First Time AntiX Experience: Here Are Initial Thoughts

[Member marius]

Before you read this list, please know that I do not wish to give off any feelings of ill-will or disrespect. I hope that you read my suggestions and thoughts with the intent to understand. All of my experience is with the “space-jwm” configuration.

1. KODI FREEZE:
Installed KODI from package installer … installed. I opened it. Tried to exit. It froze. Had to kill. Package installer froze. Had to kill. (HOURS left frozen.)

2. PROPRIETARY CODECS:
Proprietary codecs …completely unexplained.

3. ALARM:
Where is my Alarm Clock?

4. TASK MANAGER:
Right, so we must have a CTRL+ALT+DEL task manager that is GUI, simple, and powerful. I have used htop for years, but we must have a simpler solution. For example, if you try to, within htop, kill a process that you have highlighted, you could easily kill the wrong process. How, by default, the processes continuously shift. Why? The default column header is “CPU”, which causes the processes using the CPU to vary depending on the percentage of CPU used. Surely there is a smarter way?

5. HOTKEYS:
I understand these are WM/FM dependent. Make the defaults cross-platform & pre-configured for new users (at least SOME!). I uncommented, in jwm’s keys file, the line that I have guessed is for launching the terminal (<Key key=”F1″>exec: desktop-defaults-run -t</Key>). Is that even the right line? You cannot expect new users to a. KNOW THAT and b. CONFIGURE THAT. Well, it must be wrong, as “F1” does not bring up the terminal.

6. ARANDR:
This will only affect a handful of us. I have a laptop with a broken screen. I find ARandR to be a “must have” application. It allows me to to configure & use an external monitor with my laptop. I would like to solely use an external monitor. The laptop’s monitor is mostly broken. Every time I login to antiX, I have to open ARandR, make the VGA monitor “primary”, and make the laptop monitor not “active”. How can I make that permanent?

7. CONKY:
After turning off my laptop monitor in ARandR, as mentioned in point #6 above, conky seems to invisibly run on the non “active” laptop monitor. I must disable conky and re-enable it to make it appear on the external monitor. Is there a simple fix for making conky know to not display the output on inactive monitors?

8. CHROMIUM WM:
I installed Chromium. Why doesn’t Chromium have Minimize/Maximize on the window?

9. PULSEAUDIO INCLUSION:
Why is pulseaudio not installed by default?

10. TRANSMISSION BT CLIENT VULNERABLE:
https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2018-5702
Transmission 2.94 is stable. Use it!

11. START MENU BANANAS:
That Start Menu is a flustercuck. “Themes” -Why is that given top priority? Control Center vs. System Tools vs. Preferences?

12. JWM DESKTOP ICONS:
Why is there no easy way to add a shortcut to the desktop (space-jwm)?

13. THIS PC:
I wish there was a “My Computer” or “This PC” or “About this Mac” …2 Reasons:
1. (As on Windows XP-Windows 10) Right-click on This PC/My Computer -> Properties …see a brief readout of, at least, the following: CPU, RAM, GPU, OS and version
2. To have a “file manager” view of “This PC” … “/” drive, mounted drives, Optical drives

14. USER’S FOLDERS IN SPACEFM:
SpaceFM, it needs the user’s Documents, Pictures, Videos, & Downloads in the left-hand pane.

15. MOUNTED CONFUSION IN SPACEFM:
SpaceFM should, visually, make it completely clear whether or not a drive is mounted or unmounted via visual/icon changes (i.e. “light or opaque” icon for unmounted volumes).

Those are my initial thoughts.

[Forum Admin dolphin_oracle]

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marius wrote:

Before you read this list, please know that I do not wish to give off any feelings of ill-will or disrespect. I hope that you read my suggestions and thoughts with the intent to understand. All of my experience is with the “space-jwm” configuration.

Ok thanks!

1. KODI FREEZE:
Installed KODI from package installer … installed. I opened it. Tried to exit. It froze. Had to kill. Package installer froze. Had to kill. (HOURS left frozen.)

almost sounds like a video driver problem. if you are using intel parts, your installation might default to “modsetting” driver. You can force the use of the intel driver. there are instructions for that here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/intel_graphics#Xorg_configuration

you can check what driver is in use with “inxi -F” in the terminal.

2. PROPRIETARY CODECS:
Proprietary codecs …completely unexplained.

there is a help file: https://mxlinux.org/wiki/help-files/help-mx-codecs-installer

however, the codecs are note spelled out except for libdvdcss. the codecs are w32codecs and w64codecs respectively, which have some windows media formats and realaudio I think. I find them mostly unneeded these days. We will see about adding some info to the help file.

3. ALARM:
Where is my Alarm Clock?

there isn’t one. feel free to install one. antiX is lean and mean.

4. TASK MANAGER:
Right, so we must have a CTRL+ALT+DEL task manager that is GUI, simple, and powerful. I have used htop for years, but we must have a simpler solution. For example, if you try to, within htop, kill a process that you have highlighted, you could easily kill the wrong process. How, by default, the processes continuously shift. Why? The default column header is “CPU”, which causes the processes using the CPU to vary depending on the percentage of CPU used. Surely there is a smarter way?

sorting by cpu is the default for htop, I believe. I see what you mean though about shifting processes. I generally use the Filter (F4 I think) to filter the results to just what I’m working on.

5. HOTKEYS:
I understand these are WM/FM dependent. Make the defaults cross-platform & pre-configured for new users (at least SOME!). I uncommented, in jwm’s keys file, the line that I have guessed is for launching the terminal (<Key key=”F1″>exec: desktop-defaults-run -t</Key>). Is that even the right line? You cannot expect new users to a. KNOW THAT and b. CONFIGURE THAT. Well, it must be wrong, as “F1” does not bring up the terminal.

hmm…I though the standard keys were predefined across the wm’s. maybe there is something off with jwm.

6. ARANDR:
This will only affect a handful of us. I have a laptop with a broken screen. I find ARandR to be a “must have” application. It allows me to to configure & use an external monitor with my laptop. I would like to solely use an external monitor. The laptop’s monitor is mostly broken. Every time I login to antiX, I have to open ARandR, make the VGA monitor “primary”, and make the laptop monitor not “active”. How can I make that permanent?

I believe that arandr has a way built-in to generate a script that you then set to run after login, ie: in your startup file.

7. CONKY:
After turning off my laptop monitor in ARandR, as mentioned in point #6 above, conky seems to invisibly run on the non “active” laptop monitor. I must disable conky and re-enable it to make it appear on the external monitor. Is there a simple fix for making conky know to not display the output on inactive monitors?

after you set up your arandr script, set conky to launch after that script runs.

8. CHROMIUM WM:
I installed Chromium. Why doesn’t Chromium have Minimize/Maximize on the window?

because apparently they have changed something and those buttons now seem to be gtk theme dependent by default. you can change the setting in chromium to use the window manager buttons I do believe. we saw this crop up over at MX forums as well.

9. PULSEAUDIO INCLUSION:
Why is pulseaudio not installed by default?

because it goes against the lean & mean philosophy of antiX. but anti does build a systemd-free version for folks that want/need it.

12. JWM DESKTOP ICONS:
Why is there no easy way to add a shortcut to the desktop (space-jwm)?

there is. you can drag a link right out of spacefm. I believe there is also a dialog if you right click an existing item (or maybe just outside an existing desktop item). spacefm’s desktop is pretty basic.

13. THIS PC:
I wish there was a “My Computer” or “This PC” or “About this Mac” …2 Reasons:
1. (As on Windows XP-Windows 10) Right-click on This PC/My Computer -> Properties …see a brief readout of, at least, the following: CPU, RAM, GPU, OS and version
2. To have a “file manager” view of “This PC” … “/” drive, mounted drives, Optical drives

we use inxi from the command line for most system info, but I think there might be a gui system report tool in the antiX control centre. There should be file manager links on your top level menus as well as the default panels. Some other of the bigger Desktop environments have that sort of feature directly as you describe (well, mostly), but there are tradeoffs in performance/memory usage/ etc… with the larger environments that are outside the lean & mean antiX philosophy.

14. USER’S FOLDERS IN SPACEFM:
SpaceFM, it needs the user’s Documents, Pictures, Videos, & Downloads in the left-hand pane.

spacefm doesn’t do it by default. you can add bookmarks if you wish, but that’s as close as you can get.

15. MOUNTED CONFUSION IN SPACEFM:
SpaceFM should, visually, make it completely clear whether or not a drive is mounted or unmounted via visual/icon changes (i.e. “light or opaque” icon for unmounted volumes).

hmm…you are right, I thought it did that already. Will look into it.

Those are my initial thoughts.

thanks!

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by dolphin_oracle.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by dolphin_oracle.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by dolphin_oracle.

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