Light-Debian-Core-Live-CD-Wheezy + Porteus-Wheezy

[mcewanw]

One particular thing crossed my mind when I was trying out pman. The names currently used in DebianDog for default apps (e.g. default_web-browser) are not the same as those used in Puppy. That could cause a lot of problems should we wish to port Puppy utilities over to DebianDog, because sometimes Puppy utilities are coded to refer to the default apps (also defaulttexteditor and so on).

If the change doesn't have too big an impact on what has already been developed in DebianDog I would recommend using the same names for these defaults as in Puppy.

Also, when a user installs a web browser (such as iceweasel), is there currently a mechanism that alerts them to the possibility to make that the new default browser?

Toni, you seem to be making a lot of progress with JWM, which I think is excellent. I did think it would be possible to create app buttons to switch desktop with JWM but did wonder if it allowed the hiding of its existing change desktop buttons - I hope it does. If the worst came to the worst, you might need to leave the wallpaper changer only for icewm somehow. Presumably JWM, which is still being developed, would eventually provide its own mechanism for different wallpapers. There is also the one advantage to the existing JWM menu buttons in that they show a small image of what windows are currently open in each desktop (or am I confusing that facility with the xfce4 tray in Porteus-Wheezy, which I know provides that effect? I'll check in Puppy Precise).

Long term it would be good if we had a mechanism for reading desktop files and creating menus, since, as you mentioned, many apps may eventually stop supporting debian menu system, and simply provide .desktop files - I'm not sure how easy it would be to create such a mechanism though.

[saintless]

Hi, William.

If the change doesn't have too big an impact on what has already been developed in DebianDog I would recommend using the same names for these defaults as in Puppy.

I'm not sure what we can do about this without breaking set default apps application from Terry. I think he can answer proper to this question.

Also, when a user installs a web browser (such as iceweasel), is there currently a mechanism that alerts them to the possibility to make that the new default browser?

Not one I know about. Isn't every new version browser gives a message on first run to set it as default? At least Firefox does it even with old versions.

Toni

[mcewanw]

I see that JWM already allows a different background to be set for each of its virtual desktops (the most recent JWM does anyway). Is that what you are using Toni?

[saintless]

I'm not sure of the JWM version but is newest from apt-get.
I guess it supports different wallpaper for each desktop but it has to be modified from text editor for every change. It will be good to have wallpapers.gui working the same way as in IceWM.
Going out for few hours.
Toni

[mcewanw]

Hi, William.

If the change doesn't have too big an impact on what has already been developed in DebianDog I would recommend using the same names for these defaults as in Puppy.

I'm not sure what we can do about this without breaking set default apps application from Terry. I think he can answer proper to this question.

Well I guess it's not really a problem. Links are cheap. For the rare event that a different defaultxxxname link is required to make a Puppy utility work, it is perfectly okay to just create a second link to the actual app, but with the different name. Sometimes a script might be required instead of a link, but once again having that called a different name won't be a problem in practice. There may even be some occasions when it would cause a problem if the default links had the same name as the default scripts in Puppy, though I can't think of one at the moment.

Yes, I see what you mean about JWM virtual desktop backgrounds; it certainly makes things easier if the same solution can be used for both desktops. Anyway, no reason other ideas couldn't be tried later that allows wallpaper utilities to vary what scripts they call depending on the active window manager. I should think it is possible to use 'sed' on .jwmrc to simply swap the background image for a particular desktop in JWM, but that would just be a future option to try. (EDIT: I think the virtual desktop background option may not work when Rox is being used to provide the pinboard - Rox presumably needed to provide the background also as per how we are doing it with icewm. I'm not sure. I'll experiment further sometime).

It was probably the "Pager" effect on the buttons I was referring to in my last post; I have a feeling the Pagers can be turned off but I'll have to check in Puppy, which I'll quickly do now before I head off to sleep.
EDIT: From a quick check in Puppy Precise, it seems that the number of virtual desktops is controlled via the <Desktops> tag, but the buttons on the tray are controlled by the <Pagers> tag and that you can hide these buttons by removing the <Pagers> tag. By doing so, I find I no longer have buttons for the different desktops but I can still move between them using the mouse scroll wheel.

[fredx181]

@William, Thanks for suggesting pman, very nice!

Toni, all
I thought it would be nice to have some sort of welcome message with colors and below that, some useful info that the user can see at boot and when exiting X.
Copy the below and paste in a file named for example "welcome" and of course edit as you like.

Code: Select all

  [1;33m-----------------------------------------------------------[0;39m 

  [1;31m        . ''.    [1;33m====================                 [0;39m 
  [1;31m       : :'  :   [1;32mWelcome to DebianDog   [0;39m 
  [1;31m       .  '-'    [1;33m====================   [0;39m 
  [1;31m        '-                         [0;39m 


   [1;29mThe system is up and running now.[0;29m 

   Login as [1;29mroot[0;29m with password [1;29mmarina[0;29m or [1;29mpuppy[0;29m with password [1;29mpuppy[0;29m.

   Press [1;29mCtrl+Alt+F1[0;29m to go to login prompt after exiting X. 
   If X won't start automatically after login type [1;29mstartx[0;29m. 

  [1;33m-----------------------------------------------------------[0;39m
 

When pasted in geany it should show lots of "ESC" characters (before every color code).
Then put in /etc/rc.local a line like:

Code: Select all

cat <path/to>/welcome

Reboot and it should show on tty6 or tty5 (not sure which one when exiting X)

EDIT: To make the fonts thicker in console it could help to edit the file: /etc/defaults/console-setup
Then change:

Code: Select all

FONTFACE="Fixed"

to:

Code: Select all

FONTFACE="TerminusBoldVGA"

Fred

[saintless]

Thank you, Fred!
I will include the welcome message.

Thank you for the pager tip, William!
I will test it tonight. I see form quick check /etc/jwm/system.jwmrc has pager label=true Setting to false might be enough.

Toni

[tony]

Hi,

We need more than a welcoming message.

We need to be able to set up a firewall, our keyboards and our timezones.

Regards Tony.

[saintless]

Hi, Tony

if you or someone else can share simple way - script or small program as Firewall it will be included. As long as it doesn't take much space. You can always use apt-get to install firewall application like firestarter for example.
Timezone setup:

Code: Select all

tzselect

Enter and follow the instructions.

Keyboard setup:

Code: Select all

dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

Enter and follow the instructions.

Regards, Toni

[saintless]

Thank you, William.
Removing the pagers line did the trick

Fred, thank you.
Is it OK if I copy the welcome code in /etc/motd ?
It does the same job I think.

Toni

[saintless]

We need to be able to set up a firewall

Hi, Tony.
Can you please test one of these:
1. dtc-xen-firewall
2. apf-firewall
3. ipkungfu
4. arno-iptables-firewall
5. fiaif

Just apt get them one by one and test.
I prefer 1, 2 and 3 regarding the small size they add. If you are happy with one of them we will include it in DebianDog.

Toni

[fredx181]

Hi Toni

Is it OK if I copy the welcome code in /etc/motd ?
It does the same job I think.

Well, my idea was apart from welcome message that the user gets info of what to do to start X again after logging out from menu.
When copying to /etc/motd that isn't the case because it shows then only on tty1 and logging out goes to tty5/6 AFAIK.
Maybe do both /etc/motd and my suggestion (in rc.local)?

Fred

[saintless]

OK, Fred, I understand.
I will include it only in rc.local.
Should I uncomment tty5 and tty6 then?
In /etc/inittab only tty1 and tty2 are uncommented at the moment.

Toni

[fredx181]

Hi Toni

Should I uncomment tty5 and tty6 then?
In /etc/inittab only tty1 and tty2 are uncommented at the moment.

No, just leave it like that, I have the same as you in inittab and still logging out from menu goes to tty5/6
I think best to put the welcome line as last in rc.local.

Fred

[fredx181]

Hi Toni
Here's another one, with much bigger debian logo.
Choose which one you like

Code: Select all

[1;31m           _,ggg$$$$$gg.  [0;39m
[1;31m        ,g$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P.  [0;39m
[1;31m      ,g$$P""       """Y$$.".  [0;39m
[1;31m     ,$$P'              `$$$.         [1;33m====================      [0;39m
[1;31m   ',$$P       ,ggs.     `$$b:        [1;32mWelcome to DebianDog    [0;39m
[1;31m   `d$$'     ,$P"'   .    $$$         [1;33m====================    [0;39m
[1;31m    $$P      d$'     ,    $$P       [0;39m
[1;31m    $$:      $$.   -    ,d$$     [0;29m[1;29mThe system is up and running now.[0;29m [0;39m
[1;31m    $$;      Y$b._   _,d$P'         [0;39m
[1;31m    Y$$.    `.`"Y$$$$P"'           [0;39m
[1;31m    `$$b      "-.__                 [0;39m
[1;31m     `Y$$b                                [0;39m
[1;31m      `Y$$.        [0;29mLogin as [1;29mroot[0;29m with password [1;29mmarina[0;29m or [1;29mpuppy[0;29m with password [1;29mpuppy[0;29m. [0;39m
[1;31m        `$$b.                             [0;39m
[1;31m         `Y$$b.         [0;29mPress [1;29mCtrl+Alt+F1[0;29m to go to login prompt after exiting X.[0;39m
[1;31m            `"Y$b._     [0;29mIf X won't start automatically after login type [1;29mstartx[0;29m.                     [0;39m
[1;31m                `""""               [0;39m

Fred

[saintless]

Thank you, Fred
I choose the second one.

Toni

[mcewanw]

Toni, it might be worth theming jwm if you haven't already done so. It is something I know nothing about really, but there are various themes from Puppy and others in the links below:

Puppy page on Theme Management
http://puppylinux.com/technical/themes.htm

JWM Themes Exchange
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=23260

http://antix.freeforums.org/jwm-theme-f ... t3336.html

http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=12751

[sunburnt]

# I`ve tried to get JWM to do multi. wallpapers, but it`s never worked for me.
# If someone can make it work and show us how... Then I`ll make wallpapers.gui work with it.

# Jim Wing is a Puppy forum member... Perhaps we can get some help from him.


# Puppy has a menu builder script. Sadly it looks more complex than needed.
I suggest writing custom scripts ".desktop > JWM" & ".desktop > IceMW".
This seems simpler than Puppy`s "template files" and Debian`s "menu files".
Sadly there may be DesktopStandards conversion scripts for these WM menus.
# Ideally a Menu would read the .desktop files directly so no converter is needed.
So when a new app is installed, the menu needs no refreshing as it`s .desktop file is there.
# I`ve made menus like this in BaCon, but they are not like the normal TaskBar menus.
# A universal TaskBar would solve this problem for all WMs. No more "proprietary" crap.


# Puppy uses a Firewall "script", so it`s small. I don`t know much about it.


# Toni; I`ve spent more time on Rox`s file associations then I care to think about.
Most of what I`ve read says Rox has poor support for mime. What a surprise...
I`ll post a short list of files for you to manually add and we will call it done.
.

[saintless]

Hi, all.

William, themes is new area for me as well. I will check out the links you gave but I think puppy has different jwm structure. It uses separate taskbar file for example and jwm and jwmrc files.
All files we have in DebianDog are /etc/jwm/system.jwmrc, /etc/jwm/debian-menu and /etc/menu-methods/jwm
I will check out what we can use from puppy themes or look for standard debian jwm themes.

Terry,

# I`ve tried to get JWM to do multi. wallpapers, but it`s never worked for me.
# If someone can make it work and show us how... Then I`ll make wallpapers.gui work with it.

I have your wallpapers.gui working the same way with jwm and icewm. Do not waste time for this. Better wait for the next testing module and then you can check for problems or improovements.

I suggest writing custom scripts ".desktop > JWM" & ".desktop > IceMW".
This seems simpler than Puppy`s "template files" and Debian`s "menu files".

I agree. It will be best to generate menu this way. Then we can simply uninstall debian menu package or leave it as optional menu method.

# Puppy uses a Firewall "script", so it`s small. I don`t know much about it.

Debian has at least 10 small (less than 0,3 Mb) firewall packages I posted below. I never use firewall and I prefer someone who need firewall to test them and write if they are good or no good. It is not possible debian not to have small and useful firewall package I think.

I`ll post a short list of files for you to manually add and we will call it done.

I agree, Terry. Do not waste time on this anymore.

Toni

[saintless]

Suggestions to be tested from enyone interested of firewall program in DebianDog:
Use apt-get to install and test one by one.

1. dtc-xen-firewall
2. apf-firewall
3. ipkungfu
4. ferm
5. firehol
6. mason
7. shorewall
8. shorewall6-lite
9. uruk
10. uif
11. pyroman
12. arno-iptables-firewall
13. fiaif

First 10 are very small size and no problem to be included in DebianDog.

Toni