Need traditional windows/gnome/kde-style gui

Forum: X and Fluxbox
Topic: Need traditional windows/gnome/kde-style gui
started by: cyprus

Posted by cyprus on Jan. 14 2006,07:48

How would I go about getting a different gui set up in DSL? Something akin to icewm would be great. I would just use gnome or kde, but this machine is fairly low-end (AMD K-6 350, 196 MB RAM), and is going to be used solely as a fileserver and mp3 jukebox. However, the Fluxbox interface is annoying enough to definitely make me want to change it.

Posted by pr0f3550r on Jan. 14 2006,10:22

< Mydsl Windows managers >

Icewm is there

Posted by skaos on Jan. 14 2006,16:37

You could also test jwm which is built into the last versions of DSL - you can switch to it from one of the fluxbox menus.

Posted by roberts on Jan. 14 2006,16:37

My understanding is that the icewm extension has not been updated and could cause some issues.

Did you try the other builtin wm, jwm? It is similiar to icewm.
Use boot option:
desktop=jwm

or use menu option to switch to jwm

Posted by mikshaw on Jan. 15 2006,20:15

Today I built icewm 1.2.23 to run in /opt for a uci package. It seems to be working without trouble so far. The only issue i see at this time is that it has no menu....maybe a fluxbox-to-icewm conversion script could be added.

I refuse to make it plug-and-play (overwriting .xinitrc or any other files), so the user will need to make the standard .xinitrc edits himself, plus changing the .desktop file in dsl2.x. Although it's noticeably slower than fluxbox or jwm, it looks nice...i don't remember icewm being pretty =o)

EDIT: I found a flux-to-icewm perl script here in the forums, but apparently it still needs some work. Besides, I know nothing about Perl. So I made one in Bash. The code could be cleaner than it is, but it works...i'm just not a master of regexp. I still have to make it check to see if it can write the menu file (won't work if the .icewm directory hasn't been made yet)

Code Sample

#!/bin/bash

# flux2icewm.bash
# convert fluxbox menu to icewm menu
# mikshaw 2006

INPOOT="$HOME/.fluxbox/menu"
OUTPOOT="$HOME/.icewm/menu"

echo "Writing menu to $OUTPOOT"

cat $INPOOT | egrep -v "#|^ *$" | while read LINE; do
TYPE=`echo $LINE | sed 's/(.*$//;s/^[ \t]//;s/[ \t]$//;s/^\[//;s/\]$//'`
LABEL=`echo $LINE | sed 's/^.*]//;s/{.*$//;s/^[ \t]//;s/[ \t]$//;s/^(//;s/)$//'`
COMMAND=`echo $LINE | sed 's/^.*)//;s/^[ \t]//;s/[ \t]$//'|grep {*}|sed 's/^\{//;s/\}$//'`
ICON=`echo $COMMAND | awk '{print $1}'`
case $TYPE in
begin)
SUBS=0
echo "prog \"Rebuild menu\" - xterm -e /opt/icewm/bin/flux2icewm" > $OUTPOOT
;;
submenu)
SUBS=$(($SUBS+1))
echo "menu \"$LABEL\" folder {" >> $OUTPOOT
;;
separator)
echo "separator" >> $OUTPOOT
;;
exec)
echo "prog \"$LABEL\" $ICON $COMMAND" >> $OUTPOOT
echo -n "."
;;
restart)
echo "restart \"$LABEL\" $ICON $COMMAND" >> $OUTPOOT
;;
end*)
if [ $SUBS -gt 0 ]; then
SUBS=$(($SUBS-1))
echo "}" >> $OUTPOOT
else
echo " done."
fi
;;
esac
done

Posted by DAaaMan64 on Jan. 20 2006,04:32

Is there no way to install traditional kde 3.x or gnome?

Posted by mikshaw on Jan. 20 2006,04:37

Yes, there is a way. It just hasn't been done yet. My guess is that nobody with the ability and patience to do it cares enough about KDE or Gnome to make a mydsl package for it. This is damn *small* linux, after all....KDE/Gnome is the opposite of small.

Posted by pr0f3550r on Jan. 20 2006,10:11

...tough, it'd be nice to see how heavy XFCE could be on DSL...

Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 22 2006,15:37

I think someone was working on an xfce extension a while ago but I forget what happened to it.

If you want to get a feel for what "DSL + XFCE" would be like, you can try LiutLinux. It is a livecd based on an old version of DSL but with XFCE instead of fluxbox.