MintPup (Trusty LTS)

[mcewanw]

It's not as advanced as with the DD openbox_xfce version, as that has xfdesktop to draw the desktop.
The icons you see on the left of the desktop is a tint2 panel, add or remove .desktop launchers in ~/tint2launchers to change, from my first post about openbox-mintpup:

Hi again Fred,

Since its available by default, is there any reason why you chose against using Rox pinboard to draw the desktop?

Just as a quick test, I commented out the tint2 leftside panel in /root/config/openbox/autostart.sh

and modified /root/.xsession-openbox as follows:

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#!/bin/sh

setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp &
sleep 2
/usr/bin/rox -p ${HOME}/.config/rox.sourceforge.net/ROX-Filer/pinbd &
/opt/bin/start-up &
# export SESSION_MANAGER=/usr/bin/x-session-manager
exec openbox-session

Not as nice as xfdesktop facilities, and maybe needs a few tweaks and changes also for puppy user login, but allows drag and drop from filemanagers. The only thing is, I'm not sure what advantage that would give over jwm MintPup, since xfdesktop, seems to be the key to nice right-click options in DD-openbox version (though I suppose you could still also use a tint2 launcher panel elsewhere on screen if wanted and not a bit overkill - also the tint2 taskbar area stores the program icons very nicely in the desktop tabs).

EDIT: might also need to play around with some sleep values to get background to show up behind conky and desktop icons windows.

EDIT2: Actually, starting Rox pinboard right after nitrogen in autostart.sh seems to also work and slightly better in that the background came through on desktop drive icons, but for me conky is starting up in this case with blank grey background still.

EDIT3: Rox pinboard does seem to itself use about twice as much RAM than the tint2 panel, but that's but a small increase in system RAM usage overall of course, and I imagine xfdesktop would use more RAM than tint2 also in addition to a larger installation size. I hazard a guess that very low RAM machines are few in number nowadays especially since modern browsers are becoming RAM greedy. Yes, I know, Toni still possesses a 128 MB museum piece! :-)

EDIT4: Ah, this openbox MintPup uses Nitrogen for wallpaper it seems, which always seems to apply to conky and desktop drive icons, but Rox pinboard usage seems to use Toni's default wallpaper. Must be a quick way to fix that issue, but I can't work out where Rox pinboard gets its wallpaper on this system - I used to know but forget - nor can I work out/remember where Terry's (BACON program?) /opt/bin/wallpaper-gui gets called. I checked from ~/.xsession but kind find where wallpaper starts.

EDIT5: Okay, for Rox pinboard it is in ~/.config/rox.sourceforge.net/ROX-Filer/pinbd, so I guess /opt/docs/pictures/01.jpg would need to result in a different background depending on nitrogen's choice:

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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<pinboard>
  <backdrop style="Stretched">/opt/docs/pictures/01.jpg</backdrop>
...

EDIT6: And in jwm version, Wallpapers is called from pinbd icon on desktop and there is a checkbox to run at Boot. However, Fred's background wouldn't 'Scale' when I tried Terry's 'Wallpapers' program (and in fact I couldn't get the program to work the way I expected - perhaps I still don't understand how to use it - I've had problems with it before).

EDIT7: Okay, need to click 'Start' in Terry's wallpaper program, then move required image to top before selecting Apply... Works fine (have option to start at Boot time). Seems to me, it might be possible to use Rox pinboard with openbox version using Terry's wallpaper changer and no need for 'Nitrogen' - but I haven't tried that as yet. Pity, I feel, Terry didn't leave wallpaper-gui as a shell script since would have been so much easier for most of us to tinker with its GUI. I don't know the relationship between conky and nitrogen and openbox itself - not sure how conky picks up its background (nor how to get that to scale correctly inside the conky window)

EDIT8: At first sight, using rox seems a little bit more resource intensive than using tint2 and xfe as file manager. However, I note that rox only seems to run one process no matter how many times you call it up - so very efficient if used for file management and pinboard. Also, with jwm you are still free to call up conky in these startup scripts (and or tint2 for that matter) but I wonder if rox panels might come in useful as alternative to tint2 launchers in either jwm or openbox version?

EDIT9: On the subject of JWM, I note that you can create additional trays using TRAY tag in .jwmrc and these can use autohide parameter. Such trays could I presume also be used as program launchers (using 'Swallow' application attribute?). Can probably also install something like compton, which is quite low in resource usage and size (121kB compressed download, on my machine uses only 1.7MB resident RAM with VM 7.8MB), for special effects like drop shadows, fades and transparency:

http://duncanlock.net/blog/2013/06/07/h ... g-in-xfce/

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Compton

I also note that you can make the JWM taskbar tasklist tabs just the size of the active program icons by setting TRAY attribute:

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<TaskList maxwidth="32"/>

William

[fredx181]

Hi William,

Many thanks for the ideas, there's very much to choose, I did look already at the option to use rox for providing the desktop and ran into the same problems as you, such as background, transparency etc.. .
Surely these can be solved, but I'm not sure yet if it's useful to provide an Openbox session that looks almost exactly like Jwm.
Anyway, I'll look into it later, first I am busy with DebianDog iso upgrade.

Fred

[otoshan]

I try to use package Variety from this repo
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:peterlevi/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install variety
But i have this error (variety-error.txt) when i open this package.
Also i try to install this package in original Mint XFCE 17.1 32-bit. It works without problem. I need help. What i missed?

[saintless]

Seems variety expects to find gsettings-schemas inside its own folder. I don't know how official Mint provides gsettings-schemas to variety but you can make symlink to the glib-2.0 folder and variety starts:

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sudo ln -s /usr/share/glib-2.0 /opt/extras.ubuntu.com/variety/share

Edit: I don't know if the included wallpapers changer and rox-pinboard will conflict in some way with variety. Maybe you will have to stop rox-pinboard removing the line from ~/startup and stop the wallpapers changing (use the wallpapers desktop icon).
And this is from the official site:

Note for users of Openbox, Fluxbox, i3, xmonad and other window managers.

Many of the lighter window managers do not have native desktop-drawing capabilities but rely on feh to draw the desktop. To make Variety run there, install feh, then edit the file ~/.config/variety/scripts/set_wallpaper and uncomment the second of these lines:

# Feh - commented, as it may cause problems with Nautilus, (see bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/variety/+bug/1047083)
# feh --bg-scale "$WP" 2> /dev/null

Toni

[mcewanw]

Not that I've read much interest, on this forum, in this alternative (windows Rufus program) method for creating a bootable MintPup usb with save file, but here is a (simple as it happens) step-by-step HOWTO:

1. In Windows 7, plugged in blank fat32 formatted 4GB usb stick.

2. Downloaded 'Rufus' portable version from its website location and then ran it:

https://rufus.akeo.ie/downloads/rufus-2.2p.exe

3. In Rufus, chose:

Device: My plugged in usb stick
Partition scheme: MBR partition scheme for BIOS or UEFI
File system: FAT32
Cluster size: 4096 bytes (Default)
New volume label: 4GB (or make it what you want...)
Further selected:
1 Pass; Quick format; Create a bootable using ISO image, for which I:
Clicked browse button in Rufus and selected my previously downloaded MintPup-jwm-icewm-hybrid-26.07.2015 iso

4. Pressed Rufus START button, then OK to create bootable usb.

5. Once done, rebooted system to usb stick (still plugged in) choosing default first menu option:
MintPup Porteus Always-Fresh

6. Once in MintPup, set up:
My wireless network connection using JWM -> Network -> Frisbee
My local timezone using JWM -> Settings -> Set TimeZone (which for me is Pacific/Auckland)

7. Now clicked JWM -> Shutdown -> Reboot, choosing option to Create Savefile:
Made my savefile 512 MB in size (but up to you); Pressed OK to continue
In resulting pop-up filemanager window, chose to store the file in / directory of my usb stick, which for me was /mnt/sdb1 and accepted default savefile name 'changes.dat' by pressing OK button in that filemanager window.

8. In resulting pop-up window, pressed OK button to accept the 512MB savefile size.

9. At this stage, in this development version of MintPup, there is a cosmetic usage problem in that the savefile creation program does not yet display a progress bar (note to Toni). I therefore clicked my desktop sdb1 icon, which auto-opened a filemanager, to allow me to monitor savefile creation progress (pressing refresh button to see size increasing steadily). In other words, you have to wait... until, eventually, a pop-up message will appear confirming "File created successfully" to which I then:

10. Pressed OK, whereupon the session was automatically saved and the system automatically rebooted.

11. On that reboot, when boot menu re-appeared I now chose:

MintPup Porteus in RAM (save in changes=/changes.dat file)
----

EDIT: You can now go ahead and install the likes of Firefox and so on per my tips Toni points to in the first post of this thread, directlvy here:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 919#857919

----

Note that, as an alternative to using Windows program 'Rufus" to create a bootable usb of MintPup, from Windows you could instead use isoboot-win from Puppy forum member rcrsn51, which also runs from MS Windows and results in a usb flash stick that boots from a copy of the actual MintPup iso file placed on the usb stick:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 664#859664

If you already have MintPup running, you could instead, of Rufus or isoboot-win, use MintPup's own utility, MintPup-Frugal-Install for making frugal installs to other partitions or devices: MintPup JWM menu -> System -> MintPup-Frugal-Install can create standard frugal installs to, for example, usb flash sticks or SD cards using a choice of grub4dos, syslinux, or extlinux for the bootloader to install and use (only modifying the MBR of the flash device selected, not the harddrive, which is left untouched for these cases).

MintPup-Frugal-Install (and the similar DebianDog-installer) is my personal favourite method (but it has the disadvantage that it does not run from Windows and relies more on the user's understanding of what they are doing). I prefer using it because the resulting installation is the more typical Puppy-like frugal install using the standard grub4dos menu.lst type of contents I am used to (or syslinux.cfg or ext2linux).

MintPup-Frugal-Install can also create frugal installs onto harddrive partitions (but for that case, the user has to be careful if they don't want to overwrite existing harddrive MBR/bootloader).

William

[saintless]

...the savefile creation program does not yet display a progress bar (note to Toni)

Thanks William. I will add it in the fixes post.
I left the script with the mods before adding gtkdialog to the base.
Just for now attached fixed version in archive. Extract it in /usr/bin to replace the included makepfile.sh and you will have progress bar.
I think many scripts with progress bar have the bug from remasterdog and will need better fix later.

Toni

[rcrsn51]

I haven't had time to try moving the casper folder and changes.dat file to my hard drive and booting that via the usb_stick/isolinux/live.cfg file.

In ISObooter, I just changed the menu.lst to

Code: Select all

...
root (0xff)
kernel /casper/vmlinuz noauto from=/ changes=/mnt/sda2/changes.dat
initrd /casper/initrd1.xz

I didn't try this with an NTFS partition. I know that this was standard procedure in XP, but it strikes me as asking for trouble with newer Windows.

[mcewanw]

By the way, since setting up MintPup bootable usbflash via Windows 7 using Rufus I have since tried making a bootable usbflash via Windows 7 using isobooter-win instead, per rcrsn51's readme instructions here:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 226#751226

That was entirely straighforward and worked well too. The main difference I found in the procedure was that I had to manually copy a few files over to the usb stick. I expect that could be automated, but perhaps that has been left manual on purpose as a safety precaution(?).

I did make one small mistake during the isoboot-win create bootable usb process: My Windows system was setup to not show icons, so when I renamed the MintPup iso into linux.iso I accidentally ended up with linux.iso.iso, but once I fixed that all was fine.

As rcrsn51's notes say, once that single OS usbflash has been booted, that could be used to create multiple OS installs onto usb flash stick via ISObooter proper.
----

That same isobooter-win created MintPup bootable usb could also be used to create other MintPup bootable usb sticks or SD card installations, via MintPup's own MintPup-Frugal-Install utility, which is available under JWM menu -> System -> MintPup-Frugal-Install. MintPup's utility can create standard bootable usb flash stick or SD card frugal installs using a choice of grub4dos, syslinux, or extlinux for the bootloader to install and use (only modifying the MBR of the flash device selected, not the harddrive, which is left untouched for these cases).

Note that MintPup-Frugal-Install utility can also be used to create a harddrive partition frugal installation, but as per usual the user would have to be careful not to overwrite their existing harddrive MBR/bootloader unless they intended doing so. In general, I'd say the MintPup-Frugal-Installer, for the sake of overall flexibility, allows the user control over how and where they install the bootloader components and whether they repartion any parts of the devices or not, so it is necessary for the user to have some idea of what they are doing - with power, comes responsibility...

William

[otoshan]

I can confirm these packages works xbacklight, fdpowermon, redshift.

About package Variety

Seems variety expects to find gsettings-schemas inside its own folder. I don't know how official Mint provides gsettings-schemas to variety but you can make symlink to the glib-2.0 folder and variety starts:

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sudo ln -s /usr/share/glib-2.0 /opt/extras.ubuntu.com/variety/share

Edit: I don't know if the included wallpapers changer and rox-pinboard will conflict in some way with variety. Maybe you will have to stop rox-pinboard removing the line from ~/startup and stop the wallpapers changing (use the wallpapers desktop icon).

Very strangely now when i try to install Variety. I have different path /usr/bin/variety.

After that i have different error

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(variety:13849): GLib-GIO-ERROR **: attempting to create schema ‘org.gtk.Settings.FileChooser’ without a path
Trace/breakpoint trap

That is fixed with this command.

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export GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR=$PREFIX/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/

Now i can start Variety, but i can't change wallpaper with the program.

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ERROR: 2015-08-07 13:15:15,487: get_xdg_pictures_folder() ‘Could not get path to Pictures folder. Defaulting to ~/Pictures.’
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/variety/Util.py

[saintless]

Hi otoshan.

MintPup has Jwm with special setup for changing wallpapers for each available desktop and activated rox-pinboard.
Variety author is correct this desktop setup is not compatible with XDG standards. But this doesn't mean broken system. Just Mintpup doesn't have any xdg packages included and uses different way for setting wallpapers.

I can't answer how to change wallpapers from command line in OpenBox but since you like to install 100Mb extra just to have variety for setting wallpaper I see no reason to keep Jwm and IceWm.
Remove both with all depending packages by typing:

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sudo apt-get purge jwm icewm
sudo apt-get autoremove

Install whatever window manager you like (OpenBox for example) and create ~/.xsession file to start the new window manager. From here google will provide you all the answers you need about OpenBox and xdg setup.

If your question was how to make Variety change wallpapers in the existing Jwm setup maybe I would try to test and give you the answer. But I don't have the time to search and experiment how you can change the wallpapers from command line with different window manager.

In case you are using the experimental OpenBox light setup from Fred maybe he will know better how to change wallpapers from command line. As far as I know it is still experimental setup and he plans to improve it.

Toni

[fredx181]

Can i change wallpaper from console? I use openbox

Yes, with hsetroot, apt-get install hsetroot
for example:

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hsetroot -fill /path/to/image

See here for more options:
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/dap ... oot.1.html

Fred

[mcewanw]

Hi Toni,

When a special repository is required to download something I've always done it manually and then used apt-key as well. I just wondered what the reason was to not include the command add-apt-repository, which would apparently fetch the key automatically too. I presume that application is a large addition to include in default installation? It's no problem since manual adding works fine though.

William

[saintless]

Hi William.
The answer is too many dependencies. But add-apt-repository is included in the DEVX module.

Start sfs-get-MintPup from the menu and you will see all available modules.
The DEVX module includes also add-apt-repository packages: Loading the module only for adding new PPA repo and unloading the module keeping the PPA repo active works from limited testing.

Load the DEVX module -> use add-apt-repository -> unload the DEVX module -> run apt-get update.
This is what I did to add ppa repository and test variety.

Toni

[mcewanw]

Hi Toni,

Good to hear its in the DEVX; could be useful sometimes. I thought you had just added the variety repository manually, which I note you could do from details here:

https://launchpad.net/~peterlevi/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

William

[otoshan]

Thanks Toni, fredx181

Yes, with hsetroot, apt-get install hsetroot
for example:

Code: Select all

hsetroot -fill /path/to/image

See here for more options:
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/dap ... oot.1.html
Fred

I have success with hsetroot, i add line in ~/config/puppy/.config/variety/scripts/set_wallpaper

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hsetroot -fill "$WP" 2> /dev/null

I can't answer how to change wallpapers from command line in OpenBox but since you like to install 100Mb extra just to have variety for setting wallpaper I see no reason to keep Jwm and IceWm.

No problem my squashfs now is 1.1gb

This command i need write manually after every login. I tried to add it in startup fille but not works. Any idea?

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export GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR=$PREFIX/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/

[saintless]

This command i need write manually after every login. I tried to add it in startup fille but not works. Any idea?

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export GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR=$PREFIX/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/

Try to add it in /home/puppy/Startup/localhost-fix
I'm not sure about this $PREFIX variable. I guess it is part of variety script and should be executed from variety script.
But if it works as separate command after login it should work in script inside /home/puppy/Startup
Or as user puppy copy /etc/skel/.profile in /home/puppy and try to add the line in /home/puppy/.profile
If nothing above works try inside /etc/environment (I think you don't need export inside /etc/environment).

Toni

[otoshan]

I tried all variants, it doesn't works.
Here have small script.
https://www.mail-archive.com/glade-deve ... 01942.html
I tried to add in /etc/environment is this the right place? Because again no result. Also i don't have path /lib/pkgconfig

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PREFIX="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )"

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PREFIX/lib/pkgconfig/
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$PREFIX/lib/

export GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR=$PREFIX/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/
export PATH=$PREFIX/bin:$PATH

[saintless]

Sorry otoshan.

I don't feel competent enough to help you in this situation.
You have already 1,1Gb remastered module and you are trying to use some script suggested for compiling glade to change wallpapers with variety.
Don't add it in /etc/environment or anywhere else because most probably you will break the system and other programs will stop work.

If you need this script to start changing wallpapers with variety it should be included in some variety script and started from variety script. Maybe inside /home/puppy/.config/variety/scripts/set_wallpaper before hsetroot (but I'm not sure about this also).

Read my previous post about variety how I made it start without exporting anything with symlink iinside variety folder. If the path to the variety folder is changed and it is not inside /opt anymore - find the new location and create the symlink there. Then you shouldn't need to export any commands.
Also read in the same post the quote from variety author about using feh with OpenBox and other small WM:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 9bd#859434

Experimenting the way you do it now to make variety work could break other progams and scripts in your system.

Toni

[fredx181]

Hi otoshan,

I didn't follow everything and have no knowledge about variety, but noticed this from variety output:

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GError: Error when getting information for file ‘/home/puppy/Pictures': No such file or directory

Sorry, if this is just to simple, but did you try to create ‘/home/puppy/Pictures' and see what happens?

Fred

[saintless]

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PREFIX="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )"

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PREFIX/lib/pkgconfig/
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$PREFIX/lib/

export GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR=$PREFIX/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/
export PATH=$PREFIX/bin:$PATH

In any case this script does nothing useful for you.
The PREFIX= determines the current directory. In your case it is /home/puppy when you open terminal:

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PREFIX="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )"
$PREFIX
bash: /home/puppy: Is a directory

Then export GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR=$PREFIX/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/ will export /home/puppy/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/ and you don't have such directory with sure.
The real gsettings schemas are inside /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/

Toni