Other Help Topics :: menu button

Ok, I am in JWM mode now and yes, this is much more like I am use to. Thank you all so very much.

Quote (Yull @ Feb. 03 2007,12:34)

You have all helped me so very much. And thank you lucky13 very much for explaining all of that to me. I think I will try the jwm. I am rather use to the microshit windows. I now have one more question pertaining to the mydsl, is it similar to CNR on linspire/freespire? Or is there more to it than that? Not sure how much any of you know of the ***spire's CNR but all you do is double click em and it downloads and installs the program, is mydsl similar to that?

Short answer: yes and no. Kind of.

Long answer: There are four kinds of files in the DSL repository right now. The first and fewest are zipped (tar.gz) files. Those require you to unzip them manually.

The .dsl files you download from the dsl browser do a self-install. They also update your menu (in a "mydsl" subfolder), add icons, etc. You can download them and manually add them, too ($ mydsl-load [appname]).

UCI files should go to your /opt folder. These will have to be mounted to be used. You use the same mydsl browser to load (start edit) AND MOUNT (end edit) local UCI extensions.

The other kind are UNC files. Those require you to use unionfs. Don't bother with these if you're running DSL off your hard drive with a normal hard drive install.

Finally, __spire is Debian-based. So is Knoppix, on which DSL is built. You can enable apt and use synaptic (graphically) or apt-get (command line) to add files from the Debian pools. See
this thread. Using apt-get or synaptic will not update your menu or add icons. You can do that manually, though. The menu in JWM is very easy to set up like that (however you want). Setting up icons with xtdesktop is too much hassle, imo. Most of the programs in the old stable pool will work with DSL, but some won't.

The best option, though, us to start with the apps in the repository since they're built specifically to work with DSL and then try apt/synaptic. If you don't find what you need, ask.

Hope that helps.

Quote

Long answer: There are four kinds of files in the DSL repository right now. The first and fewest are zipped (tar.gz) files. Those require you to unzip them manually.

Actually, that's incorrect. "mydsl-load" will handle those as well. They are .dsl's except that they are contained within /opt and/or /home. They are the predecessor to uci's.

It's actually a *bad* idea to get into the habit of manually extracting *.tar.gz mydsl extensions as an installation method. Some of these extensions install files into /home/dsl. Depending on your method of extraction, these new files may end up being owned by root, causing problems for user dsl.

Quote

Hrrmmm, I just read that dsl becomes debian when installed on the HDD. So, by all rights if I were to insall "apt-get" then it would simply be debian like I messed with for around an hour or so on a different box, correct? With dpkg files and using alien to change other files to dpkg? Am I correct in my thinking?

Only slightly correct. There is more than one way to install DSL onto a harddrive. One common method is the "frugal" install. This is essentially the same as running the live cd, but it's faster due to the huge difference in drive speeds, and not quite as portable as a livecd.

If you install DSL to your harddrive as an uncompressed, fully-writable system (a traditional debian-style install) it becomes *similar* to Debian, but does not *become* Debian. There are several modifications to the system which give it a unique behavior suited to a single-user liveCD environment. It has been mentioned many times that DSL is developed primarily as a liveCD or frugal system, and so the debian-style install has not received a lot of attention. As a result, the dsl-to-debian process is not well documented or even terribly reliable.
There is at least one thread on these forums in which this is discussed in greater detail, so if you have some time you may consider a search for it.

Quote (^thehatsrule^ @ Feb. 03 2007,14:37)

Actually, that's incorrect. "mydsl-load" will handle those as well. They are .dsl's except that they are contained within /opt and/or /home. They are the predecessor to uci's.

I tried mydsl-installing one (evilwm) and it didn't install. I unzipped it in /opt and moved the evilintrc to /home. But I'll take your word for it and stand corrected.

Next Page...
original here.