(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I love Puppy and it's my favorite small distro. I've been away for a while, because my main office computer is Windows only. At home I have dual boot Windows and Suse 9.2. My work involves web development and graphic design, but I like to switch off sometimes and use Puppy for general browsing and email.

Although it doesn't detract from my enjoyment of Puppy, I don't understand why Firefox, Thunderbird and other programs appear kind of "boxy and clunky" for want of better expressions?

The general look and feel is less rounded than it is in Windows, Suse and Mepis, which I also use.

Are there settings I should be changing myself, or is this a distro issue? Either way I maintain that Puppy is much better than its rivals.

Are you referring to the general appearance of the windows?
Maybe IceWM would be an option to try?

The TrueCurve theme for IceWM is very nice. It has curved corners and the taskbar actually looks decent (in most themes the buttons look like doggy-doo). It's also crisp and clean, and doesn't try to mimic XP (I hate XP). What I don't get is why all the XP clones look worse than XP (that's pretty bad...) and always mimic the blue colorscheme. If I had to use XP by some misfortune, I'd use the silver colors because it's about 7X as good as the blue. Even the green is better than the blue. Oh well. I still wouldn't use an XP clone anyways, so I guess it doesn't matter.

Excuse my ignorance, but how do I try the IceWm option?

PS: Guest was me, I thought I was logged in! Sorry.

PPS: Barry, what is your avatar? Is it a ferret or what breed is the pup?

Anonymous wrote:Excuse my ignorance, but how do I try the IceWm option?

Would this post be any help?

Hi, I'm using the default window manager for puppy.

I am wondering how to remove icons from the start menu.

Is there a config file somewhere I can edit ?

I have tried opening a shell and typing: " Computer, please remove an icon from the start menu"
But that didn't work.

I also tried, "Computer, please tell me how I can remove an icon from the start menu".
Which, also resulted in an error message.

Thanks,

Golpy_penguin

Umm, why do you want to remove icons?

To customise it.
I want a particular list of apps available on the task bar.
Some icons I don't want to see.

ta

Changing the menu for JWM and FVWM95 is a problem as when Puppy upgrades to a new version Puppy will overwrite whatever was there before.

You would have to have your own little script that runs after the upgrade, to restore your own config file...

or, use a different window manager that Puppy doesn't mess with.

Is there a DotPup for the TrueCurve theme for IceWM? It looks really cool but I'm not sure how to install a IceWM theme without it being a DotPup installer. Thanks!

Pizzasgood wrote:The TrueCurve theme for IceWM is very nice. It has curved corners and the taskbar actually looks decent (in most themes the buttons look like doggy-doo). It's also crisp and clean, and doesn't try to mimic XP (I hate XP). What I don't get is why all the XP clones look worse than XP (that's pretty bad...) and always mimic the blue colorscheme. If I had to use XP by some misfortune, I'd use the silver colors because it's about 7X as good as the blue. Even the green is better than the blue. Oh well. I still wouldn't use an XP clone anyways, so I guess it doesn't matter.

I just read the good review of Puppy on Desktop Linux and it had a nice pointer to installing IceWM.

Appearance is much better. I too though would like to know about installing the True Curves theme.

silver is 7X as good as blue? I think its closer to 6.3X actually! Anyway, I was looking around distrowatch and found an interesting distro called symphonyos at http://www.symphonyos.com. Its got the most amazing desktop system! I would love to see puppy adopt it. It is html based, so your desktop is customisable. Unfortunately, their project is using knoppix as a base which makes it run like dried glue! Its a real shame. Their desktop makes using a pc so easy, even for noobs!

i've tried TrueCurve a few times, and never liked it much

the purple colour doesn't really match other colours on Puppy's wallpaper or apps ... when i made my own theme, i used the eye-dropper program to get colours from the wallpaper and rox, so you may not like the colours, but they do blend

i find the close/maximize/minimize buttons a bit ugly ... i prefer simpler, cleaner looking buttons

i find the font size rather small ... some people like small fonts

for the theme to work properly, you are supposed to change a bitmap for the screen resolution you use, so the corners are rounded

in fact, to have the theme working really properly, they expect you to patch and recompile the Icewm source ... i think that's a bit much

it's easy to install Icewm themes ... just download the tar.gz file, unzip it so the folder is in /root/.icewm/themes ... it should show up in the themes menu immediately ... a dotpup is just a little bit easier and automatic

i'll probably make a TrueCurve dotpup eventually, if someone doesn't make one first

Thanks for the info GuestToo, I've never used TrueCurve but I saw a few screenshots. I had no idea it took some much work, I think it's a bit much to recompile IceWM for a theme. I'm using the Elberg theme now, I really like it alot. I hope we get more IceWM themes as dotpup files, I'm addicted to collecting them now.

GuestToo wrote:i've tried TrueCurve a few times, and never liked it much

the purple colour doesn't really match other colours on Puppy's wallpaper or apps ... when i made my own theme, i used the eye-dropper program to get colours from the wallpaper and rox, so you may not like the colours, but they do blend

i find the close/maximize/minimize buttons a bit ugly ... i prefer simpler, cleaner looking buttons

i find the font size rather small ... some people like small fonts

for the theme to work properly, you are supposed to change a bitmap for the screen resolution you use, so the corners are rounded

in fact, to have the theme working really properly, they expect you to patch and recompile the Icewm source ... i think that's a bit much

it's easy to install Icewm themes ... just download the tar.gz file, unzip it so the folder is in /root/.icewm/themes ... it should show up in the themes menu immediately ... a dotpup is just a little bit easier and automatic

i'll probably make a TrueCurve dotpup eventually, if someone doesn't make one first

you can just unzip TrueCurve and use it ... it works ok
to make the corners round, you need to change 1 symlink

if you don't patch/rebuild Icewm, i think there's a little gap at the top of the screen

i like some themes better, but people like different things, so having themes to choose from is good

it's pretty easy to make a dotpup to install a theme (a dotpup file is just a zip file), so maybe people will start making them ... probably the easiest way would be to use a dotpup file as a template ... i should make a few general purpose templates

an easy way to make an installer is to tar czPf your files, and put the line tar xzPf in the dotpup script ... this will un-tar the files using absolute paths, so they will be put where they were originally (i did not use tar.gz for dotpups, because servers often have the mime settings wrong, and they sometimes don't download properly)

Eh? I've never done anything to set up Truecurve besides download it! It has a submenu with the non-xft version and I use that (I didn't realize I could click the normal version, but it doesn't look as good anyway).

It looks fine with 1024 x 768. As for matching the background, I don't use that one anyways. At the moment I have two different Gundam Wing wallpapers, one in Puppy, and one in ZipSlack, (that way I can tell them apart easier) and it works fine with them. I used it with a green and brown background and thought that looked good too, so you might not want to trust me on this part, though.

(FYI, this post goes above the one above it. That last one got posted before I got this one done. One of the consequenes of loading several topics at once in several tabs )

since i had TrueCurve installed anyway, i made a dotpup installer ... just click to install, it should show up immediately in the themes menu

you can try changing the symlink to make the taskbar rounded, but i don't think that works unless you patch Icewm ... i like it better with square corners anyway

My favorite IceWM theme is the BubblyBlue which can be found here:
http://themes.freshmeat.net/projects/bubblyblue/

I am wondering, is there any way to change the appearance of the widgets? (the slider bars, buttons, etc.)

it's easy to modify themes

if you look in the theme folder in /root/.icewm/themes. you will see pixmaps like closeA.xpm, closeI.xpm

closeA.xpm is the close button for the Active window ... closeI.xpm is the close button for inactive windows (that do not have focus)

you can just copy similar buttons from other themes to change the way the theme looks ... select the theme again in the menu to see it

you can change the other pixmaps too (like the window corners, menu background ...)

you can change the number of buttons and what order they are in and whether they are at the left or right in the theme file ... like default.theme

i think the slider bars are set by the gtk theme ... but you can get gtk themes too ... for example, see:
http://themes.freshmeat.net/browse/58/