MX Linux Forum

I am downloading MX17 A3 from Sourceforge but I don't see any announcement here or on MX blog.
Come on MX team! Don't be shy

Alpha = internal testing. It has some bugs that need to be fixed, it's not really ready for public testing, but it's not a secret either, if you want to try it feel free. We haven't set up a reporting thread, we feel like a first beta will show up soon, that's when we'll call people to test it.

what adrian said, plus...

networking will be broken. to fix, edit /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf and comment out the line that starts with "prepends" and ends with 127.0.0.1. then reboot or restart network-manager.

I am pretty sure it is premature, but I did a live USB of MX 17 alpha 3 and it booted as normal on my Lenovo G50 laptop.

Only oddity was that the icons didn’t have a cache.

Will spin it up on one of my Ryzen builds.

Please feel to PM me is any of the devs want some specific extra testing done and I can see what I can do.

SwampRabbit wrote:I am pretty sure it is premature, but I did a live USB of MX 17 alpha 3 and it booted as normal on my Lenovo G50 laptop.

Only oddity was that the icons didn’t have a cache.

Will spin it up on one of my Ryzen builds.

Please feel to PM me is any of the devs want some specific extra testing done and I can see what I can do.

I think we could add a postinst file that runs the cache generating command after the install for the icon packages that don't have that. Let's see if I can get that from a Debian package.

After some research, mainly here, it looks like they will be fine without caches, but the GUI might be a tad slower. Maybe we can just add a button to MX-Tweak to run "sudo update-icon-caches /usr/share/icons/*/"

I realize this is alpha and hence no announcement. Your blog says "1. There is no official "pre-alpha" released or 'in the wild" at this time. " so I thought it needs to be corrected :)
Alpha 4 is being uploaded as we speak...

What kernel?

Alpha 3 was using a version of 4.9 I think. Haven’t tested it on Ryzen yet, which I assume is why you asked.

Alpha4 external tester here. Hi everybody!
I cannot connect to WiFi on the live system. In nm-applet and nmtui the connection is available, but it doesn't connect after a minute of spinning. Edit: Likely related to what @dolphin_oracle wrote about dhcpd.

BTW: The graphical design of Xfce on MX 17 is excellent!!

I had no trouble getting the wireless to work. USB stick.

Use Unetbootin in Antix 16 with all updates, to make it.

eugen-b wrote:
BTW: The graphical design of Xfce on MX 17 is excellent!!

Yes! looking great. I just wish that MX themes lose that 3-D looking text on panel and Whisker menu ...

polaca57 wrote:
Yes! looking great. I just wish that MX themes lose that 3-D looking text on panel and Whisker menu ...

Could you post a screenshot so we can understand what you are referring to? Thanks.

There is now an Alpha4, by the way.

(mentioned during MX16.1 testing)
Note the blurred "LibreOffice" text when that menu item has focus (vs not) and the blur/graininess of the tooltip text.
The blur immediately disappeared when any other theme is selected (any, other than the 5 problematic themes I mentioned)



v---- top results from: https://www.google.com/#q=greybird+theme+blury

https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=11122 Screenshot of how XFCE Greybird theme displays icons on the desktop

https://github.com/horst3180/arc-theme/issues/607 Xfce: Text under desktop icons misaligned with shadow

https://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showt ... p?t=313216 Reload this Page [SOLVED] nice looking xfce xfce theme

Thanks, skidoo. I don't remember this issue nor reading your post in the 16.1 testing thread.

To put all relevant info into this thread, I'm pasting the link to your previous post here:

viewtopic.php?p=415465#p415465

...What led me to immediately visit "appearance }} Fonts" during first session was the "blurry" (onMouseover) text labels of items displayed within left pane of WhiskerMenu. Whelp, turns out antialiasing didn't fix the blur. The blurriness is due to a quirk within a few of the pre-installed GTK themes (one of which happens to be the now "default" theme in RC).

The following themes are "quirked":
Greybird variants -mx, -thin, -thick
Bluebird variants -thick, -thin

Your call ~~ Tweak those theme css files, or don't. Change default away from using a "quirked" theme, or don't.
As is, IMO, the blurriness of bolded fonts represents an immediate distraction/aggravation.

I don't know how to tweak css files beyond maybe changing text colour, but from your comments above, it would appear that the non-tweaked original Greybird worked properly in MX16.1? Did you try it?

Is anyone able to check on this in MX17a3 or a4? Maybe install the unaltered Greybird from Debian Stretch if it's not already in the MX alpha.

What exactly is the difference in the tweaked Greybird theme that would cause this? Because IIRC, the tweak was just to make the borders thicker and more "grabbable" for resizing, and the panel colour.

I won't be able to test anything on my home computer for some time.

Thanks.

I believe it is doing the same thing default in MX-17a4 like skidoo describes. It sort of "fuzzes" up the text and puts a drop shadow which helps less.

Other than that, no gripes or issues using MX-17a4, except the default desktop wall paper now, the odd green/blue on is nice, but it kinda hurts the eyes a bit. I really like the night sky one with the giant MX logo though, very creative!

Heehee. The green/purple one is coincidentally by skidoo. I really like its "neon Wimbledon" vibe. But yes, it's very bright.

D_O is just using a different default background on every alpha for fun. No decision has been made yet on final choice for default.

Could someone install the official Greybird to compare? Greybird-mx17 is the tweaked one.

Well the green/purple background (sorry I am blue green colorblind a bit) (or I forgot what it looked like already since I closed that VM) by skidoo is a fine background... just not my thing.

I don't think I've seen a bad user contributed wallpaper yet, pretty amazing work being done by everyone.

Here is the dmesg output with my WiFi connection problem: https://hastebin.com/ojobatihop.coffeescript

SwampRabbit wrote:I believe it is doing the same thing default in MX-17a4 like skidoo describes.
Screenshot_mx17a4.png

It sort of "fuzzes" up the text and puts a drop shadow which helps less.

Other than that, no gripes or issues using MX-17a4, except the default desktop wall paper now, the odd green/blue on is nice, but it kinda hurts the eyes a bit. I really like the night sky one with the giant MX logo though, very creative!

I see the slight "fuzzing" as well. I wonder if it has to do with the contrast of the light blue highlighting? I do not see the same with the xfce-4,6 theme that has a darker blue background. A guess on my part, not really understanding the science of visual acuity.

I created a persistent live USB via live-usb-maker (the live-usb-maker-gui said "device too small" no matter how I formatted and partitioned).

It boots fine with UEFI, toram, persistence work, but NetworkManager gives the same error. I even switched to another WiFi USB with a similar Ralink chip though, no luck. Is it possible to include ceni on the ISO?

Edit: I forgot to try what dolphin_oracle wrote:

dolphin_oracle wrote:what adrian said, plus...

networking will be broken. to fix, edit /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf and comment out the line that starts with "prepends" and ends with 127.0.0.1. then reboot or restart network-manager.

Edit2: No, that did not work for me, I edited dhcpclient.conf, rebooted - same issue.

What works necely is that my saved boot configuration (cheat codes) get a dedicated boot menu entry on a UEFI system - well done!

Networking has been fixed in a4.

skidoo wrote:(mentioned during MX16.1 testing)
Note the blurred "LibreOffice" text when that menu item has focus (vs not) and the blur/graininess of the tooltip text.
The blur immediately disappeared when any other theme is selected (any, other than the 5 problematic themes I mentioned)



v---- top results from: https://www.google.com/#q=greybird+theme+blury

https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=11122 Screenshot of how XFCE Greybird theme displays icons on the desktop

https://github.com/horst3180/arc-theme/issues/607 Xfce: Text under desktop icons misaligned with shadow

https://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showt ... p?t=313216 Reload this Page [SOLVED] nice looking xfce xfce theme

Thanks for posting the screenshots. That's exactly what I am seeing. To me blur is visible on Categories as well., it looks like fonts are 3-D.
I think fonts are bold with MX themes and that makes the effect stronger. Most other themes I tried don't have this font look.

This thread is now ancient history, since we are in the midst of testing Alpha 4.

Jerry3904 wrote:This thread is now ancient history, since we are in the midst of testing Alpha 4.

This is about Alpha 4

The thread says differently but whatever

there is a custom whisker definition in Greybird-mx17. If anyone knows more about hacking such things, take a look in /usr/share/themes/Greybird-mx17/apps (I think that's the path anyway) for whisker.rc and try your hand at modifying it.

Thanks!

dolphin_oracle wrote:there is a custom whisker definition in Greybird-mx17. If anyone knows more about hacking such things, take a look in /usr/share/themes/Greybird-mx17/apps (I think that's the path anyway) for whisker.rc and try your hand at modifying it.

Thanks!

Thanks for the tip.
Looks like changing engine(last section in file) text style to 0 and maybe text shading to 0.1 makes it looking great.

polaca57 wrote:

dolphin_oracle wrote:there is a custom whisker definition in Greybird-mx17. If anyone knows more about hacking such things, take a look in /usr/share/themes/Greybird-mx17/apps (I think that's the path anyway) for whisker.rc and try your hand at modifying it.

Thanks!

Thanks for the tip.
Looks like changing engine(last section in file) text style to 0 and maybe text shading to 0.1 makes it looking great.

thanks! Would you mind posting that whole modification?

dolphin_oracle wrote:

polaca57 wrote:

dolphin_oracle wrote:there is a custom whisker definition in Greybird-mx17. If anyone knows more about hacking such things, take a look in /usr/share/themes/Greybird-mx17/apps (I think that's the path anyway) for whisker.rc and try your hand at modifying it.

Thanks!

Thanks for the tip.
Looks like changing engine(last section in file) text style to 0 and maybe text shading to 0.1 makes it looking great.

thanks! Would you mind posting that whole modification?

File location is /usr/share/themes/Greybird-mx17/gtk-2.0/apps/
I only changed two lines in engine section. Works for me, gets rid of that 3-D effect.

style "whisker"
{
xthickness = 1
ythickness = 1

bg[NORMAL] = "#2B3640"
# bg[NORMAL] = shade (0.35, @bg_color)
bg[ACTIVE] = shade (0.65, @bg_color)
bg[PRELIGHT] = shade (0.85, @selected_bg_color)
bg[SELECTED] = shade (0.65, @selected_bg_color)

fg[NORMAL] = shade (0.9, @base_color)
fg[PRELIGHT] = @base_color
fg[ACTIVE] = shade (0.9, @base_color)
fg[SELECTED] = shade (0.9, @base_color)

text[NORMAL] = @text_color # Color for menu-item radio/checks.
base[NORMAL] = @bg_color # Color for menu-item radio/checks background.
text[PRELIGHT] = @base_color
text[SELECTED] = @base_color
text[ACTIVE] = @fg_color
text[INSENSITIVE] = @text_color

engine "murrine" {
roundness = 0
glowstyle = 0
glazestyle = 0
textstyle = 0
text_shade = 0.1
}
}
widget "whiskermenu-window*" style "whisker"

Thanks!

polaca57 wrote:

dolphin_oracle wrote:

polaca57 wrote: Thanks for the tip.
Looks like changing engine(last section in file) text style to 0 and maybe text shading to 0.1 makes it looking great.

thanks! Would you mind posting that whole modification?

File location is /usr/share/themes/Greybird-mx17/gtk-2.0/apps/
I only changed two lines in engine section. Works for me, gets rid of that 3-D effect.

style "whisker"
{
xthickness = 1
ythickness = 1

bg[NORMAL] = "#2B3640"
# bg[NORMAL] = shade (0.35, @bg_color)
bg[ACTIVE] = shade (0.65, @bg_color)
bg[PRELIGHT] = shade (0.85, @selected_bg_color)
bg[SELECTED] = shade (0.65, @selected_bg_color)

fg[NORMAL] = shade (0.9, @base_color)
fg[PRELIGHT] = @base_color
fg[ACTIVE] = shade (0.9, @base_color)
fg[SELECTED] = shade (0.9, @base_color)

text[NORMAL] = @text_color # Color for menu-item radio/checks.
base[NORMAL] = @bg_color # Color for menu-item radio/checks background.
text[PRELIGHT] = @base_color
text[SELECTED] = @base_color
text[ACTIVE] = @fg_color
text[INSENSITIVE] = @text_color

engine "murrine" {
roundness = 0
glowstyle = 0
glazestyle = 0
textstyle = 0
text_shade = 0.1
}
}
widget "whiskermenu-window*" style "whisker"

Just to let you guys know, we are incorporating this tweak. Should come down as an update to our mx-greybird-themes package. Thanks again!

I am running MX-17 a4 on one of my ssd drives and I am seeing better and better appearance. It looks awesome now. One thing I would like to change without changing the theme, Greybird-mx17, is buttons. They are not matching flat looking icons of Papirus icon theme, they would be much better looking flatter.
How could I make them flatter? Thanks!

polaca57 wrote:I am running MX-17 a4 on one of my ssd drives and I am seeing better and better appearance. It looks awesome now. One thing I would like to change without changing the theme, Greybird-mx17, is buttons. They are not matching flat looking icons of Papirus icon theme, they would be much better looking flatter.
How could I make them flatter? Thanks!

The button look is built into the Greybird style. Currently the only simple way for a user to get flat buttons is to change the window style to a flat one.

I don't know much but I suspect you need to change some of the artwork in the "assets" sub-folder in the greybird theme?

If I install this alpha 4, will i receive the future updates until the official stable release ?
Is it stable enough to work with everyday ?

monsieurzik wrote:If I install this alpha 4, will i receive the future updates until the official stable release ?
Is it stable enough to work with everyday ?

I've been using it for a while, so its pretty stable. But officially, we do not support updates from alpha.

Generally alpha version is not intended for production purpose. I don't think it's different with MX. If I were you I would wait except if you want to help to test.

From Wikipedia:

The alpha phase of the release life cycle is the first phase to begin software testing (alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, used as the number 1). In this phase, developers generally test the software using white-box techniques. Additional validation is then performed using black-box or gray-box techniques, by another testing team. Moving to black-box testing inside the organization is known as alpha release.

Alpha software can be unstable and could cause crashes or data loss. Alpha software may not contain all of the features that are planned for the final version. In general, external availability of alpha software is uncommon in proprietary software, while open source software often has publicly available alpha versions. The alpha phase usually ends with a feature freeze, indicating that no more features will be added to the software. At this time, the software is said to be feature complete.

I posted yesterday on our FB page that, as we done before, there would be no upgrade path from an alpha (and one reader got bent out of shape about it...).

It is hard to please everyone.
Dissenters might prefer sid.
They offer an upgrade path for alphas.

Richard wrote:...Dissenters might prefer sid. They offer an upgrade path for alphas.

That's because sid is in essence a perennial alpha.

That's said a bit tongue in cheek though; I used Semplice (sid-based) for 4+ years and liked it.

My experience of a4 so far is good.
*I notice the user name/pw fields in the installer seemed a bit narrow (height), a minor thing
There were many updated menu/MX Tools and panel icons etc. which look clear and informative (eg. codecs)
*What I have noticed is that my USB wifi dongle does not get detected reliably during boot, such that it does not power on (LED stays dark). Unplugging and re-plugging does not seem to help. No problem tethering with android phone, by comparison.
The new wifi icon does look a bit unusual with the reddish accent that hints at 'not working', even when it is..

Much work and bigger issues I'm sure for the development team. The wifi component is the only real concern here in testing.
Cheers
Mick

Thanks. We are addressing the installer issue but it hasn't made it into the repos yet.

Hi, I am new on the forum. I am presently running MX17a5 in live USB mode and just want to help you with testing. As far as I can see it feels good enough to install on this Asus EeePC 1000h netbook. I have used MX 14 on previous occasions with great success so I will check in with a report from time to time. Thank you.

Thank you. Certainly worthy of an install and runs quite nicely. It is an alpha, however and as you probably know there is no upgrade path to final. Having said that your testing on hardware will be appreciated.

We should close any threads for deprecated testing releases now that newer ones are out.

Stevo wrote:We should close any threads for deprecated testing releases now that newer ones are out.

Yes, I have been mulling that over for some time. Only the current should be open. It shall be done.