Thoughts on the next release

Posts: 1,081
OU812
Joined: 29 Sep 2007
#1
Hello. In a separate post, it was posed that wicd be included in the next release. In the spirit of that post, I agree that wicd would be a wonderful addition. Here are some other thoughts:

1. I would like to see a search tool such as catfish included.
2. I would like to see a calendar app such as plan included. (gdeskcal has quite a few dependencies and increases the startup time a little bit.)
3. Perhaps vlc could replace mplayer, xmms, and streamtuner (and in my case gmusicbrowser as well). vlc does have a lot of dependencies, but in total about the same as the other apps. Perhaps vlc doesn't stack up against some of the features offered by the individual apps (no album cover art, not as many stream choices, etc.) but it does provide more options in other areas (equalizer, dvd menu access, etc.). I believe it is reasonably light also.
4. Perhaps gnome-power-manager could be included if there is a fairly large user base with laptops.
5. Perhaps the dhcp lag time during the boot process can be fixed; otherwise, installing a bootsplash is kinda pointless for wireless computers (the dhcp hang causes the bootsplash to turn"off" and go into text mode).
6. If a bootsplash is included, perhaps you could install the one I saw at mepislovers - I believe it was created by larry. (I think I lost the link.) The one I saw had a similar look and feel as the current grub bootsplash.
7. Perhaps you could include a link in the fb menu to the user's style directory - just to make things a little easier on the newbies (and us old-timers as well.)
8. Not a huge deal, but maybe include a few more linux, mepis, antix, etc. bookmarks in iceweasel - maybe even to the forum and homepage on iceweasel's bookmark bar.

Thanks for reading.

john
Posts: 316
DJiNN
Joined: 26 Oct 2007
#2
Some good points there (I most certainly agree with the vlc suggestion, as although it's a little heavy, it does almost everything) and i'd also like to suggest perhaps some kind of"Easy" Net browsing/sharing ability for local networks. I think it's the one thing that i've found to be missing from almost any"Lightweight" distro that i've tried.

Gnome & KDE seem to have this covered nicely, and it would be great see something similar for the XFCE, Flux/OpenBox distros etc. __{{emoticon}}__
Posts: 1,520
eriefisher
Joined: 07 Oct 2007
#3
Good suggestions.

For Audio files I use Aqualung. Not many dependencies. Good for podcasts.catching streams etc. and album art.

Search tool--search monkey-works good

for network browsing I use fusesmb. My network mounts automatically to a folder in my /home, one click away.

eriefisher
Posts: 316
DJiNN
Joined: 26 Oct 2007
#4
eriefisher wrote:Good suggestions.

For Audio files I use Aqualung. Not many dependencies. Good for podcasts.catching streams etc. and album art.
I tried Aqualung a little while ago in Xubuntu, but for some reason it wouldn't run at all...?? I'll download & give it a try on antiX.... maybe i'll have better luck. __{{emoticon}}__
for network browsing I use fusesmb. My network mounts automatically to a folder in my /home, one click away.
How easy did you find it getting fusesmb to work? Everytime i try to use it (Apart from in Zenwalk where it works flawlessly) i just can't get it to do anything. LOL!! It's probably me doing something completely wrong or not setting something up correctly, but i've tried it on several distros/machines, and still can't get it working. Pyneighbourhood's the same..... i can get it working, but it's not too intuitive (to me at least) and invariably i end up installing Konqueror & a whole host of stuff that i don't really want.
Posts: 1,520
eriefisher
Joined: 07 Oct 2007
#5
I used a how-to from Gentoo and it worked perfectly.


========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Samba_support_in_Thunar"
linktext was:"http://www.gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Samba_ ... _in_Thunar"
====================================


It shows it with XFCE(wich I use) but it should work with anything. I switch over to Fluxbox and it still fine. Ther site looks like it's down at the moment but check back with it later.

eriefisher
anticapitalista
Posts: 5,959
Site Admin
Joined: 11 Sep 2007
#6
Keep the suggestions coming.

I would prefer apps that are already in debian rather than having to compile them.

Also suggestions as to which apps should be removed from antiX.
Posts: 1,520
eriefisher
Joined: 07 Oct 2007
#7
Her is one,

Gscan2pdf

It will use your scanner to create pdf's and you can add files already on your hard drive.

eriefisher
Posts: 1,520
eriefisher
Joined: 07 Oct 2007
#8
Another,

gthumb image viewer.

More control than feh.

eriefisher
Posts: 316
DJiNN
Joined: 26 Oct 2007
#9
I'll 2nd gThumb. It's the only one i use, whatever distro i install, as it does everything so well. __{{emoticon}}__
Posts: 316
DJiNN
Joined: 26 Oct 2007
#10
eriefisher wrote:I used a how-to from Gentoo and it worked perfectly.


========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Samba_support_in_Thunar"
linktext was:"http://www.gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Samba_ ... _in_Thunar"
====================================


It shows it with XFCE(wich I use) but it should work with anything. I switch over to Fluxbox and it still fine. Ther site looks like it's down at the moment but check back with it later.

eriefisher
Thanks for that. Just off to work now but i'll check it out when i get back later on. Much appreciated. __{{emoticon}}__
Posts: 200
moron
Joined: 12 Sep 2007
#11
suggestion: Wicd
Posts: 31
julian67
Joined: 02 Feb 2008
#12
I find vlc and audacious a good combination which can handle everything music + video. Audacious does everything xmms can do and more while remaining lightweight, it displays cover art nicely and vlc seems to be unique in its ability to play .iso images as though they were mounted DVDs.

For CD ripping how about replacing Grip with Asunder? Asunder is beautifully simple and can encode to multiple formats simultaneously. It's very light and starts up instantly and is completely desktop agnostic. On the command line ripit is an amazing CD ripper and of course being without a gui is tiny and efficient.

I like Gthumb but believe it would bring in a lot of Gnome dependencies. Perhaps it's best left to the user to choose this from the repos.

For network share browsing I've used a few different tools in fluxbox and Xfce; LinNeighborhood, pyNeighborhood and fusesmb as well as some terminal/ncurses apps. As fuse is part of mepis/antix maybe it would be worth looking at the fusesmbtool that comes with Zenwalk which makes using fusesmb extremely simple. I believe lighttpd web server is also part of the standard install so maybe SWAT could also be included for easy samba setup & management.

I like Xfe file manager which I hadn't come across before, but find emelfm2 far more useful and customisable. It's a tiny bit more memory hungry (0.4% more RAM but distinctly less CPU use on my laptop) but far more versatile, looks nicer (imo) and is desktop agnostic.

And of course another vote for Wicd!
Posts: 31
julian67
Joined: 02 Feb 2008
#13
I've had a few problems accessing some sites, particularly ftp ones which tend to be a little slow anyway. I found I had to disable ipv6 (systemwide and in my browser config). Some important sites such as
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/"
linktext was:"http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/"
====================================
were comletely inaccessible for me until I did this. The first distro I encountered with ipv6 enabled by default was opensuse 10.1 and it caused problems for many people. Unfortunately other distros are following suit (Ubuntu and Debian). I know it's coming but right now the world isn't ready. Maybe the next version of antix can ship with ipv6 disabled by default? In the past I've even been unlucky enough to live in an apartment building where all the connections are controlled by the building owner who disabled ipv6 on the gateway router because he didn't know it might be a good thing to leave it at its default.....
Posts: 1,081
OU812
Joined: 29 Sep 2007
#14
I just installed emelfm2 and I do like it a lot. It is similar in layout to mc but with a gtk2 interface. It is very clean and easy to use. On the plus side, I can navigate to lxdvdshrink (a script) and run it by clicking it (couldn't do that with rox or xfe). Another plus is that it is easier to navigate than using tabs (pcmanfm) or trees (xfe). On the downside, it is not in the repo (but you can safely use the ubuntu 7.xx version) and no additional dependencies are needed. Some more downsides are missing icons - so an icon set would need to be installed - and no thumbnails. So this is a terrific replacement for xfe, but I think you'd still want to keep rox.

john

Image
Posts: 31
julian67
Joined: 02 Feb 2008
#15
whenever I compile emelfm2 I always get the icons __{{emoticon}}__