Salix Xfce 14.1

aaditya
Posts: 14
Joined: 25. Feb 2014, 15:34
Location: India

Re: Salix Xfce 14.1

Post by aaditya »

Hello, new Salix user here.

I downloaded the Salix Xfce 14.1 (actually meant to download the 64-bit version, but after installing I saw that I was running a 32bit version and on checking the website saw that I should have downloaded the Salix64 Xfce 14.1).

Installed it in a VM without any problems (automatic partitioning).
I quite like how it looks out of the box, and the software that is installed.

A couple of suggestions from my side:
1. Maybe include volumeicon by default.
2. Optional colorising of bash prompt (like Debian does using a yes/no variable in ~/.bashrc).
3. Enabling Clipman in autostart.

Thats all. Thanks!
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mimosa
Salix Warrior
Posts: 3311
Joined: 25. May 2010, 17:02
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Re: Salix Xfce 14.1

Post by mimosa »

Hello and welcome!

Thanks for your comments. These all do sound like easy-to-medium tweaks, and evey user will have their own.

I hadn't come across clipman, but I see something called xfce-clipman-plugin is installed by default. Searching online, on the other hand, turns up quite a few different "clipman" projects. Is there a particular one you'd recommend or like to see in the repositories?

See here for some ideas on the prompt:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Color_Bash_Prompt
aaditya
Posts: 14
Joined: 25. Feb 2014, 15:34
Location: India

Re: Salix Xfce 14.1

Post by aaditya »

Hi!

Yes, I meant xfce4-clipman which comes installed with Xfce, but it was not enabled in autostart. ( Menu -> Settings -> Session and Startup -> Application Autostart -> Clipman )

And the colorising of the bash prompt I meant was (copied from ~/.bashrc from a Debian install and slightly modified) :

Code: Select all

# set a fancy prompt (non-color, unless we know we "want" color)
case "$TERM" in
    xterm-color) color_prompt=yes;;
esac

# uncomment for a colored prompt, if the terminal has the capability; turned
# off by default to not distract the user: the focus in a terminal window
# should be on the output of commands, not on the prompt
#force_color_prompt=yes

if [ -n "$force_color_prompt" ]; then
    if [ -x /usr/bin/tput ] && tput setaf 1 >&/dev/null; then
	# We have color support; assume it's compliant with Ecma-48
	# (ISO/IEC-6429). (Lack of such support is extremely rare, and such
	# a case would tend to support setf rather than setaf.)
	color_prompt=yes
    else
	color_prompt=
    fi
fi

if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then
    PS1='\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '
else
    PS1='\u@\h:\w\$ '
fi
unset color_prompt force_color_prompt
(I uncomment the #force_color_prompt=yes line to get a colorised prompt.)
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Atip
Posts: 539
Joined: 5. Jun 2011, 04:27

Re: Salix Xfce 14.1

Post by Atip »

Can't get midori to spell check.
Followed instructions as outlined in post " Midori has multilingual spell checking.", nothing
doing. Right click does not give any suggestions for any dictionary.
Miss-spelled word does show-up as red underlined, however.

Checked in firefox and spell checking is working, same in abiword.

Booted into salix-14.0.1 with midori-0..5.5 and spell check is working there.

Booted back into Salix-14.1 opened midori-0.5.5 of Salix-14.0.1 and spell check does not work.

Where could be the problem then. :?:

Now testing midori-0.5.7 in Salix-14.0.1 and not surprisingly spell-checking is working. :roll:

My conclusion, the problem is not with midori. ;)
Last edited by Atip on 9. Mar 2014, 06:13, edited 1 time in total.
GJones
Donor
Posts: 300
Joined: 22. Jul 2011, 23:27

Re: Salix Xfce 14.1

Post by GJones »

Awesome news, downloading the ISO now.

Two things:
1. The 32 bit "CD ISO" is actually over 730 MB in size - it won't fit on a CD. So it should be referred to as a DVD ISO on the web site.
2. Just wondering, what was the rationale for switching to sudo? That definitely diverges from Slackware.

Edit: Oh I see, gnsu uses sudo as a backend... Hmm. Seems to me it would be better to just use an xterm to grab the password and launch the command, no? This is what OpenSUSE does, when running in e.g. Openbox. Something like

Code: Select all

nohup xterm -e su -m -c "$COMMAND"
(nohup just keeps you from closing the xterm window, and su's '-m' option preserves the enviroment. I don't think preserving the environment should be overly dangerous in this case, but please correct if I'm wrong...)
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gapan
Salix Wizard
Posts: 6238
Joined: 6. Jun 2009, 17:40

Re: Salix Xfce 14.1

Post by gapan »

GJones wrote:1. The 32 bit "CD ISO" is actually over 730 MB in size - it won't fit on a CD. So it should be referred to as a DVD ISO on the web site.
What? The iso size is exactly 697MB. What makes you think otherwise?
GJones wrote:2. Just wondering, what was the rationale for switching to sudo? That definitely diverges from Slackware.
Short answer: we had to.
For the long answer, read the blog.
GJones wrote:Edit: Oh I see, gnsu uses sudo as a backend... Hmm. Seems to me it would be better to just use an xterm to grab the password and launch the command, no? This is what OpenSUSE does, when running in e.g. Openbox. Something like

Code: Select all

nohup xterm -e su -m -c "$COMMAND"
(nohup just keeps you from closing the xterm window, and su's '-m' option preserves the enviroment. I don't think preserving the environment should be overly dangerous in this case, but please correct if I'm wrong...)
No to everything. Again, read the blog.
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TracyTiger
Posts: 27
Joined: 5. Mar 2014, 02:28
Location: California, USA

Re: Salix Xfce 14.1

Post by TracyTiger »

Hi GJones!

I'm brand new to Salix and don't want to start a heated argument in my first few posts, but here are my thoughts. Please let me know where I'm wrong.
1. The 32 bit "CD ISO" is actually over 730 MB in size - it won't fit on a CD.
Did you try to burn the 32bit ISO on a 700MB CD and it didn't work?

Note that a standard 700MB CD should hold about 703MiB (2^20) or 737MB (10^6) of data. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-ROM#Capacity). The Salix32 ISO is 697MiB (2^20) or 730MB (10^6) so in theory it should fit with 6MB to spare. I tried in twice on an older 700MB blank CD and it fit both times.

To remove ambiguity the Salix could advertise the 32bit ISO size as 697 MiB but this newfangled megabyte/mebibyte terminology confuses people including me. I never remember which is which until I look it up.

If you're referring to the older 650MB CD media then you're correct. It probably wouldn't fit. I don't think I've seen 650MB blank CDs sold for quite a while. To say something "fits on a CD" depends upon the specific CD media. Since 700MB is "standard" I would think it okay to advertise the Salix 32bit ISO as fitting on a CD.

As I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, I also fit the Salix64 DVD on a 700MB CD three different times by forcing it with an overburn option. However YMMV when using this process as it depends upon the media. An 800MB CD should fit both Salix32 and Salix64 ISOs without a problem.
2. Just wondering, what was the rationale for switching to sudo? That definitely diverges from Slackware.

Edit: Oh I see, gnsu uses sudo as a backend...
Coming from Slackware I can certainly relate to your initial question about the sudo change in 14.1. My initial observation is that the sudo decision in 14.1 seems appropriate for the Salix philosophy and the gnsu constraints (which you later noticed).

My understanding is that Salix is intended to be more "end user" friendly and not require as many administrative skills as Slackware. In the few days that I've been messing with Salix I find that its prompts for a password to run administrative GUI tools straightforward and appropriate for the Salix philosophy as I understand it so far.

Perhaps you're like me and never bother with sudo. However we have the skills to run root easily so this is a minor issue for those with a little experience. Note that the announcement says that you can enable root
For users that still want their root user back, check the wiki, it's really easy to do it.
-----------------

As I wrote, I've only been playing with Salix for a few days so I can't assert that I have a complete grasp of it's basic principles.

I'm a long time Slackware user and was drawn to try Salix due to many recent positive comments about Salix on the Slackware section of Linux Questions forum. I'm looking for a distribution for the occasional install for non-technical friends. The *buntu distributions weren't working out as I had hoped.

I hope to learn more about Salix by participating in discussions on this forum.


EDIT: It took me too long to type this. I see gapan had already responded.
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marin
Posts: 11
Joined: 7. Apr 2013, 00:00

Post by marin »

I've upgraded 14.0 to 14.1 according to wiki and everything works.

I had zero length pasword for my working user and gdm in 14.1 won't let me through.
I can still log in the console (username with no password).
After I enabled the username with an actual password I can login through gdm again.

My root account still has a password and 'su' is still usable.

This maybe due to the new security approach with 'sudo' which really needs the common user to have 'substantial' password to work at all. I haven't installed 'gnsu'.
Is it somehow possible to have an ordinary user with zero length password in 14.1?

Regarding 'sudo', in debian type distros I use to make an alias to serve me as 'su':

Code: Select all

alias su='sudo su'
alias su-='sudo su -'
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gapan
Salix Wizard
Posts: 6238
Joined: 6. Jun 2009, 17:40

Re:

Post by gapan »

marin wrote:Is it somehow possible to have an ordinary user with zero length password in 14.1?
No, and you couldn't do it in 14.0 either.
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TracyTiger
Posts: 27
Joined: 5. Mar 2014, 02:28
Location: California, USA

Salix Xfce 14.1 - Works Great!

Post by TracyTiger »

I've been exploring Salix for less than a month. I was looking for an excellent Linux distribution for friends with limited computer administration skills and believe I've found it with Salix.

This weekend I just delivered my first Salix64 14.1 system to a friend. The system has root partition encryption on top of RAID-1 running in a 5 year old dual core box that was upgraded to 6GB of RAM. It also runs MS WIN XP in Virtual Box so the user can access a scanner and also run a MS Windows only application that's needed.

Salix has all the installation tools I've come to depend on with Slackware and presents an easy to use Xfce desktop environment including a GUI package management tool for the end user.

The new owner was impressed with the performance and capabilities of the new system and installed a couple of applications from the Salix repository.

I can see why LQ Slackware forum members recommend Salix.
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