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Topic: Win DSL?

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cbagger01

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Posted: 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.

RoGuE_StreaK Offline

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Posted: 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?

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"I find your lack of penguin disturbing"
- Darth Tux

Fordi

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Posted: 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.

mikshaw

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Posted: 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?

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cbagger01

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Posted: 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.

16 replies since Feb. 01 2005,12:52

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