This thread has been hijacked. Please use the proper thread for Extension Development You can start a new topic in that area.
Hello Robert!
I can tell you that I switched to DSL v. 4.3 as my production environment a few days ago. Unfortunately I had to change back to DSL v. 3.3 that according to me is the best version I have tested (and I have tested most all of them). That leads to the question: Why? For one thing v. 4.3 is much slower in certain aspects. Changing from jwm which is the default wm to fluxbox takes a while because it takes quite a while for the options window to appear. First you see only the top bar and after some time the whole window. This seems to be the case with other applications like the control panel under certain circumstances. But the thing that made me take this decision was that certain extensions doesn't work with DSL v. 4.3 but they work flawlessly with DSL v. 3.3. An exampel of such an extension is bittorrent-gui but I'm quite convinced that it's the same with some other extensions. I just doesn't neither have the time or want to make an extensive test in this matter. So even if DSL v. 4.3 seems very solid it is also about 4 times slower (give or take a little) if you have a lot of extensions in /mydsl/optional it seems. Besides that we have the problem with the windows appearing in a strange way. I just tried the extension mentioned before with DSL-embedded (adding the norestore option) in original shape (not remastered in any way) and the cpu didn't even react when I tried to start the loaded extension. So even if slowness doesn't matter too much to me I really want the extensions I'm accustomed to use to work. So therefore I switched back to DSL v. 3.3. Even if I don't use the most recent version of DSL I shurely can use the latest software extensions (even if I build them in my own manner). Well I think I'd let you know about these drawbacks with the new DSL version.
But thank you for your hard work and have fun with DSL, meo
P.S. I was going to shut down and it took like 7 seconds for the exit options window to complete D.S.Mostly what you indicated would point to murgaLua,. i.e, the change wm options, the control panel, the exit options, etc. While it is true that murgaLua is growing in features, I have heard that John Murga will be doing more optimizations in the next, or near future, release that will address this issue.
Ultimately users will use what they want. But complaints about a slightly larger murgaLua only gives me pause when there is so much demand for a 2.6 kernel, gtk2, flash9 etc, etc, etc.
It is a shame that you will miss out on the many new features, already notable, is mikshaw's mydslBrowser.lua which deploys many of the new features in murgaLua. It is hot!
BTW, Some have said the version 0.5.3 is the best version. It is ultimately your choice. This is so very true when deploying on old hardware.
[EDIT] Also be aware, as I had mentioned in the Firefox poll, that Firefox v2 is HUGE! It's memory foot print will only add to the slowness and on top of that it is running from within a compressed image.
Thanks Robert for a swift reply!
I didn't know what caused the things I described but I forgot to mention that DSL v. 4.3 uses about the double of the computers memory compared to DSL v. 3.3. And that is with the KNOPPIX-file remastered the same way. It also seems to handle memory worse (as in occupying the memory even with all the programs turned off) than DSL v. 3.3 that cleans the RAM pretty fast. This is no critic because I know that you are working hard with this excellent distribution. It is just an observation. I'll finalize with a question: Will fluxbox disappear with the DSL 5.xx series? I will be sorry if that is a fact but maybe it can be fixed somehow. Who knows???
Thanks for all you have done and continue having fun with DSL. meo
EDIT: If I remember right most voters wanted to remove Firefox completely. Am I wrong? Personally I use the latest version that I have built as an uci-extension and that one works very fine.