Time for a little perspective
Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Time for a little perspective
started by: clivesay
Posted by clivesay on Dec. 09 2004,18:18
I have to admit that I am a little taken aback by all the complaining about the addition of firefox, mp and media player and the absence of scite and xmms from the 'core' iso.With MYDSL and ESPECIALLY Fordi's MyDSL Maker, none of this should be an issue. The only people who might be affected are true users of 50mb CD's. They won't have enough space to add .dsl's if they were really in love with scite or xmms.
Other than those few, everyone else should be thrilled. John and Robert put some more meat in the 50mb space. Why have xmms taking up space when you have commandline alternatives? John even wrote a GUI frontend for them! Judging by looking at things like the mydsl panel, I expect the mediaplayer to become a highly functional gui in the future. I applaud John and roberts forward-thinking ideas. What good is the repository if you don't utilize it? From what I can tell, no basic functionality was lost in the release of 0.9.0.
I think maybe we are a little spoiled and need to put this all in perspective.
Chris
Posted by ke4nt on Dec. 09 2004,21:45
I understand some of the frustration of not having xmms and the extension links to xmms being native in Firefox.Being a multimedia guy for a living, the "sound" aspects of DSL were some of my favorite items to play with and enjoy.
If you were "coming over" from M$ , the firefox and xmms union worked seamlessly, just like it's counterpart did...
It was familiar, and comfortable....
Same with scite, which for me was the app I was "spoiled" on.
With all the extension rebuilding I am doing, the options in scite were memorized, fast and easy.
Working between emelfm and scite was very fluent and natural after a time...
So when I was seeing pre-release candidates of 0.9 in testing, I also grumbled a bit.. I was comfortable before using what I had.
This was ..... different....
------------------------------------------------------------
Now were still into an ZERO series build,
but with the new .dsl's available,
my desktops are now combinations of what I had before, and working nicely..
I completely understand the need for firefox in the build.
1. It's HOT ! - it's "in the news" , everybody wants it.
2. It's the one browser that "does em' all" .
With some web pages, dillo or glinks leave a lot to be desired.
3. This is the DSL 0.9 series, ....that means major changes to the OS
will need to be completed BEFORE the 1.0 release,
which is coming up soon. If there ever was a time to migrate to
an internal firefox, THIS IS THE TIME to make the move..
4. With so many other organizations, affiliations, and co-builds
working with, and looking into using DSL for their needs,
a "supported" browser should be a top priority. John has done so.
Good move guys....
There is no way this could be accomplished without a little give and grief,
but we're not really in AGONY here because of the changes...
Just some growing pains.....
I also applaud John's and Robert's BOLD maneuver to include Firefox in the DSL distro.
Having a "around the world" recognized and supported browser
adds value to DSL , especially when it is being compared
to so many other linux distros out there today.
Expect further changes to the OS before it goes 1.0
..and just when you folks were getting "comfortable" ..
73
ke4nt
Posted by CappyCaffeine on Dec. 11 2004,16:16
Had to add my 2 cents since I have not added them i a while.I have been following and using DSL for over a year and I am so impressed with the ingenuity that has followed in cramming more features into DSL, yet maintaining its 50mb ISO footprint.
I was using DSL before extensions, the MyDSL panel, downloadable themes, scripts for HD install, Apt, synaptic, etc.
In one year, DSL has evolved into a feature packed distro on the order of MS Windows 1.0 to Win 98 which took approximately 8 years. (slight exaggeration, but not much)
When many people ask me why linux is garnering so much interest, I merely have to boot DSL for them and they start to understand the power of the philosophy of open source.
So thank you for continuing to improve this distro and open many people's eyes to linux that the larger distros could never do.
Cappy
Posted by VVVV on Dec. 11 2004,23:35
I was using an older version of DSL with came with a linux magazine a year ago!,, but I decided to download the latest version. I think there is allot of improvement especially in regards to useabily for lay computing people like me!For me linux is a learning curve, but I just see it as a chance to learn something new about computers and Linux is a good way to do that because you interact more with the kernal and can modify things at a nuts and bolts level.
Firefox was a great addition because it is a very intuitive browser, I like dillo for it's minimalism (the appeal of DSL to me) and its great that there is a choice!
Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Dec. 12 2004,00:28
Like Ke4nt, the first thing that attracted me to DSL was the fact that it had Xmms, a quick was to grab firefox, and a nice gui editor. Now it has Firefox built in and the MyDSL gui to make grabbing Scite and xmms quick and painless!
Although I would be in favor of dropping something like Xcruiser (and making it a .dsl, because it's fun) in favor of Scite.
But I can live with MP if it means not having to download 8mb of firefox every time I boot up.
Great move John and Robert!
Posted by Wekkel on Dec. 12 2004,00:37
I think the Firefox insertion is a good thing. Dillo isn't too atractive for the average user and gLinks is a complete puzzel for starters (like me ). I messed up a DSL install with apt-get already quite a few times but with every fresh install came Opera 6.12 static again in order to have a decent browser.I use DSL as an excellent way to get some live in an old Toshiba 530 CDT P166mmx with wireless internet. Tapping this message right before I go to sleep is the result (hence the crappy content :P ).
I also missed scite, mp is a lot skinnier. However, scite can be obtained via the MyDSL repository very easily. Unfortunately quite a few reps seem to be offline at the moment. I'll just have to be patient.
Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Dec. 12 2004,01:59
Just wondering why, now that Firefox is built in, we can't get rid of dillo and glinks, to free up some room and get scite back? But I don't know the relative size of each of them, or which particular uses they may have...True, I always use the extensions, so scite is easy to pack back in, but if it could somehow be squeezed back in I think it's one of the core utilities that people use...
Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Dec. 12 2004,02:44
Glinks isnt there anymore.Dillo is there for low-ram systems, and because its easy to use as a gui for many things.
Links-Hacked is still there because a console-mode browser is handy to have around.