Release Candidates :: DSL v4.0rc5



Icons are comming, the icons are comming...
Application specific icons are now working in a test cut of v4.0 that I have been working on.

I am surprised how few actual icons are included with the extensions.
Neverless, I have script updated many extensions to add a resized 32x32 .xpm icon. The original 48x48 icon in .xtdesktop remains for continued compatibiliy with DSL 3.x and prior versions.

Now when 4.0 is loading an extension, either at boot up or dynamically a check is made to see if an xpm icon is in /tmp/mydsl.icons and if so the application specific one is used otherwise the fallback generic "open box" icon will be used.
Backing up a few pages, I want to thank aesendadorjr for telling us about hardware failure being the cause of high cpu usage. It happened to me the other day on the EPIA 5000 with the ps2 mouse gone bad. All of a sudden my beautiful little machine gave me a message that the BIOS was broken. I have a second EPIA 5000 computer so swapped machines and got the same message. It wouldn't boot. The screen told me the BIOS was broken. It took a day of testing different things before I discovered the bad mouse. Thanks again, aesenadorjr.

This thread is about 4.0rc5. So on my big computer I will look for a similar cause for why I get high cpu usage on the Sempron CPU. The difference is that on this machine I am able to boot and run Mepis and PC-BSD without any problems. It is a puzzlement for sure.
Hmm.. Robert could you post somewhere a list of apps considered for removal/adding?
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What is /tmp/.mydsl? It was created when I installed mc, but is an empty file.
Oh...i think it's something that's been in DSL for a while. I just checked it out again, and it is the file that I believe keeps track of where your mydsl extensions are (for the mydsl gui)...typically created in /home/dsl, I think, but I have a feeling that it was created in /tmp/mydsl because I launched the mydsl app from /tmp/mydsl?

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Legacy boot option is still supported in 4.0
Again, my bad. I somehow forgot to add legacy to my RC kernel line, while at the same time telling you it was there because I was looking at it on the kernel line for 3.4 =op

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On my own build of dfm, I can press Esc to highlight the first desktop icon.
It still works the same in DSL after all. The difference is in using a tiling vs floating window manager. In a floating window manager I am more likely to leave windows in view while starting another task. As long as there is a window visible, the dfm desktop won't take keyboard focus. All active windows must be shaded or iconified, or you must switch to an empty workspace, in order to put keyboard focus back to dfm. In a tiling window manager I must move to an empty workspace to access the desktop anyway, so I didn't notice this focus issue.

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The original 48x48 icon in .xtdesktop remains for continued compatibiliy with DSL 3.x and prior versions.
That's odd. I made the assumption that xpm was supported by xtdesk, only because it's the most basic and universal image format in unix systems.

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otherwise the fallback generic "open box" icon will be used.
I'm not quite following this. Are you implying that there will be a desktop icon created for every mydsl install, regardless of what the application is? What happens when the extension is a non-interactive commandline tool? or a library or plugin of some kind? The desktop icon would be useless and possibly confuse the user.
Quote (curaga @ Oct. 16 2007,09:18)
Hmm.. Robert could you post somewhere a list of apps considered for removal/adding?

Nothing decided for sure. Just an open discussion. It is something that keeps comming up especially when some apps become less useful, i.e., the xpdf and some would say even firefox. Siag and the heavy Mowitz library is another one.

I likely continue the release candidate cycle to showcase some alternatives and at the same time add better interface for support of alternate window managers. Not a tiny core, but perhaps slimmer.

This is open for further discussion.

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