DSL v4.4RC1

Forum: Release Candidates
Topic: DSL v4.4RC1
started by: roberts

Posted by roberts on May 19 2008,17:45

DSL v4.4RC1 is now available in the < Release Candidate > section.

* New Lua/Fltk refactored for enhanced performance.
* New Fltk library now available for C/C++ programs.
* Update to rsync to v3.0.2
* Restored Firefox default search engines.
* New low resource background & theme.
* New default system font, smoothansi.
* New .luafltkrc for Lua/Fltk theme and defaults.
* Updated dmix.
* Updated man script, new -o -b options and site.
* Fixed permissions on fusermount.
* Updated all Lua & Lua/FLtk scripts to the new Lua/Fltk system.

Files that have changed that are likely in your backup.
.Xdefaults
.jwm.inc
.jwmrc-theme
.dfminfo
.fluxbox.inc

Posted by lucky13 on May 19 2008,18:39

First, thanks to John for adding back the search engines. Second, thanks to Florian (and Robert and mikshaw and anyone else deserving of credit) for speeding things back up with lua. Perfect timing for testing my gdb+strace extension.

If smoothansi is the default font, perhaps we can set that in .torsmorc as well. I have a modified gtkrc that more closely matches this theme (also using smoothansi) if you're interested, Robert. And if you want to carry smoothansi across the board, I can paste/send my userChrome.css for firefox.

Edit: Just looked in /opt/jwmThemes and it still has the "blackandblue (cyan)" theme from 4.2 (iirc).

Posted by chaostic on May 19 2008,23:06

Quote (roberts @ May 19 2008,13:45)

DSL v4.4RC1 is now available in the < Release Candidate > section.

* Updated man script, new -o -b options and site.

Look at me, contributing to dsl
:laugh:

Posted by meo on May 20 2008,00:07

Hi Robert!

Very nice, was my first impression when I started DSL 4,4RC1. It looks very clean and nice with the new background and style. So you can be proud of your good work and all others who have contributed too. There is though some things I'd like to mention. The new font looks good but is a bit hard to read when you doesn't have a very good eye-sight. Another thing that i very noticeably is a very long pause during bootup after either declaring the version (if you boot with the legacy option) or registering unionfs. This I discovered after adding my extensions (a pretty good bunch after all these years) and having done a remaster that have substantially enlarged the KNOPPIX file. The 3.xx series didn't make a pause bigger than a couple of seconds under the same conditions but the pause has increased much with the 4.xx series. Approximately the pause with this RC was more than 40 seconds long and that seems like an eternity if you are waiting. Furthermore it takes considerable much longer time to load the extensions. I have no explanation for this behaviour. I just have made a comparison between those two release series. I'm just curious if you might have an explanation. This behaviour doesn't really bother me because I usually have the computer on for days with everything loaded and ready to go. But it would be nice to know. It seems to be a really promising release and I'm eagerly awaiting the 5.xx series. Thanks again for all the work spent to make this release possible.

Have fun developing DSL and using it,
meo

Posted by roberts on May 20 2008,03:20

Quote (lucky13 @ May 19 2008,15:39)

We can all thank florian for the new open lua fltk. His effort brought back Lua/Fltk to a useable state. There is no comparision between DSL v4.3 and v4.4 with regard to all Lua and Lua/Fltk scripts.

Thanks, Lucky13, for the new background and theme. You are correct that I forgot to update the /opt/jwmThemes/default.thm
As that file is also likely in your backup, one can easily copy /etc/skel/.jwmrc-theme to /opt/jwmThemes/default.thm

Smoothansi is a new, additional, font. No other fonts were cut or removed. As release candidates are a time for me to try new things, ;et's see how well it is received before going further. It would be nice to have a single script to change the default font for all areas, .torsmo, firefox, dfm, fluxbox, jwm, .Xdefaults. ATM, I am too busy with trying to make progress on tiny core.

Posted by roberts on May 20 2008,03:25

Quote (meo @ May 19 2008,21:07)

I really can't comment on custom remasters of DSL. I, of course, do not experience such delays with the official released editions of DSL version 4.x I am sorry to hear that you have encountered such a delay in your remaster.

Posted by andrewb on May 20 2008,04:42

What a great look - the best yet - clean & simple. Much better than the black on black of 4.2.5 that I had loaded on my Libretto. I too was worried when I first saw the new font & wondered what it would look like on a small screen. I've just run it on my Libretto (800*480, 7" diagonal screen) & it looks far far better than any OS I've used yet.

Keep up the good work.

I have noticed that with the new font it is spilling over out of the boxes in Dmix. Changing the text size doesn't seem to do anything to the font size. The only option is to juggle the box/button sizes to match. I have done this & emailled the revised version to the extensions email address.

Posted by lucky13 on May 20 2008,05:02

Quote

I have noticed that with the new font it is spilling over out of the boxes in Dmix. Changing the text size doesn't seem to do anything to the font size.

Unfortunately, smoothansi isn't scalable (and that goes for the rest of the artwiz fonts as well). Smoothansi is 13px.

Posted by meo on May 20 2008,07:32

Hi again Robert!

Thank you for responding. As I said the matter wasn't that important to me but I thought you might have an answer to it. I'm posting this from a "vanilla" or out of the box DSL 4.4RC1 and by mistake I started with jwm (I forgot the desktop boot code) and I must say that the looks of jwm in this cut is so good that I might be persuaded to keep on using it. The jwm menu has like a space between every item that the fluxbox menu doesn't have and that helps out a lot when you don't have a perfect eye-vision. It looks really nice so I don't mind if you keep it that way (this said by an old blackbox user in Slackware). I agree with andrewb "what a great look - the best yet - clean & simple". Now I won't bug you anymore so that you can get more time to work on coming releases of DSL.

Have fun and be assured that your good work really is appreciated (that goes for all contributors to this release),
meo

Posted by mikshaw on May 20 2008,11:53

Quote

It would be nice to have a single script to change the default font for all areas, .torsmo, firefox, dfm, fluxbox, jwm, .Xdefaults

Something to consider: using something similar to fonts-system.lua (murgaLua_demos) to provide a visual display of available fonts. Perhaps also a checklist of the apps/configs you mentioned to allow the user to apply all or just specific ones.

Quote

Unfortunately, smoothansi isn't scalable (and that goes for the rest of the artwiz fonts as well). Smoothansi is 13px

Might consider trying a font that has multiple sizes. The Terminus font has several to choose from, including bold. You could include only two or three of them, say 12, 14, and 16. It's not as "cool" looking as smoothansi, but is clean and much more pleasing than misc-fixed.

Fonts that scale, however, can be a problem in fltk unless you dynamically adjust widget sizes according to the chosen font. As far as I know, the murgaLua bindings are missing the ability to retrieve the font size (in some widgets at least?), so this may be a problem.

Posted by lucky13 on May 20 2008,12:11

Quote

Might consider trying a font that has multiple sizes.

I'm concerned that it works across the board and works well for everyone. I don't think scripts should be have to be rewritten to accomodate certain fonts.

BTW, the idea for using a gradient instead of wallpaper came from your (mikshaw's) wmii extension. Thanks.

Posted by curaga on May 20 2008,17:25

Quote

ATM, I am too busy with trying to make progress on tiny core.

Sorry to hear that. Is there much work left?
Perhaps you could release an alpha and let the community hack away, with instructions on what you wish?

Posted by chaostic on May 21 2008,00:58

Quote (meo @ May 20 2008,03:32)

You can have empty spaces in the Fluxbox menu, using the fluxbox code "[nop]" See: < http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/docs/en/newdoc.menuedit.php#commands >

You should be able to create a script that takes the fluxbox menu file, and replaces every \n with "\n [nop] ( ) \n", or something. Probably with Sed (At the end of every line, add "\n [nop] ( ) "...

I'll try later tonight.

Posted by meo on May 21 2008,06:51

Hi chaostic!

Thanks for your reply. It seems like a great idea. It might solve the problem I have seeing the fluxbox menu contents in this new release of DSL. Thanks again!

Have fun out there tweaking with DSL,
meo

Posted by mikshaw on May 21 2008,11:14

Quote

You can have empty spaces in the Fluxbox menu, using the fluxbox code "[nop]"

You can also set the menu height in your style file (or .Xdefaults, I believe), although I can't recall if this feature is available in DSL's Fluxbox. The resource is menu.itemHeight: <integer>

Posted by mikshaw on May 21 2008,11:36

Quote (lucky13 @ May 20 2008,12:11)

I'm concerned that it works across the board and works well for everyone. I don't think scripts should be have to be rewritten to accomodate certain fonts.

I agree totally.
Unfortunately this is close to impossible, as we have already seen. The only way for a font to work well for everyone is if it scales, and the only way to accomodate scaling fonts is to write all gui scripts to adjust widget sizes accordingly. Either that or make sure all widgets are large enough to accomodate huge fonts, which would waste space and look wrong with a small font.

There may be a way to add a command to your .luafltkrc file to make all widgets scalable in case the enduser chooses a larger font than what can be fit into the widgets, but I haven't done any tests. I have a feeling this wouldn't work, though, particularly for guis that already have specifically scaled windows, such as mydslBrowser...that script scales only the browser windows, with a fixed size and aspect for the buttons (big enough for the previous 14px default, but not for large fonts).

Posted by meo on May 21 2008,14:37

Hi mikshaw!

Actually I just used the nop-option a few hours ago and it worked well but then I started to make some other hacks to the fluxbox menu from memory (which I'm lacking at times) and completely trashed it. Now I'm back by my old box using jwm to try to restore the menu to the nop-state again. Thanks for your post! I'll look in to the menu hight to verify if that might help me to see the menu better in this version of DSL.

Have fun out there using DSL,
meo

Posted by florian on May 21 2008,17:33

Great release candidate!

I liked the default fixed font (at least in aterm). But it's just a personal aesthetic thing, so I can modify my own .Xdefaults

However one (small) problem with smoothansi is that the "extended characters" do not get displayed as they used to. Try for instance running xsetup.sh script and you'll see what I mean.

Posted by chaostic on May 22 2008,04:49

Quote (meo @ May 21 2008,10:37)

Got it. It can be run directly from the command line:
Edit: You don't even have to restart Fluxbox to see the changes

Code Sample

cp ~/.fluxbox/menu ~/menu.bk && cat ~/menu.bk | sed \
-e /"\[exec\]"/a"\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \[nop\] �( �)" \
-e /"\[end\]"/a"\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \[nop\] �( �)" \
-e /"\[config\]"/a"\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \[nop\] �( �)" \
-e /"\[exit\]"/a"\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \[nop\] �( �)" \
-e /"\[reconfig\]"/a"\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \[nop\] �( �)" \
-e /"\[restart\]"/a"\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \[nop\] �( �)" \
-e /"\[stylesdir\]"/a"\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \[nop\] �( �)" \
-e /"\[workspaces\]"/a"\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \[nop\] �( �)" \
-e /"\[submenu\]"/a"\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \[nop\] �( �)" \
-e /"\[begin\]"/a"\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \[nop\] �( �)" \
> ~/menu.nop && cp ~/menu.nop ~/.fluxbox/menu

It will save the original menu to menu.bk, the edited to menu.nop and then overwrite the original menu with menu.nop

Only things it doesn't work on is "Desktop -> Fluxbox Configuration" "Desktop -> Styles" and "Desktop -> Workspaces" which are either files fluxbox cats into the menu, or fluxbox includes from it's own program.

Given that, and that the spaces act like extra lines (clickable, instead of working like "margins" for the commands above or below it) mik's suggestion would work better (if it works in dsl's fluxbox), natch

Posted by mikshaw on May 22 2008,12:42

Rather than running two instances of cp, use sed -i to edit the original file.
Also, your sed seems to be a little overly specific

Code Sample

cp ~/.fluxbox/menu ~/.fluxbox/menu.bak && sed -i 's/$/\n[nop]/' ~/.fluxbox/menu

Mind this hasn't been tested in Fluxbox itself....just looked at the output of sed. nop might need a following ()

EDIT: sorry I forgot this is the rc thread. This is off-topic.

Posted by chaostic on May 22 2008,17:26

Quote (mikshaw @ May 22 2008,08:42)

Rather than running two instances of cp, use sed -i to edit the original file.
Also, your sed seems to be a little overly specific

Code Sample

cp ~/.fluxbox/menu ~/.fluxbox/menu.bak && sed -i 's/$/\n[nop]/' ~/.fluxbox/menu

Mind this hasn't been tested in Fluxbox itself....just looked at the output of sed. �nop might need a following ()

EDIT: sorry I forgot this is the rc thread. This is off-topic.

Right, off-topic. Someone should create a new thread after this last post if need be.
The two cp's are for backup purposes, though, a live cd really doesn't need to worry about that (plus /etc/skel/ has a copy). Nop does need the "( )" (afaik) and it's a bit specific to prevent double entries of nop.

Posted by roberts on May 23 2008,16:39

Quote (florian @ May 21 2008,14:33)

The original purpose of my seeking a tiny GUI scripting language, i.e., Lua/Fltk was to replace Dialog/Whiptail scripts running from within X. Of couse non-X, as boot time setup options still need Dialog/Whiptail. Running them in non-X is not an issue. Running xsetup from within a currently running X session is curious at best, but point taken. If one insists on running Dialog/Whiptail scripts from within X then perhaps the hostings xterm (aterm) can specify the fixed font as previous used, i.e, aterm -fn fixed -e your_dialog_script and thereby avoid this issue.

Posted by kuky on May 24 2008,15:55

good job , nice and strong rc that seems a normal version....

dsl is lsd for geeks and freaks...

i tested in hd install with 3 ucis loaded (OOo,firefox,and thunderbird in spanish ver and gtk-0.75.dls) and runs ok ....its a single test to work no a meo hard test....

only its necessary to improve dsl with the app to do a ciberbrewery to send beers to all..
included to jhon murga that works for puppy

(as you can see i am making a benchmarking operation with puppy...we need to improve Aesthetics and kernell..)

:;):

Posted by curaga on May 24 2008,18:11

As alih posted in < here >, his second point is something that ought to be already in DSL.
The use of exec startx instead of startx saves ram by chopping one bash process, and comes with no negative effects since when X dies bash is restarted by init.

Except instead of putting it into an alias I'd just change it in /etc/skel/.bash_profile to not have manually using startx crap someones work out unexpectedly.

Posting here in case Robert's busy and doesn't read all the threads.

Posted by roberts on May 24 2008,19:06

Quote (curaga @ May 24 2008,15:11)

You are right in that I am not able to read all threads. You may need to "ping me" to get my attention.

In regards to this suggestion...

While we gain memory from one less bash shell, we lose the option to "exit to prompt". This was something I had suggested when I first joined this project, however, I was told that "exit to prompt" was needed for properly setting up video (X) parameters and/or changing keyboard parameters. Maybe such is no longer the case? I am all for reducing memory demands.

Posted by curaga on May 25 2008,07:10

I wonder why it would render exit to prompt unusable, since bash is indeed restarted by init. I'll try this and see what would happen.

Edit: Yes, you're right, it's not feasible. I should've seen it right away, but it was late.
BTW, I like the new speed of lua dialogs

There's one redundant shell though, the root one that spawns the dsl one on boot. Do you think using exec there would be beneficial?

Posted by curaga on May 25 2008,14:26

More evaluation of this RC: the smoothansi font makes some whiptail scripts look funny in X

Posted by lucky13 on May 25 2008,16:21

Quote

the smoothansi font makes some whiptail scripts look funny in X

Yes, florian pointed this out.

Robert replied: "If one insists on running Dialog/Whiptail scripts from within X then perhaps the hostings xterm (aterm) can specify the fixed font as previous used, i.e, aterm -fn fixed -e your_dialog_script and thereby avoid this issue."

Posted by curaga on May 25 2008,17:01

Oops. I need to open my eyes and read before opening my mouth.

Posted by roberts on May 25 2008,19:02

I don't want to be a hard head on smooth ansi font. I felt a change with possibly an improved appearance would be nice and to also showcase the .luafltkrc that mikshaw brought to our attention. Perhaps other, already included, fonts that work well with Dialog/Whiptail can be suggested.

Posted by andrewb on May 25 2008,23:35

Quote (roberts @ May 24 2008,09:06)

Quote (curaga @ May 24 2008,15:11)

This may have been the case when the boot options were either to level 2 (root user console) or X as user DSL. Now that there is an option to boot to level 3 (DSL user console) perhaps having the level 5 boot option go straight to X withe 'exec startx' is a viable option. For the first run, or the xsetup boot code obviously booting to console first would need to be retained to run xsetup prior to staring X.

Posted by roberts on May 26 2008,02:35

X always tries to start with the default runlevel 5.
Using boot option xsetup or any vga= code other than 791 causes the Dialog Setup scripts to run prior to starting X. So no change needed.

We could require those who wish to have the capability to exit from X to get to a command line only use the currently supported boot code of 3. This means that for those using runlevel 3 they would have to also issue the startx command.

For the default, there would be little noticeable change except for the following:

1. If you need to boot with framebuffer or other non-standard video code AND then mess up during the dialog setup scripts you will need to reboot to correct. Many do this now anyway.

2. The "Exit to prompt" would not appear as an Exit option.

Posted by curaga on May 26 2008,14:17

Sorry to repeat, but I asked:

Quote

There's one redundant shell though, the root one that spawns the dsl one on boot. Do you think using exec there would be beneficial?

Any opinions?
This refers to the .bash_profile in the root of the image, which IMO leaves a root bash hanging without any purpose or use..

Posted by roberts on May 26 2008,15:50

Yes. This is the place that can make a difference. Will implement.

Posted by roberts on May 27 2008,04:53

Quote (roberts @ May 25 2008,16:02)

Would still like comments or suggestions of alternate fonts or recommendation to go back to the original font so as to accomodate both X and Dialog/Whiptail.
I would like a nice clean next release candidate in preparation for 4.4 final.

Posted by ke4nt1 on May 27 2008,06:53

Comparing the 4.3 to the 4.4RC1 in vmware:

1. The gradient background in 4.4RC1 is nice.
Much better looking/eyepleasing than the 4.3 version.
Black on Black gets old after a while.....

2. The font IMO, is better looking/easier-2-see/wider
in the 4.3 version, than the skinny thin font in 4.4RC1.

As I A/B the two, the difference is very noticeable.
My vote is +1 for the standard DSL font.

73
ke4nt

Posted by lucky13 on May 28 2008,15:55

The busybox "who" command doesn't seem to work. I got the same results each time whether I was in screen, standard shell after umounting screen, and again after rebooting without the extension present to see if it was doing something wrong. The output of who in each case was just:
USER TTY IDLE TIME HOST

Posted by roberts on May 28 2008,17:16

gnu who will show the same result on a liveCD or frugal. Both do this because there is no 'real" login occuring. The file /etc/inittab usually spawns getty's for a login.

You can see the difference in /etc/inittab vs /etc/inittab.multi

The traditional hard drive installation, which uses inittab.multi,should show expected results. In fact, from a liveCD or frugal, exit to prompt, become root, set passwd for user dsl, copy inittab.multi to inittab, then telinit q, then exit. A traditional login will appear. At the login prompt, login as dsl then try the 'who' command. Results are as expected.

Posted by roberts on May 28 2008,17:18

Quote (ke4nt1 @ May 27 2008,03:53)

Thanks for the feedback. Points taken.

Posted by lucky13 on May 28 2008,17:21

Quote

Both do this because there is no 'real" login occuring.

Ahh, well that explains it. Thanks.

Posted by roberts on May 29 2008,00:54

The fonts solution...
Based on comments and feedback, I have decided on the following:

1. Aterm, Fluxbox, & Lua/Fltk will used fixed helvetica as in all prior versions of DSL.
This will address the "crowded" fluxbox/menu and the dialog/whiptail concern.

2. JWM current theme, as used in v4.4, will stay with smoothansi.

Of course the fonts are a personal choice and with backup/restore you can choose whatever you wish.

The above font choice is just the default.

Posted by meo on May 29 2008,04:49

Hi Robert!

Sounds like a perfect solution. Thanks a lot!

Have fun developing DSL to further heights,
meo

EDIT: I just want to thank chaostic and mikshaw for them wanting to help me out earlier in this thread.

Posted by jls legalize on May 29 2008,12:31

using the full screen mode (F11) in firefox, I cannot anymore type anything inside the pages, for example fill out forms, type want I want to search in the google page..

legalize cannabis, coke...

Posted by roberts on May 29 2008,15:43

What window manager? I see an issue with jwm but not fluxbox or flwm

Posted by Jason W on May 29 2008,15:54

In the System>Daemons menu, starting nfs-common starts /etc/init.d/nfs-common without starting any other services. I have always found that portmap needs to be running for nfs-common to work. If that is correct, it would be nice if starting nfs-common from the menu would check if portmap is running and start it if needed. Thanks

Posted by jls legalize on May 29 2008,16:16

I just tryed F11 on firefox using the default wm: jwm.

legalize cannabis, coke..

Posted by chaostic on May 29 2008,19:32

Quote (Jason W @ May 29 2008,11:54)

In the System>Daemons menu, starting nfs-common starts /etc/init.d/nfs-common without starting any other services. �I have always found that portmap needs to be running for nfs-common to work. �If that is correct, it would be nice if starting nfs-common from the menu would check if portmap is running and start it if needed. �Thanks

Yea, nfs-common starts rpc.statd, but that fails if there's no portmap enabled, and any start-stop-daemon messages are disabled because of "--quiet". RPC.statd should still error to syslog (if you have it enabled)

Thing is, I'm on 3.4.11, and it seems to be the same thing. Has noone used the nfs-common at all? Has noone needed to use a nfs server since who know's when?

That's funny :laugh:

Posted by curaga on May 29 2008,19:55

I remember using DSL as a NFS client without anything but kernel support who knows when, the server side gave a complaint I seemed to lack portmap et al but files moved

Posted by roberts on May 29 2008,21:10

Quote (Jason W @ May 29 2008,12:54)

OK. Will do.
Many moons ago portmap was always started via rcS.d./
I will have nfs-common script check as you have requested.

Posted by andrewb on May 30 2008,02:31

I've just checked in .torsmorc & found that the display for the file-systems is showing the ratio of FREE space to total space rather than USED space to total space. The bar shows the used space. I had noticed the numbers seemed to reflect the amount of free space rather than used space, but never bothered to check before. To be consistent between the numbers & the bars the fs_used variable should be used instead of the fs_free variable (or perhaps both to give a display of the form used/free/total?)

Posted by roberts on May 30 2008,03:33

Good suggestion. Will do used/free/total

Posted by lucky13 on May 30 2008,12:41

A couple ideas after reading the review I linked last night. How about adding a link to the wiki's known wireless cards page in the "connecting to the net" section of getting_started.html? Maybe a section inviting users to search the forums if some part of their hardware isn't working correctly to see how others have gotten it to work (e.g., direct link to the search page)? And how about some kind of disclaimer about compatibility with Debian and which version since that page currently says "full use the Debian Package Management System"?

Not sure how useful that would since (apparently) few people bother reading the page anyway.

Posted by roberts on June 01 2008,04:00

Good suggestion. I have updated the "Getting Started" document.

Posted by kuky on June 01 2008,08:58

i have notice that mydsl data base *.bz2 when i reload done problems? the lua disappears and nothing its done...with ctrl +supr goes to the black screen and said

/bin/lua: /usr/bin/mydslbrowser.lua:56:bad argument #1 to �find�(string expected,go to nil)
stack traceback:
[c] : in function find
/usr/bin/mydslBrowser.lua:56:in function �fill_list�
/usr/bin/mydslBrowser.lua:281:in main chunk

Posted by roberts on June 01 2008,14:42

Caused by a poorly constructed .info, gdb-6.8.uci.info.
Actually, it is my bad, as I usually test the database update(download) after each posted extension.

I have corrected and tested the download feature.

Remove the bad mydslinfo.bz2 and start fresh.
It is working fine now.

Posted by roberts on June 01 2008,19:02

Moving on to RC2. Thanks for the many good ideas and suggestions.