Basic components of Puppy O.S screen.

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Antipodal
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Basic components of Puppy O.S screen.

#1 Post by Antipodal »

I'm ashamed because though I began using Puppy distributions on March 2009 and spent 99% of my (approximately) 8 daily computing hours using them since Dec 2010 , there are many basic things I don't know about them

For example:
1) What is the appropriate name for the thin panel that can be seen in the lower part of the screen and that on the old M$ distributions was called "task bar"?

And (most of all)
2)What is the appropriate name for the part of it that is between the clipboard manager and the date and time component and that is highlighted in the attached image ?

Hovering the mouse cursor over it doesn't render a pop-up little window with its name as it does with its neighbors (the volume icon, internet icon, firewall icon , clipboard icon and date-and-time sector).

Please, share your knowledge and thank you for your patience.
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mikeslr
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#2 Post by mikeslr »

Hi Antipodal,

I'll let you in on a little secret. Humans aren't all that innovative when it comes to naming anything. Hence, Main Street, Front Street, Broad Street, Elm Street, and so on.

You actually know the answer to your first question. You just don't know that you know it. You've referred to what under M$ is called a Taskbar as a Panel. Everyone will know what you mean if you use either term.

Running the JWM-Rox combination, it's generally referred to as a Taskbar because for a long time there was only one. As far as I know, under Xfce and Openbox it's usually referred to as a Panel, because xfce always enabled more than one (xfce) while openbox provided a choice of which you wanted (e.g. Lx or Tint2 or Fb, etc.) which choice often enabled you to have more than one. Since you appear to be using the "stock" Xenialpup, it employs JWM Window Manager and Rox File-manager. So, technically it is a Taskbar even though (thanks to Radky) it is now easy to have more than one panel.

The second item is some kind of resource monitor. I'm not sure if it's displaying CPU or RAM usage.

mikesLr

ITSMERSH

#3 Post by ITSMERSH »

CPU.

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nosystemdthanks
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#4 Post by nosystemdthanks »

ITSMERSH wrote:CPU.
now, now.

by the way, running "ps aux" from the term window/console will give you the name of every program running, which you can then google and find pictures of the graphical ones.

it might help if you include other terms like "puppy linux" as well.

not suggesting you should have known this or even that you should have to do it, just that it will work on practically any gnu/linux setup, and then you can get answers to this about other distros in addition to the ones you get here.
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8Geee
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#5 Post by 8Geee »

I don't think many puppies have a "Tool-Tip" to indicate whats going on with that CPU meter. For example how is 100% indicated and what is the scale of the bars?

Regards
8Geee
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"Zuckerberg: a large city inhabited by mentally challenged people."

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#6 Post by nosystemdthanks »

i thought that part (of the reply) was a joke, hence my response, though having checked the op again i can tell that its a serious reply.
how is 100% indicated and what is the scale of the bars?
those bars and similar graphs are usually cpu load, not percentage, which is useful in its own way but also sort of confusing. it will tell you when the cpu is working more, but it probably wont tell you how much in a way that is easy to explain. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/374 ... calculated
[color=green]The freedom to NOT run the software, to be free to avoid vendor lock-in through appropriate modularization/encapsulation and minimized dependencies; meaning any free software can be replaced with a user’s preferred alternatives.[/color]

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Mike Walsh
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#7 Post by Mike Walsh »

Hi, Antipodal.

Part 1 has had multiple variations on the correct answer.

The correct answer to your second question is this:-

The little 'graph' is called 'XLoad'. What it shows, apparently, is not CPU usage (well, not in the normal sense of the word). It shows the number of threads currently being executed.

The thread that explains this has been in the 'stickies' at the top of the 'Users (For the Regulars)' forum ever since I joined back in June 2014.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=28483

Read that, and you'll know as much about it as any of us..! :lol:

--------------------------------------------

A wee bit of research has revealed that you can set xload to show a small, floating window that is a good bit bigger than the tiny little thing in the 'systray' area. Normally, xload updates something in the order of once every 10 or 15 seconds by default. You can set it to update at a more reasonable once every second, by entering the following in the terminal:-

Code: Select all

xload -nolabel -update 1 &
It's still only showing the number of processes/threads, but it's a darned sight easier to see!

I've knocked together a wee MenuEntry .pet.....so you can start it from Menu->System(if you wish). I've attached it below.


Mike. :wink:
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ITSMERSH

#8 Post by ITSMERSH »

Read that, and you'll know as much about it as any of us..!
Just to mention: in PWidgets there is a widget called CPU Graph and a widget called CPU Bar. Their representation-graphics runs simultaneously to what is called xload in that topic.

Are we running peacock counting here?

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MochiMoppel
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Re: Basic components of Puppy O.S screen.

#9 Post by MochiMoppel »

Antipodal wrote:For example:
1) What is the appropriate name for the thin panel that can be seen in the lower part of the screen and that on the old M$ distributions was called "task bar"?
JWM calls it Tray.
Within the Tray you may have a TaskList, representing each open window (in your screenshot there is none)

mfb

#10 Post by mfb »

Xload - as the horizontal scale lines appear the load increases - my experience is that there has always been an irretrievable lock-up when 5 or more lines have appeared.

I have often seen 4 horizontal lines when remastering in RAM and almost always survived without failure and reboot.

During a period of minimal activity - to reduce the load, sometimes even clearing the display completely, try clicking your red Shutdown icon then choose "Restart WM".

On reading this thread I have decided (as per the input and output pictures below) to make my display yellow (for both background and foreground) with dark red (#6B0000) for the horizontal lines - because the graph is never of any interest to me - but the number of lines shown (from 3 and upwards) is, I have found, of considerable interest and importance.

PS MochiMoppel has been a star help to me - so I'm very pleased to thank him publically for his "SpeedDials" and his "ShutAll" (as shown in my "/root/.jwmrc-tray" input picture) and to recommend them without any reservation (though MochiMoppel can advise if there are any necessary dependencies).
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Antipodal
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Basic components of Puppy O.S's screen.

#11 Post by Antipodal »

:o I never expected such highly enlightening replies. !! :D
A.

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Mike Walsh
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#12 Post by Mike Walsh »

@ mfb:-
mfb wrote:Xload - as the horizontal scale lines appear the load increases - my experience is that there has always been an irretrievable lock-up when 5 or more lines have appeared.
Hm. Can't say as that's been my personal experience (often had 8 or more lines showing, especially if/when performing intensive video transcoding, for instance).....but I would guess this must be one of those 'relative' things; very much dependent on the hardware involved (CPU, amount of RAM, whether 'frugal' or 'full', etc.).

That's not to say that I don't believe you, mind..!


Mike. :wink:

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8Geee
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#13 Post by 8Geee »

On certain start-ups (especially the first-run) I get 6 or 7 bars, no harm or foul using Atom n270 CPU/2Gb mem. HTOP is a more-or-less written indicator of the environment. Just open the terminal and type htop.

Thanks for the answers... wasn't quite sure 'what' I was seeing in that little box. But I knew that when things got busy, more bars appear.

Regards
8Geee
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"Zuckerberg: a large city inhabited by mentally challenged people."

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Mike Walsh
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#14 Post by Mike Walsh »

Here's my 'xload', as it now appears in Tahr 606 (uefi):-


Image


I use the Dark-Grey theme. Tahr's xload, as standard, is set to grey background, black foreground, and black lines.....and 10 second 'update'.

So; this has been modified to black background, bright green foreground, and I've left the black lines as they were. (I tried white lines, but they sort of get 'lost' in the green of the graph...)

Using the GColor2 color chooser utility to obtain the colour codes (Menu->Graphics), the relevant bit of /root/.jwmrc-tray now looks like this:-

Code: Select all

<Swallow name="xload" width="32">xload -nolabel -bg "#0C0505" -fg "#07FE18" -hl "#0C0505" -update 1 &</Swallow>
And the 10-second 'update' interval has been reduced to 1 second, instead.


Mike. :wink:

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