rebecca

Taking a look at Linux Mint 17.1 "Rebecca" -- the default spin, with the Cinnamon desktop. I'm trying the live session from a flash drive, done with Unetbootin. Here's a shot of the default desktop:

One nice thing about Cinnamon is the Nemo file manager, forked from GNOME's Nautilus file manager by the Mint folks. Glad to see an option for dual-pane viewing!

Cinnamon has a nice automatic wallpaper changer. Not as good as what you can do in KDE, but better than what you get in GNOME or Xfce.

In Cinnamon, It isn't obvious at first how to use different workspaces, or how to add workspaces (there are two workspaces by default). If you go to System Settings/Control Center > Preferences > Hot Corners and enable hovering for one of the hot corners, then choose "Show all workspaces" from that hot corner's drop-down menu, you can use that hot corner to bring up the "Expo" view, which will show you all of the workspaces.

Or, in the Control Center's Applets window, you can add an Expo applet to the panel so you can bring up Expo that way.

There are other ways to get to Expo, too... In any case, from Expo you can add/remove workspaces, and switch workspaces from there. Unfortunately, you can't change workspaces with the mouse wheel on an open desktop like you can do in Openbox. However, you can add the Workspace switcher applet to the panel and use the mouse wheel on that to switch workspaces.

Mint 17.1 ships with a nice collection of software, including Firefox 33.0 (customized for Linux Mint).

Linux Mint still looks like a great option for folks new to Linux, and I think it would be fine for experienced Linux users as well, although I have no plans to install it here. Nice set-up; pleasant, attractive default appearances; easy to get up and running quickly. The live session booted up nicely from the flash drive, and everything seemed snappy and smooth. I encountered no major issues with any of the applications I tried. Pretty much what I've come to expect from this distro. Nice job, from what I could tell!

For more information, see Mint's page at DistroWatch and the Mint 17.1 "Rebecca" Cinnamon release announcement.

another netinst, more practice

I did another Debian Jessie netinst (again with only Openbox). Just wanted to feel satisfied that I've got the process down.

I decided to install via flash drive this time, and to use the amd64 .iso instead of the i386 one. To do this, I went to the Debian Installer page (http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/), scrolled down to the Current daily snapshots section under "other images (netboot, USB stick, etc.), clicked on amd64, then clicked on the hd-media folder. Downloaded the boot.img.gz file.

I basically followed the steps from http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch04s03.html.en, section 4.3.2. "Manually copying files to the USB stick."

Here's a list of the packages that I installed, not including the dependencies brought in by those:

sudo xorg openbox obmenu obconf tint2 synaptic lightdm chromium xfce4-terminal geany nitrogen spacefm iceweasel gparted galculator libreoffice-calc libreoffice-writer vlc menu ntp mirage geeqie localepurge gksu alsa-base alsa-utils volumeicon-alsa wicd linux-firmware-nonfree linux-firmware-free

jessie

Installed Debian Jessie, which is still the current Debian Testing, from debian-jessie-DI-b2-i386-netinst.iso. This was my first time doing a Debian net installation. The netinst .iso was about 291 MB.

Packages I've installed include the following (plus the dependencies that these brought in): sudo, xorg, openbox, obmenu, obconf, tint2, synaptic, lightdm, chromium, xfce4-terminal, geany, nitrogen, spacefm, iceweasel, gparted, galculator, libreoffice-calc, libreoffice-writer, vlc, menu (for Debian menu), ntp, mirage, geeqie, localepurge, gksu, alsa-base, alsa-utils, pavucontrol (which brings in pulseaudio and other packages), xfce4-mixer (that brings in xfce4-panel and other packages), volumeicon-alsa (the command volumeicon puts the icon into the tint2 system tray).

Here's a screenshot:

okay, i will

new archbang release

ArchBang's Mr Green has announced a new release for 2015, which can be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/archbang/files/.

I'm still using the ArchBang installation that I added from archbang-14.06.2013-i686.iso, back in June 2013, and it's running fine, fully updated; so, I can't think of a reason for me to downloaded this latest release, unless I was interested in testing it out, which I'm not.

For whatever reason, this release has not yet been mentioned at DistroWatch. Also, good luck finding any recent ArchBang reviews -- the latest review shown at DW's ArchBang page is from 2013.

In my experience, ArchBang's a very nice distro for those who like Openbox and Arch Linux, but who want a quicker, easier installation than you get with Arch. It's basically Arch with some things already set up for you, even though many "real" Arch users would say that no Arch derivative is really Arch.

xfce's built-in random wallpaper changer

I'm using the built-in random wallpaper changer in Xfce 4.10.3 in Arch; not the greatest, but it works. 

It can't pull random images from a directory; I found that I had to create an image list file. This can be done manually by creating a text file (looks like you can name it whatever you want) where the first line of the file is:

# xfce backdrop list

Then, on each line after that, add a filename for a wallpaper image (use the full path). For example, the contents of the image list file can look something like this:

# xfce backdrop list

/home/username/image1.png

/home/username/image2.png

/home/username/image3.png

...etc.

Then go to the Background tab in Desktop Settings (Menu > Settings > Desktop > Background tab):

In the "Image" section, select "Image list."

There won't be any wallpapers displayed under "Images" yet; the third button below the list of images allows you to "Create a new list, or load an existing one":

Click on that button, navigate to the image list file you just created, select it, and click "Open." Your desktop should now be displaying one of the images from your image list file.

Choose a style from the "Style" dropbox:

Select "Change the background (in minutes)" and enter a time interval. Mine is set to change every hour.

Alternatively, the image list file can be created by clicking on the "Create a new list, or load an existing one" button, choosing a directory for your image list file to go in, typing in a name for the image list file, and clicking the "Open" button. Then use the "Add an image to this list" button to add wallpaper images:

If you then open up the image list file in a text editor, you'll see the filenames of the wallpaper images that you just selected. Mine looks like this:

Later, you can add new images to the list manually (using a text editor) or by using the GUI's "Add an image to this list" button; either way works fine.

If you don't want to wait for your desktop background to change according to the time interval you've set, the following command will reload Xfce and randomly select a new wallpaper image from your image list file:

$ xfdesktop --reload

I create a panel button or a menu entry that uses that command, and I just click on that whenever I want to change to a new, random wallpaper.

I've noticed that the wallpaper changer GUI can be a bit buggy. For example, I see in the list of images that the last wallpaper is shown multiple times even though there's only one line for it in my image list file:

That seems to be a minor issue. Still, some users will not be satisfied with Xfce's built-in random wallpaper changer, and will want to install something else to use, like maybe the Variety Wallpaper Changer (see: http://peterlevi.com/variety/). I haven't tried Variety in Arch (I do use it in a few other distros), but it's available from the Community repo: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/variety/

spacefm still comatose

Still no news about the SpaceFM file manager. Its developer, IgnorantGuru, announced a "hiatus" from his public projects back in April, and there's been no work done on SpaceFM since then. I wonder if IgnorantGuru will ever come back to the project. I've seen some updates coming down the pipe in Arch every now and then -- maintenance updates, I guess -- but that's it.

I'm still using SpaceFM, and it's still working fine; but, for future installations, I'm gonna go back to using Dolphin, even for non-KDE installations. (That's the only file manager I'm using in openSUSE 13.2 KDE, by the way.) I do like the Sunflower File Manager, but not as much as I like Dolphin, and I figure that there's a better chance that Dolphin will be around long-term than there is that Sunflower will. Even with all the KDE stuff Dolphin brings in, it's still worth it to add Dolphin to non-KDE installations; in my opinion, Dolphin's the best Linux file manager out there.

"Small" or "one-man" projects can be great but it stinks when they die.


Some links:

IgnorantGuru's blog: https://igurublog.wordpress.com/

SpaceFM home page: http://ignorantguru.github.io/spacefm/

Arch Linux forums thread: "SpaceFM - A Customizable File Manager"