10 things I do not like about DSL

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: 10 things I do not like about DSL
started by: flying tuxman

Posted by flying tuxman on Feb. 06 2005,08:01

Ok, we all love DSL, yet constructive criticism is the lifeblood of evolution so, here we go...

1- splashscreen graphic not very appealing
2- the default fluxbox theme not very readable
3- too many fluxbox themes too choose from (sounded lame as soon as I wrote it)
4-default desktop background
5- default dillo info, better a real and complete starter guide but only in the menu or better ad a .dsl
5-default console (I'd like aterm better)
6-not one real usable word processor
7-its hard to find 10 faults
8-a database app a little more powerful than index
9-a bit more user-friendlyness (considering that that would turn DSL into the primary linux promotion tool on the planet)
10-it does not make me coffee in the morning

Posted by eydaimon on Feb. 06 2005,08:35

Quote (flying tuxman @ Feb. 06 2005,03:01)

I'm a first time user of DSL and I can't really find merit to any of your complaints. I like the plain look. This isn't meant to be a linux you spend too much time in I'd think. I'd reckon most work here would be sysadmin work (well, xmms I guess is needed to listen to ... something, while working. Although it's not quite justified.

Anyway, one problem I do have with it is... where is SCREEN?!?!

How can you do any serious work without using screen?
Also, locate and a default locate.db would be nice to see.

Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Feb. 06 2005,10:31

>3- too many fluxbox themes too choose from (sounded lame as soon as I wrote it)

Personally I think a few of them could do with replacement, some are just plain unuseable (that said, it's fluxbox's standard set, not a DSL-specific thing). Of course, you can just not use them...

> 5-default console (I'd like aterm better)

aterm can look nicer, but I don't know if there's enough space by default. Or what other contributing factors there are in the choice.

>9-a bit more user-friendlyness (considering that that would turn DSL into the primary linux promotion tool on the planet)

Ditto. Definitely has the potential.

>10-it does not make me coffee in the morning

I have something that occasionally does that, but she's not very user-friendly either!

Posted by mikshaw on Feb. 06 2005,17:02

With a lot of features, size has to be considered.
4: Default background is SMALL, which makes it ideal.
5: I think putting the help in menu only would be a step away from user-friendly.
5 (the second 5): I also prefer aterm. However, rxvt is nearly the same but is a smaller size.
9: User-friendly usually implies much more point-and-click and more uniform windows-like interfaces, which means more bloat. I don't think DSL will ever be as user-friendly as some of the larger distros for this reason.

Posted by clivesay on Feb. 06 2005,17:42

I think it is great that we are nit-picking the little things. It tells me that DSL is a very solid OS. Great job.

I would say that there are many 'theme' dsl's in the repository so if a useful app is just a few bytes away from fitting in the base, I would lose some of the styles and just keep a just a few.

Posted by flying tuxman on Feb. 06 2005,22:12

yep,
in order to find some minor flaws in DSL you oughta go trivial.
the functionality they stuffed into 50 megs is simply awesome.
yet, as spiderman's uncle woudl say, with greater power comes greater responsability.
besides being a great tool for linux users, DSL can be a mayor tool in bringing more and more people to try and love linux right away.
it's flexible, fairly complete, fast and easy on small boxes and works mostly out of the box.
my point is, shallow as it might seem, appearance has an impact on new users and a few bytes could be optimized.
of course. you can mold and configure DSL into anything you want it to be, but I'm thinking about total newbies.
now, I'd like to see what "top 10 -" you guys can come up with.
It aint easy.

Posted by eydaimon on Feb. 07 2005,06:49

wtf? was I the only one who missess screen then?

Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Feb. 07 2005,07:29

Apparently. Maybe if you let us know what it is, what it does, just WHY it's such an obvious ommission, maybe john&co will look into it, or someone may make an extension.
I've never seen screen on any of the other (admittedly few) live distros I've used (or HD-install, for that matter). Hadn't even heard of it.
Enlighten everyone, and we may all be using screen shortly?

Posted by monkymind on Feb. 07 2005,08:09

Screen FWIW I don't use it either :laugh:

< http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/ >

Posted by davide on Feb. 07 2005,11:42

I totally agree with flying tuxman
the look is important to newbies. this does not mean that it must look like win98 or so... it just means that a more colorfull look, with better icons may help. I know we have space issues to solve to do so..and also that this look is the best for low-resources pc.
but the first look has a very important impact..to spread the linux revolution..
(may the force be with you, young yedies..)

(as for preferences, i'm on the mac-osx-like side)

Posted by Delboy on Feb. 07 2005,13:37

A lot of the fluxbox base themes are dull or plain nasty. Better to clear out a lot of these and leave say 4 or 5 x standard ones left and use saved space for one really good integrated graphic theme. The black standard DSL background simply doesn't convey the immense capabilities of the DSL project to newbies. What about the tuxvxp.dsl theme?
As for other window decoration, a working 'WindowMaker' window manager version would be pretty attractive to newbs also - the point being it looks nothing like Windows.
Also, a (base) one click on/off dialup connection button dock app. would make sense. To flip between e-mail and browser windows and burrowing through the menus to start a connection (something which is automatic in Windows) is a bit of a drag. Yes - pretty picky I know.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Feb. 07 2005,14:14

1. DBLclicking on a window title bar doesn't maximize the window. It hides. :S

2. There isn't any "Luna" theme. ( or the flying windowpanes! ) ..wtf?

3. I can't find ANY virus software that works! ( they all say "no viruses found" )

4. What happened to my "pop-ups" ? ( Rancho De Amor, and so forth? )

5. There's no critical updates for me to download each day? what's up wit that?

6. There's no one to talk to at 1-800-DSL-ROCKS to give me a new license key
when I upgrade my hardware or install my copy of DSL to another computer.

7. I miss getting all the dozens of cool adware bars autoloaded in my browser.

8. Where's the warez? I'm a hot cracker, but there's no warez here to crack?

9. I miss spending hours and hours searching for the latest mobo and video
drivers after my system crashes, and installing them by the buttload!

10. Alright, where did you hide the "Start" button?
( or , when does my trial version of DSL expire? )
( or, how long should I wait before reinstalling DSL so it will run faster?)

73
ke4nt

Posted by mikshaw on Feb. 07 2005,15:31

Quote (eydaimon @ Feb. 07 2005,01:49)

was I the only one who missess screen then?

I made an extension last month, but never submitted it. DSL apparently doesn't utilize setuid in the same manner as other distros, so in order to use screen as a regular user in tty you need to manually change ownership of /dev/tty1. This isn't a big issue for me personally, but it was enough to make me hesitate in submitting the extension.

Posted by flying tuxman on Feb. 07 2005,17:59

personally, when i talk about improving look I dont think about windoze but just lighter, airy feeling and readibility.
I love fluxbox and prefer pulldown menu over icons all the way.
I think fluxbox, the console and all the linux GUI holds a great fascination in terms both of feeling of use and visual pleasantness.
yet, and dellboy said it perfectly, DSL look do not convey its immense capability and power.
also, it was you again dellboy, so many fluxbox themes are plainly useless (I can think of one better than Minimal).
I think a good example is SLAX.
it was the very first linux desktop I have seen and I remember thinking this looks cool, simple but elegant.
in term of functionality DSL is on a league of its own, and I think getting to this point involved so much work that look might have been secondary.

Posted by flying tuxman on Feb. 07 2005,18:52

dellboy say it perfectly.
in terms of power and functionaly, DSL its on a league of its own, yet its look does not convey its inner beauty.
I think linux GUI holds a great visual fascination even to novices and would be crazy to "windowsize" it.
Simply most of fluxbox styles are plainly useless and that space could be used otherwise.
SLAX is a good example.
It was the first linux desktop I ever seen and i remember liking the fresh and light impression.
anyway, I'm also aware that getting to the point where DSL is now took an awful amount of work and image might not have been a main priority.

Posted by solarcontrol on Feb. 08 2005,01:17

Well I just got DSL running on my 133mhz P1 with 72mb of old style SIMMS, a 1mb Trident video card, and a 4x cdrom lol.

Kinda slow, but I expected it to be.
(My full time distro for it is Deli Linux. It's THE distro for really old machines - even 486s.)

DSL's real nice on my 433mhz P2 though (and Im trying to get my pal to let me try it on his old 200mhz compaq).

Posted by softgun on Feb. 08 2005,15:21

Deli is running off the HDD and DSL running off the CD?
Not exactly comparable!
:-)

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Feb. 08 2005,15:37

Heh, and DeLi is a PAIN to set up.

I've been playing with it since last night.

I'd never heard of it before. ^_^

-J.P.

Posted by Ploppy on Feb. 08 2005,16:25

Hi I am from germany and normally using SUSE/NOVELL Linux , tried DSL only because it made me curious to run completely from CD. There is a thing that really wonders me about the german (maybe all foreign lang?) keyboard. I can type certain german Letters into Pathetic Writer , but any other application would not show them. Sending myself an email and opening it under Suse later makes them reappear. This is really strange , does anyone have a solution ?
I think a wordprocessor is neccessary , the one from 9.3 isnt
good , if there would be a Word compatible Pathetic W I would even copy dsl to my old Laptop and use it permanently.

Posted by flying tuxman on Feb. 08 2005,17:40

ploppy,
try the DSL repository and check the word processors availables there.
you can easily customize DSL at will.

Posted by solarcontrol on Feb. 08 2005,20:21

I didnt put DSL to the hd because I was just seeing if it would even recognize the cdrom (something some trim distros like Feather and Puppy wont do) since it has to boot from a floppy.

What I meant by DSL being "slow" was that most apps and GUIs tend to be slow on that dinosaur - namely pretty stuff - hence my dropping winslow95/98 for Deli in the 1st place.

Deli is a little more involved to install, and you have to add ALSA to get sound (at least I had to on mine - but of course Im a noob and also got it for learning linux, so maybe I missed something..), but it is made specifically for old machines from 486s to 166mhz - with older stuff like the 2.2.26 kernel, xfree 3.3.6, XD640, etc.
MiniSlack boots ok on it, but like DSL, it's newer and more capable than that old thing needs (or wants) - besides, Deli is Slack 7.1 based anyway.

Anyhow, that old box has never run so fast and Deli is my choice so far for anything below 200mhz.

Dont get me wrong, I certainly didnt mean to disparage DSL in any way.
It's awesome in my eyes just because such an advanced OS could even boot on that box, and it will be in my right holster from now on for anything above 200mhz.

(I refurb and maximize home comps for ppl that cant/wont buy new ones and today's linux has me quite stoked to say the least.)

Posted by codestorm on Feb. 08 2005,23:01

I also kinda miss screen, but unless you're using shells through the GUI, you can just (from memory) use Atl-F1 to Alt-F4 to login as different sessions.

I made my own fluxbox themes, probably due to the garishness of some of the standard ones (I understand they're probably to showcase fluxbox, but really ... gradient shading over menu texts! Yuck.)

As for old boxen, DSL's running nicely at home off HDD on a 200MMX/64Mb, and off CF HDD on a 100MHz/64Mb.

Posted by codestorm on Feb. 08 2005,23:02

Hafta say though, from using linux WP's at work, Abiword kicks arse over OO - at least in my experience, for opening M$ Word docs with tables and embedded images.

Posted by ck_Fish on Feb. 16 2005,00:41

I also do refurbs and such for a charity org.
Can't say as I've heard of Deli before, but I'm currently running DSL quite smoothly from the HDD of this machine (originally from CD, but planning to remove CD drive):
�Pentium 120MHz
�32MB RAM
�540MB HDD
�onboard s3 Graphics
�network card (not working tho, prob dead)
floppy drive
�14" or 15" monitor, old, 800x600x16res
�ps2 keyboard, and serial mouse

my primary issue is with the mouse, which as most of you will know does not automatically get picked up when a standard boot is performed, works fine after xsetup. �I want to be able to set it up so that it will automatically setup the mouse on boot, but I'm not sure how to go about it yet, I'm still a bit of a newbie.

Posted by KenK on Feb. 16 2005,01:46

When I boot up everything seems OK. Then the computer freezes up and stays that way. My only recourse is to unplug it and reboot in Win 98. And then go back to DSL.
If I open the browser FF and a text ap it freezes up. What is the matter ?

Posted by codestorm on Feb. 16 2005,05:50

KenK, how much memory (RAM) does this computer have?
Does it have a swap file/partition?

I'd suggest that Firefox wouldn't generally be a viable option on machines with 32Mb RAM and no swap.

As a test perhaps try dillo plus your text app.

Posted by ck_Fish on Feb. 16 2005,07:25

I have found a workaround for my mouse issue (the fact that I am using a hd-install probably helps).
My .xserverrc now reads:
------------------------------------------
exec /usr/bin/X11/Xvesa -2button -screen 800x600x16 -mouse /dev/ttyS0 -shadow -nolisten tcp -I &>/dev/null
------------------------------------------
and my .xinitrc reads:
------------------------------------------
#^comments^-->editted out for shortness
grep noicons /proc/cmdline >/dev/null
if [ $? != 0]; then
enhance &>/dev/null &
fi
home/dsl/.xserverrc &>/dev/null &
fluxbox
---------------------------------------
The mouse works straight up and I don't get the welcome/manual screen anymore.

I have no idea what the /dev/null thingies are for, or if they are necessary, can anyone enlighten me on this?

My current setup is listed earlier, however I didn't mention that the HDD is split up into swap (96MB), ext2 / (280MB), and ext2 /home (180MB).

Cheers

Posted by mikshaw on Feb. 16 2005,07:48

a command followed by &>/dev/null just redirects output of that command to /dev/null

2>/dev/null redirects only standard errors to /dev/null

/dev/null is basically a black hole in these situations...anything redirected to it will disappear. This is often used when you don't want to receive error messages.

Posted by ck_Fish on Feb. 16 2005,12:27

Thanks milkshaw,
It's a slow process, but I'm learning stuff.

Now I've gotta find a good WP compatible with M$ Word, and figure out how to install it...

Posted by KenK on Feb. 20 2005,03:43

Quote (codestorm @ Feb. 16 2005,00:50)

32mgs memory
No I don't have enough space for that.
Dillo works fine but it is kinda limited, eh? Thanks for your answers.
Ken

Posted by ke4nt1 on Feb. 20 2005,06:56

Here is another simple fix for the serial mouse issue..

Works for me..

< http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....0;st=10 >

73
ke4nt

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 20 2005,17:07

The opera (Opera6.1.2) myDSL extension should work fine on a computer with 32MB of RAM.

However, my suggestion is to use the opera.uci extension because it will use less RAM.

Good Luck.

Posted by joer on Feb. 22 2005,22:11

I can't think of 10, but my top gripes are:

1. Should boot to VGA=normal
2. Fix serial mouse, why need to link?
3. Try to move to a standard UI, too many styles, even in the custom scripts.
4. The website needs to be updated to more easily show what to download. Is embedded the new usb version? How to know that frugal is really for embedded systems (CF) ? The names are confusing.

If some of these are addressed maybe less Qs from the new visitors.

Still amazing work! And better with each release

Posted by mats on Feb. 22 2005,22:12

Ok have to post this bug in hope that it will be fixed.

with the norwegian (and some other, like german) keyboard
layouts the @ key will not work in firefox nor opera.

You get @ by pressing Alt gr +2 in this layout and the
Alt gr key seems to be not working at all in Firefox / opera.
I used DSL to set up public p1 style boxes for mail and websurfing, but as i found out about this issue i cant continue doing this as people cant even login to or send mail.

its frustrating as i have not found any other distros that can fill up the space.
The ones based around DSL have the same problem(fether , luit) , morphix is no good with 64mb ram or less and puppy seems to have to have lacking hardware detection.
Deli is one to watch but at the moment it does not have an installer or any other browser than Dillo.

please fix this bug so i can turn Norway on to
DamnSmallLinux

Mats

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 23 2005,02:34

Try this:

Turn on the NumLock for your keyboard
Press and hold down ALT key
Press and release the "6" key on numeric keypad
Press and release the "4" key on numeric keypad
Release the ALT key

Posted by mats on Feb. 24 2005,23:38

thanks for the tip
thiis is like a code for a Super Mario hidden world or something

not working, but,

bur got me thinking of the Nes

Posted by JohnS on Feb. 25 2005,04:25

My biggest issue with DSL is lack of man pages. I've been using unix systems for over 20 years and have gotten into the habit of typing man xxx whenever I run across a commond or file I don't completely understand. In DSL this gets you a browser to a URL that doesn't exist, not terribly helpful.

I know there is not enough room for a complete man page suite on the CD, but it would be nice to have it available as a .dsl for HD installs, or even the online approach would work most of the time if it actually pointed at some place that had man pages.

Of course when I was first working with DSL I was trying to get wifi to work, online man pages wouldn't have helped much with that!

John S.

Posted by joer on Feb. 25 2005,04:42

The net man utility works fine in 0.9.3
DSL cannot help if the manpage site goes down,
I think they told us in the change log that they had to change sites.
Anyways it working fine for me.

Posted by tronik on Feb. 25 2005,06:24

You can definitely install manpages. Busybox uses a web based lookup. Anyway, you can install manpages yourself. If you're using DamnSmall you're also using Debian. Look into it. =)

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Feb. 25 2005,13:13

google > man

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 25 2005,23:08

Visit www.die.net and look up the linux docs. They are very helpful web-based man pages and include some linux programs that are not found on some other Internet Man page web sites.

For example:

< http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man8/hdparm.8.html >

Posted by AwPhuch on Feb. 26 2005,01:12

WOW...awesome

This is going in my shortcut list for sure!

Brian
AwPhuch