Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
* Wed 2006-06-07 Axel Beckert abe AT deuxchevaux.org * Message-Id: 20060607001535.GT3066 AT fsinfo.cs.uni-sb.de Hi! I'm creating a meta package for install a lite desktop for old machines with poor hardware. Hey, that's a really cool idea! Debian is one of the last modern (and not specialised) Linux distribution feasible for old and slow hardware, especially old PCs. But Sarge already made a big step away from old PCs (e.g. by dropping XFree86 3.3 and requiring 32 Megs of RAM for installation -- Woody needed only 12 Megs) so I'm really happy to see that others try to take the cudgels for Debian on old hardware too. FYI, I've already have a running a project to provide a very light, very low profile Desktop for Debian. The project is ready to install[*] and it has been tested for old harware running 64M/166 (even lower) needs. The project page is at: http://debian.cante.net/stem The extra packages currently used are optional and some that are missing are being ported to Debian. At the end of opening page you will find listing of programs used for the desktop. http://debian.cante.net/stem/package.lst The WM choices currently are: - Jwm window manager (very light) - Fvwm95 (the standard look), moderate memory consumption. You will also find study on programs that were evaluated to build up the desktop from pictures of memory consumption graphs. http://debian.cante.net/stem/manual http://debian.cante.net/stem/faq Suggestions how to eventually be included it in Debian, please comment how this could be done. I'm not a DD yet. Jari - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [*] The bugs are being ironed out, but in general it's ready for the prime time. Repository deb http://debian.cante.net/debian unstable main deb-src http://debian.cante.net/debian unstable main There is automatic install script (asks few questions) wget -qN http://debian.cante.net/stem/netinstall.sh sh netinstall.sh [--help] or install can be done manually (for expert only) apt-cache search ^stem- apt-cache show packagename -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Le mercredi 07 juin 2006 à 02:15 +0200, Axel Beckert a écrit : Hi! I'm creating a meta package for install a lite desktop for old machines with poor hardware. Hey, that's a really cool idea! Debian is one of the last modern (and not specialised) Linux distribution feasible for old and slow hardware, especially old PCs. But Sarge already made a big step away from old PCs (e.g. by dropping XFree86 3.3 and requiring 32 Megs of RAM for installation -- Woody needed only 12 Megs) so I'm really happy to see that others try to take the cudgels for Debian on old hardware too. [..] Since one of the points, why I like Debian, is its huge package variety (so there's nearly always also a low end software for the desired purpose) and since Woody runs fine on most of those boxes, I was perfectly fine with that. Now since Woody runs out of security support, I installed Sarge on a Pentium 90 with 76 MB of RAM and a 1,5 GB big but bad performing HD. I general it runs fine, but X took a while (the graphics card is no more supported in XFree 4.x and there no more supported in Sarge) to get it running. To my knowledge, at some point, the XFree86 Team treated the no-longer-existing-in-4.x drivers as bugs. They requested anybody who noticed that its graphics card worked with previous versions of XFree86 but no longer with 4.x to submit a bug and it would be fixed. Are you sure your card is not simply managed by another driver now (split or merging of drivers)? [..] And then there are the real low end browsers like Dillo and the Links family (links, links2, elinks, etc.) as well the pure text browsers as lynx and w3m. But there you have to lower your sights regarding the rendering quality respective rendering features (no CSS there, etc.). Dillo doesn't support CSS either, I think. [..] Most recent software also have more configuration items available, and you can often trim down their requirements using them. Regards
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
At 1149646535 past the epoch, Axel Beckert wrote: Why gdm and not wdm? gdm depends on a horribly large bunch of libraries including GNOME. wdm depends on way less libraries, looks not as bare as xdm by default does and still is fast and easy to use. (We use it on all our Debian workstations at the Department of Physics at ETH Zurich.) One reason: wdm (really wings) has no keyboard-shortcut support. You are forced to use a mouse to operate it. -- Jon Dowland http://alcopop.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Hi! On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 12:21:13PM +0200, Jérôme Warnier wrote: (the graphics card is no more supported in XFree 4.x and there no more supported in Sarge) to get it running. To my knowledge, at some point, the XFree86 Team treated the no-longer-existing-in-4.x drivers as bugs. Thanks for that information, didn't knew that. Hope, that Xorg sees it the same way -- that gives hope for old boxes. :-) They requested anybody who noticed that its graphics card worked with previous versions of XFree86 but no longer with 4.x to submit a bug and it would be fixed. Are you sure your card is not simply managed by another driver now (split or merging of drivers)? Well, regarding the newest XFree86 4.4, due to lack of driver documentation, I'm not: http://www.xfree86.org/4.4.0/cirrus.4.html -- Same problem with the Xorg docs IIRC. XFree86 says about 4.3 in http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/Status9.html#9: ---snip--- 9. Cirrus Logic 3.3.6: Support (unaccelerated) for the 6410, 6412, 6420 and 6440 is provided by the XF86_SVGA server with the cl64xx driver. Support (accelerated) for the 5420, 5422, 5424, 5426, 5428, 5429, 5430, 5434, 5436, 5446, 5480, 5462, 5464, 5465, 6205, 6215, 6225, 6235, 7541, 7542, 7543, 7548, 7555 and 7556 is provided by the XF86_SVGA server with the cirrus driver. 4.3.0: Support (accelerated) for the Alpine (5430, 5434, 5436, 5446, 5480, 7548), and Laguna (5462, 5464, 5465) chips is provided by the cirrus driver. Summary: The following chips are supported in 3.3.6 but not in 4.3.0: 6410, 6412, 6420, 6440, 5420, 5422, 5424, 5426, 5428, 5429, 6205, 6215, 6225, 6235, 7541, 7542, 7543, 7555 and 7556. ---snap--- I have a laptop with a GD 7543 chip. And I won't throw away a working laptop just because its graphics card isn't supported and can't be exchanged either. [..] And then there are the real low end browsers like Dillo and the Links family (links, links2, elinks, etc.) as well the pure text browsers as lynx and w3m. But there you have to lower your sights regarding the rendering quality respective rendering features (no CSS there, etc.). Dillo doesn't support CSS either, I think. [..] Most recent software also have more configuration items available, and you can often trim down their requirements using them. Of course, you can tweak a configuration towards low Ressource consupmtion, but you can't change the design principles a software is built upon. And in case of Mozilla, Firefox and Thunderbird it's the decision to render the UI with Gecko, too, which is to heavy for old PCs and you can't change that. You only can change it by using alternatives. Kind regards, Axel aka XTaran -- /~\ | Axel Beckert \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign| [EMAIL PROTECTED] X Say No to HTML in EMail and News | [EMAIL PROTECTED] / \ | http://abe.home.pages.de/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Am Mittwoch, 7. Juni 2006 02:15 schrieb Axel Beckert: + The dropping of the 2.4 kernel line: This will drop AFAIK support for e.g. active ISDN cards. The other way round: active cards are still supported as before, at least the AVM B1 cards and all others that already support CAPI. What lacks is proper maintainance of the hisax driver or bringing mISDN into kernel and make it more stable. HS pgpZA9pCETpZm.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Am Mittwoch, 7. Juni 2006 15:21 schrieb Axel Beckert: I have a laptop with a GD 7543 chip. And I won't throw away a working laptop just because its graphics card isn't supported and can't be exchanged either. What about using the vesa of fbdev drivers? Maybe slow but working. HS pgpR476JnFR01.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Le mercredi 07 juin 2006 à 19:04 +0200, Hendrik Sattler a écrit : Am Mittwoch, 7. Juni 2006 15:21 schrieb Axel Beckert: I have a laptop with a GD 7543 chip. And I won't throw away a working laptop just because its graphics card isn't supported and can't be exchanged either. What about using the vesa of fbdev drivers? Maybe slow but working. I would have suggested that too, but you were quicker. ;-) Not sure it would be necessarily slower, though. HS
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 07:04:40PM +0200, Hendrik Sattler wrote: Am Mittwoch, 7. Juni 2006 15:21 schrieb Axel Beckert: I have a laptop with a GD 7543 chip. And I won't throw away a working laptop just because its graphics card isn't supported and can't be exchanged either. What about using the vesa of fbdev drivers? Maybe slow but working. I currently use the vesa driver, but it seems to have several more or less strange side effects like e.g. keeping the last graphics mode picture in memory even after a reboot, having always some green lines on the top of the screen for the first few seconds after starting or switching to X, etc. Framebuffer is still on the todo list, yes. Regards, Axel -- Axel Beckert - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://abe.home.pages.de/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Jérôme Warnier [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: To my knowledge, at some point, the XFree86 Team treated the no-longer-existing-in-4.x drivers as bugs. They requested anybody who noticed that its graphics card worked with previous versions of XFree86 but no longer with 4.x to submit a bug and it would be fixed. Of course, the existance of a bug doesn't mean it will ever be fixed... My old graphics card (mach64 variant) worked badly with xfree86 4.x (whereas it worked fine with 3.x). There was a debian bug for the problem, and it had been reported upstream I think, but probably wasn't important enough for anybody to pay attention to... [Eventually my solution was to buy a new cheapo gfx card -- I found one that's also long obsolete but much better supported by modern X, and it only cost me $5 (brand new)...] -Miles -- `Life is a boundless sea of bitterness'
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Hi! I'm creating a meta package for install a lite desktop for old machines with poor hardware. Hey, that's a really cool idea! Debian is one of the last modern (and not specialised) Linux distribution feasible for old and slow hardware, especially old PCs. But Sarge already made a big step away from old PCs (e.g. by dropping XFree86 3.3 and requiring 32 Megs of RAM for installation -- Woody needed only 12 Megs) so I'm really happy to see that others try to take the cudgels for Debian on old hardware too. I used the Slackware and kernel 2.2 based Desktop Light (DeLi) Linux (http://www.delilinux.de/) distribution for a while on old boxes (e.g. i486 laptops), but its package variety just sucks (the full ISO is 90 MB) and so I had to compile a lot on the boxes itself locally. (Any Gentoo advocates here? ;-) But the package list of DeLi Linux partly was quite well chosen (Siag Office as office tools, Dillo and Links as browsers, etc.) and DeLi can surely give an idea of what is good for old, low resource hardware and what isn't. (Ok, I strongly disagree in putting PHP5 on such boxes, even only for developing purposes. ;-) Since one of the points, why I like Debian, is its huge package variety (so there's nearly always also a low end software for the desired purpose) and since Woody runs fine on most of those boxes, I was perfectly fine with that. Now since Woody runs out of security support, I installed Sarge on a Pentium 90 with 76 MB of RAM and a 1,5 GB big but bad performing HD. I general it runs fine, but X took a while (the graphics card is no more supported in XFree 4.x and there no more supported in Sarge) to get it running. That is also one of the reasons I stay with Woody as long as I can. Another reason is GNOME 2.x. It is neither as performant as GNOME 1.x nor is it (IMHO) as user-friendly as GNOME 1.x was. (Ok, we'll drop the user-friendly discussion here, it just doesn't matter here. ;-) I would like to receive opinions about my packages list: - x-window-system-core - xfce4 (beautiful!) That's really fine IMHO. XFCE is not as resource-hungry as GNOME or KDE are and is easy to use. But if you just want an easy to use WM instead of a desktop environment, I suggest the FLTK based FLWM or one of the *box famliy window managers (and ion3 or ratpoison for the mouse-haters). - gdm Why gdm and not wdm? gdm depends on a horribly large bunch of libraries including GNOME. wdm depends on way less libraries, looks not as bare as xdm by default does and still is fast and easy to use. (We use it on all our Debian workstations at the Department of Physics at ETH Zurich.) - mozilla-firefox - mozilla-thunderbird Those are resource-whores, too: They render their whole GUI with Gecko instead of a widget toolkit and cost a lot of performance and memory. You just don't want them on old hardware, it's really no fun to use them there. If you want a slim Gecko based web browser use Galeon, Epiphany (both GNOME, but still faster than Firefox or Mozilla itself) or the currently GTK based (and AFAIH planned to be FLTK based) Kazehakase -- a web browser useable for both beginners and power users (the UI and the configuration dialog has a user level switch). Only drawback: Kazehakase isn't really stable in Sarge. But it is in Sid (or at least was the last time I played with it). And then there are the real low end browsers like Dillo and the Links family (links, links2, elinks, etc.) as well the pure text browsers as lynx and w3m. But there you have to lower your sights regarding the rendering quality respective rendering features (no CSS there, etc.). - eog Isn't xzgv much leaner? - abiword - gnumeric Here I would like to see Siag Office, the free low end office package instead. But unfortunately it fell out of Debian with Sarge. It run acceptable even on a i486 with 16 Megs of RAM. In general I would try to not use any GNOME or KDE depended package (and I don't say that because I like parts of Linus' statement in the Desktop Environment War a few months ago ;-), GNOME and KDE are both just a lot of bloat which badly slows down old boxes. In the future, I see thre main problems for Debian on old PCs and other old non-x86 hardware: + Memory requirements for installation (32 MB RAM AFAIK). The requirements for finally running a Sarge box are lower AFAIH. + The dropping of XFree86 3.3 as far as Xorg doesn't step in. XFree86 4.x probably never will. + The dropping of the 2.4 kernel line: This will drop AFAIK support for e.g. active ISDN cards. On the other hand the new schedulers seem to bring better (feelable) performance, if an old box is used as desktop. I'm not sure, if it really is a possibility to still support older hardware in Debian, but if the Linux kernel 2.6 makes hassles, perhaps Debian GNU/kFreeBSD can help. I at least plan to give it a try on some Pentium 1 box. In general, I think it could help to create some kind of forward ports (e.g. packages from Woody ported to
Re: Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Sat, May 13, 2006 at 10:27:50AM +0200, Marc Haber wrote: Localepurge is a bad hack which tries to compensate for a shortcoming in dpkg, maybe a bad hack, but very useful in light desktop - --e e -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Sat, May 13, 2006 at 10:27:50AM +0200, Marc Haber wrote: On Fri, 12 May 2006 01:10:17 +0200, Eugen Paiuc [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'd add localepurge - witch save my 25 % disk space on 6-700 mb installation. Localepurge is a bad hack which tries to compensate for a shortcoming in dpkg, one that I have been waiting to be fixed since I started using Debian nearly ten years ago. I begin to lose my hope. Did you remember to submit a patch to the bugreport you filed? Regards: David -- /) David Weinehall [EMAIL PROTECTED] /) Rime on my window (\ // ~ // Diamond-white roses of fire // \) http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/(/ Beautiful hoar-frost (/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Sun, 14 May 2006 20:49:46 +0200, David Weinehall [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, May 13, 2006 at 10:27:50AM +0200, Marc Haber wrote: Localepurge is a bad hack which tries to compensate for a shortcoming in dpkg, one that I have been waiting to be fixed since I started using Debian nearly ten years ago. I begin to lose my hope. Did you remember to submit a patch to the bugreport you filed? No. I cannot personally take care of every shortcoming in Debian. I am already doing too much for the distribution. The bug reports are #68788 and #68861. Greetings Marc -- -- !! No courtesy copies, please !! - Marc Haber |Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom | http://www.zugschlus.de/ Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG Rightful Heir | Fon: *49 621 72739834
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Fri, 12 May 2006 01:10:17 +0200, Eugen Paiuc [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'd add localepurge - witch save my 25 % disk space on 6-700 mb installation. Localepurge is a bad hack which tries to compensate for a shortcoming in dpkg, one that I have been waiting to be fixed since I started using Debian nearly ten years ago. I begin to lose my hope. Greetings Marc -- -- !! No courtesy copies, please !! - Marc Haber |Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom | http://www.zugschlus.de/ Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG Rightful Heir | Fon: *49 621 72739834
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Hi, I'd add localepurge - witch save my 25 % disk space on 6-700 mb installation. Thanks! Eugen Paiuc -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
At 1144985401 past the epoch, Keegan Quinn wrote: * Full desktop (or Heavy maybe?) * KDE * GNOME * Light desktop (or Advanced maybe?) No complaints so far * openbox * fluxbox * etc. No - if someone knows which window manager they want they're sufficiently advanced enough to go for manual package selection. -- Jon Dowland http://alcopop.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
At 1144928811 past the epoch, Eduard Bloch wrote: As said, Gnome bloat. Use gqview or pornview. The latter has been orphaned[1]. [1] http://bugs.debian.org/316934 -- Jon Dowland http://alcopop.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
#include hallo.h * Don Armstrong [Sun, Apr 16 2006, 11:35:07PM]: On Sun, 16 Apr 2006, Eduard Bloch wrote: Much, much, much? Where? Some eye-catchers (collage, HTTP client builtin) but not much for daily use for a desktop system: - no picture browser GUI Uh... feh -t .; Primitive and uncomfortable. Does not even allow to scroll that preview image. - no picture management function mv, rm, rename. Check. [feh -A 'mv %f foo/%n' if you want something else...] Cannot see mv/rm/rename in the GUI elements (menus). Forcing a desktop user to use CLI for such basic functions is somehow odd. AFAICS no advanced functions are available either, eg. EXIF data display, something that every modern digicam adds to JPEG pictures. Or comparing two directories and displaying which images are new. - image quality not sufficiently adaptable to system's performance I have no clue what this means. The way it renders the pictures/thumbnails? Interpolation, dithering algorithms. On a slow machine I would prefer to use the fastest method unless I need the better quality and _then_ I would like to change the prefs inside the GUI. I get all that with gqview. I miss all that in feh. Now, if you're arguing that this may not be appropriate for those who are afraid of a command line or a program that has more than 50 command line options, that may be the case... but it definetly gets rid of the bloat present in other image viewers. [This is probably YA Please, try gqview before judging. Regards, Eduard. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Sun, 16 Apr 2006, Eduard Bloch wrote: Much, much, much? Where? Some eye-catchers (collage, HTTP client builtin) but not much for daily use for a desktop system: - no picture browser GUI Uh... feh -t .; - no picture management function mv, rm, rename. Check. [feh -A 'mv %f foo/%n' if you want something else...] - image quality not sufficiently adaptable to system's performance I have no clue what this means. Now, if you're arguing that this may not be appropriate for those who are afraid of a command line or a program that has more than 50 command line options, that may be the case... but it definetly gets rid of the bloat present in other image viewers. [This is probably YA case of the desktop task recommending software that few of us actually use.] Don Armstrong -- A one-question geek test. If you get the joke, you're a geek: Seen on a California license plate on a VW Beetle: 'FEATURE'... -- Joshua D. Wachs - Natural Intelligence, Inc. http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Scripsit Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] Now, if you're arguing that this may not be appropriate for those who are afraid of a command line or a program that has more than 50 command line options, that may be the case... but it definetly gets rid of the bloat present in other image viewers. Well, people who are unafraid of command lines could theoretically have a light desktop consisting of (1) xorg (2) xdm (3) a traditionalist window manager (fvwm, twm, ...) (4) xterm or an xterm replacement (5) tty or curses programs for actually getting work done (emacs/vi, tex, mutt, gnus, ...) (6) xdvi, gv, xpdf for viewing the results (7) large graphical programs when there is work to be done that inherently needs such things: web browser, gimp, xfig ... This is what I use on the computer on my desk. *BUT* ... it is not what people expect from a desktop software installation option, even a light one. There, I think, the defining characteristic is that one can get work done *without* meeting any command lines in one's day-to-day use of the computer. -- Henning MakholmAnything you can discover we would be most happy to review. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
2006/4/14, Kevin Mark [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Thu, Apr 13, 2006 at 04:20:13PM +0300, Linas Žvirblis wrote: Joey Hess wrote: Z If so, I would be happy to add this to tasksel, so that the desktop task automatically installs it if it detects a system that is not easily capable of running kde/gnome. Tasksel has the infrastructure needed to support doing this kind of thing, just a matter of finding appropriate heuristics to pick the right desktop variant in an unsuprising way. Hi Linas, what about /proc/cpuinfo to determine MHZ and /proc/meminfo to find MB. does this provide some way to get this info accross all (or most) of the archs/subarch? And how about using /proc/* to guess what kind of storage is avalable to determine which install will likely fill the HD? No automatic detection can be 100% unsurprising, because it highly depends on your expectations. I do realize that desktop task is not targeted at experienced users, but this autodetection should at least be optional. I am sure this has been discussed many times, but one thing i would really like to see in tasksel is: [X] Desktop environment [X] I do not know (automatic/default) [ ] KDE desktop environment [ ] GNOME desktop environment [ ] XFCE desktop environment [ ] $foo desktop environment I think this would be better than a meta package because it would be available in the regular install, and it would avoid some of the issues with meta packages. Meta package or not, I do not consider Light Desktop a good name because it is too general. A name like XFCE desktop would be way more descriptive. What about: '100-300MHZ system desktop(XFCE)' Also, based upon the cpu/mem info, display: you machine has a 766MHZ processor with 128MB memory. [x]KDE desktop environment[500mhz or greater] [ ]GNOME desktop evirnoenne[500mhz or greater] [ ]XFCE desktop enviorneme[300mhz or greater] [ ]TWM desktop enviroemnet[100mhz or greater] ... My idea is to create a meta package. Because will install it manually. I think tasksel tasks should have more generic names. IMHO, If we go to create a task, we can't to use applications names (KDE, GNOME, XFCE) and only specific tasks names, for example: [x] Full Desktop environment [ ] Lite Desktop (old machines) [ ] Select manual packages cheers, Kev -- | .''`. == Debian GNU/Linux == | my web site: | | : :' : The Universal | debian.home.pipeline.com | | `. `' Operating System| go to counter.li.org and | | `-http://www.debian.org/ |be counted! #238656 | | my keysever: pgp.mit.edu | my NPO: cfsg.org | -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFEP0D3v8UcC1qRZVMRAvQ0AJ0cgyyuruGtBBieNXLsP2DVRnBAKgCfZd8s zRDiTg3W8bfr6PffTp3Eo/Y= =4DAC -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Andre Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira (si0ux) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Unix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity. (Dennis Ritchie)
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
2006/4/14, Ron Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Fri, 2006-04-14 at 09:40 +0200, Giuseppe Sacco wrote: Il giorno gio, 13/04/2006 alle 11.46 +0200, Eduard Bloch ha scritto: [...] - evince As other pointed out, does basically the same job as xpdf but pulls half of the Gnome. If you just want to display PDF files then probably xpdf is a better option, but Evince has a really nice feature: it show TIFF multipage. This is the *only* free software program I am aware of, that can show multipage tiff file. Something that pulls in half of GNOME should not be part of a light desktop meta-package. Let the user pull it in later if desired. What about we to separate the choices in gtk OR gtk2 applications ? -- - Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson, LA USA There is no shadow of protection to be had by sheltering behind the slender stockades of visionary speculation, or by hiding behind the wagon-wheels of pacific theories. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Andre Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira (si0ux) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Orlandia - SP - Brazil Unix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity. (Dennis Ritchie)
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
2006/4/14, Christian Perrier [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I am sure this has been discussed many times, but one thing i would really like to see in tasksel is: Many many times, yes..:-) Joey often raised an argument about novice users likely to be confused by a KDE/Gnome choice, not knowing the difference between both. Your suggestion adds an interesting possibility in that matter with the I don't know choice. Seems worth discussing it, imho. I would vote against too much choices if we go this way, though. Probably if the multiple desktop environments suggestion is implemented, it should be restricted to four choices: -I dont know -KDE -Gnome -Light desktop other idea: [x] Full Desktop (recommended) [x] GNOME [ ] KDE [ ] Light Desktop (old machines) [ ] XFCE [ ] Icewm [ ] ... [ ] Select manual packages Offering too many choices would add much confusion and we have to remember that tasks are mostly targeted at novice users -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFEP1sI1OXtrMAUPS0RAh4bAJ4vL9i+mJa2dRdYjvXW7SROrDmtawCfXePX 91d1kex1FSXh7jcG3ufgl5k= =b4/i -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Andre Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira (si0ux) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Unix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity. (Dennis Ritchie)
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
2006/4/14, Yves-Alexis Perez [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Thu, 2006-04-13 at 11:46 +0200, Eduard Bloch wrote: - file-roller Is there really no other choice without GNOME dependencies? there is xarchiver, entered recently in unstable Hmm... Looks like a file-roller fork, but only needs GTK+2 and nothing else. -- Yves-Alexis Perez -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Andre Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira (si0ux) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Unix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity. (Dennis Ritchie)
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Linas Žvirblis wrote: Now this Light Desktop - something totally untested, composed of entirely separate pieces of software that might or might not work well together. Will we ever be able to do half as much testing in Debian, as it was done for KDE/GNOME? Is it even ethical to use Debian users as testing grounds for this? By this lie of resoning the only task that Debian can afford to ship is either KDE or Gnome. Since Debian does already ship other useful tasks, that seems a bit specious. Perhaps instead we're actually capable of testing and integrating collections of software? -- see shy jo signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Joey Hess wrote: By this lie of reasoning the only task that Debian can afford to ship is either KDE or Gnome. No, not at all. That is not what I was trying to say. KDE and GNOME were examples of something that did not happen overnight. They proved worthy of becoming a task. Would you accept KDE as a task, if it was started yesterday? Since Debian does already ship other useful tasks, that seems a bit specious. The other tasks consist of far less (and rather obvious) choices. And this one offers numerous possible combinations. Perhaps instead we're actually capable of testing and integrating collections of software? It most certainly can be done, but we need to clarify the goals. How light should it be? Should it be limited by a certain number of megabytes? GNOME/KDE-lib-free or not? etc. Let us create a project on alioth, compose a team, and see how it goes. I am all for it. And while we are at it, looking into existing lightweight distros (especially Debian derivatives) might be a good idea. Their choices are already somewhat tested and could give us some guidelines. Regards, Linas P.S. I still am for separating GNOME and KDE tasks. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Linas Žvirblis wrote: Joey Hess wrote: By this lie of reasoning the only task that Debian can afford to ship is either KDE or Gnome. No, not at all. That is not what I was trying to say. KDE and GNOME were examples of something that did not happen overnight. They proved worthy of becoming a task. Would you accept KDE as a task, if it was started yesterday? A XFCE-based lightweight desktop also isn't something which happened overnight. It's the usual thing I install as desktop environment, and I appreciate that it might become easier and better integrated now. Thiemo
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Thiemo Seufer wrote: A XFCE-based lightweight desktop also isn't something which happened overnight. As in xfce4 package, sure. But all the additional applications are something to be considered very carefully. It's the usual thing I install as desktop environment, and I appreciate that it might become easier and better integrated now. Simply preinstalling a certain set of additional applications does not imply that it will be better integrated, as they were made neither with XFCE in mind, nor they are maintained by the same team of developers. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
#include hallo.h * Don Armstrong [Fri, Apr 14 2006, 02:02:17PM]: On Fri, 14 Apr 2006, Torsten Marek wrote: - eog As said, Gnome bloat. Use gqview or pornview. Well, don't take pornview or you'll soon have a bug report about politically incorrect package names;-) Try feh. Much, much more powerful, and much, much nicer. Much, much, much? Where? Some eye-catchers (collage, HTTP client builtin) but not much for daily use for a desktop system: - no picture browser GUI - no picture management function - image quality not sufficiently adaptable to system's performance Eduard. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Therefore I suggest doing this... - I don't know (both of them) - KDE desktop environment - Gnome desktop environment ...and leaving the specialized tasks for CDDs, because that is what they are for, right? Well, I haven't followed the rest of the thread (the part where people wonder which package could pertain to a Light desktop task) but I've seen Joey suggest himself to turn it into a task. So, if Joey himself, who is actually quite conservative when it comes at new tasks for tasksel, mentions that he thinks that a light desktop task is worth it, I tend to give him the needed credit. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Thu, 2006-04-13 at 09:08 -0300, André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira wrote: 2006/4/11, Bernhard R. Link [EMAIL PROTECTED]: * Andr Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira [EMAIL PROTECTED] [060411 18:45]: - x-window-system-core - xfce4 (beautiful!) - gdm [...] - gnome-ppp - gnome-utils Definitions differ, but I'd not call something light pulling in half of gnome. What about Debian Light Gnome Desktop? Is true...but I don't are using nautilus and metacity, only some gnome applications. It's still pulling in many GNOME libs and apps. Even AbiWord sucks in many GNOME libs. Better, IMHO, to stick with, _at_the_heaviest_, XFce and GTK2 apps. Is there *any* nice semi-lightweight WP that doesn't consume mass quantities of RAM? Something along the size of Word Excel 97 or Word Perfect 6.0, that use GTK2 and work well on 300MHz machines. Doesn't even have to interpret MSFT files. -- - Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson, LA USA Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory. John Kenneth Galbraith
Fwd: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
hi auf der debian-devel liste findet gerade eine diskusion ueber einen debian light desktop. hier der stein des anstosses. jan-david André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hi ! I'm creating a meta package for install a lite desktop for old machines with poor hardware. I would like to receive opinions about my packages list: - x-window-system-core - xfce4 (beautiful!) - gdm - gftp - mozilla-firefox - mozilla-thunderbird - menu - gcalctool (or xcalc) - evince - eog - gaim - zip - unzip - arj - bzip2 - file-roller - wvdial - gnome-ppp - gnome-utils - inkscape - gimp - abiword - gnumeric - gnumeric-plugins-extra - gnome-system-monitor - firestarter I made some tests with sucess in my machines with the following setup: Pentium 166 MHZ - 64 MB RAM - HD 2 GB Any idea? Thanks! -- Andre Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira (si0ux) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Orlandia - SP - Brazil Unix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity. (Dennis Ritchie)
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Christian Perrier wrote: Well, I haven't followed the rest of the thread (the part where people wonder which package could pertain to a Light desktop task) but I've seen Joey suggest himself to turn it into a task. So have I. But I am against it nevertheless. Do not get me wrong. I am not against the idea in general, nor am I against what André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira is doing. I simply do not think that this is the right way to do it. A CDD is fine, a meta package is fine, but a task is not. So, if Joey himself, who is actually quite conservative when it comes at new tasks for tasksel, mentions that he thinks that a light desktop task is worth it, I tend to give him the needed credit. I respect him and his work, and that is why I feel that it is important to explain my reasons for being against it. -- The Reasons -- Firstly, the number of people behind this. Both KDE and GNOME desktop environments have come a long way of evolution during which they have been thoroughly tested by a huge number of users and developers. We know it (the idea behind each of them) works. We know their goals. We can predict their future. There are also Debian KDE and GNOME teams that present the product in a highest quality possible. Now this Light Desktop - something totally untested, composed of entirely separate pieces of software that might or might not work well together. Will we ever be able to do half as much testing in Debian, as it was done for KDE/GNOME? Is it even ethical to use Debian users as testing grounds for this? Secondly, I do not consider this fair with other projects. I quickly searched trough Debian websites and found at least a couple of projects aiming to provide a certain desktop environment. Their goals may be different, but does that mean that they are worse? -- A Yet Another Alternative -- If we really need a lightweight desktop environment, why not give people a lightweight version of what they already know? Note that this is based entirely on my imagination, not what tasksel actually does: 1. I do not know (automatic) - kde-core, gnome-core 2. Basic GNOME desktop environment - gnome-core 3. Full GNOME desktop environment- gnome 4. Basic KDE desktop environment - kde-core 5. Full KDE desktop environment - kde Five options - a lot, I know. They should probably not appear on main tasksel window, but rather as another step if you chose desktop previously. Regards, Linas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Thu, Apr 13, 2006 at 04:20:13PM +0300, Linas Žvirblis wrote: Joey Hess wrote: Z If so, I would be happy to add this to tasksel, so that the desktop task automatically installs it if it detects a system that is not easily capable of running kde/gnome. Tasksel has the infrastructure needed to support doing this kind of thing, just a matter of finding appropriate heuristics to pick the right desktop variant in an unsuprising way. Hi Linas, what about /proc/cpuinfo to determine MHZ and /proc/meminfo to find MB. does this provide some way to get this info accross all (or most) of the archs/subarch? And how about using /proc/* to guess what kind of storage is avalable to determine which install will likely fill the HD? No automatic detection can be 100% unsurprising, because it highly depends on your expectations. I do realize that desktop task is not targeted at experienced users, but this autodetection should at least be optional. I am sure this has been discussed many times, but one thing i would really like to see in tasksel is: [X] Desktop environment [X] I do not know (automatic/default) [ ] KDE desktop environment [ ] GNOME desktop environment [ ] XFCE desktop environment [ ] $foo desktop environment I think this would be better than a meta package because it would be available in the regular install, and it would avoid some of the issues with meta packages. Meta package or not, I do not consider Light Desktop a good name because it is too general. A name like XFCE desktop would be way more descriptive. What about: '100-300MHZ system desktop(XFCE)' Also, based upon the cpu/mem info, display: you machine has a 766MHZ processor with 128MB memory. [x]KDE desktop environment[500mhz or greater] [ ]GNOME desktop evirnoenne[500mhz or greater] [ ]XFCE desktop enviorneme[300mhz or greater] [ ]TWM desktop enviroemnet[100mhz or greater] ... cheers, Kev -- | .''`. == Debian GNU/Linux == | my web site: | | : :' : The Universal | debian.home.pipeline.com | | `. `' Operating System| go to counter.li.org and | | `-http://www.debian.org/ |be counted! #238656 | | my keysever: pgp.mit.edu | my NPO: cfsg.org | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Il giorno gio, 13/04/2006 alle 11.46 +0200, Eduard Bloch ha scritto: [...] - evince As other pointed out, does basically the same job as xpdf but pulls half of the Gnome. If you just want to display PDF files then probably xpdf is a better option, but Evince has a really nice feature: it show TIFF multipage. This is the *only* free software program I am aware of, that can show multipage tiff file. Bye, Giuseppe -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Fri, 2006-04-14 at 09:40 +0200, Giuseppe Sacco wrote: Il giorno gio, 13/04/2006 alle 11.46 +0200, Eduard Bloch ha scritto: [...] - evince As other pointed out, does basically the same job as xpdf but pulls half of the Gnome. If you just want to display PDF files then probably xpdf is a better option, but Evince has a really nice feature: it show TIFF multipage. This is the *only* free software program I am aware of, that can show multipage tiff file. Something that pulls in half of GNOME should not be part of a light desktop meta-package. Let the user pull it in later if desired. -- - Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson, LA USA There is no shadow of protection to be had by sheltering behind the slender stockades of visionary speculation, or by hiding behind the wagon-wheels of pacific theories. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Fri, Apr 14, 2006 at 03:00:44AM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On Fri, 2006-04-14 at 09:40 +0200, Giuseppe Sacco wrote: Il giorno gio, 13/04/2006 alle 11.46 +0200, Eduard Bloch ha scritto: [...] - evince As other pointed out, does basically the same job as xpdf but pulls half of the Gnome. If you just want to display PDF files then probably xpdf is a better option, but Evince has a really nice feature: it show TIFF multipage. This is the *only* free software program I am aware of, that can show multipage tiff file. Something that pulls in half of GNOME should not be part of a light desktop meta-package. Let the user pull it in later if desired. Hi Ron, I'd probabbly just use pdftotext on such a system. cheers, Kev signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
[Kevin Mark] What about: '100-300MHZ system desktop(XFCE)' Also, based upon the cpu/mem info, display: you machine has a 766MHZ processor with 128MB memory. [x]KDE desktop environment[500mhz or greater] [ ]GNOME desktop evirnoenne[500mhz or greater] [ ]XFCE desktop enviorneme[300mhz or greater] [ ]TWM desktop enviroemnet[100mhz or greater] Your implication that some absolute number of MHz means much about system performance is very i386-centric. May as well go back to using the bogomips value, at least the bogo- prefix is honest. (Now, amount of RAM is at least _somewhat_ comparable as a metric for what combination of apps will thrash the system and what might not. For a single-user, single-login machine. Doesn't particularly apply to, say, a terminal server.) signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
I am sure this has been discussed many times, but one thing i would really like to see in tasksel is: Many many times, yes..:-) Joey often raised an argument about novice users likely to be confused by a KDE/Gnome choice, not knowing the difference between both. Your suggestion adds an interesting possibility in that matter with the I don't know choice. Seems worth discussing it, imho. I would vote against too much choices if we go this way, though. Probably if the multiple desktop environments suggestion is implemented, it should be restricted to four choices: -I dont know -KDE -Gnome -Light desktop Offering too many choices would add much confusion and we have to remember that tasks are mostly targeted at novice users signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Le Vendredi 14 Avril 2006 08:28, Kevin Mark a écrit : Hi Linas, what about /proc/cpuinfo to determine MHZ and /proc/meminfo to find MB. does this provide some way to get this info accross all (or most) of the archs/subarch? And how about using /proc/* to guess what kind of storage is avalable to determine which install will likely fill the HD? On laptops running powersaved, /proc/cpuinfo will show the current CPU speed instead of the maximum possible. So you need to be careful about depending on /proc/cpuinfo. -- Daniel Schepler
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Thu, 2006-04-13 at 11:46 +0200, Eduard Bloch wrote: - file-roller Is there really no other choice without GNOME dependencies? there is xarchiver, entered recently in unstable -- Yves-Alexis Perez -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Fri, Apr 14, 2006 at 10:19:20AM +0200, Christian Perrier wrote: I would vote against too much choices if we go this way, though. Probably if the multiple desktop environments suggestion is implemented, it should be restricted to four choices: -I dont know -KDE -Gnome -Light desktop Offering too many choices would add much confusion and we have to remember that tasks are mostly targeted at novice users I agree with your concepts here, but I have an idea. Perhaps something like this could be offered: * Full desktop (or Heavy maybe?) * KDE * GNOME * Light desktop (or Advanced maybe?) * openbox * fluxbox * etc. I don't know if this would be practical but I think it could be useful. HTH, -- Keegan Quinn [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://keegan.sniz.org q=' qq='echo q=\$q\ qq=$q$qq$q \\ eval \$qq' eval $qq signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Christian Perrier wrote: Joey often raised an argument about novice users likely to be confused by a KDE/Gnome choice, not knowing the difference between both. That is undoubtedly true for novice (as in first time) users, but we should realize that there is a large group of users that are experienced enough to know what they want, but are not yet capable of doing manual install with aptitude. A good example of this is existence of (k)ubuntu. People like choice. I would vote against too much choices if we go this way, though. Probably if the multiple desktop environments suggestion is implemented, it should be restricted to four choices: -I dont know -KDE -Gnome -Light desktop That could be a certain compromise, but I strongly suggest not naming it Light desktop. It simply is too general. Let us pretend we have not seen the list of packages posted by André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira. Now, does any of them suddenly become cryptic? Both Gnome and KDE are highly sophisticated desktop environments and are both recognizable by name. You know what to expect from them. You know both are heavy. But why should one particular selection of packages become THE light desktop? A custom selection of packages based on someones opinion is not a desktop environment. It is a CDD. Offering too many choices would add much confusion and we have to remember that tasks are mostly targeted at novice users Therefore I suggest doing this... - I don't know (both of them) - KDE desktop environment - Gnome desktop environment ...and leaving the specialized tasks for CDDs, because that is what they are for, right? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Any particular reason for not just using xpdf? Evince have more resources and combine with the Xfce interface. In the reality I would like to keep the applications with the same appearance. Possibly gtk2. Er, that's nice, but as long as xpdf is (much) faster, lighter-weight, and renders documents much more nicely, wouldn't it make more sense to use it? I like evince's pretty widgets too (though its keybindings suck), but every time I try it, I give up in disgust after a short while because it's so slow and dysfunctional -- and this this is on a normal system; on a lightweight system, evince makes even less sense. If, someday, evince becomes a better choice, you can switch then... -Miles -- Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Giuseppe Sacco [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: As other pointed out, does basically the same job as xpdf but pulls half of the Gnome. If you just want to display PDF files then probably xpdf is a better option, but Evince has a really nice feature: it show TIFF multipage. This is the *only* free software program I am aware of, that can show multipage tiff file. Er, yeah, but ... how often do people want to (a) just view pdf files, and how often do they want to (b) view multipage tiff files? I'd say (a)/(b) is about 1000:1 in the average user population... -Miles -- = (^o^; (())) *This is the cute octopus virus, please copy it into your sig so it can spread. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Fri, Apr 14, 2006 at 11:17:50AM +0900, Miles Bader [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Any particular reason for not just using xpdf? Evince have more resources and combine with the Xfce interface. In the reality I would like to keep the applications with the same appearance. Possibly gtk2. Er, that's nice, but as long as xpdf is (much) faster, lighter-weight, and renders documents much more nicely, wouldn't it make more sense to use it? The renders documents much more nicely is absolutely wrong and is the main reason why i switched from xpdf to evince. Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
#include hallo.h * Ron Johnson [Fri, Apr 14 2006, 03:00:44AM]: On Fri, 2006-04-14 at 09:40 +0200, Giuseppe Sacco wrote: If you just want to display PDF files then probably xpdf is a better option, but Evince has a really nice feature: it show TIFF multipage. This is the *only* free software program I am aware of, that can show multipage tiff file. Why should I care about TIFF multipage when in 99% I need a P. D. F. reader? And I think that multipage TIFF support is very specific feature while you are constructing a meta package for generic desktop. And I imagine that imagemagick (display) could display multipage tiffs, so why should one install evince for that? Eduard. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Eduard Bloch wrote: #include hallo.h * André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira [Tue, Apr 11 2006, 01:44:57PM]: Hi ! I'm creating a meta package for install a lite desktop for old machines with poor hardware. I would like to receive opinions about my packages list: - x-window-system-core - xfce4 (beautiful!) Depends. IceWM with a tiny Filemanager (eg. emelfm) suffies my idea of light desktop much, much more. I would say - set xfce4 | x-window-manager. - evince As other pointed out, does basically the same job as xpdf but pulls half of the Gnome. - eog As said, Gnome bloat. Use gqview or pornview. Well, don't take pornview or you'll soon have a bug report about politically incorrect package names;-) - gaim Please depend on gaim | psi | licq or so. - arj Who cares about arj nowadays? I suggest installing the unp package instead, it will tell user which program is needed to install for a certain type of archive. - file-roller Is there really no other choice without GNOME dependencies? You could use rox-filer, which is (in my opinion) much more useful than xffm4 and quite fast. Best, Torsten - -- Torsten Marek [EMAIL PROTECTED] ID: A244C858 -- FP: 1902 0002 5DFC 856B F146 894C 7CC5 451E A244 C858 Keyserve -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFEP2wFfMVFHqJEyFgRAgXKAJ0XQSrB1ezRzChrPR1rVmTR0penpgCdEOEp hRMmJxMnN6pIECeDIGFgy/M= =fcbq -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Mike Hommey [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The renders documents much more nicely is absolutely wrong No it's not. Perhaps you haven't used xpdf recently. In particular, xpdf seems to do a _much_ better job of anti-aliasing fonts than evince: xpdf's antialiasing generally manages to be both smooth _and_ still maintain readable high-contrast edges, whereas evince's antialiasing is often a fuzzy mess. I don't know why this is -- I'd think both would eventually end up using the same freetype/xft/whatever library to do font rendering -- but it's the main thing that quickly drives me away from evince every time I try it. Having readable fonts is pretty basic for a pdf-viewer! [xpdf used to have pretty poor font support, but it's become very good these days.] -miles -- We live, as we dream -- alone -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Fri, 14 Apr 2006, Torsten Marek wrote: - eog As said, Gnome bloat. Use gqview or pornview. Well, don't take pornview or you'll soon have a bug report about politically incorrect package names;-) Try feh. Much, much more powerful, and much, much nicer. Don Armstrong -- The sheer ponderousness of the panel's opinion ... refutes its thesis far more convincingly than anything I might say. The panel's labored effort to smother the Second Amendment by sheer body weight has all the grace of a sumo wrestler trying to kill a rattlesnake by sitting on it--and is just as likely to succeed. -- Alex Kozinski in Silveira V Lockyer http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Linas Žvirblis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Miles Bader wrote: - evince Any particular reason for not just using xpdf? Especially since xpdf seems to do a much better job of rendering many pdf documents... [Evince has nicer looking widgets though.] Not only that, but Evince can be quite slow at rendering complex documents. Are there any benchmarks on that? poppler (on which evince is based) aims to be better than xpdf in that, but it seems some of the additional functions have slowed it down. The poppler people appreciate input on that, with example files etc. Of course, everything highly depends on your definition of light. If I were to make a list of packages for a light desktop, my selection would be entirely different. One thing at least is clear: xpdf only depends on a couple of xlibs, whereas libpoppler pulls in libcairo and one of the frontend libraries (qt or glib). Regards, Frank -- Frank Küster Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich Debian Developer (teTeX)
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira wrote: I'm creating a meta package for install a lite desktop for old machines with poor hardware. I would like to receive opinions about my packages list: I'm glad to see someone working on this. I hope you manage to find a consensus for some good default packages. If so, I would be happy to add this to tasksel, so that the desktop task automatically installs it if it detects a system that is not easily capable of running kde/gnome. Tasksel has the infrastructure needed to support doing this kind of thing, just a matter of finding appropriate heuristics to pick the right desktop variant in an unsuprising way. I think this would be better than a meta package because it would be available in the regular install, and it would avoid some of the issues with meta packages. -- see shy jo
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
2006/4/11, Yves-Alexis Perez [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Tue, 2006-04-11 at 13:44 -0300, André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira wrote: Hi ! I'm creating a meta package for install a lite desktop for old machines with poor hardware. Great task. I would like to receive opinions about my packages list: - x-window-system-core - xfce4 (beautiful!) Yeah :) I don't know if you have included the Thunar file manager in this, but you could. Cool ! I will look this... You could also ask xubuntu people. They are trying to achieve the same goal (a light distribution, but quite complete). They packages some packages without gnome dependencies (gdm for example, iirc), so it could be helpful for your task. I don't know if gnome dependencies would be a problem. I need speed and these programs had been executed very well in my machines. I saw the xubuntu project [1] and I liked sufficiently. Very Nice! IMHO the gtk (v1) applications are a little ugly and the Gtk2 slow. But the applications with a theme without many resources can be faster. Do you plan to add a music/media player ? a slow machine can't play HD videos but can play music so Yeap! XMMS ? -- Yves-Alexis Perez -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] References: [1] - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XubuntuProposedPackages -- Andre Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira (si0ux) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Orlandia - SP - Brazil Unix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity. (Dennis Ritchie)
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
2006/4/11, Daniel Dickinson [EMAIL PROTECTED]: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, 11 Apr 2006 13:44:57 -0300 André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi ! I'm creating a meta package for install a lite desktop for old machines with poor hardware. That's an admiral goal, however I would be prepared for a great deal of frustration. I worked on this for a while last year, but I wasn't happy with what I ended up with. I would like to receive opinions about my packages list: - x-window-system-core - xfce4 (beautiful!) You may want to offer a choice of window manager. On low-end machines I'm partial to WindowMaker, but IceWm, FluxBox, or BlackBox are also good choices. - gdm If you're going to pull in gnome depencies anyway gdm is a good choice, otherwise wdm may be better (but AFAIK wdm isn't keyboard-only friendly). - gftp - mozilla-firefox I would also install dillo that the user has a choice between a fast, but no javascript, css, java, flash, etc support (dillo), or a slow (on the hardware you describe) browser that is otherwise great. Dillo is faster. I used here but some sites doesn't open very nice and Dillo doesn't have compatibility with the WM (copy and past functions for sample). - mozilla-thunderbird On a P1?! No way. Thunderbird is slower than molasses in January. I would recommend Sylpheed or Sylpheed-claws as a much faster/better alternative. In fact I have recently switched to sylpheed-claws on my personal workstation (Duron 850M/2.2G) because it's so much faster, keyboard-friendly, and I'm finding it a better piece of software. Yes! Sounds good. Is more one option - menu I'd recommend against making an install task that is both about console and GUI. Console vs desktop should be different tasks IMO. They could, however, be part of the same cd (set). - gcalctool (or xcalc) - evince Any particular reason for not just using xpdf? Evince have more resources and combine with the Xfce interface. In the reality I would like to keep the applications with the same appearance. Possibly gtk2. - eog - gaim - zip - unzip - arj - bzip2 - file-roller - gnome-utils - inkscape - gimp - abiword This is what I would use too, but I know someone who swears by LyX on low-end machines, so you may want to check it out. LyX is a GUI for LaTeX (and maybe DocBook, but I'm not clear on that) that is apparently easy to get started with and works well for writing reports and technical documents. I will add in my list... - gnumeric - gnumeric-plugins-extra - gnome-system-monitor - firestarter Those all look good. You may also want to toss in a couple of small graphical games. I made some tests with sucess in my machines with the following setup: Pentium 166 MHZ - 64 MB RAM - HD 2 GB What do you mean by success? Installs and can load, or you have tried to do some of your usual activities and found the experience reasonable? I know that when I was working on this, that I was getting frustrated by the speed (though come to think if it, I was also using 32 MB RAM) of firefox and some other apps. I also found that the 1.2 GB drive I had was pretty cramped, and that I couldn't install everything I had on the cd I made up (and which I already considered cramped). Yes, with 64 MB RAM the things happens a little more fast. The firefox is slow but only until start. Having said that, I have been considering trying again, now that a medical condition is under control and not interfering with my ability to focus, if I can find the time between work (which at present is not even computer related) and the various other projects I have on the go. If you need a tester I will likely be able to help. Ok! Also I have a number of scripts and things that I was making to make life easier for this project. I was also trying to go the debian's package list to categorize everything, and to pick out and test various apps that could be useful on a low end machine. Send me... Perhaps we can use in Debian... Best of luck! Daniel P.S. I have cc'd you because I don't know if you are subscribed to debian-devel or not. - -- And that's my crabbing done for the day. Got it out of the way early, now I have the rest of the afternoon to sniff fragrant tea-roses or strangle cute bunnies or something. -- Michael Devore -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFEO/dMhvWBpdQuHxwRAvG3AKC9NtRr01Kh0v9zdp6JWdk9RBaatgCgnN8O Dbp0j9nK+gltLRSAbtqPRJw= =cmt1 -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Andre Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira (si0ux) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Unix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity. (Dennis Ritchie)
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
2006/4/11, Bernhard R. Link [EMAIL PROTECTED]: * Andr Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira [EMAIL PROTECTED] [060411 18:45]: - x-window-system-core - xfce4 (beautiful!) - gdm [...] - gnome-ppp - gnome-utils Definitions differ, but I'd not call something light pulling in half of gnome. What about Debian Light Gnome Desktop? Is true...but I don't are using nautilus and metacity, only some gnome applications. Hochachtungsvoll, Bernhard R. Link -- Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Andre Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira (si0ux) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Orlandia - SP - Brazil Unix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity. (Dennis Ritchie)
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Frank Küster wrote: Not only that, but Evince can be quite slow at rendering complex documents. Are there any benchmarks on that? poppler (on which evince is based) aims to be better than xpdf in that, but it seems some of the additional functions have slowed it down. The poppler people appreciate input on that, with example files etc. No benchmarks, just my personal experience. But that is expected, as Evince does much more smoothing in drawing lines, scaling images etc., that xpdf does not. As for rendering issues, yes, I can provide example files for that. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Thu, 2006-04-13 at 08:22 -0300, André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira wrote: 2006/4/11, Yves-Alexis Perez [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Do you plan to add a music/media player ? a slow machine can't play HD videos but can play music so Yeap! XMMS ? xmms is gtk1 so maybe it will not fit nicely. But you could see beep-media-player (gtk2 clone of xmms), xfmedia (xfce media player, xine based so it can also read videos) or see mpd and its gtk2 clients. -- Yves-Alexis Perez -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
2006/4/12, Margarita Manterola [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Some comments on the choice of programs. On 4/11/06, André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - mozilla-firefox - mozilla-thunderbird As other pointed out, I'd go for dillo and Sylphed. Maybe include the mozilla-ones as Suggested, but they are definitely not light. - evince Evince is a monster. I'd use xpdf instead. - gnome-system-monitor I'd go with gkrellm. Is there anything that gnome-system-monitor that gkrellm does not? to control processes (kill for sample) ? Also, I'd try to avoid as much of GNOME as possible. -- Besos, Marga -- Andre Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira (si0ux) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Unix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity. (Dennis Ritchie)
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
2006/4/13, Linas Žvirblis [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Frank Küster wrote: Not only that, but Evince can be quite slow at rendering complex documents. Are there any benchmarks on that? poppler (on which evince is based) aims to be better than xpdf in that, but it seems some of the additional functions have slowed it down. The poppler people appreciate input on that, with example files etc. No benchmarks, just my personal experience. But that is expected, as Evince does much more smoothing in drawing lines, scaling images etc., that xpdf does not. Yes. I also noticed this. As for rendering issues, yes, I can provide example files for that. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Andre Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira (si0ux) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Unix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity. (Dennis Ritchie)
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Quoting Joey Hess ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): I think this would be better than a meta package because it would be available in the regular install, and it would avoid some of the issues with meta packages. I second this proposal. Indeed, I was about pinging Joey about this thread because it fits a recurrent request for tasksel and, indirectly, D-I. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
At 1144766211 past the epoch, Daniel Dickinson wrote: - x-window-system-core - xfce4 (beautiful!) You may want to offer a choice of window manager. On low-end machines I'm partial to WindowMaker, but IceWm, FluxBox, or BlackBox are also good choices. I'd use Recommends or Suggests for the window manager you go with, that way someone could mark your package, then change the window manager if they were so inclined. (Using Depends would mean changing the window manager could potentially remove the conflicting light-desktop package and all it's dependencies marked automatic). -- Jon Dowland http://alcopop.org/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Thu, 2006-04-13 at 09:26 -0300, André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira wrote: to control processes (kill for sample) ? there is an xfce4-taskmanager not yet in the archive. see http://heracles.corsac.net/~corsac/xfce4-taskmanager.png Maybe it would fit your needs ? -- Yves-Alexis Perez -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Joey Hess wrote: If so, I would be happy to add this to tasksel, so that the desktop task automatically installs it if it detects a system that is not easily capable of running kde/gnome. Tasksel has the infrastructure needed to support doing this kind of thing, just a matter of finding appropriate heuristics to pick the right desktop variant in an unsuprising way. No automatic detection can be 100% unsurprising, because it highly depends on your expectations. I do realize that desktop task is not targeted at experienced users, but this autodetection should at least be optional. I am sure this has been discussed many times, but one thing i would really like to see in tasksel is: [X] Desktop environment [X] I do not know (automatic/default) [ ] KDE desktop environment [ ] GNOME desktop environment [ ] XFCE desktop environment [ ] $foo desktop environment I think this would be better than a meta package because it would be available in the regular install, and it would avoid some of the issues with meta packages. Meta package or not, I do not consider Light Desktop a good name because it is too general. A name like XFCE desktop would be way more descriptive. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Le Jeu 13 Avril 2006 15:20, Linas Žvirblis a écrit : I think this would be better than a meta package because it would be available in the regular install, and it would avoid some of the issues with meta packages. Meta package or not, I do not consider Light Desktop a good name because it is too general. A name like XFCE desktop would be way more descriptive. because *you* know what XFCE is and looks like -- ·O· Pierre Habouzit ··O[EMAIL PROTECTED] OOOhttp://www.madism.org pgpZ0lopgD4Ht.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Thu, 2006-04-13 at 15:28 +0200, Pierre Habouzit wrote: Le Jeu 13 Avril 2006 15:20, Linas Žvirblis a écrit : I think this would be better than a meta package because it would be available in the regular install, and it would avoid some of the issues with meta packages. Meta package or not, I do not consider Light Desktop a good name because it is too general. A name like XFCE desktop would be way more descriptive. because *you* know what XFCE is and looks like Exactly. Light Desktop (XFCE) would be descriptive and specific at the same time. -- - Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson, LA USA And I'm hiding in Honduras, I'm a desperate man. Send lawyers, guns and money!
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
2006/4/13, Pierre Habouzit [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Le Jeu 13 Avril 2006 15:20, Linas Žvirblis a écrit : I think this would be better than a meta package because it would be available in the regular install, and it would avoid some of the issues with meta packages. Meta package or not, I do not consider Light Desktop a good name because it is too general. A name like XFCE desktop would be way more descriptive. because *you* know what XFCE is and looks like In the majority of the times the user doesn't knows what is XFCE. IMHO, xfce is seemed Gnome and Kde. The idea is to have good applications for a light desktop (no depend of Gnome,XFCE or outher WM) and not my favorites :) -- ·O· Pierre Habouzit ··O[EMAIL PROTECTED] OOOhttp://www.madism.org -- Andre Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira (si0ux) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Unix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity. (Dennis Ritchie)
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira wrote: 2006/4/13, Pierre Habouzit [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Le Jeu 13 Avril 2006 15:20, Linas Žvirblis a écrit : I think this would be better than a meta package because it would be available in the regular install, and it would avoid some of the issues with meta packages. Meta package or not, I do not consider Light Desktop a good name because it is too general. A name like XFCE desktop would be way more descriptive. because *you* know what XFCE is and looks like In the majority of the times the user doesn't knows what is XFCE. IMHO, xfce is seemed Gnome and Kde. The idea is to have good applications for a light desktop (no depend of Gnome,XFCE or outher WM) and not my favorites :) FWIW, Lightweight Desktop or Lean Desktop sounds better to me. Thiemo
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
#include hallo.h * André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira [Tue, Apr 11 2006, 01:44:57PM]: Hi ! I'm creating a meta package for install a lite desktop for old machines with poor hardware. I would like to receive opinions about my packages list: - x-window-system-core - xfce4 (beautiful!) Depends. IceWM with a tiny Filemanager (eg. emelfm) suffies my idea of light desktop much, much more. I would say - set xfce4 | x-window-manager. - evince As other pointed out, does basically the same job as xpdf but pulls half of the Gnome. - eog As said, Gnome bloat. Use gqview or pornview. - gaim Please depend on gaim | psi | licq or so. - arj Who cares about arj nowadays? I suggest installing the unp package instead, it will tell user which program is needed to install for a certain type of archive. - file-roller Is there really no other choice without GNOME dependencies? - wvdial What's wrong with chat? - gnome-ppp Bloat for a simple task like Interface status watching. Configuration can be done wiht pppconfig once. And even then, it's too specific for a Desktop meta package, IMO. - gnome-utils You can replace all of them with lightweigt alternatives: xwd (or import from imagemagic or even gimp for screenshots), ding, locate (make some GUI), superformat (make some GUI, I have written one years ago, see GSwissKnife on Freshmeat). - inkscape Too specific for a Desktop package. - gimp - abiword - gnumeric - gnumeric-plugins-extra - gnome-system-monitor The last time I used this monitor, it was the application using much more memory than every other one. Do you really want it for a lightweight desktop? Eduard.
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Daniel Dickinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: - evince Any particular reason for not just using xpdf? Especially since xpdf seems to do a much better job of rendering many pdf documents... [Evince has nicer looking widgets though.] -Miles -- P.S. All information contained in the above letter is false, for reasons of military security. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Miles Bader wrote: - evince Any particular reason for not just using xpdf? Especially since xpdf seems to do a much better job of rendering many pdf documents... [Evince has nicer looking widgets though.] Not only that, but Evince can be quite slow at rendering complex documents. Of course, everything highly depends on your definition of light. If I were to make a list of packages for a light desktop, my selection would be entirely different. I am not saying that current selection is bad in any way. It contains most of the packages I would expect to see on a _modern_ desktop machine. But as for light, it can certainly be much much lighter. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Debian Light Desktop - meta package
Hi ! I'm creating a meta package for install a lite desktop for old machines with poor hardware. I would like to receive opinions about my packages list: - x-window-system-core - xfce4 (beautiful!) - gdm - gftp - mozilla-firefox - mozilla-thunderbird - menu - gcalctool (or xcalc) - evince - eog - gaim - zip - unzip - arj - bzip2 - file-roller - wvdial - gnome-ppp - gnome-utils - inkscape - gimp - abiword - gnumeric - gnumeric-plugins-extra - gnome-system-monitor - firestarter I made some tests with sucess in my machines with the following setup: Pentium 166 MHZ - 64 MB RAM - HD 2 GB Any idea? Thanks! -- Andre Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira (si0ux) [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Orlandia - SP - Brazil Unix is very simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity. (Dennis Ritchie)
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Tue, 2006-04-11 at 13:44 -0300, André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira wrote: Hi ! I'm creating a meta package for install a lite desktop for old machines with poor hardware. Great task. I would like to receive opinions about my packages list: - x-window-system-core - xfce4 (beautiful!) Yeah :) I don't know if you have included the Thunar file manager in this, but you could. You could also ask xubuntu people. They are trying to achieve the same goal (a light distribution, but quite complete). They packages some packages without gnome dependencies (gdm for example, iirc), so it could be helpful for your task. Do you plan to add a music/media player ? a slow machine can't play HD videos but can play music so -- Yves-Alexis Perez -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Tue, 2006-04-11 at 13:44 -0300, André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira wrote: Hi ! I'm creating a meta package for install a lite desktop for old machines with poor hardware. I would like to receive opinions about my packages list: - x-window-system-core - xfce4 (beautiful!) - gdm - gftp - mozilla-firefox - mozilla-thunderbird [snip] I made some tests with sucess in my machines with the following setup: Pentium 166 MHZ - 64 MB RAM - HD 2 GB Any idea? Sylpheed instead of mozilla-thunderbird. It's much lighter, I think. -- - Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson, LA USA A politician will do anything to keep his job -- even become a patriot. William Randolph Hearst, editorial (1933).
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Tue, 11 Apr 2006 13:44:57 -0300 André Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi ! I'm creating a meta package for install a lite desktop for old machines with poor hardware. That's an admiral goal, however I would be prepared for a great deal of frustration. I worked on this for a while last year, but I wasn't happy with what I ended up with. I would like to receive opinions about my packages list: - x-window-system-core - xfce4 (beautiful!) You may want to offer a choice of window manager. On low-end machines I'm partial to WindowMaker, but IceWm, FluxBox, or BlackBox are also good choices. - gdm If you're going to pull in gnome depencies anyway gdm is a good choice, otherwise wdm may be better (but AFAIK wdm isn't keyboard-only friendly). - gftp - mozilla-firefox I would also install dillo that the user has a choice between a fast, but no javascript, css, java, flash, etc support (dillo), or a slow (on the hardware you describe) browser that is otherwise great. - mozilla-thunderbird On a P1?! No way. Thunderbird is slower than molasses in January. I would recommend Sylpheed or Sylpheed-claws as a much faster/better alternative. In fact I have recently switched to sylpheed-claws on my personal workstation (Duron 850M/2.2G) because it's so much faster, keyboard-friendly, and I'm finding it a better piece of software. - menu I'd recommend against making an install task that is both about console and GUI. Console vs desktop should be different tasks IMO. They could, however, be part of the same cd (set). - gcalctool (or xcalc) - evince Any particular reason for not just using xpdf? - eog - gaim - zip - unzip - arj - bzip2 - file-roller - gnome-utils - inkscape - gimp - abiword This is what I would use too, but I know someone who swears by LyX on low-end machines, so you may want to check it out. LyX is a GUI for LaTeX (and maybe DocBook, but I'm not clear on that) that is apparently easy to get started with and works well for writing reports and technical documents. - gnumeric - gnumeric-plugins-extra - gnome-system-monitor - firestarter Those all look good. You may also want to toss in a couple of small graphical games. I made some tests with sucess in my machines with the following setup: Pentium 166 MHZ - 64 MB RAM - HD 2 GB What do you mean by success? Installs and can load, or you have tried to do some of your usual activities and found the experience reasonable? I know that when I was working on this, that I was getting frustrated by the speed (though come to think if it, I was also using 32 MB RAM) of firefox and some other apps. I also found that the 1.2 GB drive I had was pretty cramped, and that I couldn't install everything I had on the cd I made up (and which I already considered cramped). Having said that, I have been considering trying again, now that a medical condition is under control and not interfering with my ability to focus, if I can find the time between work (which at present is not even computer related) and the various other projects I have on the go. If you need a tester I will likely be able to help. Also I have a number of scripts and things that I was making to make life easier for this project. I was also trying to go the debian's package list to categorize everything, and to pick out and test various apps that could be useful on a low end machine. Best of luck! Daniel P.S. I have cc'd you because I don't know if you are subscribed to debian-devel or not. - -- And that's my crabbing done for the day. Got it out of the way early, now I have the rest of the afternoon to sniff fragrant tea-roses or strangle cute bunnies or something. -- Michael Devore -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFEO/dMhvWBpdQuHxwRAvG3AKC9NtRr01Kh0v9zdp6JWdk9RBaatgCgnN8O Dbp0j9nK+gltLRSAbtqPRJw= =cmt1 -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
* Andr Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira [EMAIL PROTECTED] [060411 18:45]: - x-window-system-core - xfce4 (beautiful!) - gdm [...] - gnome-ppp - gnome-utils Definitions differ, but I'd not call something light pulling in half of gnome. What about Debian Light Gnome Desktop? Hochachtungsvoll, Bernhard R. Link -- Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Light Desktop - meta package
On Tue, Apr 11, 2006 at 01:44:57PM -0300, Andr? Luiz Rodrigues Ferreira wrote: Hi ! I'm creating a meta package for install a lite desktop for old machines with poor hardware. I would like to receive opinions about my packages list: - x-window-system-core Note that this metapackage, as well as the x-window-system one, has just been replaced by a single metapackage named xorg. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
