the latest from antiX

antiX-19 "Marielle Franco" was released a few days ago. Here's a shot of the default IceWM desktop:

antiX-19, based on Debian Buster, ships without systemd (for those who want to avoid that init system). This very lightweight distro packs lots of great tools, and it's a great option for installations on low-spec computers, or even simply for running live sessions from a flash drive. It's one of the speediest distros I've tried.

Four different window managers (IceWM, fluxbox, jwm, and herbstluftwm) are included. Users can switch between a few different variations of IceWM, fluxbox, and jwm from within the current session (Desktop > Other Desktops), which is convenient:

I didn't see an easy way to switch to herbstluftwm. Here's a link to a tutorial, for those who are interested: https://herbstluftwm.org/tutorial.html

Among the items I found in the menu were Firefox ESR, Galculator, Geany, MPV Media Player, GParted, Leafpad,  the LibreOffice suite, Mirage, muPDF, nano, qpdfview, rox-filer file manager, roxterm, SpaceFM, Synaptic, and XMMS. I also found a handful of antiX's own special tools (Applications > antiX), like the very useful Live USB Maker:

I thought it was an interesting choice to give antiX-19 the codename "Marielle Franco". She was a Brazilian politician, feminist, and human rights activist; check it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marielle_Franco

For more info about antiX-19, see the release announcement: https://antixlinux.com/antix-19-isos-available/

again, the gecko - leap 42.2

I replaced openSUSE "Leap" 42.1 with a fresh installation of the newly released 42.2 (I downloaded openSUSE-Leap-42.2-DVD-x86_64.iso). openSUSE no longer offers a live session iso; there's a full, DVD-sized installation iso, well over 4 GB, and a network installation iso (see: https://software.opensuse.org/422/en).

I went with a fresh installation instead of an in-place upgrade. Desktop choices offered by the installer: KDE, GNOME, Server (Text Mode), Xfce, Minimal X Window, and Enlightenment. I chose the KDE Plasma desktop, which is at version 5.8.3 in openSUSE 42.2.

After about 30 minutes with the excellent openSUSE installer, I booted into KDE Plasma 5, in Folder View:

Nice, but of course I had to come up with my own setup:

As with the previous release, the KDE installation of openSUSE 42.2 provides a login option for the IceWM window manager, for when you're in the mood for a lightweight setup:

I'll probably add Fluxbox eventually, but there's enough to explore in the KDE and IceWM setups to keep me happy for now.

I was reluctant to replace 42.1; that release was working great for me. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But I enjoy doing Linux installations, so I took the plunge, and openSUSE 42.2 hasn't disappointed. openSUSE is still one of the best Linux distros out there.

The release has a support life cycle of about 18 months, but the next Leap release is expected in November 2017.

Jesse Smith's review of openSUSE 42.2 at DistroWatch: https://www.distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20161128#opensuse

icewm in opensuse 12.2

I've been running openSUSE 12.2 (KDE) for some time now. Yesterday, I decided to try IceWM, which comes installed with this release. By default, the desktop looks something like this, with the desktop right-click menu opened up:

You'll notice that there's no clock on the taskbar, and no icons for CPU status or network status, even if you make sure those are enabled in IceWM's preferences file. I went into YaST2 - Software Management and found that the package icewm-lite was installed by default; working on a tip from someone at the openSUSE forums, I installed the icewm-default package (which uninstalled the icewm-lite package).

I logged out and back in, and the clock, CPU status, and network status icons were now visible on the taskbar.

I found information and documentation for IceWM at their home site (http://www.icewm.org/). Different distros put the system-wide configuration files in different locations; I ran the following command to see where they were in this release:

$ rpm -q -l icewm

From the output of that command, I saw that IceWM's config files were located in the /etc/icewm directory. I created ~/.icewm and copied the default config files into that directory, then used those to customize IceWM.

IceWM's manual pretty much explains everything, but other nice tips can be found out on the internet. I used xli to set my wallpaper (other folks use feh or icewmbg to set the desktop background), edited the menu file, and did some other tweaks like adding application icons and turning on MenuMouseTracking in the preferences file (so that menus track the mouse with no mouse buttons held, which is the behavior most people are probably used to).

I decided to stay with the default theme for now.

More themes can be made available by installing the icewm-themes package; I'm told that you can get a nice control panel by adding the iceWMCP and and iceWMCP-addons packages, but I haven't tried those yet because I'm okay with simply editing the configuration files.

I like when distros ship with a light-weight window manager to log into as an option to the default desktop environment. Sabayon did the same kind of thing, including Fluxbox with the default KDE; rumor has it that Mepis (another KDE distro) will do something similar with its next release. Personally, I think Openbox would be a nice choice, but one advantage that IceWM and Fluxbox have over that window manager is that they come with their own native panel/taskbar; with Openbox, something like fbpanel has to be added.

I haven't played around much with IceWM before now, but I'm already liking it as much as I like Openbox and Fluxbox.