User Feedback :: DSL to the Rescue! [again...]

Kind of abandoned this board for a while, but I have made sure to speak kindly of DSL, and recommend it to anyone who might find it useful. I still think it's a great system, but ended up resorting to Xubuntu because more of its config tools have a graphical front-end on them [btw, thanks again to lucky13 for the tips on burning ISO images to CD, on a machine running Windows. Very helpful, in more ways than I'd expected]. Anyway, sorry, but until I get better at this, I'm going to need an OS with training wheels.

Oh well, call it rehab.

This is a bit of a disappointment, because I do like the *idea* of DSL better; leaner and cleaner, and generally a lot more efficient. I also think it behaves more coherently, partly because it's so stripped-down. With fewer components in total, there's less that can go wrong, even if the ratio of bugs to flawless clean code were the same [I honestly doubt that ratio is the same though, thanks to the proficiency, dedication and raw talent of John, Roberts, and others here].

Anyway, getting back to the `DSL to the Rescue' part...

I'm not sure how this got screwed up, but somehow I lost the setuid bit on sudo. Have you ever tried to fix your system, when the one thing that's broken is the one thing that would *let* you fix your system? Not bloody likely.

But it became easy, as soon as I booted your brilliant business-card OS and typed;

Code Sample

chmod 4755 /mnt/hda1/usr/bin/sudo

on the command line. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and by the way, *thanks*! :-)

And just to render a rambling post completely incoherent, here's another tangent; you ever notice EmelFM's command line is actually a lot nicer than xterm's, the full-time dedicated terminal emulator? For one thing, it supports copy/pasting to and from the clipboard. Came in real handy, because all I had to do was copy the relevant permissions/path from a text file opened in Beaver, over to EmelFM [adding the /mnt/hda1 prefix, or course].

A file-manager with a built-in command line is something I kind of miss, in Thunar. It will open a terminal app for you, and cd the term into the currently selected directory, but the immediacy of a text entry box right there on the main window is a real plus.

Actually, it's kind of funny to see what kind of apps I've been installing on this thing; XMMS, Audacity, Dillo, Leafpad... Xubuntu ships with Abiword pre-installed, so no need to add that. mtPaint isn't too totally different from Xpaint, and more stable than Xpaint under this system [yes the Gimp is pretty damned hot, but also pretty damned *slow* to launch on an old 233 mHz Pentagram II. No problem, once it's up and running though]. Oh, and I just found out the Evince document viewer is mostly based on Xpdf. Haven't tried Netrik yet, but thanks for pointing it out to me.

And another tangent; you might want to go drop-in on the Debian repos and have a look at Tilda, if only because it *does* allow copy/pasting to and from the terminal, plus a few other things. Not the greatest thing going, and I'm pretty sure it requires GTK2, but you might like it. No window border either, so it's alt-click-drag to move the window around [see, it's meant as a full-screen term, but you can set the window size/position however you like in the prefs. Just right-click anywhere in the window to bring up its config dialog].

And some further tangential noise; does anyone know why the GTK1.2 clipboard is so much more reliable in DSL? Even Dillo's flaky about copying and pasting text in Xubuntu. My guess is that with a primarily GTK2 desktop, the backward compatability might not be all it's cracked up to be. But if I'm just missing a lib or two, I'd like to know which one[s].

Anyway, thanks again, and please excuse the babble,

Patrick.

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you ever notice EmelFM's command line is actually a lot nicer than xterm's, the full-time dedicated terminal emulator? For one thing, it supports copy/pasting to and from the clipboard.

This isn't a flaw in xterm (which is actually aterm in DSL). It is a problem with some Gtk applications using only their own Gtk "clipboard" rather than the one in X. Aterm will allow you to copy and paste to or from any application that supports the X clipboard (copy buffer...selection holdy thing...whatever it's called). Any Gtk applications (including Tilda) should naturally have no trouble copying to other Gtk applications. I don't know what your trouble with the Gtk2 clipboard might be, though. The only Gtk2 apps I use much are Gimp and Firefox, and haven't done much cross-copying with them.

Hi Patrick. Nice of you to drop in again. No shame in "training wheels" -- some never make it past the starting line on the learning curve. I have a feeling you'll tinker more with DSL as you learn more about Linux.

Your bad experience could be chalked up to a difference between versions of Dillo. I installed it while using Mepis and had to ditch it because it was a total abortion. It was an older version than DSL has (which surprised me).

Netrik is fast and nimble. My favorite console browser is elinks. It has tabs and can download in the background, and has more bells and whistles. It's not quite as fast as netrik, but it's not going to bog you down like Firefox does.

Take care.

Quote (mikshaw @ May 10 2007,15:01)

Any Gtk applications (including Tilda) should naturally have no trouble copying to other Gtk applications. I don't know what your trouble with the Gtk2 clipboard might be, though.

Not so much a problem with Gtk2 or 1.2, but how the two of them interact -- or in this case, don't interact. I'd guessed it was a primarily Gtk2 framework missing some subtle cues from Gtk1.2 apps, because the same, or almost the same programs have no trouble with this in DSL. Just a guess though.

But as you say, they're probably just using the wrong clipboard, or more accuarately; one that's too specific to one application framework or another. Both Gtk, but in some ways it's like running two separate GUIs side-by-side.

[Note to self; I should experiment with v1.2 > v1.2 copy/pasting in this environment, and see if it's more reliable than v1.2 <> v2 copying, if only for educational purposes.]

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The only Gtk2 apps I use much are Gimp and Firefox, and haven't done much cross-copying with them.

Well no, not between a graphics app and a web browser. Then again, you might have copied URLs back and forth between Firefox and Dillo [if you use Dillo], and never thought twice about it. People tend not to notice little things like that, unless they fail.

Hmm...

Patrick.

Quote (lucky13 @ May 10 2007,21:54)

Hi Patrick. Nice of you to drop in again.

Hi lucky13. Thanks. :-)

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No shame in "training wheels" -- some never make it past the starting line on the learning curve.

Well, I Have a Dream, program (daydream is more like it; I don't even know C), but that's for another thread.

I will say that I feel more competent to use Xubuntu right now, and the familiarity of that makes it easier to dig around under the hood, and figure out how stuff actually works. And under the hood, there's plenty that's universal to Linux, and even other UNIX-like spin-offs, so a fair chunk of it should be useful here.

Being more of an entry-level distro, the Ubuntu forums also have their fair share of clueless n00bs, kind of feeling their way around in the dark. No criticism in that, I'm in there too; just making it up as I go along really. Actually managed to help a few people, so I guess it suits me. :-)

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I have a feeling you'll tinker more with DSL as you learn more about Linux.

Tinkering... Yes, that's probably how I break things. But so far I've managed to fix it again, and learned something in the process. :-)

BTW, I think this is what killed sudo;

Code Sample

#!/bin/sh

sudo echo 0wn: Making "$@" yours...
sudo pwn $USER "$@" &
# Should not be called as `sudo 0wn'
# or the script will think you're root.

And in pwn;

Code Sample

#!/bin/sh

chown -R "$@"
echo
echo 0wn: "$1", "$2" is yours to edit, for now...

sleep 3333
# Wait about an hour.

echo "
0wn: Now returning to root, that which belongs to root..."
chown -R root:root "$2"
echo 0wn: "$2"

I've since noticed that the setuid bit gets dropped, even if you chown something from root, to *root*! (No, I didn't experiment on /usr/bin/sudo to find that out. Well not on purpose, not the second time anyway...)

Might be useful to somebody, as long as they're careful with it.

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Your bad experience could be chalked up to a difference between versions of Dillo. I installed it while using Mepis and had to ditch it because it was a total abortion. It was an older version than DSL has (which surprised me).

0.8.5-i18n-misc , which I think is a bit later than the one in DSL. The `misc' is probably for various patches applied, like SSL support and so on. In any case, it's probably not the same binary.

Can't say it's been a bad experience though. This Dillo is very fast and *very* stable, just that the clipboard flakiness gets a little annoying sometimes, and that might be a separate issue.

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Netrik is fast and nimble. My favorite console browser is elinks. It has tabs and can download in the background, and has more bells and whistles. It's not quite as fast as netrik, but it's not going to bog you down like Firefox does.

Well, I did have a look a Netrik and tried it out, but might not have looked long enough. It is very much a work in progress, and from the tone of the docs it might be a work in very *fast* progress, so I'll keep an eye on that.

My favourite text browser is still Lynx; not that it's the best or anything, but it is what I know best. Aside from the total lack of JavaScript I have no complaints. It's also worked pretty well as a console file-manager when the GUI broke down on me (and what did I say before about tinkering...?).

Hmm... elinks, you say. From your description, it sounds featureful and well-developed, should check it out. Thanks. :-) Sounds like it could make the cut for a DSL release, unless the file-sizes get a bit high...?

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Take care.

Thanks, you too,

Patrick.

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