Salix Xfce 15.0beta1

[Pilou]

Unfortunately it seems to not be maintained any more at SBo.

Well, broadcom-sta is still maintained.
Look at https://slackbuilds.org/slackbuilds/15.0/network :

Code: Select all

broadcom-sta.tar.gz	2020-12-18 20:48 	13K	 
broadcom-sta.tar.gz.asc	2022-03-12 20:44 	195 	 

Hope this helps.

[gaucho]

After a long hiatus, it's nice to have a new version of Salix on my old netbook [HP Mini 210, Intel Atom N455 CPU, 2 GB RAM, A-Data SP550 240 GB SSD]. It's probably about the lowest-end hardware possible; nevertheless, here's my installation report.

I installed the 15.0 beta1 .iso last night [64-bit, BIOS, US English] last night.

• The installation was straightforward, with no surprises.

• The multimedia codecs installer worked smoothly. I have been listening to several FM radio streams (.mp3, .aac) with no problem.

• I did the initial update of the system via Gslapt with no issues.

• I enabled the root user account as per instructions on the Salix Wiki.

• I also used Gslapt to install several other packages (e.g., Abiword, GnuCash, Hexchat).

• This is my first experience with Flatpaks, so I'm learning. I installed HomeBank (ver. 5.5.5) via Flathub and it seems to be working fine thus far.

• I will continue testing the OS and report any issues I encounter.

Minor glitches:

• The icon for the Network Manager applet (in the bottom panel) is very light-colored. I almost overlooked it at first ... Maybe the problem is my aging eyes.

• Exaile was a bit buggy / crash-prone on my system when I tried opening / adding URLs of radio stations. I experienced this when using File > Open URL and/or "Add Station" (under the "Radio" tab).

• As a workaround, I installed Audacious and it has been working smoothly.

Overall, this has been a very positive experience and the .iso is super-polished for a 'beta'. Thanks a lot for your dedication and hard work, gapan!

[gapan]

Well, broadcom-sta is still maintained.
Look at https://slackbuilds.org/slackbuilds/15.0/network :

Code: Select all

broadcom-sta.tar.gz	2020-12-18 20:48 	13K	 
broadcom-sta.tar.gz.asc	2022-03-12 20:44 	195 	 

Hope this helps.

No, it really isn't. From https://slackbuilds.org/slackbuilds/15.0/ChangeLog.txt

Code: Select all

network/broadcom-sta: Removed (no maintainer)

It's just that they forgot the tarball in the repo. But it's not possible to get it with any of the automated tools.

[gapan]

• The icon for the Network Manager applet (in the bottom panel) is very light-colored. I almost overlooked it at first ... Maybe the problem is my aging eyes.

I'll have a fix for this soon. And for all other light-colored tray icons too.

• Exaile was a bit buggy / crash-prone on my system when I tried opening / adding URLs of radio stations. I experienced this when using File > Open URL and/or "Add Station" (under the "Radio" tab).

• As a workaround, I installed Audacious and it has been working smoothly.

Thanks, I haven't tried that myself, but I'll see if I can fix it.

Thank you gaucho!

[gapan]

- when starting nano, it complains about "invalid backup directory ~/.nanobackups
So I had to create " ~/.nanobackups" and "/root/.nanobackups" manually.

Thanks, somebody else had reported this too. It will be fixed in RC1.

- /etc/slapt-get/slapt-srcrc
this file had no links to any proper slackbuild data.
I've set it to https://slackbuilds.org/slackbuilds/15.0/

But perhaps there is a reason why it is not by default pointing to repository of slackware 15 slackbuilds?

Yes, it includes that salix version of the sbo repo, which in previous releases included several fixes. But now that we have most of sbo as prebuilt packages in our repos, maybe we'll change to the standard sbo repo and remove ours.

[djemos]

About broadcom-sta. It is not compiled anymore on kernel-5.18.3. I had to patched to compile it for kernel 5.18.3 also.
I had to do it since my lenovo has this chipset so network wifi was broken.
Here is everything you need to build it Install the kernel source package for your kernel version. And build it. You get the txz package in the current directory.
This is the binary package for 64bit salix kernel-5.15.38

[gaucho]

This isn't a problem, but I haven't seen anyone else mention this, so I thought I would ...

I'm not sure whether to call it a graphical effect or an animation. When you first log in, the default wallpaper is "salix_night." (On this netbook, I almost always use Wi-Fi; after successfully connecting to Wi-Fi for the first time, Network Manager remembers that connection.) On subsequent logins, Network Manager auto-connects to the Wi-Fi network. When that happens, the "salix_night" wallpaper changes to "salix_day" after several seconds.

IANAGD (I Am Not a Graphic Designer) so my opinion is worth about $0.02, but I like this feature. I haven't seen anything like it in other distros that I've used.

(I was able to connect to our Wi-Fi network OOTB via the Network Manager applet. This netbook has a Broadcom BCM4313 chipset, which is handled by the brcmsmac driver built into the Linux kernel.

I noticed that there are b43 and ssb driver dependencies which I'd like to eliminate. I will try blacklisting these as outlined in an old post:

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=7377
"How-To: Configuring Broadcom BCM4313 on Salix 14.2." 13 Aug. 2017. )

[gaucho]

I noticed that there are b43 and ssb driver dependencies which I'd like to eliminate. I will try blacklisting these as outlined in an old post:

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=7377
"How-To: Configuring Broadcom BCM4313 on Salix 14.2." 13 Aug. 2017. )

The instructions above still work. I successfully blacklisted those dependencies and the Wi-Fi is behaving normally.

Before I made the change, I was seeing this output:

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david[~]$ lsmod | grep -e brcm
brcmsmac              626688  0
brcmutil               16384  1 brcmsmac
cordic                 16384  2 b43,brcmsmac
mac80211             1069056  2 b43,brcmsmac
cfg80211             1032192  3 b43,mac80211,brcmsmac
rfkill                 32768  4 hp_wmi,brcmsmac,cfg80211
bcma                   61440  2 b43,brcmsmac

david[~]$ lsmod | egrep 'b43|wl|brcm'
brcmsmac              626688  0
brcmutil               16384  1 brcmsmac
b43                   462848  0
cordic                 16384  2 b43,brcmsmac
mac80211             1069056  2 b43,brcmsmac
cfg80211             1032192  3 b43,mac80211,brcmsmac
ssb                    86016  1 b43
mmc_core              188416  2 b43,ssb
rfkill                 32768  4 hp_wmi,brcmsmac,cfg80211
bcma                   61440  2 b43,brcmsmac

After creating the blacklist file and rebooting, here is the output:

Code: Select all

david[~]$ lsmod | grep -e brcm
brcmsmac              626688  0
brcmutil               16384  1 brcmsmac
cordic                 16384  1 brcmsmac
mac80211             1069056  1 brcmsmac
cfg80211             1032192  2 mac80211,brcmsmac
rfkill                 32768  4 hp_wmi,brcmsmac,cfg80211
bcma                   61440  1 brcmsmac

david[~]$ lsmod | egrep 'b43|wl|brcm'
brcmsmac              626688  0
brcmutil               16384  1 brcmsmac
cordic                 16384  1 brcmsmac
mac80211             1069056  1 brcmsmac
cfg80211             1032192  2 mac80211,brcmsmac
rfkill                 32768  4 hp_wmi,brcmsmac,cfg80211
bcma                   61440  1 brcmsmac

[missTell]

This isn't a problem, but I haven't seen anyone else mention this, so I thought I would ...

I'm not sure whether to call it a graphical effect or an animation. When you first log in, the default wallpaper is "salix_night." [...] On subsequent logins, [...] When that happens, the "salix_night" wallpaper changes to "salix_day" after several seconds.

IANAGD (I Am Not a Graphic Designer) so my opinion is worth about $0.02, but I like this feature. I haven't seen anything like it in other distros that I've used.

Your and every other opinion is always worthwhile and wellcome, as long as you don't try to 'know better', when you don't.

As of "I like", one can like it or not, and it can look 'good' or 'bad', depending on the wallpaper combination.

Night to day change looks kinda cute, day windowed to day change looks even better.

Some wild flowers to beautiful sunset on MX looks horrible.

The slower the HW, the longer the lag.

Smaller WP loads quicker ...

The fact is, that it is some failure of the whole construct -- not Salix, but anything Xfce + LightDM.

The same happens on all of my Xfce installations in VirtualBox. There it is even much more obvious and annoying.

The login screen in VM is usually something like 800x600, and then it jumps to 1600x900, and in the meanwhile, it shows 4 small pictures for a moment, before it loads the preset wallpaper.

[hugok]

Hello everybody,

Salix 15-beta1 installed easily.
Works fine.
Just a problem : wifi doesn't work.

$ lspci -v | grep Network
05:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM43142 802.11b/g/n

Could help ?

Otherwise, best congratulations for the whole work.

P.

I have the same wifi network controller.

In Slackware 15.0 64bit the b43-fwcutter and b43-firmware packages solves the problem. Everything works fine here