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Salix Xfce 14.1beta1

Posted: 31. Dec 2013, 16:00
by gapan
We have finally packaged all the software that is required for an Xfce iso release, so it's time for a first beta for 14.1! This release includes a lot of changes compared to the previous 14.1alpha1 release and to the 14.0.1 release.

First of all, there are changes with the installer. The most obvious change is that reposetup is run at the end of the configuration stage now. Also, if a hard disk with a GPT partitioning scheme is present, it should be detected and cgdisk should be run instead of cfdisk. This hasn't been tested at all though. In EFI enabled systems, the 64bit release should prompt to install ELILO instead of LILO, but this hasn't been tested at all either. It might work or it might not work at all. Since I have no hardware to test all that, it's mostly guess work. We had some talks about Grub replacing LILO, but from what I'm reading online ELILO has a much bigger success rate compared to Grub, so we're sticking with that, just as Slackware did. The installer itself was tweaked to allow Grub installation though, if Grub is available in the iso (which isn't). So if someone adds a Grub package to the iso and LILO is also there, you'll get a dialog asking which one to use (which you don't get now, because there's only LILO there). If only Grub is included in the iso, it will be used by default. But we have LILO and ELILO and that's it. Confused yet?

The 32-bit iso only includes an i686 SMP enabled kernel, as the 14.0 releases did. The iso size has grown considerably and it was a big struggle to make it fit within CD size. The 64-bit iso is beyond the CD size limit anyway. The flash-plugin package was removed from the iso, not only because of size. I would like to get rid of it in general, but for now it will be installed if you run the Salix codecs installer along with all other codecs. Pitivi was also removed from the iso, it was probably the application that was used less than anything else on it. It will be available in the repositories later though. Also, subversion and cvs have been removed from the iso. They took up a lot of space and I don't think a lot of people use them anymore, it seems everyone uses git these days and everyone that actually needs them probably knows how to find them through the package manager.

There are a lot of things that have been added to the iso as well though. Most are stuff that run in the background. Gstreamer 1.x packages have been included and installed side by side with gstreamer 0.10.x packages, since one version is needed by some applications in the iso and the other from some other applications. Also, GTK+3 is included too, as Transmission only works with GTK+3 now, dumping GTK+2.

One major addition (although tiny in size) is the inclusion of spi, a new command line package management tool that is now the recommended way to search for and install packages and SlackBuilds. spi is a tool that acts as a wrapper around slapt-get and slapt-src and also allows dependency handling crossing over to the "other side" if needed. Please run man spi (or gtkman spi) to read how it works, it should be easy enough.

Another change is the switch to our own gksu implementation that is gnsu. This actually uses sudo as a backend and if you want to run something in the system menu, you'll need to provide your own password now, instead of the root user password. You can tune up sudo permissions by running visudo from a root terminal. By default, everyone in the "users" group is allowed to get superuser priviliges by running sudo.

As far as all other software, everything has been updated to newer versions (if available). Not too many surprises there. A lot of software has already been added to our repositories thanks to our packagers. We're still not at the same level as our 14.0 repositories, but we're getting there.

We also have a new logo, created by our user Alejandro Simón. You'll see it in the Xfce menu. It hasn't yet replaced the old logo in this website and everywhere else, but it will eventually.

So, please download the beta and report any problems you might find.

Salix Xfce 14.1beta1 (32-bit, i686):
(size: 702MB, md5: c2094a13039542f5ef7e3ccab394f73a)
Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/salix/f ... o/download
torrent: http://download.salixos.org/i486/14.1/i ... so.torrent

Salix64 Xfce 14.1beta1 (64-bit, x86_64):
(size: 715MB, md5: 7289de679e257d9c98464199b06c51d9)
Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/salix/f ... o/download
torrent: http://download.salixos.org/x86_64/14.1 ... so.torrent

Happy testing and a happy new year!

Re: Salix Xfce 14.1beta1

Posted: 31. Dec 2013, 16:52
by fdeak
Quick installation report:

I've sucessfully installed on a cryptsetup+LVM based layout.

I've sucessfully used spi to install unison from slackbuilds.

More tests are comming...
Also, subversion and cvs have been removed from the iso. They took up
a lot of space and I don't think a lot of people use them anymore, it seems
everyone uses git these days and everyone that actually needs them probably
knows how to find them through the package manager.
Following this logic git can also be removed, even every development-related
tools can be removed, if we need more space on the ISO.

For the newbies, Salix can have a salix-devtools-installer to install common
development tools like git, gcc, g++, mercurial, subversion, cvs, cmake, etc.
like salix-codecs-installer installs all the codecs. (altough no-one needs all
the tools)
Happy testing and a happy new year!
Happy new year to the whole salix team!

fdeak

Re: Salix Xfce 14.1beta1

Posted: 1. Jan 2014, 06:48
by slack631
Hi,

I installed from USB stick, on a separate partition on the hard disk, the installation has passed surprisingly quickly, like lightning.
Without any problems. All partitions are mounted properly, Lilo is installed, and there is no need for GRUB,
Lilo can do everything as well as GRUB .
The system is very fast.
As for me, this is practically Realize candidate, if not more.
But I'll wait for official version to replace the current Salix.

I noticed a small anomaly,that is this: when is selected Applications menu by right-clicking on Destop, then in the Multimedia menu,
Asunder CD Ripper icon is noticeably much bigger than the other icons in that menu.
That's all for now. Thanks for yours work.

Happy new year.

Re: Salix Xfce 14.1beta1

Posted: 1. Jan 2014, 21:16
by gapan
fdeak wrote:Following this logic git can also be removed, even every development-related
tools can be removed, if we need more space on the ISO.
Maybe, but git is very popular and at least everyone who is involved with developing this distribution uses it so I'd much prefer it if we kept it.
fdeak wrote:For the newbies, Salix can have a salix-devtools-installer to install common
development tools like git, gcc, g++, mercurial, subversion, cvs, cmake, etc.
like salix-codecs-installer installs all the codecs. (altough no-one needs all
the tools)
Not really. gcc cannot be removed as it is a dependency of several other packages. gcc-g++ could be, but then a large portion of what is available through sourcery/slapt-get wouldn't work without installing it first, so I don't think that would be a good idea either.
slack631 wrote:I noticed a small anomaly,that is this: when is selected Applications menu by right-clicking on Destop, then in the Multimedia menu,
Asunder CD Ripper icon is noticeably much bigger than the other icons in that menu.
That's all for now. Thanks for yours work.
Thanks for that. It's weird, probably an xfce bug, but I'll see what we can do.

BTW, there was a problem with salix-codecs-installer that comes with the iso. This has been fixed with salix-codecs-installer-1.2.2, so make sure you update to the new version before you use it.

Re: Salix Xfce 14.1beta1

Posted: 1. Jan 2014, 23:05
by Bart
Great job. :D The only problem I found for now is that (already solved by the way) on the package salix-codecs-installer.

Compliments. ;)

Re: Salix Xfce 14.1beta1

Posted: 2. Jan 2014, 17:58
by dillinger
slack631 wrote:I noticed a small anomaly,that is this: when is selected Applications menu by right-clicking on Destop, then in the Multimedia menu,
Asunder CD Ripper icon is noticeably much bigger than the other icons in that menu.
The SLKBUILD script links the 128x128 Asunder icon to /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps and icon resizing apparently doesn't happen in the desktop menu.
Something like this happens with Grsync too, a 128x128 icon is put in /usr/share/icons/hicolor/64x64/apps.

Re: Salix Xfce 14.1beta1

Posted: 3. Jan 2014, 07:42
by anttel
Hi,
It's so good to see Salix to go up to 14.1! Super. Here are a few remarks from my side:

On my EeePC 901 I did a clean install:
- during startup I get messages about a a bas superblock on my xfs "disks": ssd 16 gb, compact flash disk 32 gb and micro sd 32 gb (not a very common configuration I guess...). This did never occur during my salix 13.37 installation. A xfs_repair kept on searching for the secondary superblock until I hit Ctrl-c. Could it be that the xfs contains errors? I did again a clean install with ext4 and this time a only get problems with the third disk which I didn't format during installation.
- Simple-scan doesn't get my scanner to work. I get a message that dbus isn't started/found: it finds my scanner (canon lide 700)but stops when I start a scan. With Xsane this doesn't occur.
- salix-codex-installer updated to the latest but it doesn't seem to install codecs. It hangs during the proces. I did choose the ftp nluug repo during installation.

So far my remarks, but I am very impressed by this beta, already it seems so solid. Chapeaux! Keep up the good work!
anttel

Re: Salix Xfce 14.1beta1

Posted: 4. Jan 2014, 19:33
by gapan
dillinger wrote:The SLKBUILD script links the 128x128 Asunder icon to /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps and icon resizing apparently doesn't happen in the desktop menu.
Something like this happens with Grsync too, a 128x128 icon is put in /usr/share/icons/hicolor/64x64/apps.
Thanks, I have uploaded updated packages that solve these problems.

Re: Salix Xfce 14.1beta1

Posted: 4. Jan 2014, 19:34
by gapan
anttel wrote:On my EeePC 901 I did a clean install:
- during startup I get messages about a a bas superblock on my xfs "disks": ssd 16 gb, compact flash disk 32 gb and micro sd 32 gb (not a very common configuration I guess...). This did never occur during my salix 13.37 installation. A xfs_repair kept on searching for the secondary superblock until I hit Ctrl-c. Could it be that the xfs contains errors? I did again a clean install with ext4 and this time a only get problems with the third disk which I didn't format during installation.
- Simple-scan doesn't get my scanner to work. I get a message that dbus isn't started/found: it finds my scanner (canon lide 700)but stops when I start a scan. With Xsane this doesn't occur.
- salix-codex-installer updated to the latest but it doesn't seem to install codecs. It hangs during the proces. I did choose the ftp nluug repo during installation.
Unfortunately you seem to be having hardware issues. Your disks might be corrupted or your RAM is.

Re: Salix Xfce 14.1beta1

Posted: 4. Jan 2014, 21:11
by anttel
I "solved" the xfs issue by replacing the xfs 14.1 packages with the 13.37 xfs packages.....no more errors