• From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 1,722

Topic: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

I was planning exhaustive tests and a long erudite review, but a laptop with (now solved) network issues had Statler Openbox put on it to try and fix them, so here's a short superficial review instead. The network problem was elsewhere, but I think Crunchbang will be a perfect match for this little Sont Vaio with 1GB of RAM but a rather slow 1 point something GHz Centrino CPU (longer battery life is the payoff there).

So a few things that struck me:

*) Overall there seem to be many small improvements over Alpha 1. If the next  version is as better again it should be really impressive!

*) Visually very nice.

(specifically)

1) There doesn't seem to be an Openbox equivalent to the GTK Shiki-Statler theme: http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/post/77429/#p77429

2) I couldn't find a memtest in the Grub menu. It's not a major issue because you can use the live session, but...

3) It's nice to have a custom Grub background image, but the menu looked a bit cluttered to me. Can font sizes be reduced a bit for less essential bits? Can that white box be thinned down or removed?

4) A few apps I expected to find were not included by default: htop, rsync... Especially, can I put in a plea for as many network tools as possible to be included? If your network's down you're in a Catch 22 situation sad

5) Nice to see the Openbox menu coming back with all those neat config entries.

6) Happy to note that man pages can now be scrolled with the up and down arrow keys. (That's the sort of small improvement I meant.)

Anyway it's looking good! Philip, your work is most appreciated. smile

Last edited by johnraff (2010-07-31 16:19:22)

John
------------------------
( a boring Japan blog , and idle twitterings )
“There is more Unix-nature in one line of shell script than there is in ten thousand lines of C.” - Master Foo

johnraff's Website

  • pvsage
  • Internal Affairs
  • Offline
  • From: Section Six
  • Registered: 2009-10-18
  • Posts: 4,911

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

The man page scrolling is simply a matter of including the less package.  (I know, calling it "less" is counterintuitive, but there's this whole thing behind the name... see `man less` for everything about that.)

I see Openbox themes for both Shiki-Statler and Shiki-Statler-Dark.  Their colors are identical, but they're there.

I think having as many connectivity options as possible is always a good thing, especially considering how many of us rely on wifi or some other wireless networking.

while ( ! ( succeed = try() ) );
  • From: Scotland
  • Registered: 2009-12-29
  • Posts: 330

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

I was really surprised not to see htop installed, was there any gui monitor?

  • From: Austin, TX
  • Registered: 2009-11-17
  • Posts: 223

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

less is more!

  • From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 1,722

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

pvsage wrote:

The man page scrolling is simply a matter of including the less package.

Ah, then alpha2 included less (I was surprised not to find it in alpha1 to be honest) and less somehow involves itself in the way 'man' works?

I see Openbox themes for both Shiki-Statler and Shiki-Statler-Dark.  Their colors are identical, but they're there.

That's what I meant - the Shiki-Statler theme doesn't match the GTK theme of the same name, it's just a copy of the Dark theme.

John
------------------------
( a boring Japan blog , and idle twitterings )
“There is more Unix-nature in one line of shell script than there is in ten thousand lines of C.” - Master Foo

johnraff's Website

  • pvsage
  • Internal Affairs
  • Offline
  • From: Section Six
  • Registered: 2009-10-18
  • Posts: 4,911

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

The default behavior for man is to use less if it's installed; if less isn't installed, man uses more as a fallback.

while ( ! ( succeed = try() ) );
  • From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 1,722

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

Cool, if all it takes to get that man behaviour is to install less then I'm all for it! smile
So that's why 'man man' said nothing about how to search man pages - it's in 'man less'.
(There's also an app called "most" btw.)

Couple more things I forgot to mention:

7) During installation, Debian said there were some "missing non-free firmware files":
iwlwifi-3945-2.ucode
iwlwifi-3945-1.ucode
and asked if I wanted it to look for them on the hard disk. I clicked "yes", things seemed to go OK, and wireless seems to be working fine, but there was no response about whether those files were found or not. Maybe they were included on the Crunchbang iso?

8) When unmounting USB sticks, exo-mount puts up a popup about data being written and to wait, but it has to be closed by clicking "OK". Meanwhile the notification daemon has already put up a passive window about the stick being safe to remove. A minor irritation which didn't happen under Ubuntu - maybe Debian will fix it eventually.

9) I can't check this any more because while trying to get the network working I replaced network-manager with wicd ( the problem turned out not to be network-manager's fault roll ) but in order to make changes to network-manager's settings you had to run 'gksu nm-connection-editor'. You should get a popup authorization window from nm-applet when making changes.

10) The Shiki-Statler-Dark theme is very nice-looking, but some bits are hard to see, like scroll bars. Just a little bit more contrast there maybe?

11) I installed update-manager and its dependencies and recommends, but when I try to run it I get 

[CRITICAL:UpdateManager.Application] Invalid implemention name CrunchBang

I know Update Manager isn't standard Statler issue, but I like to use it, and this problem might have implications with other apps too, dpending on what that message means...

12) I couldn't edit the repositories from Synaptic's menu ( Settings>Repositories ). It just puts up a "repositories changed" popup. I know that interface isn't much more user-friendly than just editing /etc/apt/sources.list, but still...

Last edited by johnraff (2010-07-30 05:17:14)

John
------------------------
( a boring Japan blog , and idle twitterings )
“There is more Unix-nature in one line of shell script than there is in ten thousand lines of C.” - Master Foo

johnraff's Website

  • pvsage
  • Internal Affairs
  • Offline
  • From: Section Six
  • Registered: 2009-10-18
  • Posts: 4,911

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

johnraff wrote:

(There's also an app called "most" btw.)

Yup, some of us have been using that to get prettier man pages:
http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … man-pages/

johnraff wrote:

*) When unmounting USB sticks, exo-mount puts up a popup about data being written and to wait, but it has to be closed by clicking "OK". Meanwhile the notification daemon has already put up a passive window about the stick being safe to remove. A minor irritation which didn't happen under Ubuntu - maybe Debian will fix it eventually.

I agree, that popup window is annoying.  Anyone know how to tell it to shut the heck up already? tongue

johnraff wrote:

*) I installed update-manager and its dependencies and recommends, but when I try to run it I get 

[CRITICAL:UpdateManager.Application] Invalid implemention name CrunchBang

I know Update Manager isn't standard Statler issue, but I like to use it, and this problem might have implications with other apps too, dpending on what that message means...

I think that message just means that the Debian maintainers of update-manager haven't told it about the CrunchBang repository.  Maybe if there's enough interest in this package, Philip might be persuaded to put a custom version in the CrunchBang repo.

johnraff wrote:

*) I couldn't edit the repositories from Synaptic's menu ( Settings>Repositories ). It just puts up a "repositories changed" popup. I know that interface isn't much more user-friendly than just editing /etc/apt/sources.list, but still...

I think being able to edit repos from the Synaptic menu is added by Canonical, and is therefore only available in *buntu and distros downstream from *buntu like Mint.  The inline search function introduced in Jaunty is another Canonical enhancement to Synaptic that I miss, but am willing to live without.

while ( ! ( succeed = try() ) );
  • From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 1,722

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

pvsage wrote:
johnraff wrote:

*) I couldn't edit the repositories from Synaptic's menu ( Settings>Repositories ). It just puts up a "repositories changed" popup. I know that interface isn't much more user-friendly than just editing /etc/apt/sources.list, but still...

I think being able to edit repos from the Synaptic menu is added by Canonical, and is therefore only available in *buntu and distros downstream from *buntu like Mint.

But the entry is there in the menu, in the Debian version. What's more, in Alpha1 it worked, although the interface is nowhere near as easy to use as the Ubuntu version. I think there's an Ubuntu app called "software sources" or something that plugs in there; in Debian it's much more primitive.

The inline search function introduced in Jaunty is another Canonical enhancement to Synaptic that I miss, but am willing to live without.

Likewise.

Last edited by johnraff (2010-07-24 16:18:22)

John
------------------------
( a boring Japan blog , and idle twitterings )
“There is more Unix-nature in one line of shell script than there is in ten thousand lines of C.” - Master Foo

johnraff's Website

  • pvsage
  • Internal Affairs
  • Offline
  • From: Section Six
  • Registered: 2009-10-18
  • Posts: 4,911

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

^ Sorry, I thought you were referring to whatever it is in the *buntu version of Synaptic that checks for available mirrors.  (I understand there's a CLI app for this available in Debian, but I couldn't get that to work with Statler a1.)  You can't edit the repos in that dialog box?  That is weird.  I never really install anything via Synaptic; I only use it to look at the more detailed info about packages that isn't shown by aptitude or apt-get.

while ( ! ( succeed = try() ) );
  • From: Scotland
  • Registered: 2009-12-29
  • Posts: 330

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

@johnraff, because for an obvious reason something is not quite like in ubuntu, that does not mean it's "primitive". Sorry, but the option to edit repositories is available in synaptic. The separate "Software Sources" entry in menus is just wasting space, and by the way, it is available in full-blown gnome desktop in debian.

  • From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 1,722

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

bozhkov wrote:

@johnraff, because something is not quite like in ubuntu, that does not mean it's "primitive".

I agree completely, but in this case the option I had available in Synaptic on Alpha 1 was very little different from editing the sources.list file directly. I think it's fair to call that "primitive" compared with what the Ubuntu version offered.

the option to edit repositories is available in synaptic.

It wasn't for me - that's the bug I was reporting! When I tried to access that option I just got a popup window saying "the repositories have changed", but no access to the repositories.

John
------------------------
( a boring Japan blog , and idle twitterings )
“There is more Unix-nature in one line of shell script than there is in ten thousand lines of C.” - Master Foo

johnraff's Website

  • From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 1,722

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

I keep forgetting stuff I should have put in:

13) Many people have already reported the "missing OS in Grub menu" problem, and I also posted it here but it's important, because if you don't know it can be fixed by running 'sudo update-grub' you might bring in some heavy-duty tools and mess up your system even more...

14) Now  I often miss something important and obvious, but I can't see any reason why lxsession should be in autostart.sh or in the system at all. If you start it it seems to exit immediately and leaves no processes running. If I've got it right ( roll ) it needs to be launched with the option '-session sessionname' which directs it to some file in /etc/xdg/lxsession/sessionname which will list some processes to be started up. Now, in Crunchbang that stuff is all handled by autostart.sh anyway. The session-saving features of lxsession were dropped a couple of years ago because they were too buggy, so now the app serves no function at all... (as far as I can see). Feel free to put me right on this.

Last edited by johnraff (2010-07-30 05:17:49)

John
------------------------
( a boring Japan blog , and idle twitterings )
“There is more Unix-nature in one line of shell script than there is in ten thousand lines of C.” - Master Foo

johnraff's Website

  • From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 1,722

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

Another theme thing:

15) This comes up on IceWeasel so I suppose it's a GTK theme thing, but if you go Edit>Preferences or Tools>Add-ons the inactive tabs are almost the same colour as the text on them, making the label unreadable.

Re #12 (I've added numbers smile ) - the Synaptic "software souurces"/"repositories" thing - the gui app that does it is called software-properties-gtk and it's available in Debian and Ubuntu both, and comes with Statler, unless it came in as a dependency of something I installed. You can launch it on #!9.04 with 'gksu software-properties-gtk' but that command on Statler alpha2 gives this error:

(gksu:3716): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_str_has_prefix: assertion `str != NULL' failed

So there seems to be some bug there at the moment.

John
------------------------
( a boring Japan blog , and idle twitterings )
“There is more Unix-nature in one line of shell script than there is in ten thousand lines of C.” - Master Foo

johnraff's Website

  • From: California, USA
  • Registered: 2008-11-29
  • Posts: 8,647

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

johnraff wrote:

15) This comes up on IceWeasel so I suppose it's a GTK theme thing, but if you go Edit>Preferences or Tools>Add-ons the inactive tabs are almost the same colour as the text on them, making the label unreadable.

Confirmation screenshot (this is with Shiki-Statler-Dark):

http://omploader.org/vNTM5dA/2010-07-30--1280504996_607x253_scrot.png

Note: ** Please read before posting **

BTW if you wish to contact me, send me an e-mail instead of a PM.
  • From: The Chatsubo
  • Registered: 2010-04-03
  • Posts: 778

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

Having finally set up Statler a2 (Openbox), I have to say how much I appreciated the cb-welcome script (particularly the LAMP stack setup!) - it made several things really easy and is much appreciated! :-)

"Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?" Walt Whitman, 'To You'.
  • From: Nagoya, Japan
  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 1,722

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

pvsage wrote:
johnraff wrote:

(There's also an app called "most" btw.)

Yup, some of us have been using that to get prettier man pages:
http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … man-pages/

So you have! Not bad, but a little bit gaudy - is there any way to tweak the colours - tone them down a bit?

johnraff wrote:

*) I installed update-manager and its dependencies and recommends, but when I try to run it I get 

[CRITICAL:UpdateManager.Application] Invalid implemention name CrunchBang

I know Update Manager isn't standard Statler issue, but I like to use it, and this problem might have implications with other apps too, dpending on what that message means...

I think that message just means that the Debian maintainers of update-manager haven't told it about the CrunchBang repository.

Update Manager works on Crunchbang 9.04, so the Ubuntu devs have added data about Crunchbang?

John
------------------------
( a boring Japan blog , and idle twitterings )
“There is more Unix-nature in one line of shell script than there is in ten thousand lines of C.” - Master Foo

johnraff's Website

  • Registered: 2008-11-24
  • Posts: 1,858

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

Update manager reads the repositories from /etc/apt/sources.list and so it is irrelevant whether the devs are aware of CrunchBang or not.

  • pvsage
  • Internal Affairs
  • Offline
  • From: Section Six
  • Registered: 2009-10-18
  • Posts: 4,911

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

^ So whence comes the "invalid implementation" message? hmm  Johnraff isn't the first person to mention this issue with update-manager here.

@johnraff:  I don't know if you can specify colors for most, but the vast majority of xterm emulators allow you to change how colors are displayed.  If you're using Terminator, the Linux color scheme is a little more subdued than the Tango scheme.

while ( ! ( succeed = try() ) );
  • Registered: 2008-11-24
  • Posts: 1,858

Re: First impressions of Alpha 2 Openbox

My bad, thought we were talkin' 9.04 for a second. smile