another fluxbox trick

I don't know how to add a "Show Desktop" button to Fluxbox, but I found that it's possible to set up a keystroke that will do the same thing. I added the following line to my ~/.fluxbox/keys file:

Mod4 d :ToggleCmd {ShowDesktop}

After saving the changes to that file, it was necessary to select either "Reconfigure" or "Restart" from the Fluxbox menu. Now, the Mod4 + D keystroke ("Mod4" being the "Windows" key on my keyboard) toggles the "ShowDesktop" command.

news from the lubuntu team

Posted at the Lubuntu blog:

Taking a new direction

During the transition to LXQt, we have received mixed feedback about Lubuntu's perceived direction going forward, so we decided it would be good to make a blog post explaining what's been happening during the transition, and where our focus will be.

Creating a Linux distribution which is specifically meant for older hardware is beginning to become a challenge. As time progresses, the definition of "older machines" has been changing. At one point, our rule of thumb was to support machines ten years old. If you look at computers that were released ten years ago, for example, a computer with the AMD Phenom X3 processor, you will note that computers, give or take, supported two gigabytes of RAM and two processor cores, and were also 64-bit at this time.
More Linux distributions today can run on the computer of ten years ago than Linux distributions made five years ago with a 15 year old computer.
As an example, on a fresh amd64 (64-bit) Kubuntu 18.04.1 install with two gigabytes of RAM and one CPU core (in QEMU), the idle usage with LibreOffice open and Firefox open to Lubuntu.me is about 1 GB of RAM and 6% idle CPU usage. With the same specifications/programs and an i386 (32-bit) install, 790 MB of RAM and 7% of idle CPU usage is used.
While there is something to be said about i386 resource usage and how much more efficient it can make a system, the point is that other distributions can now do what only Lubuntu was once able to do with ten year old hardware. You are welcome to also draw your own conclusions and leave them in the comments of this post.
Furthermore, imagine what these statistics will look like in 2021, when Lubuntu 18.04, which has kept our traditional focus, reaches its end of life phase.
These statistics brought much internal debate within the Lubuntu team, but we decided that going forward, we need to adapt for the current state of the market. Therefore, our main focus is shifting from providing a distribution for old hardware to a functional yet modular distribution focused on getting out of the way and letting users use their computer.
In essence, this is leveraging something we have always done with Lubuntu; providing an operating system which users can use to revive their old computers, but bringing this to the age of modern computing.
For the forseeable future, here are our core goals:

• Lubuntu will leverage modern, Qt-based technologies and programs to give users a functional yet modular experience.
• In collaboration with others, Lubuntu will continue to be a transparent and open distribution which makes it a priority to keep the community informed about the development when possible.
• Lubuntu will create and maintain complete documentation which will be included by default in the operating system, and can guide anyone from beginner to expert on how to use Lubuntu to its full potential and contribute to the further development of it.
• Lubuntu will keep a light experience by default but enable users to utilize more heavy and featureful components as desired.
• Lubuntu will have the ability to be used in any language across the world, and enable contributors to easily translate all components of the operating system.

This means that Lubuntu will stay light, and for users with old systems, should still be usable. But we will no longer provide minimum system requirements and we will no longer primarily focus on older hardware.
This is a large endeavor as you might expect, and we're still working on catching up to other distributions in terms of feature parity, but with 18.10 being the first LXQt-only release and 20.04 being the first LTS LXQt-only release, we are confident that Lubuntu will be ready for whatever the future holds.

Link: https://lubuntu.me/taking-a-new-direction/

could happen

A thought-provoking satirical piece, a warning, a call to action: "How Trump Won Re-election in 2020: A sneak peek at the Times’s news analysis from Nov. 4, 2020" by Bret Stephens, opinion columnist contributing to The New York Times.

lite

After seeing DistroWatch's review of Linux Lite 4.0, I decided to check it out. I downloaded linux-lite-4.0-64bit.iso and used md5sum to check the download:

$ md5sum linux-lite-4.0-64bit.iso
f4ff50524b7fb18fe97a6748db1318ec  linux-lite-4.0-64bit.iso

I wanted to try booting the iso from the hard drive instead of booting from a flash drive like I normally do when I want to take a look at a live session of a distro release. My "test" computer is currently home to BunsenLabs Deuterium; booting into that system, I created the directory /isoimage, then copied the Linux Lite iso into that. Then I edited the /etc/grub.d/40_custom file so that it now looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
menuentry "Linux Lite 4.0 (iso on /dev/sda1)" {
  set isofile="/isoimage/linux-lite-4.0-64bit.iso"
  loopback loop (hd0,1)$isofile
  linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=$isofile noprompt noeject
  initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.gz
}

Then I ran sudo update-grub, then rebooted. That gave me a grub menu entry for Linux Lite 4.0. I booted into the live session.

Linux Lite 4.0 is based on Ubuntu 18.04 (LTS), and ships with Xfce 4.12.3. Here's what the system looks like at first boot:

The Welcome screen has a "Help Manual" button (there's also an icon for the manual on the desktop), so I clicked on that. The manual, which is stored in the /usr/share/docs/litemanual directory, opens up in Firefox. It can also be found at https://www.linuxliteos.com/manual/. I haven't spent much time checking it out, but it seems to cover a good number of topics.

Some of the apps included in the release: firefox, gnome-calculator, gimp, hardinfo, inxi, htop, leafpad, libreoffice, xfce-terminal, qpdf, rsync, gparted, shotwell, synaptic, thunderbird, and vlc. Also included are several tools created specifically for Linux Lite that are supposed to make life easier for users. And, much more; Linux Lite 4.0 appears to be fully loaded and ready to use out-of-the-box.

Of course, I wanted to see the repo setup. The repos enabled by default in /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu bionic partner

Also, I found some files in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d directory. Enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/linuxlite.list:

deb http://repo.linuxliteos.com/linuxlite/ diamond main

Enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/otto-kesselgulasch-ubuntu-gimp-xenial.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/otto-kesselgulasch/gimp/ubuntu bionic main

Enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/teejee2008-ubuntu-ppa-bionic.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/teejee2008/ppa/ubuntu bionic main

So, a few PPA things going on, and some stuff from Linux Lite's own repos, and the rest from Bionic (Ubuntu 18.04).

To me, the live session of Linux Lite 4.0 looked about as good as anything else I've seen that ships with Xfce. I haven't quite decided whether I like it better than MX-17, which I keep on a flash drive for the occasional live session; might come down to a coin flip. Excellent job, from where I sit.

from sea to shining sea

What is "America", anyway?

I don't know why, when we talk about America, that doesn't include all of the Americas. North America, South America, Central America, the Caribbean Islands, all of it. The New World. When did "America" come to mean only the U.S.? What's up with that?

a nice site for testing distros

Here's a link to a site where users can try out various distros online, right from the web browser: https://distrotest.net/

And, here's a link to an article about the site: https://www.ostechnix.com/test-100-linux-and-unix-operating-systems-online-for-free/

I tested it out from my Debian Stretch (GNOME) system, using the Pale Moon browser. The site offers over 100 distros for testing.

I decided to have a look at Linux Lite after reading a DistroWatch review of that distro's latest release (https://www.distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20180709#lite). After selecting Linux Lite (4.0), I was presented with the following screen:

I clicked on the "System start" button. Then I had to wait a long time; there was a message telling me that "You are on slot #49." This slowly counted down. Very slowly! Finally, I got down to slot #3, then slot #2.

Finally, I saw the following, with the message that "Pale Moon prevented this site from opening a pop-up window."

I clicked on "Preferences" and "Allow pop-ups for distrotest.net". Then I clicked the "Open VNC-Viewer" button. Linux Lite opened up in a new browser window. A few screenshots:

As the article linked above says, "If you don’t want to enable the pop-ups in DistroTest page, just use any locally installed VNC client applications in your system. The VNC client login details are given in the same page itself."

After I finished playing around in Linux Lite, I clicked on the "Disconnect" button in the sidebar to the left:

At the next screen, I found that I could quickly reconnect and get back to the session that I was in.

Clicking on the "System stop" button back at the site ended the session.

Trying out distros at DistroTest.net is kinda slow on my hardware, but that's okay, it's still nice for taking a quick look at a distro. Great tool to have available out there!