- This topic has 24 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated Apr 27-9:24 pm by BobC.
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BobC
Me WISE? LOL, Oh my!
Sorry, I don’t know anything about Udev or Eudev, but I do remember there is a thread on that here if you search for it where Eudev was tested recently.
AntiX is my favorite. I stay with the stable versions to avoid the cutting edge. AntiX is actually designed, tested and tuned to run well even on old clunkers from 1998, so it absolutely FLIES when you give it some real horses. Unbelievable vs Windoze 10!
I try other distros all the time and to be honest, I always come back because this one is the real deal. The Slackware based distros like Slitaz, Slackel, Salix, Linux-from-Scratch, Nutyx, etc are interesting to me because you can more easily compile things up from a Slackbuild or recipe of sorts and source, but the price tag is stability and package availability, which Debian based wins Hands Down.
As for AntiX, the code is good, nothing in this world is perfect, and perfection is always a moving target, but the question is how close can you get with minimal pain? This is pretty darned stable, and if someone finds a bug they usually get it fixed. Look for that elsewhere, I dare you. The typical answer is to blame it on user error or hardware glitch, you know the song. Look around the forum here, and note that even the newbies are treated pretty well, and helped to learn rather than the other possible options that are typical elsewhere.
The Devs here are great. Not only do they perform miracles code wise, they are friendly and helpful, which is something rare to find in the same place. Me, I’ve programmed for a living all my life, but am just learning Linux in my old age.
If you have more machine than you need, MX-Linux is like a fancy version of AntiX and is also a good bet. AntiX and MX-Linux are both Debian based, so if you don’t mind SystemD, which I really dislike, Debian’s not speedy or memory efficient, but it is the standard by which the others are measured.
Yes, XFCE on AntiX core is quite doable. I’ve found minor issues, but I didn’t really put enough time into it to beat down the minor few I have left. You do know there is a runwiththedolphin video of how to install XFCE on an AntiX Core install? https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=video&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjgn4CUpNLaAhXDx4MKHQD1AlIQtwIILzAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DCCVPZkUXXU8&usg=AOvVaw1uBQdSXy1TRP4bQglkleym Its from 2014 but it was pretty close. There are newer videos for installing LDXE and Mate also, and I’d suggest looking at them for clues on what should be done differently today, but I never looked at them (LOL). Search google for videos with “antix core install desktop” for a good list.
BTW, I’m pretty sure MX-Linux comes with an XFCE interface, so you might want to try that if you have a faster machine and really want XFCE and are not wanting any adventure.
Have fun 🙂
- This reply was modified 5 years ago by BobC.
Anonymous
Thanks! Long story short, my big initial distrohopping days were 6-7 years ago, and I got as far as building up from the late lamented AntiX core-libre. Settled on Manjaro OpenRC, which was perfect until they deprecated it (or whatever) at the beginning of fall semester last year. I didn’t have time to be serious about my OS at that point, so I grabbed MX and have been gliding along with it for months.
But summer’s coming, and time will open up, so AntiX-from-Scratch is what I’m into at the moment. If I was more virtuous I’d go full-tilt window-manager. But I’m scandalously addicted to xfce4-panel in the short term.
I’ve watched dolphin’s series a half dozen times (and the older version of it too), and I’m sure it would steer me right. But your package list will help me a lot regardless. I want to try breaking a few things creatively and experimentally. For example, there are people out there making a convincing case that even something like dbus is overkill for a true minimalist. (And dependency on it might someday force one into using systemd …)
I like the devs too. For their helpfulness and smarts, as you suggest, but for other less tangible reasons too. The other day I read the thread where anti brought down the banhammer on the Heather-Heyer-Heart-Attack troll, and I just thought, eff yeah, this is a place where I can really feel at home from many angles.
Yes, I did Mandrake about 15 years ago, and the Arch from scratch at some point about 10 years ago, Debian and AntiX 8.5, and Manjaro after that, and OpenRC was also my favorite, and I created an IceWM desktop for it that ran quite well, but on my older PC’s it was super slow, with very long boot times that just weren’t reasonable. I spent time with AntiX 13.2 after that, and customized Slackopup 5.7, and ran on that for 3 years until the browser didn’t play videos anymore, and then I came back to AntiX and have tried all sorts of crazy setups since then. Each round I learn a little more, and hopefully do a little better with scripting, compiling, replicating and hopefully buggering things up less.
I’d be interested to hear what it is in the xfce4-panel that you find so useful as to be addicting. I’m always looking for better, more comfy and efficient ways of doing things.
The only problem I’ve got outstanding that I know of with my XFCE-AntiX is that the command history arrow keys don’t work. BTW, that is a hard wired setup, but you could easily add roaming wifi to it, I think, if you wanted to (search for my Ceni roaming wifi thread). The thing I didn’t like about the XFCE-AntiX was that the memory footprint of the desktop itself is almost double my IceWM desktop. That might not be an issue for you. Certain features are WORTH spending memory on, if need be, is the way I see things.
I think you can literally PROCESS the package list, BTW, to get the system to just install everything on the list. I haven’t ever actually used that, but that was the idea behind creating it.
I missed the troll thread(s). I wouldn’t put up with them, either.
Nice to meet Ya!
Well … probably incomprehensibly abstract and wildly off-topic, but …
The panel is:
horizontal
workflow
OS, on an SSD, backed up to bootable USBThe desktop is:
vertical
data
home, on an HDD, backed up to another external HDD—
Xfce makes it so simple to just add and move things around as they shift priority. I kind of ‘silo’ what I do on a computer. Like, the Iridium browser there goes to YouTube over a VPN, and never anywhere else. The screenshot as a snapshot of my brain and its preoccupations I guess. A vaguely encrypted and symbolic picture.
I really love text-based and scripty ideas like your one about processing the pkglist to just rebuild a system on the fly. At the same time the GUI is still a very useful crutch for me. Over time that’s changing, but slowly. Very slowly.
To compare to IceWM which is the window manager I know best:
The toolbar/tray entries are easy to create in IceWM if you know what icon you want and what program each runs.
So, are you saying that you move the icons on the desktop around to arrange the priorities? Its not something I’ve seen before, but looks like a neat idea and makes good sense…
I’m thinking you could do this same icon thing with IceWM and either Rox or possibly Spacefm, I forget which is easier. There is a how to video that had it.Does the Iridium browser and VPN actually require XFCE?
I think you could make a desktop entry to run the vpn/browser stuff the way you want after installing them, or run it from the personal menu.Just thinking aloud…
>> move the icons on the desktop around to arrange the priorities
Not just the desktop but even in the panel too.
>> Does the Iridium browser and VPN actually require XFCE?
No, not at all. I can type “iridium-browser” into a terminal to launch it like any other program. It’s just a visual organizing cue. “You’ve checked your email, been to the site for work; now maybe you can go see if there’s something fun on the Tubes”.
The way you asked it makes me think: ‘Hmmm, maybe all I really need is a picture of it, burned into the desktop background.’ That wouldn’t be nearly as flexible and easy to change, but it would work … and kind of push me in the leaner, terminal-based direction. Interesting.
Sorry, I don’t know how to add or remove, let alone manually rearrange programs on the fly from the taskbar easily.
I will say that programs like Streamlight add icons to it without using a lot of memory, and are the result of programs running, and you can click it to remove them. Another problem would be that they go away after a reboot, and if you expected it to come back again, it would need to be remembered and recalled. Actually, you would need to remember both what they were, as well as what position they went in.
It could be done, but it would be a project. Actually, I think it would be better done just by using desktop icons for all of them, because those would come back after a reboot.
Your browser button looks like a very easy thing to add.
- This reply was modified 5 years ago by BobC.
- This reply was modified 5 years ago by BobC.
- This reply was modified 5 years ago by BobC.
Did you know that you can take text and overlay it onto a picture? So if you had a blank canvas background pic named bkblank.jpg and then a text file named todolist.txt, you could overlay the text file onto the pic and name the complete picture bkdisplay.jpg and have that named as your background.
If you created a little script, it could open the text file in an editor, then run a command to overlay it onto the blank canvas, saving the result as the completed picture, and then refresh the background.
If you always put the priority in the first column, you could easily have it resort it by priority for you before putting it onto the blank canvas.
Put an icon on your desktop or toolbar to do all that, and there you go…
Just thinking aloud.
- This reply was modified 5 years ago by BobC.
- This reply was modified 5 years ago by BobC.
- This reply was modified 5 years ago by BobC.
Hola BobC. I’ve been off in the weeds with work the last few days, and also with learning about arcane things (What do I lose if I lose dbus? How about trying to compile all of AntiX from source?).
Anyway, it occurred to me that one marginally helpful thing I could do would be to post a package list like you did. So this is the one for AntiX net 17.1, as it comes out of the box. About 240 packages compared with your 840. Of course there’s not even any X-windows, much less a DE, but that’s part of the fun I think. At least for those of us who know nothing and want to know everything.
I’m not knowledgeable enough to answer those. I like to start with small things and learn my way up over time.
I looked at the net version, and it doesn’t include wifi. I try not to get into reinventing wheels unless I really need to.
I didn’t count the packages, I just installed what I needed.
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