First impressions (feedback) and persistence
Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2014 5:01 pm
Guess I could've contributed to another ongoing thread but don't want to break into its cosiness but have just come upon MX-14 whilst looking at an unrelated thread and thought I'd investigate.
In particular. I was intrigued by two features close to my heart - Persistence and Remastering. Persistence offers the possibility of creating a useful rescue system (as Puppy can be) and also a customised install directly from usb. Of course, Remastering also offers the means to creating a customised iso after an initial install.
1> First of all hardware.
I'm happy to report that graphics support in MX-14 works flawlessly, including compositing, across my five machines without even the need for cheatcodes! These consist of Intel Mobile 4 GMA 4500M on the Tosh laptop, ATI Radeon X1200 on the netbook, ATI Radeon 9250, ATI Radeon 9550 and nVidia 6200 LE on the desktops (all old stuff!).
Similarly wifi n/w connects without a hitch.
From my perspective these two features are crucial.
Sound is rather more problematical with weak sound on the laptop and netbook and none at all on two desktops (CMedia CM6501) with error warnings generated. Oddly, when trying to play sound files vlc is usually launched but on one occasion clementine was the default.
Printing is also proving problematical and localhost:631 "server refused the connection"! Perhaps not enough of Cups is included by default? Hplip also failed although it did see my wifi printer it complained about not finding ppd.
2> However, so far no joy with Persistence. There seems to be two possibilities offered for setting this up - Grub menu options and a desktop dialogue but am not sure whether these are independent methods or inter-related with the necessity to use both? First of all tried the desktop dialogue which seemed to take me round in circles but nevertheless rootfs and homefs have been created. Yet they are obviously not being utilised as I have achieved no level of persistence whatsoever. Next tried the grub offerings but all I get is a (persistent!) nagging to change the root password to something more secure. I have searched for information on setting it up but so far have drawn a blank.
3> Xfce is my favourite wm, especially when used in conjunction with Compiz and Screenlets. The latter always works impeccably with xfce (and Mepis 8/11 kde) but although available and installed (appears in menu) it fails to launch. This is often because dbus-x11 isn't installed but it is, though "screenlets-pack-all" and "screenlets-pack-basic" are not available even after enabling testrepo and reload? Compiz is only offered as one limited entry (compiz-fusion-bcop) in Synaptic with no plugins, fusion icon etc offered?
4> As a further observation but in common with almost all distros, why is there more than one type of password dialogue. Although just a niggle, one would expect a consistent appearance. After all, it is just a simple function that needs to return just one boolean value regardless of the caller electing to use decoration/theme that doesn't conform to the general appearance of other windows. Isn't there a standard function available as part of the common libraries?
5> Is there an intention to include a splash screen as a cosmetic between grub and desktop? However, boots and shuts down impressively quickly (though, for some strange reason, required me to press enter to complete shutdown on one machine) and is credibly responsive running from usb. Interesting to see a graphical grub menu rather than the severely text one when unebootin has been used!
In particular. I was intrigued by two features close to my heart - Persistence and Remastering. Persistence offers the possibility of creating a useful rescue system (as Puppy can be) and also a customised install directly from usb. Of course, Remastering also offers the means to creating a customised iso after an initial install.
1> First of all hardware.
I'm happy to report that graphics support in MX-14 works flawlessly, including compositing, across my five machines without even the need for cheatcodes! These consist of Intel Mobile 4 GMA 4500M on the Tosh laptop, ATI Radeon X1200 on the netbook, ATI Radeon 9250, ATI Radeon 9550 and nVidia 6200 LE on the desktops (all old stuff!).
Similarly wifi n/w connects without a hitch.
From my perspective these two features are crucial.
Sound is rather more problematical with weak sound on the laptop and netbook and none at all on two desktops (CMedia CM6501) with error warnings generated. Oddly, when trying to play sound files vlc is usually launched but on one occasion clementine was the default.
Printing is also proving problematical and localhost:631 "server refused the connection"! Perhaps not enough of Cups is included by default? Hplip also failed although it did see my wifi printer it complained about not finding ppd.
2> However, so far no joy with Persistence. There seems to be two possibilities offered for setting this up - Grub menu options and a desktop dialogue but am not sure whether these are independent methods or inter-related with the necessity to use both? First of all tried the desktop dialogue which seemed to take me round in circles but nevertheless rootfs and homefs have been created. Yet they are obviously not being utilised as I have achieved no level of persistence whatsoever. Next tried the grub offerings but all I get is a (persistent!) nagging to change the root password to something more secure. I have searched for information on setting it up but so far have drawn a blank.
3> Xfce is my favourite wm, especially when used in conjunction with Compiz and Screenlets. The latter always works impeccably with xfce (and Mepis 8/11 kde) but although available and installed (appears in menu) it fails to launch. This is often because dbus-x11 isn't installed but it is, though "screenlets-pack-all" and "screenlets-pack-basic" are not available even after enabling testrepo and reload? Compiz is only offered as one limited entry (compiz-fusion-bcop) in Synaptic with no plugins, fusion icon etc offered?
4> As a further observation but in common with almost all distros, why is there more than one type of password dialogue. Although just a niggle, one would expect a consistent appearance. After all, it is just a simple function that needs to return just one boolean value regardless of the caller electing to use decoration/theme that doesn't conform to the general appearance of other windows. Isn't there a standard function available as part of the common libraries?
5> Is there an intention to include a splash screen as a cosmetic between grub and desktop? However, boots and shuts down impressively quickly (though, for some strange reason, required me to press enter to complete shutdown on one machine) and is credibly responsive running from usb. Interesting to see a graphical grub menu rather than the severely text one when unebootin has been used!
). I think the big problem is that if people don't get to the step of saving persistence then they will be faced with the password screen again the next time they boot which gets very annoying very quickly. Perhaps we could automatically run persist-save shortly after a persistence system has been booted for the first time. This might help reduce the problem of seeing the password screen multiple times.