statler

I like using Openbox, and I like Debian Stable and distros that use Debian Stable repos. Debian-based Crunchbang Linux (whose name is commonly abbreviated as simply "#!") uses Openbox by default. I've been meaning to take a look at it for a long time now, so I finally ran a Unetbootin live session of Crunchbang 10-20120207-i386, which includes Debian Squeeze repos in its /etc/apt/sources.list.

There's a new Crunchbang release in development, so I won't spend much time talking abot Crunchbang 10 (aka "Statler"). They give you Abiword and Gnumeric, but there's an entry in the menu for installing LibreOffice. The default web browser is Iceweasel, and Thunar's the default file manager. Geany is the default text editor -- cool, that's my favorite text editor! Like Semplice Linux, Crunchbang uses tint2 for the panel. If you want a GUI menu editor, they've got Obmenu.

Here's a look at the default desktop:

Hm. Not exactly awe-inspiring, but it's unique, and not all that bad once you get used to it. I've always said that a distro's default appearance doesn't matter much to me because I'm gonna change it anyway, and that as far as I'm concerned they could come with a black background and I'd be happy. Still, it's kind of a downer after seeing Sabayon's default appearance.

In this shot, I've got a few apps minimized on the two workspaces to show their icons on the tint2 panel, and the menu opened up to show the default office stuff:

Crunchbang has their own default Google homepage in Iceweasel:

I won't be adding Crunchbang here, at least not at this time. That's because I'm quite happy with straight Debian Stable, and I like Mepis and SalineOS, which are two other great alternatives when I want something else based on the current Stable.

No knock on Crunchbang, though It just happens that I came to those other distros first, and I see no reason to replace any of 'em with Crunchbang, and I don't think there's any reason to add #! to a lineup that already includes Debian, Mepis, and SalineOS. But it looks like a fine distro, and I'm really glad it's out there.

tweaking cinnamon

In Cinnamon, the dialog boxes are attached to the parent window. Whenever a dialog box is open, if you try to move it, its parent window will move along with it.

To disable this behavior, open up gconf-editor (you'll need to install it if you haven't already). Then:

desktop > windows > cinnamon > uncheck the box next to "attach_modal_dialogs"

Then Alt+F2. Then type r and press Enter. That'll restart the desktop, and the change will have taken effect.


A big "Thanks" to "bill," who mentioned this fix in this blog post at MPSHouse Blog.


There are still a few other things I'd liked to see in Cinnamon:

1. The ability to adjust the width of the panel; I've read that this is coming in the next version of Cinnamon.
2. Allow the Cinnamon Window List panel applet to show open windows from all desktops instead of only from the current desktop.
3. "Icons only" in the Window List instead of "Icons and Text." As I recall, this is something that I also couldn't change in GNOME 2.

fluxbox in sabayon

Sabayon 9 comes with Fluxbox, so I decided to log into a session and have a look around.

By default, they went with the Nyz style, which fits nicely with the default Sabayon 9 wallpaper.

But I found the default Fluxbox menu quite lacking; there was no mention of Chromium or Dolphin, for example -- under Net > Browsers, I found Konqueror and Lynx, and under File utils, I again found Konqueror.

But Konqueror is a very useful application to start out with in Fluxbox when the menu isn't set up yet. After navigating to the Home directory, I could get to applications via Go > Applications; or, I could do much the same thing by navigating to Settings > Show Sidebar, then clicking on the Services button on the left side.

That allowed me to open up applications without using the command line, even if they weren't shown in the default Fluxbox menu. I've used Fluxbox many times before, so I have copies of old ~/.fluxbox/menu files to work refer to. I saved a copy of Sabayon's original ~/.fluxbox/menu file, then proceeded to create my own menu.

That's good enough for now.

One nice feature about Fluxbox is the ability to tab applications at the top of one window. I don't use this feature much because having a panel kinda makes it redundant, but it's useful sometimes when you have a lot going on.

I thought Sabayon should have done a better job of setting up the default Fluxbox menu to show some of the available applications, but it's kinda fun setting it up yourself, too. You can always run applications by opening up a terminal; and, the main menu has a "Run" entry, which opens the "Run Program" box:

As with KDE, Fluxbox in Sabayon 9 is fast and beautiful. Nice touch by the devs to include it!

the new addition

After checking out the live session a little bit, I installed Sabayon 9 KDE in a multi-boot set-up with three other Linux distros, on my notebook. The installer seemed clear and sensible; the one thing that struck me as odd was the dig at Debian Stable in the slideshow that runs during the installation ("debian stable? pfft! OLD!!").

I spent some time looking over Sabayon's wiki, which has plenty of good and important information, especially for someone like me who is brand new to Sabayon. Its "Introduction" section includes installation instructions and info on what to do with a fresh installation, like how to get the system completely up-to-date using the Entropy package manager, with equo commands from the command line. A separate section of the wiki provides more info on Entropy. Here's a link to the Sabayon wiki.

Once I made sure the system was up-to-date, I customized things to my tastes:

It seemed like a good idea for me to get used to running the Entropy package manager from the command line, but I wanted to at least take a look at Rigo, Entropy's new GUI front-end. When you first start Rigo up, you see that they use it to send information notices, which strikes me as a very nice touch:

You can search for applications by name, or by category, and then install what you want.

There's a notification applet on the panel that tells you when updates become available. Now that my system is up-to-date, here's what it looks like when I right-click on the applet:

Clicking on "Use Packages web interface" opens up Chromium and takes you to http://packages.sabayon.org/. where you can get more info about what's available. Looks good.

For now, I think I'll stick with using Entropy from the command line.

The distro looks like it's put together well. Its desktop strikes me as being perhaps the most beautiful one I've seen. The documentation seems good and the system seems stable.  Sabayon 9 KDE seems quite fast and responsive, although updating and installing packages seems to take a long time. I mentioned a few reviews of this release in my blog post yesterday, and those would provide more detailed info than I would, but I will say that Sabayon looks like a very pleasant Linux distribution, and one that I hope to be running here for a very long time.

sabayon

I downloaded Sabayon 9 KDE today. I used UNetbootin to put it on a 4 GB flash drive, then booted into a live session on the Compaq Presario CQ56-219WM notebook.

My immediate impression? Best-looking default KDE desktop I've seen so far.

Sabayon 9 comes with KDE 4.8.3. LibreOffice 3.5.3.2, and Chromium 19.0.1.084.46 (0).

I've been reading mostly good things about this Gentoo-based distro, but this is the first time I've taken a look at it. DistroWatch has a nice review on it this week, and you can find a couple of other reviews at LinuxUser and Muktware.

Looking forward to trying an installation!

rolling

I've had to re-do my PCLinuxOS KDE desktop a few times now due to upgrades that have come down the pipe. A hassle, but it actually turns out to be mostly a trivial exercise, and not much of a big deal.

I guess the bottom line is that I'm still using the same PCLOS installation that I first put in back in August, 2010. Not a bad "rolling release."

grrr...

I pulled in updates in PCLinuxOS back on June 16th. Synaptic's history shows this change:

kde4-config (4.6.1-2pclos2011) to 4.6.1-3pclos2012

I was logged into E17 at the time; I logged into KDE today and found that my desktop now looks like this:

Wonderful. Now I have to get to work setting up my desktop all over again. Thanks a lot, guys.

Obviously, I could have avoided this hassle by backing up my system, or at least my configuration settings. I didn't notice anything at the PCLOS forums telling people that this upgrade would affect KDE like this, but perhaps I missed it; I don't visit those forums often.

Oh, well. Time to tweak.