Mint FM2 version 3 tutorial (for Mint Fluxbox 9 Isadora)

[shane]

I have written a tutorial for the latest version of MintFM2 which comes with Mint Fluxbox 9 Isadora and later.

http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/96

Any suggestions, corrections, clarifications are most welcome.

[xazax]

Hi!

Could you write a brief changelog what changed in the new version of mint-fm2?

I'm curious ( and maybe it helps when I'm considering to update from my recent Mint fluxbox 8 or not).

[shane]

The changelog is pretty big... since I rewrote the whole thing from scratch. You have all the functionality of the old version and many new features.

Here is a short list:

• Menu now generated using libmenu-cache.
• Icons found using a custom mlocate database.
  ^^ The above 2 give the biggest performance boosts.
• Completely configurable menu root.
• 'Entry tags' which allow preservation of custom entries and changes even if menu is regenerated.
• Translations fully supported.
• Debug mode.

I think these are the major new things in version 3.

[edit] Another feature I should mention is that user installed applications, e.g. apps installed in WINE are also detected by the menu

[Kendall]

To add just a bit of history here:

Between versions 1.x and 2.x, certain parts of the package were reworked in order to take advantage of upstart and a usplash hack was added so that it would show when shutting down the system. In addition, the triggers for shutdown/restart were moved as they were ineffective in their original positions.

Between versions 2.x and 3.x Shane rewrote the entire thing and did some amazing things there. Saying it's an improvement is an understatement beyond belief.

3.x and beyond. I'd like like to find the time to rewrite the whole thing, using the 3.x series as a model, in Python to take advantage of it's speed over Bash. Due to other obligations I'm quite curious to see what kind of time I'm going to have during the Mint 10 release cycle. If not, then we'll continue to work on the 3.x base in order to make the best system for the most users.

[shane]

Hi Kendall,

Forum user ju1ius is trying to redo mint-fm2 in Python. You may want to collaborate with him to lessen your work. I think he has almost got it working as expected. (I haven't tried it though)

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=142&t=54206

[Kendall]

I was just reading that. Thanks.