[solved] Potential Bug – Minimal-fluxbox “not supported” in antiX 19.4

[Moderator christophe]

@marcelocripe brought up this issue to me to see if I could reproduce it:

He installed antiX 19.4 (full). Upon booting into rox-icewm in the newly installed system, he configured internet connection, then logged out. Then he pressed F1 until minimal-fluxbox was chosen, and logged back in.

He told me the task bar didn’t start, and the “not supported window manager” window came up. He could do nothing at all on this screen, so he had to press ctl-alt-backspace to get out of it. Mouse did not work.

I confirmed that I got the same behavior. And to add detail to my experience: conky was on-screen, the cpu usage was at 100%, the memory kept steadily climbing (up to 500 MB used before I pressed ctl-alt-backspace), and the rest was as marcelocripe witnessed.

Does anyone else get this outcome?

• This topic was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by christophe.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by christophe.

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Member Xecure]

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A month or two ago, a backport of desktop-defaults-[icewm,fluxbox,jwm]-antix from antiX21 (which uses “minimal-<wm>” instead of “min-<wm>”) updated the files in /usr/xsessions/, which brought the minimal-<wm> to not work when starting this session from slim.

A recent update to desktop-session-antix for antiX 19.4 makes it possible to workaround it and a accessing the minimal-<wm> (correctly names min-<wm> now) from the other desktops sessions (the update is already in the repos, so installing it and running the corresponding command will update the other desktops menus).

Now, for anyone who has no problems in their normal (non-minimal) desktop-session experience, DONT USE MINIMAL SESSIONS. Minimal sessions are meant to be used for troubleshooting, and NOT for normal use. If this is to follow PPC’s tutorials to use Tint2+[…] transformations, DONT USE MINIMAL. Minimal were never meant to be used for normal user sessions. When antiX21 comes, minimal will not work as before (fluxbox/icewm/jwm startup will be disabled).

If you want a minimal session (low RAM use), instead edit the desktop-session options file. You can disable desktop-session startup (LOAD_STARTUP_FILE=”false”), conky (LOAD_CONKY=”false”), etc editing the ~/.desktop-session/desktop-session.conf (as it was intended). Then select a icewm/fluxbox/jwm session without desktop icon handler and it will be identical to the “old” minimal session.

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General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member marcelocripe]

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Christophe, thank you so much for testing and bringing up the issue in this thread.

Xecure, I followed the topics you mentioned but I couldn’t understand them well enough. Sometimes, the way conversations develop on topics makes it difficult to understand everything with translations.

… DONT USE MINIMAL SESSIONS. Minimal sessions are meant to be used for troubleshooting, and NOT for normal use.

I never knew this information until today (thanks!), so much so that I configured computers with up to 1 GB of RAM memory with the options Min-Fluxbox, or Min-JWM, or Min-IceWM, the decision between which of the three Min that should be the “default” of the user, according to the levels of processing, the desktop that presented the least effort for the processor was chosen.

Would min or minimal desktop options be equivalent to Windows Safe Mode?

Good to know that this problem will not be in antiX 21.

Thank you very much.

marcelocripe
(Original text in Brazilian Portuguese language)

– – – – –

Christophe, muito obrigado por testar e trazer o problema neste tópico.

Xecure, eu acompanhei os tópicos que você citou mas eu não consegui compreendê-los suficientemente bem. Às vezes, a forma como se desenvolvem as conversas nos tópicos, fica difícil compreender tudo com as traduções.

… DONT USE MINIMAL SESSIONS. Minimal sessions are meant to be used for troubleshooting, and NOT for normal use.

Eu nunca soube desta informação até o dia de hoje (obrigado!), tanto é que eu configurava os computadores com até 1 GB de memória RAM com as opções Min-Fluxbox, ou Min-JWM, ou Min-IceWM, a decisão entre qual das três Min que deveria ser a “padrão” do usuário era conforme os níveis de processamento, a área de trabalho que apresentasse menor esforço para o processador era a escolhida.

As opções de área de trabalho min ou minimal seriam equivalentes ao modo seguro do Windows?

É bom saber que este problema não estará no antiX 21.

Muito obrigado.

marcelocripe
(Texto original em idioma Português do Brasil)

[Moderator christophe]

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Thank you, Xecure.

So to restate:

If you want a minimal session (low RAM use), instead edit the desktop-session options file.

Navigate to: Root-menu > Control Centre > Session > User Desktop Session

You can disable desktop-session startup

Then Navigate to the geany tab for “desktop-session.conf,” which is open

Edit the statements from “true” to “false”:

LOAD_STARTUP_FILE=”false”

LOAD_CONKY=”false”

Save & close.

Then switch desktop – by logging out, switch with F1 key – to fluxbox (or jwm/IceWm) – without rox- or space- prefix, and without min/minimal …

…and it will be identical to the “old” minimal session.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by christophe.

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Member Xecure]

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marcelocripe wrote:

Would min or minimal desktop options be equivalent to Windows Safe Mode?

minimal sessions are meant to only load the window manager. No programs can auto-start (no conky, no wallpaper, no startup programs at all).

If in the normal session you see that it takes a very long time to load, uses a lot of RAM or CPU power, or the system directly freezes, you can check in the minimal session if you experience the same.
If you do, then it is the window manager or something related to the linux system (like a kernel incompatibility, an xorg problem, a misbehaving driver, a problematic service… something that requires a lot more studying).
If you see everything work smoothly in the minimal session, then you know that the responsible process can be one (or many) of these possibilities:
* The conky (something is not properly configured in the ~/.conkyrc file that is slowing the system, for example, a new line that calls a process that gets locked or is called to often, introduced by the user)
* The wallpaper is trying to load an image that doesn’t exist anymore, or it is getting stuck.
* The Desktop Icon manager is trying to load something but it gets stuck.
* A command added either to the session startup or window manager startup file (or from xdg-autostart) is having problems loading, or directly block the system.

In most cases, this will be related to a bad configuration (or an update to a certain program that normally auto-starts).

So, it is meant for the user to launch a clean environment and, step by step, figure out what is the reason for their system’s slowness or breakage. From thsi environment, you can test launching each program one by one and finding which is the one that blocks or slows the system, and change the options (or disable them from auto-starting), so that the normal session works again.
This is easier troubleshooting than from the terminal.

You can see Dave, the creator and maintainer of desktop-session-antix, explain it here:
https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/understanding-desktop-session-antix/#post-46602

• This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by Xecure. Reason: some typos

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General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member Xecure]

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christophe wrote:

So to restate:

Yes. That is what I understand from my discussion with Dave.

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General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member Wallon]

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Thank you all for this thread.
I didn’t know that it wasn’t recommended to work with a minimal environment.
Good to know!
Wallon

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