mouse down and continued at the bottom centre of the screen wasn't to my liking.

When you get more used to mouse into top left or press Win key and type t for terminal, L for libre ...etc its quite nice is some ways. I dropped back to using LXDE however as I just have a top of screen panel with my more common apps/program as icons in that ... so even more productive/quicker IMO.

As a common desktop interface gnome is quite good for across a wide range of kit IMO. You can either mostly navigate using just the keyboard, or mostly navigate using the mouse (touch). I think a good way to run it is to open programs you use on different desktops and then mouse into top left corner and pick which one to switch to. In debian they only had a close button on each window and I had to hunt around to find how to add minimise/maximise buttons (in tweak-tool), but only then later 'got-it' about not bothering to minimise windows and instead just switch to another workspace (desktop).

I haven't seen the Ubuntu version so that might be totally different.

Posted: **Sat 15 Apr 2017, 12:04**

realwigums wrote:i run slackware almost exclusively anymore. im really liking slacko too

ive also dev'd on yoper linux and vector linux and am starting another which will be called principia (slackware based) which will include zfs on root and dep handling of official slackware packages

...ah,..let us know when you get principia going (sounds interesting). Gotta admit I love the clean, no-nonsense of Slackware. I just got lazy lately,..and prefer Salix. Doesn't Salix tout itself as: "Slackware for lazy slakers"...?

Posted: **Sat 15 Apr 2017, 16:25**

i cant stand how they (salix) build packages and the fact that they rely on sourcforge
for packages. i know a couple of the salix guys from using slackware for so long.
smart people i just hate the way they build and submit packages

Posted: **Sat 15 Apr 2017, 18:18**

realwigums wrote:i cant stand how they (salix) build packages and the fact that they rely on sourcforge
for packages. i know a couple of the salix guys from using slackware for so long.
smart people i just hate the way they build and submit packages

Well,..I'm not a dev,...(just a happy linux user for over 10 years now). But my very favorite Slax-based used to be Vector. Then they started to deviate from basic Slackware,...and then the releases got farther and farther apart. I started with Vector back at version 5.9 (and was sold on it!). But I've had to go looking else-where for a good Slackware based distro. Salix seems to be OK so far (just started with it). Absolute is kind-of a little "raw" around the edges (or so it seems to me). Couldn't get my sound working in it. Any suggestions you could give about a decent small Slackware distro would be very appreciated!

Posted: **Sat 15 Apr 2017, 19:49**

nitehawk wrote:
realwigums wrote:i cant stand how they (salix) build packages and the fact that they rely on sourcforge
for packages. i know a couple of the salix guys from using slackware for so long.
smart people i just hate the way they build and submit packages
Well,..I'm not a dev,...(just a happy linux user for over 10 years now). But my very favorite Slax-based used to be Vector. Then they started to deviate from basic Slackware,...and then the releases got farther and farther apart. I started with Vector back at version 5.9 (and was sold on it!). But I've had to go looking else-where for a good Slackware based distro. Salix seems to be OK so far (just started with it). Absolute is kind-of a little "raw" around the edges (or so it seems to me). Couldn't get my sound working in it. Any suggestions you could give about a decent small Slackware distro would be very appreciated!

I agree with you about Vector; though I still use it sometimes it's been a bit disappointing recently compared to the Vector releases I remember in the past (5.9 SOHO was excellent IMO). They had a great package management system which was unique to the distro, called Quick Picks, and then scrapped it for no apparent reason.

ConnochaetOS is still going, and although I found it a bit rough around the edges it still works; it's a Slack-based distro for older computers and which uses free software only. Zenwalk released a new version in February this year; though it's now 64-bit only it might be worth a look.

Posted: **Sat 15 Apr 2017, 20:07**

Well,..I'm not a dev,...(just a happy linux user for over 10 years now). But my very favorite Slax-based used to be Vector. Then they started to deviate from basic Slackware,...and then the releases got farther and farther apart. I started with Vector back at version 5.9 (and was sold on it!). But I've had to go looking else-where for a good Slackware based distro. Salix seems to be OK so far (just started with it). Absolute is kind-of a little "raw" around the edges (or so it seems to me). Couldn't get my sound working in it. Any suggestions you could give about a decent small Slackware distro would be very appreciated!

vector went sideways for a couple versions. from 7.0 on it is back to being slackware based again and actually uses the slackware toolchain. what theyve been up to lately i dont know. one nice thing thats been done is adding dependancy handling using slapt-get.

as far as my opinion of a good slack based distro i have to say slacko
is my fav so far. it needs some updating imo but i do love PPM and also ive installed sbotools which handles deps for 3rd party packages i.e. apps that dont actually ship on the slackware iso for example
https://slackbuilds.org/

Posted: **Sun 16 Apr 2017, 00:12**

Thanks for reminding me of Zenwalk, Col. P! I had forgotten about that one,....and I use Slacko on another old computer I have,...(I still long for a really good Vector release, though.)

Posted: **Sun 16 Apr 2017, 03:05**

I'm running Mint 18.1 on my 9 year old iMac, it runs Vlc,Kodi,etc great.

$ inxi -b
System: Host: bill-iMac Kernel: 4.4.0-72-generic x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3
Distro: Linux Mint 18.1 Serena
Machine: System: Apple product: iMac8 1 v: 1.0
Mobo: Apple model: Mac-F226BEC8 v: PVT Bios: Apple v: IM81.88Z.00C1.B00.0802091538 date: 02/09/08
CPU: Dual core Intel Core2 Duo E8135 (-MCP-) speed/max: 1600/2400 MHz
Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RV610/M74 [Mobility Radeon HD 2400 XT]
Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1680x1050@59.88hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV610 (DRM 2.43.0, LLVM 3.8.0) GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 11.2.0
Network: Card-1: Broadcom BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n driver: b43-pci-bridge
Card-2: Marvell 88E8058 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller driver: sky2
Drives: HDD Total Size: 376.4GB (4.6% used)
Info: Processes: 187 Uptime: 2:13 Memory: 405.0/3948.2MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.2.35
$

I like Slackware too

Posted: **Sun 16 Apr 2017, 21:51**

Billtoo wrote:I'm running Mint 18.1 on my 9 year old iMac, it runs Vlc,Kodi,etc great.

Mint's been my installed-on-HD daily driver for a few years now. Many old-school Linux stalwarts may pooh-pooh it as being nothing more than a "beginner friendly" distro, but the fact is that it just works - better that anything else out there at the moment, IMHO - and has a huge, useful application repo (Mint's own plus Ubuntu's). You can make it anything you desire, with less trouble than other OS's.

What else does one want/need? There's a good reason it's been #1 at Distrowatch for years. It's really, really excellent!

Bob

Posted: **Mon 17 Apr 2017, 00:28**

Just trying out LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) 64 bit Betsy 2 MATE version. Booted it in a Virtual Box then did a Install using the 6GB of VM disk space (1GB RAM/256K video memory) I'd assigned (only got to see that they recommend 9GB min disk space (20GB preferred) after I'd run through the install). Applied all updates (apt-get update;apt-get upgrade) and whilst it did fail the first time (large amount of updates), a apt-get -f install and another apt-get upgrade finished it off ... with 150MB free disk space to spare

Runs really nicely and looks great ... well polished (even though its now down to around 90MB of free space remaining after the browser has been started).

Oddly, whilst based on Debian Stable the LXDE gets Mint updates early (and they say it runs a little faster also) ... so very stable on the Debian side of things, but the more unstable on the Mint side (front run changes earlier). Bit of a odd contrast/choice. I guess you could always opt out of upgrades until after Mint point releases before upgrading i.e. uninstall update-manager and update-manager-core and just run apt-get update;apt-get ugrade manually whenever you prefer.

They do say there's much less of a user-base and hence help ... its more for the more experienced user ... but that's relative ... being more familiar with Debian going the standard Mint route would be a greater learning curve for me.

Posted: **Mon 17 Apr 2017, 01:17**

Hi rufwoof - let us know of what you think of the Mate desktop environment. I think it's an excellent all-around DE - very reasonably light and fast/responsive, yet plenty of straightforward tweakability + panel plugin assortment/menu choices.

rufwoof wrote: ... so very stable on the Debian side of things, but the more unstable on the Mint side (front run changes earlier). Bit of a odd contrast/choice.

Just my experience, but I tend to feel Mint is actually pretty conservative with their updates. I find myself updating my Mint installs about every time I boot - and over years of doing so, have never had an update break or adversely effect the system. If anything, updates appear to actually improve the system's performance - things just seem to get a little faster and smoother over a point release's life-cycle (aside from longer boot times since switching to systemd init...

).

Strange... but I'll take it!

The Debian edition may be a little different in that respect, though...

Bob

Posted: **Mon 17 Apr 2017, 02:45**

Moat wrote:Hi rufwoof - let us know of what you think of the Mate desktop environment. I think it's an excellent all-around DE - very reasonably light and fast/responsive, yet plenty of straightforward tweakability + panel plugin assortment/menu choices.

Hi Bob

I'm not that familiar with VirtualBox and expanding the size was a bit of a pain. Had to clone the existing 6GB one first as I'd set that to fixed rather than dynamic and apparently cloning transposes it over to dynamic ... which needs to be the case before you can resize the .vdi Then once you've cloned and resized it you have to install gparted within the machine and resize the partition. I also had problems with the UUID's not matching. Got there in the end, and installed the Guest Additions (which also didn't come easy/naturally), but now its working great. In Seamless mode and with the machine settings to share the clipboard/cut-paste etc you can have both running alongside each other. Attached is my Debian File Manager dragging and dropping a file into Mint's file manager. By default I like my menu at the top of the screen so Mints being at the bottom pairs nicely with that. And fully installed into the VM (rather than just running the .iso/live-boot) its running at a reasonable/usable rate, even on my relatively old 4 core 2GB system.

The browser and other progs are working great. Which is nice as its more integrated i.e. isolated browser session from the rest of the system (personal docs etc.).

Clickable thumbnail.

Catches you out a bit, press print screen and depending on what's in focus either Mint's or Debian's screen capture window pops up

Or you can have both

I haven't installed guest additions yet on the Debian side, so currently it looks like drag and drop is just one way instead of the bi-directional value I set (similar for screen capture, Mint currently just captures its own windows, Debian captures both windows). Playing a sneekylinux youtube in Mint's Firefox and play another in Debian's didn't work well, the second to be started kept spinning (loading). Playing Kodi (listening to a radio station) in Debian, playing a youtube in Mint did work however, overlaid sound (hear both).

I guess the obvious choice is to use two desktops, one on each and just flip desktops to switch between the two (handy being able to drag/drop and cut/paste etc between them as well

)

Load wise it runs quite well with just 2GB of ram. Slows some when heavily loaded (youtubes playing and kodi running), but for general use OK (I allocated 1GB of ram to the virtual machine, could have got away with less IMO to leave more available for the host)

UPDATE : on thinking more about two youtubes playing, that's potentially down to I'm running the Debian FF in a restricted user session, perhaps when a local firefox (user) then I suspect that might be fine.

Posted: **Thu 20 Apr 2017, 18:44**

rufwoof wrote:In Debian Gnome you use either system-settings or tweak-tool to change those sorts of things.

Yes, I've since spent quite a bit more time tweaking Gnome 3 to my liking. It's OK now (after quite a lot of work and hunting down extensions), but still lacking in certain basic features/functions that I'm so used to (just showing clickable max-minimize buttons on the main taskbar, without having to run a screen-hogging lower taskbar for the same functionality, for example).

To my surprise, I've downloaded Maui Linux 17.03 “Cuba Libre

Posted: **Thu 20 Apr 2017, 20:32**

Thanks Moat. Just trying it now in a virtual box live-boot. Sluggish on my old clunker. Might try a actual live-boot.

Posted: **Thu 20 Apr 2017, 23:46**

rufwoof wrote:Sluggish on my old clunker. Might try a actual live-boot.

I'm running it as a live session from a USB flash drive (created with Mint's iso>USB tool) on Andy's (scientist!) old donated HP 6730b laptop, an am truly surprised how responsive it feels. The more I play with it, the more impressed I am. Lots of useful desktop config tools/widgets OOTB - takes a little digging since there are so many options, but the necessary tweaks are there, and well implemented to boot. Me likes it!

Bob

Code: Select all

maui@maui:~$ inxi -f
CPU:       Dual core Intel Core2 Duo P8600 (-MCP-) cache: 3072 KB 
           clock speeds: max: 2401 MHz 1: 1600 MHz 2: 800 MHz

Posted: **Sat 22 Apr 2017, 19:57**

Devuan Linux made this announcement plus some interesting distros to try based on it - some of which are not so well known.http://refracta.freeforums.org/post6831 ... lit=#p6831

- Gnuinos <http://gnuinos.org> (linux-libre 100% free, GNU review pending)
- Refracta <http://www.ibiblio.org/refracta>
- Exe GNU/Linux <http://exegnulinux.net>
- Nelum-dev1 <https://sourceforge.net/projects/nelum-dev1>
- Star <https://sourceforge.net/projects/linnix>
- heads <https://heads.dyne.org> (linux-libre 100% free, GNU review pending)
- good-life-linux <https://sourceforge.net/projects/good-life-linux/>
- Crowz <https://sourceforge.net/projects/crowz>

Posted: **Sat 22 Apr 2017, 19:59**

I'm trying the Goodlife spin it offers 32 bit versions.
https://devuan.org/os/partners/devuan-distros

Posted: **Sun 23 Apr 2017, 06:56**

My Good Life Linux desktop based on Devuan this one is for Colonel Panic and Nitehawk.

Posted: **Sun 23 Apr 2017, 15:42**

Robert123 wrote:My Good Life Linux desktop based on Devuan this one is for Colonel Panic and Nitehawk.

Thanks for the mention! My problem at the moment is getting distros I've installed to boot from the hard drive; that's why I'm Puppy-only for the time being.

Looks like a great concept though and you've clearly put a lot of work into it, so I may have a look at it later on.

Posted: **Sun 23 Apr 2017, 18:31**

Sorry Colonel it isn't creation my creation I just mean't my desktop the way I set it up as opposed to the vanilla default one

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Other Distros

Re: other OS's

Other Distros

Re: Other Distros