- This topic has 33 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated Oct 10-5:44 am by Anonymous.
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PPC
@anticapitalista: I’m a SpaceFM hardcore user. But I noticed Cli-aptiX lists for several other very well known file managers:
caja, dolphin, nemo, nautilus
Do you thing they should be included too? They are way heavier that rox and SpaceFM but… if a user is confortable using any one of those choices…My reasoning for suggesting applications I don’t use: probably the most used applications in a [non gamer] computer will probably be the web browser and the file manager. and we already have a very complete offering of web browsers! So why not do the same with File Managers?
And just for the sake of more freedom of choice – Evolution mail client too [ and I say this being a Thunderbird user since my Windows XP days ]…
Off topic – a DistroWatch reviewer was pleased with antiX but noted it should be used as is, because it was difficult to install new programs… It’s a good argument for my suggestion of putting package installer’s icon on the desktop by default. But I’m not sure a user that does not even bother exploring the menu and something called “Control Centre” and then something called “Package installer” is someone that is minimally proficient using computers…
…On the other side, what if a non geek user does not even know what a package is? Then “package installer” would be meaningless to such person…
I remember I took a while to get to know Package Installer when I started using antiX. I used Synaptic because I know what it was… Putting myself on a complete newbies shoes I do get that I was a bit afraid of messing something up in the Control Centre and Package Manager is not a term that someone coming from another OS may be aware.
A right-in-front-of-your-eyes icon on the desktop, looking like the usual symbol for a “app store” may have pointed me on the right track a few days before. And if it had a less cryptic name, even better [maybe calling the desktop icon something like “Add Software” or “Install applications” could be as near as 100% comprehensible for everyone as possible]. The same applies possibly to the antiX updater. This would make antiX a system that even the most computer illiterate people on the world could use… People coming from Window XP/7 probably just want to get Chrome on the computer and fire up Facebook, and be sure they have all the latest security updates installed… This suggestion would cover that.
Non newbie users simply can delete that/those unneeded icon(s).Note1: And I know – antiX is NOT supposed to be a newbie friendly distro- but the fact is that it now is much moooore user friendly than it was say, a year ago and my suggestions would imply antiX opens itself for some bad reviews from complete newbies – stuff like “This seemed great, it even allowed me to installed Google Chrome!… but I don’t have it’s icon on the bar thingie and I can’t put it there, antiX sucks!!!”]
Note2: Just writing this made me realize how easy it would be to using a function from the Toolbar Icon Manager, make a script that offers to create a toolbar icon after the user installs any browser or e-mail client… Hum… Can a distro be too newbie friendly?
Sorry for “hijacking” the thread, but I didn’t think these ideas deserved a individual thread…
P.
BobC
The file manager besides SpaceFM that I find most useful is XFE
@anticapitalista- please check this- there’s something wrong with Skype’s description- it’s huge, repeated over and over…
P.
anticapitalista
@anticapitalista- please check this- there’s something wrong with Skype’s description- it’s huge, repeated over and over…
P.
Fixed version sent to repo manager. Thanks
Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.
antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.
fatmac
Just a personal observation, but the menu is getting way too ‘busy’ these days, my sister has trouble finding her programs.
Linux (& BSD) since 1999
anticapitalista
OK, can you be more specific. Which menu and what trouble?
Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.
antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.
Brian Masinick
fatmac said: “Just a personal observation, but the menu is getting way too ‘busy’ these days, my sister has trouble finding her programs.”
anticapitalista said: “OK, can you be more specific. Which menu and what trouble?”
If you are using a window manager with a taskbar, you can place your favorite applications on the task bar.
Alternatively, you can copy desktop application files onto your desktop and then use a file manager (rox, spacefm, PCmanfm, etc._ to click on the appliction icons of the programs you are most interested in using.I don’t know if we have a video about this or not; if not maybe one of our video experts could create one. That might be a reasonable alternative. A future refinement of menus to override or at least complement current behavior may offer a small incremental improvement. But let’s face it, these are “trade-offs” between a high degree of lightness and efficiency versus highly polished, expensive in resources and overhead – both in people’s time and in system overhead. People tend to prefer “different approaches”.
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Brian MasinickModdIt
If as I think the statement from fatmac the menu is getting way too ‘busy’ these days maybe means
changes to the menu structure come quite often and can cause confusion.
My most difficult/citical user has also commented on that, on her system I will be locking (making it read only) the menu structure after once again changing the alphabetic sorting to logical grouping. The thing I keep thinking of is showing anything used in the last two weeks in the top level menu structure and putting all else one level lower, but still an extra click away. My guess is that would in most cases mean about 80% in the lower level and far less entrys seen on raise.The person concerned is anything but an idiot, but has much greater difficultys with change than others without her disability structure.
Brian Masinick
It is certainly legitimate to want a menu configuration that is clear, easy to navigate, and well organized.
Some of the menu entries come from upstream Debian packages and others come directly from antiX. As such, managing everything consistently becomes an antiX issue. Because of the small size and a availability of development team members, anything we do has to be prioritized.
Ultimately anticapitalista decides what work is going into the release.
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Brian MasinickI don’t know if you are still “taking requests”, anticapitalista, but, since Package Manager has such a great list of Browsers, why not add “torbrowser-launcher” to it, to allow easy and simple access to Tor Browser?
This came to mind because a user asked me how to install it…By the way, I just tested antiX 19.2 live- it was a bad idea putting Packager Manager’s icon on the toolbar! Now how are users going to complain, on distrowatch, they can’t install anything on antiX? And include an automatic system updater? What are newbies going to complain about? 🙂
(Now seriously, but off-topic: recently someone there complained that using antiX reduced network speed… what the hell???)- This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by PPC.
Brian Masinick
Some people (fortunately a small minority) are prone to complain about almost anything.
We know that even our fine work isn’t perfect in every possible way, but I personally think that it is perfectly suited to what it was envisioned to be many years ago and we have also seen that the original model can be customized into whatever you want (if you are willing and able to do some work yourself).
I’m glad that we have so many helpful people contributing in a variety of ways.
Thank you all who do help with ideas, art work, code, testing, documentation and tutoring and anything else that emerges as the work continues.
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Brian MasinickMaybe just call it “Free App Store” or “Free Apps”
We live in a “different world” these days, probably better just to match the lingo used on the cell phones.
On the con side, I know from experience that if I install and mess with enough configurations, eventually something breaks something.
deeamboh
This is what I got while installing some stuff
to modules. If that’s on purpose, you may want to uninstall the
‘cryptsetup-initramfs’ package in order to disable the cryptsetup initramfs
integration and avoid this warning.What am I to do about this? Is everything OK??
anticapitalista
Everything is ok. If you do not use disk encryption, you can remove the package.
sudo apt purge cryptsetup-initramfsPhilosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.
antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.
@anticapitalista- another request- I recently began using rclone and rclone-browser: those packages provide (once configured via CLI) a very easy way to access dozens of cloud storage services (namely Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive)- and take an extremely low ammount of RAM while ruinnig (anout a dozen Mb or so). They could be a worthy addition to the Package Manager (performing “sudo apt install rclone-browser” is a easy, although CLI to get this application- and it makes some sense not adding rclone-browser the Package Manager, since rclone has to be configured from the CLI- on the other side, running the configuration from the GUI simply starts a CLI interface that the user has to type through, by pressing enter or “y” or “n” a few times- I do have “fool proof” how-to instructions that explain how to configure Google Drive and Ms OneDrive that I can provide, if needed, to make life easier to newbies- Hell I’m not excalty new at this and still wrote everything down, just because I’m no longer used to reading and typing answers at the terminal- antiX as been spoiling me, now that I seldom need to use the CLI for such stuff)
This could be handy for users that depend on those services for doing backups or have a synced folder… It’s no dealbreaker, but I find this a quite good (although not perfect) solution… (the CLI configuration, and allowing drag and drop to upload files, but not to download files and also not allowing (at least I don’t know how to do it) the selection of multiple files to download…)
P.
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