The unofficial LMDE XFCE - startup

[widget]

RC works fine here. Couldn't spend much time on it but it was all working as far as I could see.

Had only one problem in the Live Session and that was Exaile crashing when playing some music during install.

Booted better than any LMDE image I have booted. Always get asked for a password after a number of error boxes pop up. This one just booted to the desktop.

Install is 1 gig smaller than my fresh Wheezy install but not a real fair comparison as I have the full Libre Ofice installed and some things like Rhythmbox that pull in some Gnome crap.

Looks pretty good. Need to add some themes and icon sets, edit the fstab to mount my Data partition and go back and finish setting it up.

[gosa]

can 'unetbootin' replace 'image writer'
It (at least for me) makes a USB Startuper (is that a word?) perfect, but Gparted (unless in a live environment) complains about a recursive file system if want to reuse as (format) just as a storage pendrive.

edit** Also can 'BUM' replace setting>services. Bum gives more Info. P.S. also can't find listed using alacarte (to find launcher name) found name of app from putting on desktop (launcher properties). Uses about same mem unless dependencies problem again.

J.Jay

Not really related to this thread, but I feel I get complaints about recursive file system just about every time I dd any of the latest Mint ISO's by following the guide on the community pages (only checked with LM 13 and above) and then later try to reuse them for other stuff...

[gosa]

about, distros sharing home folder.

I do something Almost similar...
I normally have a root(/) a swap and a home(/home) and a 32fat formatted partion I call the 'Bridge&Keep. Where I can put stuff for easy access with windows (I don't multi-boot but great for bluetooth those that do have Windows). I either copy things their for 'My Window friends' or sometimes I have symlinked into/with my (Linux) home folder.

J.Jay

P.S. also a great place to put stuff during upgrades (or borking system ) for easy retrieval (no format during install) come up local but not install proper

Almost the same here... I partition all the computers I come across (2 desktops and two laptops/netbooks at home and the computers of a number of family members) with a swap, a root & a home and apart from that I add one partition I call "files" where I keep the "user document" folders such as Documents, Downloads, Videos, Music etc. Those are then symlinked to each OS where I remove the corresponding "local" folders. (I never "fiddle" with the rest of the stuff in /home though... that are kept as it is) This "extra" partition is formatted either with Ext4 or ntfs depending on if I'm dual booting with Windows or not.

This solution works quite well for me as I tend to either bork things up a bit once in a while and need to reinstall/restore or just want to try another Mint flavor/distro because I always have the Important stuff saved on a partition that doesn't have to be "touched" by my adventures.
Keeping a text doc with all the symlinking/mounting "strings" at hand also makes the setup very fast when I need to reinstall. This also keeps dual/multi-booting quite painless as I always access this partition no matter "where I am" at the moment. And by the way - this way any clone of root & home stay quite small not having to include huge video files or my latest photo adventures in the backup.

Anyway - now I feel I've been "off topic" for way to long, sorry about that.

[widget]

about, distros sharing home folder.

I do something Almost similar...
I normally have a root(/) a swap and a home(/home) and a 32fat formatted partion I call the 'Bridge&Keep. Where I can put stuff for easy access with windows (I don't multi-boot but great for bluetooth those that do have Windows). I either copy things their for 'My Window friends' or sometimes I have symlinked into/with my (Linux) home folder.

J.Jay

P.S. also a great place to put stuff during upgrades (or borking system ) for easy retrieval (no format during install) come up local but not install proper

I have, on this drive (internal sda) only 2 installs. One is Debian testing and the other Sid. Both xfce. They are identical except to version. I use them as my production OS.

One is usually more stable than the other. Depends on where they each are in the dev cycle. So to make it easy for me I use one /home partition. tom is the user for testing and sam for Sid. Both installs have tom and sid as groups and both users belong to both groups. This makes file sharing between users very easy.

If you are doing testing of, say Ubuntu, which I did for years, you find that having many installs is very handy. As the system may break at anytime for any number of reasons and there are always requests to test particular packages, you sometimes have trouble figuring our what broke. The system or the added package.

This can be over come, easily, by having separate install for each package being added to the Ubuntu-testing install. For 9.10-testing, where grub2 was thrown in to us at A2 with no documentation, I ended up with 21 installs. This may seem to take up a good bit of room. It does not need to.

If you have one 320gig drive, I had 2 that size for testing in an external enclosure, you actually have plenty of room for fairly generous installs of 13 OS's. 10 gig / partitions and a 40 to 60 gig /home. Home does not at all need to be that big but I use a 5 gig per OS rule on big numbers of installs sharing /home. As you can see, if you have 13 / partitions, 1 /home and /swap you are out of partitions.

If testing I will use 12 /, 1 /home, 1 Data, and 1 swap. On a 320gig drive this gives you a total of 182 gigs used for installs and swap (I only use 1 or 2 gigs for the look of it, never use it unless opening more than 12 images in Gimp at one time) leaving the rest for shared files like music, movies, collected themes and icon sets and so on. Using the full 15 partitions you can have.

I never use more than 3 installs for /home if they are installs I actually am using for something other than straight up testing. Can,t keep track of them.

On the external testing platform security is not an issue. I use custom menu entries and they can use as the title of the install the user name and purpose of the install. "Jak 1part Grub" was one title for a custom menu entry for 9.10. Jak was my solution to the promblem of grub2 not booting to a 2 partition install. It would boot to other installs that were 2 partitions but not the install that held the files for Grub. From that entry I knew that I was Jak when logged in and it was installed on one partition to run Grub and experiment with Grub.

This is obviously more information than you would want on the menu for a "real" install. I don't like the user name coming up on the login screen or having a list of users there. Certainly do not want that in the menu entry.

Works great for large numbers of installs though.

Testing really can't be done in VB. Development takes place in VB. That is why you need a lot of testers. You need a diverse population of hardware, real live hardware to see if the system works on real hardware.

VB is great to develope on because you have already got a reliable interface with the hardware in the host system. You can concentrate on the basic code and whether or not it works.

You use idiots like me to test it on a real hardware interface. I file bugs. You, the dev, fix the bugs. Basically testers are bored if the OS works. We are only useful if it breaks. FUN stuff.

I never put alien file systems on my computer. The wife and I don't allow MS products under our roof. Used it for years. Hold a grudge.

I do put all the ntfs and other wierd file system tools on my portable drive. I enjoy going to demonstrate Linux and show how easy it is to nose through ALL the files in an MS install (unencrypted) and then reboot to MS and let them use their system to try and look at mine. Pisses some off until they have a wreck and need recovery done on their drive. Testdisk is also installed on all OSs on my "loaner" (demo) drive.

[zerozero]

But anyway switched my source list to testing (not Upacks) again, tried in term 'mint-choose-debian-mirror' gives error found debian org in source list...aborting no changes made.
Am I tring to change mirrors wrong (on 64 bit I know switch me to 'Metrocast' but that was before changed soure list to testing??

no you are not doing nothing wrong, the app is working as intended: if it finds debian.org in the sources.list it skips the mirror check. it's only useful (and a lot) with the mint mirrored repos.

[cwwgateway]

But anyway switched my source list to testing (not Upacks) again, tried in term 'mint-choose-debian-mirror' gives error found debian org in source list...aborting no changes made.
Am I tring to change mirrors wrong (on 64 bit I know switch me to 'Metrocast' but that was before changed soure list to testing??

Thank You
J.Jay

If you look in the following link, there's a list of debian mirrors: http://www.debian.org/mirror/list. You can also look here, which is a mirror that picks the best mirror for you http://http.debian.net/. I have heard of mixed results with the http.debian.net repo (and it mentioned cdn.debian.net IIRC, but I haven't looked in to that). I believe there is also a program that allows you to do this, but I am blanking out over what its name is.

[Schoelje]

I see that your experimenting with the iso, and because I don't hear any major issues, I assume that all's well.

Now, to clarify the status:

• I've solved the wicd configuration: at startup a script is run to write the wireless interface (usually wlan0) to wicd's configuration file. This means that wicd is able to search for networks without user configuration.
• With the Alacarte developer I'm working to get a Xfce-friendlier version. I'm waiting to release the final version until that is done.
• Now that we're in the RC fase, no major changes are being made unless it's a fix to solve a bug (so no additional software).

I don't want to hurry to release the final version, but you already have the RC to play with

[jjaythomas]

Sorry double post (think hit send 1/2 throu.

[jjaythomas]

no you are not doing nothing wrong, the app is working as intended: if it finds debian.org in the sources.list it skips the mirror check. it's only useful (and a lot) with the mint mirrored repos.

Thank you (again)ZZero
J.Jay

P.S.

Now, to clarify the status:

I've solved the wicd configuration: at startup a script is run to write the wireless interface (usually wlan0) to wicd's configuration file. This means that wicd is able to search for networks without user configuration

YES

With the Alacarte developer I'm working to get a Xfce-friendlier version. I'm waiting to release the final version until that is done.

Think mine all with alacarte not RC

Now that we're in the RC fase, no major changes are being made unless it's a fix to solve a bug (so no additional software).

I'll be quit & try rember on RC now!

[jjaythomas]

Wrong place again (if so move)

Going to reinstall 64bit RC (better for me I have 8GBs mem ) think going to stay with Upacks. Might try switching to direct testing (or sid) in future.
QUESTION...
when would be best time to switch? My UNeducated guess would be after the Upack thats after freeze (take care of major problems?)

Thank You
J.Jay

[widget]

But anyway switched my source list to testing (not Upacks) again, tried in term 'mint-choose-debian-mirror' gives error found debian org in source list...aborting no changes made.
Am I tring to change mirrors wrong (on 64 bit I know switch me to 'Metrocast' but that was before changed soure list to testing??

Thank You
J.Jay

If you look in the following link, there's a list of debian mirrors: http://www.debian.org/mirror/list. You can also look here, which is a mirror that picks the best mirror for you http://http.debian.net/. I have heard of mixed results with the http.debian.net repo (and it mentioned cdn.debian.net IIRC, but I haven't looked in to that). I believe there is also a program that allows you to do this, but I am blanking out over what its name is.

If you install the package "apt-spy" it will check the repos for speed and add the fastest to your /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory.

Check out the man page but if you want to just check the mirrors in North America for the distribution "testing";

Code: Select all

apt-spy -d testing -a north-america


works fine.

I am pretty sure you can narrow it down to a specific country but have never tried that. There is a mirror in Calgary that is sometimes much better for me, here in Montana, than any in the US.

It does take some time. Checks each mirror for 15 seconds. With the number of mirrors for Debian and the time it takes to swhitch from one to the next it adds up. Usually worth it though.

[widget]

Wrong place again (if so move)

Going to reinstall 64bit RC (better for me I have 8GBs mem ) think going to stay with Upacks. Might try switching to direct testing (or sid) in future.
QUESTION...
when would be best time to switch? My UNeducated guess would be after the Upack thats after freeze (take care of major problems?)

Thank You
J.Jay

Doing it after a Upack is a good idea.

If you want to have a Stable version just change to the wheezy repo.

When Wheezy is released, hopefully early next month, anyone using the term "testing" in the sources.list instead of "wheezy" will get a huge update/upgrade dumped on them with the change to Jessie. You may want to have an extra install to test that on to see if it breaks anything.

Sid will also probably get a deluge of packages held in limbo since the Wheezy freeze started when Wheezy is released.

I have no real interest in loosing the systems I use daily. I have copies of my installs that will be used to test this expected down pour.

[zerozero]

widget is very right (again ) here: a couple weeks after wheezy's goes gold we'll see a big influx of updates in both testing and sid and with disruptive effects for sure (those following the update-packs will be safe because certainly won't be another one until the dust settles down)

interesting weeks ahead

[jjaythomas]

Thanks for everyone's input about mirrors and merits of testing/sid/wheezy stating Upack ect. (I feel so much more enlightened now)

As a side note on mirrors even though in Arkansas (USA) I have better luck (when downloading distro) using a U of Canada mirror (if available ,Mints does)!

J.Jay

[jjaythomas]

Back on 64bit

EDIT Sorry found (is that the KDE Dict. (don't use KDE)?
J.Jay

[GeneBenson]

I've been playing with the Live version again and have a couple more comments:

1. On the Liver version /var/lock and /var/run are "real" folders (I forgot to check /dev/shm). These should be symlinks. Could someone who has actually installed this please check to see what happens to these folders? For more info see here.

2. The flash plugin (libflashplayer.so) is over a year old. The latest version was released in Dec. 2012. It might also be nice to include Firefox 18 and Thunderbird 17.0.2 which were just released. Since we're waiting for Alacarte anyway ...

If you look in the following link, there's a list of debian mirrors: http://www.debian.org/mirror/list. You can also look here, which is a mirror that picks the best mirror for you http://http.debian.net/. I have heard of mixed results with the http.debian.net repo (and it mentioned cdn.debian.net IIRC, but I haven't looked in to that). I believe there is also a program that allows you to do this, but I am blanking out over what its name is.

Just an FYI: I have been using http://http.debian.net for several months now without incident. Download speed has been very good and never a problem (knock on wood) with an unreachable repository (which you wouldn't have given the philosophy behind it .

[mockturtl]

2. The flash plugin (libflashplayer.so) is over a year old. The latest version was released in Dec. 2012.

Adobe stopped releasing updates for Linux with Flash 11.2 and AIR 2.6. Google has a licensing agreement to continue shipping a current plugin with Chrome (their "native client," NaCl -- "salt" and "pepper" API -- is incompatible with Mozilla's "netscape" API).

[GeneBenson]

2. The flash plugin (libflashplayer.so) is over a year old. The latest version was released in Dec. 2012.

Adobe stopped releasing updates for Linux with Flash 11.2 and AIR 2.6. Google has a licensing agreement to continue shipping a current plugin with Chrome (their "native client," NaCl -- "salt" and "pepper" API -- is incompatible with Mozilla's "netscape" API).

Hi mockturtl,

I suggest you have a look here to see which version you are running. I am running 11.2.202.261 in Firefox according to that site. I got my version here.

[mockturtl]

I suggest you have a look here to see which version you are running. I am running 11.2.202.261 in Firefox according to that site. I got my version here.

That's correct: it's impossible to update Flash on Firefox in Linux, since 11.2. Adobe canned it: there are no updates; there won't be any.

[Schoelje]

The developer on Alacarte has done his best to make the changes necessary for Xfce.
Unfortunately, after 3 hours of trying, I was unable to compile Alacarte for Debian.
It kept throwing missing dependencies which I could not find in the repositories and had to compile myself.
I suppose my knowledge of compiling myself is very limited (as my patience)
If anyone would like to try himself:

Code: Select all

git clone git://git.gnome.org/alacarte

So, I'll keep what's in the RC and I upped the version to 3.7.1
The current development version is 3.7.2 and when that is available in the Debian repositories, it should be the version adapted for Xfce.

@GeneBenson
- Good call on the /var directories. I've totally forgotten about them.
- The final release will have the latest available flash plugin (the ones currently in the RC were a bit old).
- I only include packages which are not in the repositories if there is no good alternative and the functionality is needed (see the Alacarte message above). Therefor, Firefox and Thunderbird will have the version which are available in the repositories.