DSL v2.4RC1

Forum: Release Candidates
Topic: DSL v2.4RC1
started by: roberts

Posted by roberts on April 11 2006,05:12

Release Candidate One for DSL v 2.4 is now posted < here >

Change Log for DSL v2.4RC1
1. 64 cloops
2. "User"-less UCI now fully supported.
3. Added Tiny C compiler, tcc
4. Added rsync
5. Added Lua cgi library, cgi.lua with sample test.html/test.lua

Posted by 300c_pilot on April 11 2006,06:22

Thanks for the Rsync, I use it a lot.:)

Posted by enthusi on April 11 2006,08:12

TCC is back!
That is awesome and something I appreciate ALOT :o)
Time to write some c-tut again for it maybe

Thanks,
enthusi

Posted by jls legalize on April 11 2006,12:54

what to do if updating from 2.3?

Posted by torp on April 11 2006,15:14

Wow! Mikshaw will have a gusher...lol 64 cloops! Joy!

torp

Posted by mikshaw on April 11 2006,16:11

/me gushes

That's what has kept me with 2.1b...the kernel version I'm not so concerned about, but having the ability to run a dozen UCI apps at once is killer.
"User"-less uci...I assume that will quell the little tar error when loading certain uci packages at boot?

time to start cranking out more mountable packages....

Posted by clacker on April 11 2006,16:38

64 cloops sounds like a challenge. Are there even 64 *.uci files to try to load?

That lua cgi stuff is really creative. For some small things that might be perfect.

I noticed that when you enable the monkey daemon and load < http://127.0.0.1 > you have a new page, which looks so much better than the default did before. It doesn't look correct in Dillo, though, because the background in that frame doesn't turn black so the white lettering becomes invisible. In firefox it looks fine.

There is still a problem with Fluxter and the DSl->Window Manager->restart option. I'm sorry, since I can see it just calls the Restart from fluxbox and I can't see a clean way to go from that to something that tells fluxbox to restart and then loads fluxter. Could you add it somehow using the rootCommand: in the Styles? Something that would kill fluxter if loaded and then reload it? Or is there a better way?

I missed that great Icontool option in the desktop menu in previous releases. I love the double click option for icons instead of the single click. Belated thanks.

Posted by ke4nt1 on April 11 2006,19:15

64 cloops again!!

Jumping for joy.. \o\ /o/ \o\ /o/ \o/

73
ke4nt

Posted by chirilas on April 12 2006,01:13

what's a cloop, sorry my ignorance but i have no idea what 64 cloop is for, neither what UCI applications are

please explain

thank you

Posted by mikshaw on April 12 2006,01:29

cloop = compressed loopback device (/dev/cloop0, /dev/cloop1, etc)
uci = compressed image (or compressed iso?)

uci is a type of myDSL extension, which is mounted rather than installed. The cloop devices are used to mount the uci images. The more cloop devices available, the more uci images you can have mounted simultaneously.

Posted by ripcrd6 on April 12 2006,13:42

to add to what MikShaw said: With 64 cloops, you can add up to 64 extra apps that are built in .uci format. Great thing about .uci built apps is they are compressed, so they take less CD space and they can be added to a custom CD you build yourself. You can trick the heck out of your own personal disk. make it as big as you want.

I used to test MyDSL packages and .uci and would add nearly everything to a custom .iso file and burn it to test. I think I filled 650 MB when I added the Doom and Quake stuff finally. But I had to add my own .wad files and data files for Quake.

I don't have as much time to test these days, but I still watch the project. I just got 2.3 and it looks awesome! Current project is customizing SystemRescueCD and fixing some of their docs.

Posted by l0st on April 12 2006,16:16

Well we have an excuse for turning everything into uci now

Posted by ZoOp on April 14 2006,09:45

Thank you a lot Robert for this very nice release.
It works very well on my old PII and I get a lot of fun with rsync. 64 cloops looks amazing. I give you just some comment after a first look related on functions and apps which I use the most:

- 'Run program': it is a wonderful tool; is it possible to improve it in order to run every program you want to? f.ex. when I tip rdesktop or vnc, it doesn't run it
- rdesktop: is there an up to date version of this lovely program in order to get a better resolution than only 800x600?
- vnc: I find it not so useful as an application burned within the iso (there is a lot of problem with the vnc program and keyboard keys, which are not recognized as they should; it is most the case with european keyboard layouts); is it possible to make a dsl package of it and to provide it as an option of dsl only?
- fluxter: I find it very very useful; though, it is always impossible to point-and-click in one of the workspace-box in order to move to this workspace; you have always to click on the arrows near 'Workspace x' in the toolbar; is it possible to 'activate' the boxes of fluxter in order to move from one workspace to the other by poiting-and-clicking?

2.4 RC1 is at this stage very promising. Just keep up the good work.
yours
z

Posted by ZoOp on April 14 2006,10:45

Here we are again,

I did a frugal install of 2.4 RC1 and all works well (grub in the mbr and dsl on hda1, home, opt, mydsl on hda5, swap on hda6). At boot, something unexpected appened after the line 'checking apps in mydsl':

sr0 CDROM (ioctl) REPORTS ILLEGAL REQUEST
sr0 CDROM (ioctl) REPORTS ILLEGAL REQUEST

What does it looks for at sr0? for mydsl apps? After starting X, I just mount and unmount the Cd-rom, it works perfectly.
yours
z

Posted by newOldUser on April 14 2006,12:08

Sorry, this may be a bit off topic but was anything ever decided about the future of DSL? There was talk about different DSL's with different kernels or was it maybe a big DSL and a small DSL, I'm not sure.

Posted by roberts on April 15 2006,00:26

Quote (ZoOp @ April 14 2006,02:45)

The run program does run those programs ok.
What you need is the correct name and sometimes the full path.
The reason for this is default paths or names might actually be running something other than you expected.

Take for example rdesktop, the gui you get when you click the icon or from the menu is really rdesktop.lua. Try typing rdesktop.lua.
Vnc is really vncviewer. I am able to start both of these from the run command prompt.

RE: rdesktop a newer version? I don't know. Haven't had the time to see if a newer one would suffer from the typical bloat. Maybe you have found one that you could suggest.

RE: fluxter. I believe the way it currently works is the way it is supposed to work. Now, we don't write the code for all of these programs. If you want a click to go to workspace, you may wish to try jwm. It does have such feature.

Not every app in DSL will support other languages. Not all languages are supported in DSL. It is not possible with such small size. If you have experience in a different language, then may I sugguest to contribute a mydsl extension to support this area which you would know about. The purpose of the extensions are for just such purposes.

Posted by roberts on April 15 2006,00:29

Quote (ZoOp @ April 14 2006,03:45)

Would have to see your grub menu line.
I suspect that the autorestore is trying to scan for a backup.tar.gz.
If you have a restore=xxxx or a norestore in your boot line, grub menu item. then no scanning will be performed.

Posted by roberts on April 15 2006,00:38

Quote (newOldUser @ April 14 2006,05:08)

It's on its way very soon now. John and I have been testing it.
It is not a replacement nor a progression of DSL.
DSL development will continue as long as the demand is there.
This will be an additional offering from John and I.
This is targeted at newer hardware with of course a newer kernel and supporting modules.

Posted by roberts on April 15 2006,00:41

Quote (jls legalize @ April 11 2006,05:54)

what to do if updating from 2.3?

Frugal updates should not require anything special.
Unless you happen to save monkey htdocs and/or cgi-bin.
There are some small sample lua scripts with a lua cgi library.
It is not real sophiscated but for simple things it is there and self contained within the base 50MB.

Posted by ke4nt1 on April 15 2006,06:31

Fluxter DOES switch workspaces with mouse clicks for me.
Requires the middle mouse button ( scroll wheel on mine )
to change workspaces ..

Even easier, is to scroll up/down with the mouse on any
free/open/available desktop background area ..

73
ke4nt

Posted by ZoOp on April 15 2006,08:13

Thank you a lot Roberts for your answers.

The run program runs as you said; it is really a very useful feature.

Rdesktop: I red this post on the forum (and others also, related to the same subject): < http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....desktop >
I also find that link < http://www.rdesktop.org/#download > (last version 1.4.1); I am looking for a newer version, but at the moment, I don't find anyone newer than 1.4.1.

Fluxter: thank you a lot ke4nt1; I have a laptop and a touch-pad, so no scroll; I didn't know the feature you mention, but I will try it at my office, where I use a mouse with a scroll.

Vncviewer: it was just a suggestion, but thank you for your offer to contribute to mydsl extension, however, I have a lot to learn about before I can deliver a vnc package for some european language

Here is my grub line: title DSL fb1024x768
kernel /boot/linux24 root=/dev/hda1 quiet vga=791 noacpi noapm nodma noscsi frugal lang=de home=hda5 opt=hda5 mydsl=hda5
initrd /boot/minirt24.gz
I have a backup.tar.gz on hda5; with dsl 2.3 last release and grub-frugal install, I didn't get this message, so I was suprised.

yours
z

Posted by torp on April 15 2006,14:24

another fantastic upgrade! just did my first frugal with the toram option...WoW! talking about fast! makes this 400mhz celeron go like a 64bit system. booted up and loaded all the uci files I could find...what joy! haven't seen any bugs yet on this end, and am looking forward to the final.

torp

Posted by ssmaxss on April 16 2006,12:16

Please update ndiswrapper to 1.4 at least. 1.13 (latest) will be great.

Posted by cmanb on April 16 2006,18:27

I'm excited about this release candidate. It's going to be great having tcc and being able to compile out of the box. The additional cloops are exciting too. I only ever have about three uci extensions mounted at any one time though. I'll have to get really creative in order to do 64 things at one time!

I'm downloading the iso right now because I didn't see a v2.4rc1.torrent in the mirrors. Should I create one once I finish downloading the iso?

Posted by mikshaw on April 16 2006,19:24

While I agree that 64 is a lot, it's my belief that too many is better than not enough in this case. Eight cloops just didn't cut the mustard when i typically use up 6 of them before i log in. And who knows what the future will bring. Maybe we'll eventually have hundreds of modular libs and includes in uci format so you can swap them in and out for building various applications on DSL. Picture a UCI application that has separate UCI plugins...that could easily use a large number of cloops. You could even mount several KNOPPIX files at once for comparisons or to find some old theme elements from past versions...or whatever you might do with several KNOPPIX files at once. Anyway, the point is the possibilities of 64 cloops are mindbogglingly diverse.

Posted by ZoOp on April 16 2006,19:48

Thanks a lot for the "Usaved extension...." reminder option, I find it very useful. Two more questions (test machine is a vaio laptop pcg-fx802, 1,5 Ghz, 256 Ram):

- RAM: with 2.4 RC1 I have 9% of RAM working with basic frugal installation (= no extension running, no uci, no network, no deamons, nothing); I don't remember that it was so high with 2.3; is that a consequence of the 64 cloops?
- Processes: I also have 24 processes running at x starts with basic frugal (20 with 2.3); is that also a consequence of 64 cloops?

Thanks for enlighting me and congratulation for this extraordinary release.
yours
z

Posted by chirilas on April 17 2006,06:09

this is awesome, any idea when the final might be out ?

Posted by ZoOp on April 17 2006,09:23

... the formulation of my first question was not so lucky: I actually said that when x starts, dsl already uses 9% of my 256 mb RAM (14% with wireless on an when using firefox in order to write this message), which was not so high in my opinion with dsl 2.3; what does dsl stock in the RAM?
Thanks again
yours
z

Posted by mikshaw on April 17 2006,13:04

9% of 256 is very little for a modern operating system, particularly if that is including cache/buffers. Compare this to the 30% or more that Suse usually sucks up from 256mb, without doing anything. And that's with Fluxbox....i can only imagine what it'd be when running KDE.

If it is actually more than what was used in 2.3 that might be something to look into, though.

Posted by ZoOp on April 17 2006,13:35

Thank you mikshaw for your answer.

I find it very little, too; I just wonder if we can keep the RAM usage under 10% at x starts (without specific options) in comparison with 2.3, which needed 8% at x starts on my laptop; the same for the processes needed at x start: is it possible to keep them at 20 or not up to 23? As you suggest, even with Ram usage around 10% and used processes between 24-27 at x start wihout specific options, I find the 2.4 RC1 incredible powerful.

One more observation on something strange to me:

a) I have dsl 2.4 installed (frugal, grub bootloader) on HD, up and running;
b) I have dsl 2.3 burned on a CD; I put the CD in my machine, and I reboot in order to boot from CD (my first boot option in my bios);
c) my machine doesn't boot directly on the CD (= dsl boot prompt), but gives me the Grub prompt with my resolutions for 2.4;
d) I make 'enter' in order to get the appropiate resolution for my hardware, dsl runs as usual, and it uses the iso image (dsl 2.3) on the CD, instead of refering to hda1 (i.e. dsl 2.4); so it gives me what I wanted, but...
e)... it was impossible for me to have the dsl boot prompt of dsl 2.3 when booting from the CD...; has anyone else observed the same?

yours
z

Posted by mikshaw on April 17 2006,14:11

Yes...I've seen something very similar with a pendrive. Grub will load from my harddrive, and i select the DSL entry for the frugal system installed on my harddrive. If the pendrive was attached when i booted, that is the system that gets loaded...if it was not attached, the regular HD frugal system will be loaded.

I have no idea how this works, or if it's intentional.

Earlier issue: It would be interesting to know what those additional processes in the 2.4 system are. It would be a logical guess that this is related to the increased ram use.
It's possible that just the fact that you are running one system from harddrive and one from CD is making a difference.

Posted by roberts on April 17 2006,15:53

There are no new processes related to the increase in cloops.
There is a very small memory increase.

Booting with:

dsl base norestore

Is a fair way to see the difference between 2.3 and 2.4RC1
Do a free command.

Posted by ZoOp on April 17 2006,17:56

Thanks a lot Roberts for your quick answer and for the tip; it is then probably due to my backup.tar.gz.

I also checked the moving in the boxes of fluxter with the wheel of my mouse at my office, and it works perfectly, I didn't knew that feature; thank you again ke4nt1.

Suggestion:
Is it possible to make the boxes activable for those who have a laptop and a point-and-click touch pad only?
Or would it be possible to make them activable by keys' combination strg+tab (actually the combination which works with kde)?

yours
z

Posted by Linuturk on April 17 2006,19:16

I wanted to thank you for the option to save wireless settings. I have DSL installed for my 6 year old sister, and she was having problems typing in the SSID, let alone a wep key, for the wireless.

***THANKS***

Posted by ZoOp on April 18 2006,05:07

Dear all,
it seems that the cups server (http://localhost:631) doesn't work (error message: The connection was refused when attempting to contact localhost:631; same error message with < http://localhost:631/printers). > Is it a specifical problem of 2.4?
yours
z

Posted by ripcrd6 on April 18 2006,16:08

I've been using DSL 2.4RC1 for two and a half days from liveCD (over weekend). I installed about ten games for my kids to have something to play with. They loved it! But they are very familiar with the penguin already. My son said, "Dad, can you stop fooling around so I can play the bubble game?"

A few observations:
I guess I didn't know the window pager was called fluxter, but I have a problem with it. maybe like Zoop, I don't know how to use it. It looks like I can grab the program icons in the pager window and move them around, but the real windows don't move when dragged. Not a big deal, unless talking about my next issue.

When I load and run the Opera 8.5 cloop, it opens a window with the top or program bar above the top of the screen. I can resize the window or I can minimize it, but when I minimize it goes out of the viewable area and you can't get it back. You also can't move the window if you can't grab the title bar.

I loaded probably 15 cloops and mydsl pkgs and they all worked great! I really like the system monitoring embedded in the wallpaper (torsmo). It seems like there is more useful info available and it is more readable than the old dockapps. But those were cool too.

I think I'm getting 1024x768 and maybe 16 or 24 colors, but I'm wondering if there has been any talk of getting a ATI driver into a mydsl like nvidia or if there is a way to get more out of one of these cards easily while in LiveCD mode? This is the only box I currently have an ATI card in. Radeon 7000. More screen real estate is always good.

Even with all this stuff loaded, my CPU barely was stressed, maybe 9% max and memory load was relatively low. I have plenty in there, but it was nice having it all in ram and still having plenty left over.

Is it possible to install DSL and to migrate it to an updateable, apt-get-able Debian like system while maintaining the DSL look and feel and low resource requirements? Maybe DSL approved and stable repositories like Ubuntu. Just a thought.

Posted by aveline on April 18 2006,21:33

AFAIK the ATI drivers require you to be running an ati 8500 or later for them to work properly. So sadly I don't think the answer to that question is going to be anything but "no" at the moment.

Avey

Posted by ZoOp on April 19 2006,09:23

Dear ripcrd6

"I guess I didn't know the window pager was called fluxter, but I have a problem with it. maybe like Zoop, I don't know how to use it. It looks like I can grab the program icons in the pager window and move them around, but the real windows don't move when dragged. Not a big deal, unless talking about my next issue.

When I load and run the Opera 8.5 cloop, it opens a window with the top or program bar above the top of the screen. I can resize the window or I can minimize it, but when I minimize it goes out of the viewable area and you can't get it back. You also can't move the window if you can't grab the title bar."

yes, my problem is almost the same as yours, but with a laptop. With a mouse and a wheel in the middle of it, you can, as k34nt1 said, move from one box of fluxter to another one. But without a mouse and a wheel, so with a simple touch pad, you can't, even if, as you said, you can move windows in the boxes.

I hope that it is possible to expand the point-and-click-in-the-boxes features for fluxbox in order to navigate with point-and-click; another possibility would be to assign a key combination for the navigation from one to another box (as strg+tab in kde). It would be very useful in my opinion.

Concerning your windows size problem: I have had the same problem with one or two extensions (limewire f.ex.); when the top of the window disapear, you can go to the box in fluxter in order to move the window from the top to the bottom a little bit, since you see again the top of the window in order to resize it.

"I think I'm getting 1024x768 and maybe 16 or 24 colors"

a bit off your point: I have 1024x768 with 24 colors (nvidia nv5m64), though with a frugal dsl on my hd. It works very nice. I didn't find any occasion to say it earlier, but now.

"Even with all this stuff loaded, my CPU barely was stressed, maybe 9% max and memory load was relatively low"

With my AMD 800Mhz, I use between 11%-15% of CPU ressources while using 64% of my RAM (at 313 MB) with 50 processes loaded, and heavy apps such as openoffice.uci, thunderbird (gtk2).... Under this conditions, DSL works perfectly.

yours
z

Posted by pr0f3550r on April 19 2006,15:09

Quote (ripcrd6 @ April 18 2006,12:08)

Is it possible to install DSL and to migrate it to an updateable, apt-get-able Debian like system while maintaining the DSL look and feel and low resource requirements? � Maybe DSL approved and stable repositories like Ubuntu. �Just a thought.

You can do a full hd-install but that has pros and cons.
You might have problems when upgrading the whole distro.

About Ubuntu, their repositories are not binary compatible with Debian, and I'd argue whether Ubuntu is stable or not.

Posted by roberts on April 19 2006,15:40

No changes have been made to fluxbox or fluxter in this release candidate.

Quote

When I load and run the Opera 8.5 cloop, it opens a window with the top or program bar above the top of the screen. I can resize the window or I can minimize it, but when I minimize it goes out of the viewable area and you can't get it back. You also can't move the window if you can't grab the title bar.

I believe the usual way to handle this in fluxbox is...

You don't need to grab the title bar to move a window.
You can press Alt and Left mouse button to move a window.

When you minimize a window, you can get it back by clicking on its title in the center section of the fluxbox task bar located at the bottom of the screen.

Posted by RandyB on April 19 2006,20:33

Quote (ZoOp @ April 14 2006,05:45)

- rdesktop: is there an up to date version of this lovely program in order to get a better resolution than only 800x600?

The rdesktop in DSL has the better resolutions, and more. Type "rdesktop -h" for more info.

Posted by ZoOp on April 19 2006,21:47

... a-ma-zing
thanks a lot RandyB, it helps me a lot.
yours
z

Posted by mopcar on April 20 2006,01:46

please add USB ADSL modem support
thank you!
:laugh:

Posted by ripcrd6 on April 20 2006,13:51

Quote (roberts @ April 19 2006,09:40)

Quote

Thanks for the key combo to try.
It's probably something with the .uci file for Opera 8.5, but it doesn't put anything in the taskbar.!! I said, "Holy crap!! Where did the app go?"

Posted by ZoOp on April 21 2006,07:30

After using the 'run program' option quiet a lot, I would like to suggest a systematization of input commands to give in the run program.

F.ex.: in order to run firefox, I just have to tipe

firefox

It is the same for Emelfm or dillo (just examples). But, as Robert kindly teaches me, I have to tipe

rdesktop.lua

in order to run rdesktop. Tipping rdesktop only won't work.

It would be great to harmonize all input commands in order for users to only tipe names of apps, and not sometimes names, sometimes full extensions. Thank you so much for keeping up the great work.
yours
z

Posted by torp on April 21 2006,13:39

found what might be a glitch, or might be something i did. after doing frugal install, setting up persistent home, etc., when I minimize an application it's not docking, but closing. i rebooted (fb800x600 toram norestore) with the cd and it's not happening there. the only thing i did that *might* have caused this was to kill fluxter, and lengthen the taskbar to the full width of the screen.....oh and changed the desktop style to minimal using my pink-floyd live 8 wallpaper. any ideas or suggestions?

torp

Posted by mikshaw on April 21 2006,14:44

Quote (ZoOp @ April 21 2006,03:30)

The "run program" dialog is grun, which is the same as fbrun, which is the same as every other run dialog. It's merely a "friendly" alternative to a terminal, when you don't need to run a program interactively and don't need bash-specific functionality. As such, it utilizes the basic principle of running a command according to its filename, and with or without its full path depending on its location.

In the case of rdesktop, this behavior is necessary because rdesktop requires commandline parameters in order to work. You cannot start it in any system with only "rdesktop" unless you create an alias or symlink. The rdesktop.lua script is there as a convenience, to give you an interface for setting the commandline parameters.
You can still start rdesktop from the run dialog by using "rdesktop <server>".

Posted by torp on April 24 2006,00:28

i'm having some PPP issues with the release candidate. after i have configured PPP using the script, then dial, i get a connection but its a bad one. cant pull up any web pages, and can't even ping my isp. i rebooted with 2.3 (fb800x600 toram norestore), configured PPP using the script, and everything works fine. ideas?

torp

,

Posted by mikshaw on April 24 2006,02:05

I don't know if this helps, but i just copied /opt/ppp from 2.1 into 2.4, and it worked the same. I haven't used 2.3.

Posted by roberts on April 24 2006,05:44

I am posting this with my dialup using 2.4 and winmodem
No problems detected here.

Posted by roberts on April 25 2006,05:05

Moving on to RC2.
Thanks to the many who have posted bugs and suggestions...