...making Linux just a little more fun!
[ In reference to "The Unbearable Lightness of Desktops: IceWM and idesk" in LG#160 ]
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
I just realized that I forgot one either minor or major thing in this article, depending on how you look at it: how to actually auto-run 'idesk' under IceWM.
Since Ubuntu does its own thing with startup files, adding things to ~/.xinitrc or ~/.xsession won't do anything useful. However, IceWM itself supports an init file mechanism of its own: if you place a file called 'startup' into your ~/.icewm directory and make it executable, it will be run when you start IceWM. Mine consists of nothing more than
/usr/bin/idesk &
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Larry Tobos [tobos at msu.edu]
Nice work.
Just a couple of points:
- 374 MB RAM for a 64bit machine is more like half of that on a regular 32bit cpu (give and take), unless you specifically optimize your code (which I doubt most of the ports do)
- you could opt for openbox, it supports menus and configuration of the FreeDesktop initiative - in my case the switch was waaay less painful than going the old way with icewm- once you install obmenu and obconf, your initial GNOME menus are transparently imported. And don't forget to remove Nautilus, and use instead rox-filer or PCManFM as your file manager.
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 07:19:02AM -0400, Larry Tobos wrote:
> Nice work.
Thanks for the feedback, Larry!
> Just a couple of points: > > - 374 MB RAM for a 64bit machine is more like half of that on a regular > 32bit cpu (give and take), unless you specifically optimize your code > (which I doubt most of the ports do)
I realize that. The catch-22 here is that bringing the memory up to a reasonable amount (e.g., 2GB) would cost about half of a brand-new notebook with that amount of memory - but throwing away a perfectly-good laptop would be a stupid thing to do as well. What to do? Linux + lightweight DM/apps is the best answer I know of.
> - you could opt for openbox, it supports menus and configuration of the > FreeDesktop initiative - in my case the switch was waaay less painful than > going the old way with icewm- once you install obmenu and obconf, your > initial GNOME menus are transparently imported. And don't forget to remove > Nautilus, and use instead rox-filer or PCManFM as your file manager.
I've got an even easier way to handle that one: menu-xdg (also from FreeDesktop.) Once you've installed it, your IceWM (or whatever) menus will be auto-updated with new apps every time that 'update-menus' is run.
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Kapil Hari Paranjape [kapil at imsc.res.in]
On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 Larry Tobos wrote:
> - 374 MB RAM for a 64bit machine is more like half of that on a regular > 32bit cpu (give and take), unless you specifically optimize your code > (which I doubt most of the ports do)
It is possible to run 32-bit code on a 64-bit machine. One way is to run a 32-bit (s)chroot.
<shameless_plug> This was described in LG #150 </shameless_plug>
On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 Ben Okopnik wrote:
> I've got an even easier way to handle that one: menu-xdg (also from > FreeDesktop.) Once you've installed it, your IceWM (or whatever) menus > will be auto-updated with new apps every time that 'update-menus' is > run.
Users of "icewm" (like me) will soon have to put in some work on either on fixing this wm and/or its libs or on shifting to another wm since it depends on older versions of libraries (imlib1).
The same unfortunately applies to "fvwm" (gtk1 and glib1).
ISTR something about running quite hard to stay in the same place 
Kapil. --
Larry Tobos [tobos at msu.edu]
Please don't "fix" it. I remember a time when fvwm was a light nimble wm, just like openbox, icewm, and so forth. Then they added some crappy dependencies, which weren't even necessary if you didn't care for the latest "bling".. and bloated it 10 times.
The only fix needed is already there: SuSE 9.3 has the packages necessary to import your menus into IceWm from KDE and/or Gnome, i.e. to make it compliant with the FreeDesktop way of doing the menus. (just used that couple years ago).
I know you can, problem is, any data type will roughly gobble twice that much memory on your 64 bit system: this was EXACTLY what I was trying to say, if you read my message.
Sincerely,
Larry Tobos
Thomas Adam [thomas.adam22 at gmail.com]
2009/3/11 Kapil Hari Paranjape <kapil@imsc.res.in>:
> Users of "icewm" (like me) will soon have to put in some work on > either on fixing this wm and/or its libs or on shifting to another wm > since it depends on older versions of libraries (imlib1). > > The same unfortunately applies to "fvwm" (gtk1 and glib1).
[ Dons his FVWM-developer hat. ]
No, there's nothing to fix. The only GTK1 "dependency" if it's wanted is FvwmGTK -- funnily enough this is being discussed on the FVWM-workers mailing list at the moment. No GTK1 libs means it's not built at all -- so I am not sure what you mean at all by "fix" -- and note this FVWM module is NOT about being able to access GNOME's or KDE's menus -- there's separate ways to do that. The same logic applies to gdk-imlib.
-- Thomas Adam
Larry Tobos [tobos at msu.edu]
Fantastic !
This is what I was refering to (menu-xdg and the xml way of doing menus- well, more or less), but my memory betrayed me (oh yeah, long time ago ...) And I agree, this is the way to go- was just pointing out that in your case it is even more so: as if you would have a 200 MB ram 32bit system!
More or less to the point: I have an even older Inspiron 5000 lap: PIII 600
MHz, initially 256 MB. Using Metacity + Gnome, it would be very annoying to
try and watch movies. Just switching to a light wm like openbox or icewm
won't cut it, as long as you keep metacity alive, to give you all the
"bling". Going initially to a "bare" openbox session, I had a very spartan
(plug here: Go Green, Go MSU!) right click menu. Then back in Gnome, I used
Ubuntu's (that's what I have on that machine) package manager to install
some more packages (again, sorry for missing all details- personal RAM has
major refresh problems .. ) and probably behind the scenes this installed
the xdg-menu scheme. Now I can happily switch into openbox AND icewm and all
Gnome menus are just a right click away, without Metacity.
Nice ! I can have an acceptable movie experience with scifi.com (hello to all BSG fans out there), not great, but a-OK. Last week, I upgraded for about $30 to 384 MB RAM, but I would not say it made a huge difference. Another testimony to Linux done right.
Sorry for the long post, I hope someone may find it helpful, and maybe you guys can fill in the missing pieces and write a new article about say multimedia on crappy old hardware. Or just host a discussion where your readers share their experiences/experiments.
Thomas Adam [thomas.adam22 at gmail.com]
2009/3/12 Larry Tobos <tobos@msu.edu>:
> PLease don't "fix" it. I remember a time when fvwm was a light nimble wm, > just like openbox, icewm, and so forth. Then they added some crappy > dependencies, which weren't even necessary if you didn't care for the latest > "bling".. and bloated it 10 times.
[ Still wearing his FVWM developer hat. ]
Err, only if you want those features -- or turn them off at ./configure time -- you're free to do just that, you know.
And FVWM is still very light and nimble.
-- Thomas Adam
Larry Tobos [tobos at msu.edu]
Sorry for the confusion,
I did not want to insult anybody, well, let's better say any of the developers involved in fvwm. What I was refering to, is that some distros started about some years ago to package fvwm together with loads of other dependencies, some necessary, some maybe not. Personally I can't stand when for a simple header include of one function, I have to take in the rest of tens of MB of the lib that provides it. But you are right, I know, that's the beauty of open source.
Oh well, where are the days of installing Slackware 3 from 7 diskettes ... maybe then people would start appreciating more the value of the megabyte !!
Larry
Thomas Adam [thomas.adam22 at gmail.com]
2009/3/12 Larry Tobos <tobos@msu.edu>:
> Sorry for the confusion, > > I did not want to insult anybody, well, let's better say any of the > developers involved in fvwm. What I was refering to, is that some distros > started about some years ago to package fvwm together with loads of other > dependencies, some necessary, some maybe not. Personally I can't stand when > for a simple header include of one function, I have to take in the rest of > tens of MB of the lib that provides it. But you are right, I know, that's > the beauty of open source.
Don't top-post, please.
I suspect what you're looking at here is a distribution-policy aspect. Binary distributions (i.e., not source-based like Gentoo) have to have a trade-off between adding in enough functionality for a good user-experience, which invariably means annoying someone for having a depenency where one poor user thinks this an infringement of disk space when it's downloaded. You think that's bloated with FVWM? Balderdash, confer GNOME and KDE. ;)
This is perhaps the only beneficial reason why source-based distros might outweigh binary ones; such library depenencies can be turned on/off at will for packages before they're compiled. Then again, you can still do that with binary ones, it's just typically after the fact of having installed and downloaded the program in the first place.
-- Thomas Adam