Win DSL?

Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: Win DSL?
started by: xmak

Posted by xmak on Feb. 01 2005,12:52

I'm planning to make my own Linux distribution which has this characterisitics:

- it can run comfortably on slow machines
- looks like Windows a lot

What's the motivation? At the place I currently work I have some old machines which I intend to use as Internet workstations. Since the average users get pretty much confused when they just glance at linux like GUIs it has to look like windows as much as possible.
Since DSL is the first Linux that worked comfortably on one on my machines, I'd like to use it for this project.

So what are the legal issues about this? Under what license is DSL exactly, and can I make this without worrying about legal stuff?

Is there anyone interested in joining/helping me in this project?

--
Nothing is impossible! Not if you can imagine it.
Hubert Farnsworth

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Feb. 01 2005,16:08

Do we really need another windows look-alike?

There are so many. Anything from knoppix, to red hat, slackware, even debian can be made to look and feel like windows.

What the world needs is fewer M$ look-alikes, because the windows interface sucks.

Play with DSL and Fluxbox for a while, and you'll do what ke4nt1 and I did. Go back to windows, and double-click the title bar of a window. "double-clicking on the titlebar in XP sucks!" as ke4nt said.

-J.P.

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 01 2005,17:20

That's easy.

Install DSL + icewm extension.

Then rename all of the desktop icon text for the novice user.

For example, replace "Sylpheed" with "Email Client" and "Firefox" with "Web Browser".

Posted by xmak on Feb. 01 2005,18:03

SaidinUnleashed, i know that WE don't need more windows like OSes and GUIs, but I do. need it in my case. Not because of me but because of technically stupid and uneducated people that are confused ba even the slightest change in the GUI. I know that it shouldn't be that way, but it's not a perfect world.

My goal here is to trick the average user and make him belive he's using Windows. Maybe that way people will step by step get used to Linux instead of Windows.

I've tried Knoppix and Mandrake but they are to demanding for the machines I have.

Posted by xmak on Feb. 01 2005,18:05

cbagger01 I tried icewm with Mandrake but all together worked toooo slow. Maybe it was Mandrake's fault, I'l give it a try with DSL. Where can I find ice-wm extension for DSL and how do I install it?

Posted by clivesay on Feb. 01 2005,18:15

xmak -

Not sure who your audience is but I have had much success with kids. I refurbish old PC's for needy kids. If you like to tinker a little you can install wmdrawer and place the icons in there to give a "Start" button feel to the desktop.

< Here > is my remaster with wmdrawer. Click on the NCLB icon to access the icons. Once you choose a program the icons "slide" back into the "drawer". I use it all the time.

It's a shame to eat up system resources with the window manager.

Good luck.

Chris

Posted by davide on Feb. 01 2005,21:55

maybe Xpde also deserves a try.
it claims to be light, even if not that light i suppose.
don't know if it requires dependencies that are not there in DSL.
It's the most windows-looking WM that I've found surfing around.
good luck

< Xpde >

Posted by noclobber on Feb. 01 2005,23:40

How much CPU/MHz/RAM/HD/Video/etc do your "slow" PCs have?

To me, a 486SX is "old".

As already mentioned, once you show them the right-click popup fluxbox menu, they won't want to go back to the Windows taskbar.

Of course, the less they know about Linux, the less they'll be able to screw it up (er, be sure to do a "frugal" install).

Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Feb. 02 2005,01:23

Quote (davide @ Feb. 01 2005,16:55)

< Xpde >

Interesting... Very Interesting...
Your average joe wouldn't have a clue they weren't using XP. Though I'm guessing it'd be a pain trying to get it going under DSL, maybe if you do a full HD install, get all the dependencies etc set up, then image the drive to copy it to the other machines?

Though it's a little bit TOO XP for me - would be preferable to make it at least a BIT different, eg. cooler skins. Something that's similar enough so the average joe (or jane, or whatever) can readily transfer from XP, but different enough for them to notice and say, "ooh, that's cool, what's this thing running?"
Don't think it would be lightweight enough for most slower machines, though. But could be wrong, didn't see anything about system requirements.

Cool for noobies maybe, which is what xmak is after.

Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Feb. 02 2005,01:26

Oops, had network troubles and got a double post!

(couldn't delete, so replacing the second post with this useless comment)

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 03 2005,03:51

You can get IceWM from the wm apps section of the myDSL repository, located here:

< http://www.ibiblio.org/pub....wm_apps >

IceWM will work fine with higher end Pentium-1 and Pentium-MMX CPUs or newer. The only way to know if it will work up to your expectations is to try it and see if you like the results.

If you don't mind compiling it for yourself, another option would be to get this Fluxbox Tray Menu app:

< http://freshmeat.net/project....=186411 >

although I have never used it myself.

XPDE is probably not a good option for older computers.

In fact, unless they have suddenly made it stable and usable, it is probably not a good option for any computer at this point.

Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Feb. 03 2005,10:43

Quote (cbagger01 @ Feb. 02 2005,22:51)

If you don't mind compiling it for yourself, another option would be to get this Fluxbox Tray Menu app:
< http://freshmeat.net/project....=186411 >

THAT looks interesting. Has anyone tried this, if possible could a .dsl be made for testing? Might be a usefull addition to a future DSL release?

Posted by Fordi on Feb. 28 2005,07:39

I dunno.

No, I don't want my Linux OS to look like Windows, but I do want a couple of Windows concepts in Linux.

For example, I think the folder-based program launching system is awesome as compared to the file-based one (read: Explorer's Start Menu folder versus Fluxbox's single file mode).

I think that including the icon for a specific piece of software in it's own section of a multisegment binary is a much cleaner way of doing things as far as GUI arrangement goes (when was the last time you actually had to look for an appropriate icon in a windows program? Since when is the maker of the WM supposed to have the responsibility of dictating the default icon used for a program? Why do most WMs just have a dot or symbol as their WM controls icon?)

On non-windows related concepts (more from the PC manufacturer world), I think a user should be able to say "This is what I want to do", and the OS should be able to say, "OK, I know exactly which programs will do that. Here's a list with pros and cons. Or, if you feel really lazy, I can choose the on-average winner."

I think a blank computer should be able to have a single disc popped in and in two minutes, have a workable system, running from the CD and self-installing in the background.

I think that a UI should be simple for the novice to use, yet the user should still be able to do things to the system that were never intended.

I think that securing your machine against spyware, adware, viruses, exploits, network attacks, etc, should be a task handled, mostly, without user supervision.

Example of the immediately previous: Mac OS X has recently had its first bout of spyware attacks. Firefox looks to be next in the running. Forget "Alerting the user" to the presence of malware. How about a "Hey, my system's running slow. Could you help me fix it?" button? Click it and a list of running processes, on-start routines, etc, (excluding those binaries known from the dpkg/rpm/other installer database know about and known system files) is displayed for the user, who may then click and say "Turn this off", "Kill this process", "remove this and make a system-locked dummy file to prevent it ever showing up again"

And who's going to write it?

Well, I'm working on it. But it's going slowly.

Posted by mikshaw on Feb. 28 2005,16:05

I definitely wouldn't rely on mostly unsupervised removal of spyware, etc., if it means having things automatically removed. Case in point, i just saw a snapshot of Microsoft's AntiSpyware beta which lists Mozilla Firefox as a "very high risk threat and should be removed immediately".

These user-friendly options would be fine for a lot of people, but they should definitely remain options. When an operating system takes too much control over how things are done it can get very annoying. Suse is a very good example of this. Although I've been using it as my main system for a long time, there are things about it which make me wonder where it's headed. For example, I upgraded GTK2 a few weeks ago with no apparent problems. Yesterday gimpprint stopped working (or maybe yesterday was the first time i tried printing from gimp since the change?). I had to reconfigure my printer, and today i received a message saying that certain gnome files need to be moved into /opt or they will be deleted automatically. That ain't right, nope. I've also seen several config files which include a line such as "# Please DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE", which is bullspit. These are some of the things which have caused me to reinstall Slackware and begin learning again. As long as we still have to option to avoid having the OS make too many assumptions, then adding these features doesn't bother me much.

A UI can do only what the programmer can forsee the user wanting to do, which is one reason I really like Fluxbox. It gives you a few easy-to edit config files which control practically the whole thing. Linux, being a modular system, allows for the creation of UIs for anything....just about any configuration in Linux has one or more available graphical tools with which to deal with the config. Some are good, some not-so-good. I think the only thing missing here for the gui-needy is a way to access those tools from a control panel, including tools which the user has added....something like a configurable control panel where there are numerous actions, and for each action the user can specify which tool to use.

I don't know how to feel about icons embedded into applications. I guess I have no problem as long as they are tiny and don't hinder the use of the application in any way, whether or not you choose to use icons. It would be kinda interesting to see how it might work for the multitudes of non-binary executables in Linux....perhaps the window manager and file manager would read the interprter line and just use a perl icon, or bash icon, etc. Maybe this is already being done in desktop environments like KDE?

Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 28 2005,17:35

You could UUENCODE the icon image at the end of your non-binary script file, but that would be a little strange to me.

As for editing the fluxbox text file, you can do most of these functions from a gui using the whitebox.dsl extension.

Posted by noclobber on Feb. 28 2005,21:50