New Puplet - Boxpup

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gray
Posts: 316
Joined: Fri 23 Feb 2007, 22:42
Location: Adelaide - South Australia

New Puplet - Boxpup

#1 Post by gray »

Boxpup is a puplet built around the fast and efficient Openbox
window manager. There is no taskbar and no icon support for the desktop,
with access to applications by right click on the desktop to get a menu.
Middle click on the desktop gives access to "iconified" apps and other
desktops. Iconified apps are also accessible via the Tint iconbar at
the top of the screen. At the bottom of the screen is Wbar for launching
a selection of apps. System feedback is provided by Conky (cpu & memory
usage etc). On the left is a variant of Hotpup.

Wait a minute, how is Hotpup possible without desktop icons ? Easy - Wbar is used to
display the drive icons !

Boxpup is Puppy 4.0 based & comes with a good selection of apps ;-

Opera 9.52 (webbrowser & mail) with flash 9.0124 (latest)
Abiword 2.63 with spellcheck, equation editor etc
Gnumeric 1.82 spreadsheet
Gimp 2.4
Osmo 0.2.2
Thunar filemanager
Xine media player

Download from http://www.puppylinux.ca/tpp/NOP
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sintot
Posts: 57
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Location: Madrid

#2 Post by sintot »

Hi, Gray.

I'm using your Boxpup, and I like it very much, but I have one question:
Where can I see the applications that when minimized go to the system tray dock (like ayttm, pidgin, transmission, etc.)?

Thanks in advance

pigshed
Posts: 158
Joined: Fri 23 May 2008, 14:28
Location: France

#3 Post by pigshed »

Hi Gray, nice work - looks well !

A couple of questions :

How do I stop conky, the calendar and the round clock from loading ? Conkyfor one seems to heavily hit performance on my box. I've looked in startup and /etc/rc.d.

How do you change the font size in the top tint bar ? I've tried a few settings and now I'm not sure if I've managed to increase the size or if I'm just getting used to it !

Onlyproblem I've seen is that Opera by default is a takes up a larger window than a 1024*768 screen - though it doesn't load as full screen so you can drag it around and re-size it.

Cheers, Adam.

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sintot
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Location: Madrid

#4 Post by sintot »

Pigshed, I think it can be made editing /root/.xinitrc
And I think Tint has it's config file under /root/.config/tint/tintrc

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Ray MK
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#5 Post by Ray MK »

This is very nice - in fact better than that - it's outstanding - Luv it.

All the essentials like - hotpup, conky, osmo, opera - and all in a V cool front end.

Beautifully done - and complete with all of the Puppy4 advantages. Brilliant.

Many thanks indeed.

Best Regards - Ray MK

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dogone
Posts: 202
Joined: Tue 22 Apr 2008, 02:53
Location: Arizona, USA

Superb - but boot CD never stops spinning

#6 Post by dogone »

Gray, I am VERY impressed with Boxpup. It's gorgeous and easy to navigate. This one is a keeper. Please plan a nice, long future for Boxpup.

Two issues however:

!. The CD never stops spinning. I can eject it, as Boxpup doesn't depend on it, but reload it and the disk spins up and never stops. Something must be hitting it. Rather annoying.

2. Thunar doesn't open and mount pup_save files as Rox does. This is pretty much a show stopper for me as I truly need this capability.

I otherwise look forward to getting to know Boxpup.

Vey nice work. Thanks.

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gray
Posts: 316
Joined: Fri 23 Feb 2007, 22:42
Location: Adelaide - South Australia

boxpup

#7 Post by gray »

sintot: There is no system tray, everything iconifies to the tint bar.

pigshed: As sintot has answered - edit .xinitrc to comment out conky and edit tintrc to alter properties. If you google for tint there is a good pdf user guide.

dogone: right click on a 2fs file and select the open with other application option. At the bottom type in the command as filemnt. Then when you right click on a 2fs file again it should give the option to run filemnt.

The cd keeps spinning 'cos hotpup needs to keep polling it to see if the cd has changed. If you set hotpup to always display the cd drives I think it should stop ?

Mic67

#8 Post by Mic67 »

Browsing the puppy forum I saw this pupplet, since the DL was only 95 megs and it had The latest Opera with flash.<<<worked perfectly!!!!! I gave it a whirl....

Nice work, Abiwork with spell check (so it does not have to be added as most would), Gimp loads super fast....

Conky is a great app. with some downsides...
-all open windows need to be minimized to see it,
-with dialup the up and download indicator were blank
with the browser window open there doesnt seem to be an obvious blinky for network activity

It would be nice to minimize all windows with 1 click and have a click to another window desktop.

Opera is a preferred browser, but like firefox or foxfire with Java script ON malicious web pages or the like can close your browser for you when you dont want.

This one is a keeper ....well done.

Mic67

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prit1
Posts: 542
Joined: Fri 04 Jan 2008, 00:10
Location: Los Angeles

#9 Post by prit1 »

Hi Gray,

As usual, job well done. Thanks for the puplet. One thing that I noticed is that the dialogs for Network setup takes a long time to show up. The whole network setting thing for me took around 2 minutes.

Is it because these wizards are written to work well only with JWM and Icewm?
[url=http://macpup.org][b]Macpup - The beauty of linux[/b][/url] [b] | [/b] [url=http://pritlog.com/][b]Pritlog - Simple blog app[/b][/url]

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technosaurus
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#10 Post by technosaurus »

if you have trouble with the flash you can download the tar.gz of flash 10rc (just replace the flash player .so file in the opera / plugins folder)- its file size is bigger but things run a lot smoother and no random white or gray boxes on youtube that go away when refreshed anymore
Its already way better than flash 9 for Linux especially in opera for some reason.

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sintot
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Location: Madrid

#11 Post by sintot »

Hi:
As I need the system tray, I have installed stalonetray http://stalonetray.sourceforge.net/, which can be integrated as a dock in openbox.
I run it putting

Code: Select all

stalonetray &
in /root/.xinitrc, just before tint. The config file I'm using is /root/.stalonetrayrc:

Code: Select all

transparent true
window_layer bottom
withdrawn true
parent_bg true
The stalonetray binary is attached.

Thanks Gray, for this great puplet!
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kayan
Posts: 90
Joined: Thu 14 Feb 2008, 18:26
Location: India

excellent

#12 Post by kayan »

I am really in love with this puplet....it is reeally fast...
how to see battery level ? i am using laptop,
[color=blue]SAHARA laptop intel celeron M 1.4 GHz/ 768Mb Ram /40GB ,SIS 661 chipset,[/color]

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SirDuncan
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Re: excellent

#13 Post by SirDuncan »

kayan wrote:I am really in love with this puplet....it is reeally fast...
how to see battery level ? i am using laptop,
Well, one way would be to use Conky. Look for "/root/.conkyrc" and edit it to show the battery status. Look here http://conky.sourceforge.net/variables.html for the different variables that you can use with Conky. The battery stuff should be at the start of the "b" section. Of course, this is obscured if you have a window open. Hopefully someone knows of a battery tray applet that works with Openbox.

@Gray: I've just been playing around with this in VirtualBox, and I must say that I like it. It may end up on my laptop as the primary OS. I've always liked clean desktops and docks - they just jive well with my normal workflow - and BoxPup does that without looking like another OSX clone.

My only issue so far is that a maximized window covers the bottom Wbar. Is there a way to prevent this?
Be brave that God may help thee, speak the truth even if it leads to death, and safeguard the helpless. - A knight's oath

magerlab
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Joined: Sun 08 Jul 2007, 20:08

#14 Post by magerlab »

i also found stalone tray( took from zenwalk repo and use it with openbox no i'm s\downloading this new puplet and have a request for a tint. pet also to use it with normal puppy
want to try on eee pc also

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SirDuncan
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#15 Post by SirDuncan »

Ugghh . . . I just booted it up to install it to a flash drive, and Wbar is doing something even more annoying than disappearing under the window and the clock has joined it. See screenshot.
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Be brave that God may help thee, speak the truth even if it leads to death, and safeguard the helpless. - A knight's oath

magerlab
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Joined: Sun 08 Jul 2007, 20:08

#16 Post by magerlab »

may be it woul be better to use openbox autostart.sh to place apps on boot than xinirc?

Sage
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#17 Post by Sage »

Another winner, gray! This is the way Puppy should look. Opera - most people's favourite, releases the mammoth burden imposed by Barry's preference! Never could understand why he sticks with GXine when everyone knows it's bent, but Xine works! However, Gimp is a luxury, too far that mops up much of your savings on browser packages; make it a .pet option, with Fotox as standard. That would match with Abiword, the slim option for OOooooo.....
I can see scope to make this an ultra fast derivative to rival MeanPup.
Next would be sub-notebook ports.

sertse
Posts: 17
Joined: Mon 09 Jun 2008, 01:35

#18 Post by sertse »

Long time lurker and irc chatter, but first time poster.

This is a really great puppy! Using it as my main USB OS. Only issue is there is no save to usb button here, but its minor since puppy does it periodically anyway.

sintot: I don't quite understand how to get stalonetray? I download the binary and then? Sorry if it sounds dumb.

Agreed on the point about Wbar, Wish there to pop up the Wbar when you hover over it, instead it it being hidden etc...

magerlab
Posts: 739
Joined: Sun 08 Jul 2007, 20:08

#19 Post by magerlab »

I really like the look and the speed of Boxpup!
i think we also need to pick up some info here on tint config and stalonetray
and tips on setting up the fonts in opera

astrogreek
Posts: 29
Joined: Wed 21 May 2008, 14:12

#20 Post by astrogreek »

Hi Gray,
I like Boxpup, it looks really nice! I have a few problems and suggestions.
1. If I change the global font size (and restart), Opera will start mostly outside the screen, with only a small corner of the program visible and no way to move it. The only way I found around this problem is to shutdown with Opera still open; at the next startup Opera will then be in a normal position.
2. Although I like the minimalistic approach, I don't like that the bar at the top (Tint iconbar?) has a fixed size, cannot be moved (or can it?), and essentially steals a lot of the available vertical screen area.
3. Wbar at the bottom takes some more vertical screen area. I have a widescreen laptop screen, and with the bars both at the top and bottom there is not much space left vertically. Is there a way to add or remove apps from this bar? Can it be set to autohide? (I found somewhere an option to autohide, but it did not work).

What I would prefer is some way to have only one bar, preferably at the bottom, where one can add and remove shortcuts to apps and folders (like quicklaunch in Windows), that also shows open windows. Also, I miss a volume button.

edit:
edit2:never mind!
Last edited by astrogreek on Fri 29 Aug 2008, 15:48, edited 1 time in total.

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