Salix Ratpoison 13.37beta1

[gapan]

Thanks for explaining gapan. The solution is now at my fingertips. I still look forward to your mount manager!

Look no further!

Code: Select all

slapt-get -u
slapt-get -i gmountman

Please report any issues, if you find any.

[mimosa]

Wow! will test shortly.

I'm going to start using the beta in a VM so I can be sure my writeup doesn't reflect any of the customisations I may have already forgotten having made - except that I vaguely remember it crashing when I tried this before; anyway, I just installed over my defunct Arch. I'll get back to you if there really is a problem. A lot of people must try things out in a VM (especially as there is no live version - do you plan one?) so it would be good if this worked as it does for other editions.

I found the option to exit ratpoison in the menu, and I think a shutdown option would be good as well; otherwise you need to login as root at a terminal. While we can assume that prospective users will be able to manage that, it's annoying to have to keep going through the steps instead of MOD r and a little arrow navigation. Maybe reboot, too?

Tsuren has also persuaded me that even quite inexperienced users could find ratpoison rewarding (I suppose I'm an example), which is the rationale for having a walkthrough in the Guide at all. If that is the case, it's certainly worth smoothing over what might be perceived as rough edges like this.

[mimosa]

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lucy[~]$ ls /media
README  cdrecorder  cdrecorder0  cdrecorder1  cdrom  cdrom0  cdrom1  disk  dvd  dvd0  dvd1  floppy  floppy0  floppy1  hd  hd0  hd1  memory  memory0  memory1  zip  zip0  zip1
lucy[~]$ gmountman
lucy[~]$ ls /media
README  The Wire 1 & 2  cdrecorder  cdrecorder0  cdrecorder1  cdrom  cdrom0  cdrom1  disk  disk-1  dvd  dvd0  dvd1  floppy  floppy0  floppy1  hd  hd0  hd1  memory  memory0  memory1  zip  zip0  zip1
lucy[~]$ 

Success!

[mimosa]

gapan, I've sent you a screenshot of the beta failing in VirtualBox.

Has anyone else tried it in a VM?

[mimosa]

gmountman doesn't work in my xfce 13.37 - it runs ok, but m (and e for the DVD) have no effect. The devices concerned appear on the desktop in the normal way. When I switch to xmonad, gmountman only shows the (non-existent) floppy, f something. This also happened in xfce when I tried running it from a console as root just before switching to xmonad.

I don't know if it's even meant to work for anything other than ratpoison, but anyway, here it doesn't seem to. Great in ratpoison though!

[gapan]

First of all, you should not run it as root. And I have written it primarily for ratpoison. But it works fine here under xfce and kde too. Others reported that it doesn't. Not really sure why yet.

[mimosa]

you should not run it as root

I thought as much - just testing

it works fine here under xfce and kde

I will test in Fluxbox when I next fire up that ***?!#!!* VM.

[mimosa]

I'm now using Vimprobable, and I have to say I don't think it's as good as Jumanji. Specific problems:

no tabs. The website hints that you might end up as glad not to have tabs as you were to stop using your mouse; maybe so, but you don't have to use them just because they're available. Of course, ratpoison gives you access to all vimperator's windows, and (an extra step and more keystrokes either way) you can see a list or visualise the lot to remind you what's where, but I find it easier with fewer open. So my browser looks after its windows with tabs, and I use screen for terminals, keeping it down to a handful of frames overall. The website suggests using tabbed, but it's another thing for the user to think about and a lot clunkier than Jumanji's gt, Xgt etc;

to fill in forms you sometimes need to use C-z to stop the keystrokes going to Vimprobable. Easy enough once you get used to it, but clunky;

Jumanji copes better with over-featured websites. For instance, Vimprobable won't open "Look inside" on Amazon. With Jumanji you do have to use the mouse to scroll, but at least it opens.

One trouble with Jumanji is it won't even follow links without this behaviour being specified in a config file. For a Salix edition, though, it could come with a sensible working configuration as default, couldn't it? I basically followed JRD's recommendations, except that I think it was when I switched to xmonad that I found his custom download script with zenity didn't work any more, so I went back to the commented version in the main jumanjirc file which automatically puts everything in downloads.

So: what does anyone think about replacing Vimprobable with Jumani?

[gapan]

You don't need tabs. Just use one workspace for all your vimprobable windows and launch everything else in other workspaces. You can also switch between windows with "C-t e". Gives you a nice overview of what each window is too. You don't get that with tabs.

[gapan]

gmountman doesn't work in my xfce 13.37 - it runs ok, but m (and e for the DVD) have no effect.

You will need to make sure you have the gvfs and gnome-mount packages installed. I missed that gnome-mount is a dependency.