- This topic has 8 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated Mar 11-2:36 am by Anonymous.
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Girafenaine
Hello,
I have installed antiX 17.3 32b to make a live USB I could use in my work place and keep with me. It could be used as emergency OS as well – when I fail in installing some Linux distro on random computers. It works well, but for modern computers I would like to use xfce rather than jwm (which is perfect for low RAM old computers (but very long to customize). I used the antiX packages installer, “Desktops Environnements”, to try “very light xfce” and then “xfce and lightdm”. First “very light xfce” works but is rather… very light. Second one leads to an issue : after booting, lightdm greeter screen prevents me from login with “demo” user. When I enter my password, after a few seconds the greeter screen is back. I can only login as “root” user. As root user, I can change the demo password, but it doesn’t solve the issue. I went back to slim with “dpkg-reconfigure slim” and it works, but xfce offers very few tools (I would like some other network manager). I have a few questions to help me go ahead :
1- what are the differences between “very light xfce” and “xfce and light dm”, except lightdm itself ? (which added packages in the second one ?)
2- what are the main differences between lightdm and slim, and why lightdm seems to be more common to use xfce as DE ? Is it a good idea to use slim with xfce ?
3- any idea to let lightdm accept my demo user ?Thank you for the help you could provide !
Girafenaine
Girafenaine
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Antix 19 - Fluxbox - Live USB stick and frugal / MX 19 - Fluxbox - Dell XPS 7590Anonymous
To make the answer short:
LightDM is lighter then many and heavier then some — it’s a middleweight application.
Same applies for Xfce/Xfwm — too litle for DE, too much for WM — middleweight.
The combination of Xfce & LightDM prooved to be robust and works well.There is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to use Xfce with Slim just as well.
Obvious would be somewhat less functionality at the Log In screen (F1).
Devuan and Devuan based Distros usually use Slim as default.Installing Xfce and LightDM on antiX is a nonsense. You could simply use MX instead.
“Obvious would be a nonsense”
@ skidoo
You’re perfectly right, but completely wrong.
The sole functionality that Slim offers is a possibility to enter the UN/PW.
Some others will show the:
machine name
time and date
session choice
keyboard choice
language selector
toggle on-screen keyboard
shutdown/reboot options
…It doesn’t count when typing the command instead of user name does something or when you have to press shift + ctrl + tab + del + space + insert + pgdn simultaneously to reach something.
Example:
If the Slim would offer 15 different functions and LightDM only 3 and my Grandma can explain me 2 of them in LightDM, but only 1 in Slim, then the LightDM obviously wins, because it has 2 functions to offer vs. only one that Slim can offer.It does not count what 100 experts know and understand, but what 100 millions of Grandmas can see, understand and explain, completely without any knowledge, without forums, without studying the manuals and without speaking English to be able to write ‘reboot’ instead of the user name or press F1 to choose sessions and such crap. My grandma could speak 4 languages, but none of them was English.
Got what I mean? ‘Linux for Human Beings’.
P.S.
Since you know Slim in and out, could you please answer me one question? It’s not about antiX Slim.In which file are the settings for positioning the input fields (UN/PW mask) and changing backgrounds in Slim? (‘In which file …’ because I’m not talking about antiX) Or — how one can say, input field should be positioned left/top, right/bottom, center/center?..
Girafenaine
Hello,
Thanks for your anwser. I will try slim/xfce, since I cannot login with lightdm. Yet I would like to know why I cannot login, if someone knows about this issue.
And if someone knows about very light xfce and “xfce” in the antiX packages manager, I am still interested !
For MX, it makes sense for me, but :
– I believe that MX is still heavier, with its 1,5 Go versus 0,6 Go for AntiX base. I have no clue about RAM use with MX vs antiX.
– antiX let you choose before boot between very light (jwm) or light (xfce) DE, which is useful to use on different computersGirafenaine
Girafenaine
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Antix 19 - Fluxbox - Live USB stick and frugal / MX 19 - Fluxbox - Dell XPS 7590Yes, it’s heavier, but it can do more … or — more comfortable.
RAM consumption is almost never a problem nowadays.Unless you have less then 1 GB of RAM, your actual problem will usually be the processor speed and not RAM.
If you don’t have something with +1 GB of RAM, you’ll anyway not use it for anything seriuos.Xfce usualy runs with something around 250 (Salix 14.2) ~ 400 (MX) MB RAM, but sometimes there are Xfce distros using 1.5 ~ 2 GB (Modicia) upon fresh start.
That said, they actually all consume the same (when it comes to Xfce part itself) almost same amount of RAM, but the RAM management between distros varies.And if someone knows about very light xfce and “xfce” in the antiX packages manager
search prior discussions in this forum will find details describing the minimum set of xcfe components needed (vs installing the “xfce” metapackage).
.In which file are the settings for positioning the input fields (UN/PW mask) and changing backgrounds in Slim?
/usr/share/slim/themes*/slim.theme
grep ‘current_theme’ /etc/slim.confIn case the version of SLiM installed in antiX lacks a theming howto doc, here’s a link to an online doc
/usr/share/doc/slim/THEMES.gz
.press F1 to choose sessions and such crap
I agree ~~ that’s a deplorable anti-feature.
“Why can’t we just have a combobox dropdown chooser, instead?”
Researching, I discovered that employing XAW (Athena Widgets toolkit for X) would be the only viable option. Utilitzing an SDL or openGL -based frontend would risk leaving SLiM incompatible with some older hardware. Sadly, Debian’s libxaw7 package + related xlib packages (libx11-xcb-dev?) have been poorly maintained ~~ one of the c header files is missing. Rebuilding and/or maintaining all the thousands of lines of code for those would-be dependent packages is out of scope, several times larger than the entire SLiM codebase… and the icky result would be a dropdown featuring non-antialiased font(s). (To see what I mean by “icky”, run the command “xfontsel”.)seaken64
If you don’t have something with +1 GB of RAM, you’ll anyway not use it for anything seriuos.
What is serious computing? Is e-mail serious? Remote Desktop back to the office? Adding inventory to a database file for import to the main file? Writing a letter to a customer? Taking notes? Testing networks?
Is any of that serious? Do it all in less than 512K! thanks to antiX and Linux.
Just sayin’
Seaken64
@ skidoo: Thanks skidoo!
@ seaken64:
Reliability — even 10 ~ 12 years old computers came already with 2+ GB of RAM.
Who does serious work, does it for money — can afford himself a computer.
The computer is a tool that makes your living — you’d invest in tools.
Weak processor & less then 1 GB RAM == ancient == unreliable.E-Mails you can do on anything. Even with a 2000 (no) smartphone.
Remote Desktop needs no resources (some video) as the remote is doing the job.
On 1 GB RAM you’ll not use DBs, except you are playing with some ‘own PC’s’ inventory.
Writing a letter to a customer? If you would have a customer, you wouldn’t be using PC with 512K. 😉
IT professional will have a computer for work and testing. Others don’t test NW.
Taking notes can be be done on anything, same as E-Mail.
Moleskin notebook being still the best.And then, we also have graphics, video and other multimedia production. Even I have some 512MB or bigger photos.
Open something like that and try to work with it with some 20 ~ 30 layers. Wish you luck.
Yes, we did it in 80′ and 90′ too, but there’s no more Alias Eclipse today.Anything under 1 GB RAM is not only unusable for work, but also unusable for fun, except the fun consists of ‘I’ll show, I can make it work’.
Open 10 Tabs in a web browser with some Angular JS websites or YouTube videos on 1 GB RAM and you can have a nap or go shopping.
(Like when collecting informations while writing something.) You’ll be back before you can press the next button.For 2~300 $ you can get a brand new HW with 4GB RAM, used even for 50~100 $.
It’s a joke in comparison to SGI “Fullhouse” workstations from 1993.PS: Writing on 11-years old laptop with 4 GB RAM; even my old 2002 model had already 1 GB, but I can remember 512K. That was in 1984, wasn’t it?
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