Rev on two minimalist Linux distros
I have finally fired up Rev Media 4.0 on two minimalist Linux distributions as a start on the effort to discover whether the problems are really due to not having all the necessary files installed, and whether they are due to the mulifarious nature of Linux. I began with Slitaz and Tiny Core, the latter of which gives new meaning to the expression 'minimalist'. It is gui userland Linux system in 11 Mb. If we still had floppies, it would just about be deliverable on a handful. It uses almost none of the standard components. All applications have to be installed from repository. Both of these distros run in memory, so they are super fast. If you do this at home with Tiny Core, you should probably go with 3.1, just out. I used 3.0. It has 2.6 kernel, BusyBox, Tiny X, FLTK graphical user interface and flwm window manager. Without getting too far into the recherche details, this is not your standard distro. This is as minimalist as X windows can get. Get it here: tinycore_3.1.iso The other distribution is Slitaz, less minimalist, this has a whole 30 Mb and runs OpenBox, so a standard GUI, though not one most folks here may be familiar with. It comes with XOrg and LXDE bits and pieces. Midori as web browser, leafpad editor. It is a usable desktop out of the box, unlike Tiny Core. Get it here: slitaz-3.0.iso I did not use these in VMs, but on a spare bare metal machine we now have available. There is not going to be any difference if you run from CD in live mode, or if you install on hard drive, since in either case they both load directly to memory. I don't use VMs for this stuff in the interests of eliminating as many variables as possible. I made no modification whatever to Slitaz, but on Tiny Core, using the terminal, was unable to cd to the USB drive on which I had placed Media. I therefore installed PCManFM from the repository, which brought down a modest bunch of dependencies, including Gtk2, all of which went by in a flash. I didn't make a note of the others but can find out what they were if anyone is interested. It would be nice to know what people think should be tested for to make this rigorous. What I did was two things. First, some minimal exercise of the IDE. Created a new mainstack, dragged objects onto it, resized them. This worked fine. The font (yes, singular is intended) could be resized fine. The dictionary displayed and worked fine. You can alternate between IDE and browse mode. Buttons work. Second thing was, when I had a stack, I then moved it to another virtual desktop, popped over to the virtual desktop and clicked it. It instantly went back to the first one, where Media was open. So virtual desktops do not work here. It does not look like the problems could be missing dependencies. Rev seems to work exactly the same if its in one of these totally minimalist environments, including with Tiny Core which has out of the box almost nothing the big ones have except what you absolutely have to have to run the kernel and a command line, or if it is full fledged and bloated like Gnome or KDE. The environment I have found where Rev doesn't work at all is Ion2 window manager. This is actually a very nice working environment, its becoming my favorite. Its a tiling and tabbing WM. You have tiles open, and your apps take up the entire tile, in a tab. The tiles sit side by side on the desktop. It handles pop-up windows in an unusual way, they all appear at the bottom of the tile you are in. Rev does not like this, and it crashes. When you get used to Ion and know the keyboard shortcuts, its simply superb, fast, intuitive and very easy. You start apps from the keyboard with auto fill to help. Everything else seems to work with Ion, so this may be an indication that Rev is not standards compliant on the desktop issue. So, tell me what else people want to see exercised, and I will do it, this is just a start. And next week I will hopefully have time to do a full scale slackware install and bash around with that. I am not all that lively lately, and the latest is, have a proper phone system to install in addition to a server. But we will get to it, we really will. Peter ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Rev on two minimalist Linux distros
Thanks for the report Peter. It's really useful to get a feel of what is and is not working on these minimalistic Linux distros. On 16 September 2010 08:22, Peter Alcibiades palcibiades-fi...@yahoo.co.ukwrote: I have finally fired up Rev Media 4.0 on two minimalist Linux distributions as a start on the effort to discover whether the problems are really due to not having all the necessary files installed, and whether they are due to the mulifarious nature of Linux. I began with Slitaz and Tiny Core, the latter of which gives new meaning to the expression 'minimalist'. It is gui userland Linux system in 11 Mb. If we still had floppies, it would just about be deliverable on a handful. It uses almost none of the standard components. All applications have to be installed from repository. Both of these distros run in memory, so they are super fast. If you do this at home with Tiny Core, you should probably go with 3.1, just out. I used 3.0. It has 2.6 kernel, BusyBox, Tiny X, FLTK graphical user interface and flwm window manager. Without getting too far into the recherche details, this is not your standard distro. This is as minimalist as X windows can get. Get it here: tinycore_3.1.iso The other distribution is Slitaz, less minimalist, this has a whole 30 Mb and runs OpenBox, so a standard GUI, though not one most folks here may be familiar with. It comes with XOrg and LXDE bits and pieces. Midori as web browser, leafpad editor. It is a usable desktop out of the box, unlike Tiny Core. Get it here: slitaz-3.0.iso I did not use these in VMs, but on a spare bare metal machine we now have available. There is not going to be any difference if you run from CD in live mode, or if you install on hard drive, since in either case they both load directly to memory. I don't use VMs for this stuff in the interests of eliminating as many variables as possible. I made no modification whatever to Slitaz, but on Tiny Core, using the terminal, was unable to cd to the USB drive on which I had placed Media. I therefore installed PCManFM from the repository, which brought down a modest bunch of dependencies, including Gtk2, all of which went by in a flash. I didn't make a note of the others but can find out what they were if anyone is interested. It would be nice to know what people think should be tested for to make this rigorous. What I did was two things. First, some minimal exercise of the IDE. Created a new mainstack, dragged objects onto it, resized them. This worked fine. The font (yes, singular is intended) could be resized fine. The dictionary displayed and worked fine. You can alternate between IDE and browse mode. Buttons work. Second thing was, when I had a stack, I then moved it to another virtual desktop, popped over to the virtual desktop and clicked it. It instantly went back to the first one, where Media was open. So virtual desktops do not work here. It does not look like the problems could be missing dependencies. Rev seems to work exactly the same if its in one of these totally minimalist environments, including with Tiny Core which has out of the box almost nothing the big ones have except what you absolutely have to have to run the kernel and a command line, or if it is full fledged and bloated like Gnome or KDE. The environment I have found where Rev doesn't work at all is Ion2 window manager. This is actually a very nice working environment, its becoming my favorite. Its a tiling and tabbing WM. You have tiles open, and your apps take up the entire tile, in a tab. The tiles sit side by side on the desktop. It handles pop-up windows in an unusual way, they all appear at the bottom of the tile you are in. Rev does not like this, and it crashes. When you get used to Ion and know the keyboard shortcuts, its simply superb, fast, intuitive and very easy. You start apps from the keyboard with auto fill to help. Everything else seems to work with Ion, so this may be an indication that Rev is not standards compliant on the desktop issue. So, tell me what else people want to see exercised, and I will do it, this is just a start. And next week I will hopefully have time to do a full scale slackware install and bash around with that. I am not all that lively lately, and the latest is, have a proper phone system to install in addition to a server. But we will get to it, we really will. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Rev on two minimalist Linux distros
On 09/16/2010 10:22 AM, Peter Alcibiades wrote: I have finally fired up Rev Media 4.0 on two minimalist Linux distributions as a start on the effort to discover whether the problems are really due to not having all the necessary files installed, and whether they are due to the mulifarious nature of Linux. I began with Slitaz and Tiny Core, the latter of which gives new meaning to the expression 'minimalist'. It is gui userland Linux system in 11 Mb. If we still had floppies, it would just about be deliverable on a handful. It uses almost none of the standard components. All applications have to be installed from repository. Both of these distros run in memory, so they are super fast. If you do this at home with Tiny Core, you should probably go with 3.1, just out. I used 3.0. It has 2.6 kernel, BusyBox, Tiny X, FLTK graphical user interface and flwm window manager. Without getting too far into the recherche details, this is not your standard distro. This is as minimalist as X windows can get. Get it here: tinycore_3.1.iso The other distribution is Slitaz, less minimalist, this has a whole 30 Mb and runs OpenBox, so a standard GUI, though not one most folks here may be familiar with. It comes with XOrg and LXDE bits and pieces. Midori as web browser, leafpad editor. It is a usable desktop out of the box, unlike Tiny Core. Get it here: slitaz-3.0.iso I did not use these in VMs, but on a spare bare metal machine we now have available. There is not going to be any difference if you run from CD in live mode, or if you install on hard drive, since in either case they both load directly to memory. I don't use VMs for this stuff in the interests of eliminating as many variables as possible. I made no modification whatever to Slitaz, but on Tiny Core, using the terminal, was unable to cd to the USB drive on which I had placed Media. I therefore installed PCManFM from the repository, which brought down a modest bunch of dependencies, including Gtk2, all of which went by in a flash. I didn't make a note of the others but can find out what they were if anyone is interested. It would be nice to know what people think should be tested for to make this rigorous. What I did was two things. First, some minimal exercise of the IDE. Created a new mainstack, dragged objects onto it, resized them. This worked fine. The font (yes, singular is intended) could be resized fine. The dictionary displayed and worked fine. You can alternate between IDE and browse mode. Buttons work. Second thing was, when I had a stack, I then moved it to another virtual desktop, popped over to the virtual desktop and clicked it. It instantly went back to the first one, where Media was open. So virtual desktops do not work here. I was unable to reproduce that; started RunRev Enterprise 4.5 on Desktop 1; opened a new Mainstack and moved it to Desktop 2 (have 4 Virtual Desktops here); clicked on the stack, and it stayed put on Desktop 2. Ubuntu 10.10 Beta. It does not look like the problems could be missing dependencies. In an ideal world ( Ha, ha! ) RunRev for Linux would come, from RunRev, bundled with the necessary dependencies; or from a RunRev repository via aptitude or somesuch with its dependencies so all the cooking would be done with a minimum of fuss and user-intervention. Rev seems to work exactly the same if its in one of these totally minimalist environments, including with Tiny Core which has out of the box almost nothing the big ones have except what you absolutely have to have to run the kernel and a command line, or if it is full fledged and bloated like Gnome or KDE. The environment I have found where Rev doesn't work at all is Ion2 window manager. This is actually a very nice working environment, its becoming my favorite. I really wonder if it is reasonable to expect RunRev to ensure their product can function on every single Window manager out there? Its a tiling and tabbing WM. You have tiles open, and your apps take up the entire tile, in a tab. The tiles sit side by side on the desktop. It handles pop-up windows in an unusual way, they all appear at the bottom of the tile you are in. Rev does not like this, and it crashes. When you get used to Ion and know the keyboard shortcuts, its simply superb, fast, intuitive and very easy. You start apps from the keyboard with auto fill to help. Everything else seems to work with Ion, so this may be an indication that Rev is not standards compliant on the desktop issue. So, tell me what else people want to see exercised, and I will do it, this is just a start. And next week I will hopefully have time to do a full scale slackware install and bash around with that. I am not all that lively lately, and the latest is, have a proper phone system to install in addition to a server. But we will get to it, we really will. Peter ___ Well; as a teacher trainer told me in the
Re: Rev on two minimalist Linux distros
Le 16 sept. 2010 à 09:22, Peter Alcibiades a écrit : I have finally fired up Rev Media 4.0 on two minimalist Linux distributions as a start on the effort to discover whether the problems are really due to not having all the necessary files installed, and whether they are due to the mulifarious nature of Linux. Hi Peter, Interesting post. I've been working with mini-linux too since a while. I've stopped working with Ubuntu for different reasons, but let's put that way : Few of my customers were not happy and after the first Wouah, they started complaining on differents things Otherwise, there is often a lot of misunderstanding on Linux around. First, they all share the core linux, which is more or less the same on every distro. Then we have these collection of distrib which can be seen as supermarkets where you can ship a whole bunch of products in one go, but it's only tools/apps put on the top of the core linux. This can be done with packages tools available on every distro, and if they have different names, they all do the same jobs. And if you don't find a specific app on your distro , then search it from another distro, convert the package , and install it tinycore_3.1.iso I've worked with it, but I wouldn't recommend it as a first choice, because the main goal of this distro is to run it on RAM with no installation. Sure you can install it on a hard disk but then you won't find so much support or help on this topic By the way, the tc forum is a very friendly one. slitaz-3.0.iso This is my choice since a while. I've been able to do fast installations, easily packaged for every customer. And each time I'm doing a new job, I'm building my own tools to run installs faster and with good qualities ( one is to not miss any specific parameters in one of those dozens of config files ). I use Rev as a front-end for my install, and for instance, on my Mac, I have a stack where I can design the whole desktop, I mean a desktop background image, properties of windows, appareance of the menus,the panel, populating menus,... and doing this too with the Login window ( slim ), and have French text everywhere ( well, true a 95% ) then via a ssh connection, in one click do the instal or update of a user with a specific environment, and this takes less than a second, and more, even with old PCs with 128/256 Kb of RAM, old disks, etc Until now, I've blocked my customers with only one desktop, then Rev runs almost allright. ( and nobody complains as they all were microsoft's users. ) Some glitch still, but I'm a RevStudio 4.0 user... waiting for the next release So far, I'm not proposing apps made by Rev to my customers ( except few games for children as gifts ), just use it as an administration tool, but that's already a good deal for me. In my office, I'm running a PIV box with Slitaz and all the development tools I need. And I use it as a backup server, a svn server and building rev externals with it, and all this with 256 Mb of RAM. And last, few weeks ago, I was buiding a Rev stack using one my external. All this in Slitaz. Then I make a tar file, send it to a friend ( not a computer geek ) and he could play with the stack and the external instantly on Ubuntu ! Well, another little story :) Regards, Thierry ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Rev on two minimalist Linux distros
Richmond, I am just trying to find out if there ARE any dependencies of note that will not be included in most any distro. I think the answer is probably no based on this. I do not expect anyone to use these distros in anger, except for embedded systems. I also wanted to know, were any of the problems extinguished by lack of apps and libraries. The answer to that one seems to be no. I think the answer is, the problems are intrinsic to the basic way Rev on Linux has been implemented. As for Ion, I do not think Rev should be made to work with all WMs. I think it should be standards compliant, and if it is, it will work on all. I think Ion is a fair test of this. Make it work on Ion, and it will be standards compliant and will work on all. If its not standard compliant, then, as now, it will work partly, and on some. What we want is standards compliance. -- View this message in context: http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/Rev-on-two-minimalist-Linux-distros-tp2541646p2541893.html Sent from the Revolution - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Rev on two minimalist Linux distros
On 09/16/2010 01:21 PM, Peter Alcibiades wrote: Richmond, I am just trying to find out if there ARE any dependencies of note that will not be included in most any distro. I think the answer is probably no based on this. I do not expect anyone to use these distros in anger, except for embedded systems. I also wanted to know, were any of the problems extinguished by lack of apps and libraries. The answer to that one seems to be no. I think the answer is, the problems are intrinsic to the basic way Rev on Linux has been implemented. Quite; see obs. sub. As for Ion, I do not think Rev should be made to work with all WMs. I think it should be standards compliant, and if it is, it will work on all. I think Ion is a fair test of this. Make it work on Ion, and it will be standards compliant and will work on all. If its not standard compliant, then, as now, it will work partly, and on some. What we want is standards compliance. I suspect that, to get RunRev on Linux standards compliant 'someone' will have to go back to square one and build the whole thing all over again. Just possibly RunRev for Linux is a bit like Windows Millennium ( !! ); insofar as Windows Millennium was built on top of 98, on top of 95, on top of 3.1 and so on; and RunRev 4+ for Linux is built on a series of things going all the way back to the Linux Metacard engine when things in the Linux world were very different. Now, I cannot see the folk in Edinburgh feeling that is really worth all that effort, especially considering the share RunRev on Linux must have of their overall sales (well? 1 copy to you, and one to me at the RunRev 2009 conference ???). Therefore we might be more sensible to live with what we have (which, after all, is far from bad) and work to improve it. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Rev on two minimalist Linux distros
Peter Alcibiades wrote: As for Ion, I do not think Rev should be made to work with all WMs. I think it should be standards compliant, and if it is, it will work on all. Sounds good in principle, but in practice have you ever try to run Google Earth with Compiz? Sometimes standards take a while get standardized. I like many things about Ion that are very interesting (inspiring for some Rev script editor/object browser ideas), but givens its, shall we say, mixed development history I can't help but wonder if it's really the best test case to use here: the author has since abandoned open source and Linux altogether, and no distro ships with it as its default choice (I don't think any even include it). It's a nice work, but I'm not sure it's the best choice for testing standards. -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com revJournal blog: http://revjournal.com/blog.irv ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Rev on two minimalist Linux distros
It's a nice work, but I'm not sure it's the best choice for testing standards. No, agreed. Or rather, admitted! But Rev should however work with tiling window managers, as long as everything else does with them. If it did, it would probably do virtual desktops right as well. No, this is not a big deal, the surprising thing was how well it works with almost nothing standard installed except Gtk2. That is on tiny core. So whatever is going wrong, it cannot be missing dependencies, can it? -- View this message in context: http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/Rev-on-two-minimalist-Linux-distros-tp2541646p2542749.html Sent from the Revolution - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
