MX Linux Forum

Thanks for such a great job on antiX-15. I've been trying out the various betas and RC.
Now, with antiX-15 installed on my 6 year old Acer Aspire One, model AOA 150, w/160GB HDD.
Really seems a bit lighter and quicker, subjectively, than with MX-14 installed.

I ran IceWM on Mandrake, Mepis, Kanotix, sidux, testing, etc, until about 2007,
when my Dell Latitude, with 286 cpu, died. Then continued on desktop running several others:
Peppermint, LinuxMint, Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, others, Crunchbang then SalineOS till it closed,
Manjaro; since then MX-14. Most everything with Xfce4 and mostly with a vertical or deskbar.

I'm really enjoying the new antiX-15 and relearning IceWM, but old habits are tough to break.
I was a left-side deskbar user before I came to MX-14. So after a while, I began to wonder.
Then googled and found that no one seemed to be making a vertical taskbar for IceWM?
So, what to do. Looked at Tint2-nice but it's a pain. Installed the xfce4-panel, and it worked OK.
But, still, kind of nice but lacking some bits, although antiX-15 started up using 100 MB of RAM.
{Iceweasel and email died while trying to upload images.}

Then, installed a minimal core Xfce4 and added the minimum number of applets to which I
am accustomed. antiX-15 booted and runs using 109 MB of RAM at startup:...and here is a MX-14.4 on another partition using 281 MB RAM at startup: This same setup is much less resource hungry on antiX even with Xfce4.12, here with DC, IW, LibO and roxterm open: I feel the future is bringing both antiX and MX closer together. The netbooks need 32 bits
and the desktop can run 64 bits, though I have never bothered, since 32 bit OSs
do everything I want to do, but choice is less every year.

I'm not advocating that antiX change to Xfce, just showing what I found out while asking, "What if ...?"

Richard wrote "I feel the future is bringing both antiX and MX closer together. The netbooks need 32 bits
and the desktop can run 64 bits, though I have never bothered, since 32 bit OSs
do everything I want to do, but choice is less every year."

Like you, I have not had the need to run 64 bits, and with SSD's able to replace elderly HD's, the life of an aged laptop can be extended - certainly for longer than I will be around. Our problem may be planned obsolescence of suitable software.

Slightly off topic, but I remember those Saline days. It was a very good system.

Nowadays I always install two systems per hard drive. One to use daily and one to use for repair. Daily I'm using MX with Manjaro as second choice.

I currently use MX-14.4 and antiX 13.2. I'll be changing antiX to 15-V shortly. It's quite a nice system.

Everything else is testing OS's. I be very, very happy.

Back to running IceWM on the Acer One.
Remembering how to work around some things,
how to fix some others, to use rox and
learning to appreciate 70 MB at idle. :)

Richard,

Running antiX 64bit and Xfce, would like to change the wallpaper, but do not know where they are stored to add more, or change the three that show in the Desktop settings.

JR

Maybe Users Manual Section 3.8.3 (found by Ctrl-F "wallpaper") would help?

Jerry3904 wrote:Maybe Users Manual Section 3.8.3 (found by Ctrl-F "wallpaper") would help?

Jerry,

Can't find that section: http://www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php? ... Categories

Google search turned up this manual: http://www.mepiscommunity.org/user_manu ... ection-3.3

Jerry maybe a link for this section should be somewhere on top of the forum page, for easy access for new users and dummies like myself.

JR

It's under Manuals at the top of every page on the forum.

When using MX14, changing wallpaper is simple - even for simple folk like me . Just right click on the preferred image name, and select "set as wallpaper", it works!

For MX14, the system backgrounds are in /usr/share/backgrounds, IIRC.

But you can just choose another folder containing wallpapers as your wallpaper repository, esp if you use XFCE's automatic wallpaper rotator like I do.

You got me on this one!

Can't find that section: http://www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php? ... Categories

I referred to a Users Manual, not a Wiki; to a Section, not a Category; to something that deals with Xfce, not KDE; and to something that is current, not a million years old.

Google search turned up this manual: http://www.mepiscommunity.org/user_manu ... ection-3.3

Bingo. Did you then go to the Section I mentioned or use the Ctrl-F method?

Jerry maybe a link for this section should be somewhere on top of the forum page, for easy access for new users and dummies like myself.

JR

There is a big fat tab (=link) to the Users Manual on top of the forum page for easy access.

lucky9 wrote:I currently use MX-14.4 and antiX 13.2.
I'll be changing antiX to 15-V shortly. It's quite a nice system.

Yes, it's a great combination.
On my netbooks, antiX now provides both native IceWM and a minimal Xfce.
Xfce takes about 40 MiB more at idle than IceWM with DC.
Functionally, they are about the same.
It's just visual and habit for Xfce. :lipsrsealed:

I'm going to try a minimal antiX to satisfy my OCD.

Here's a really easy way to discover the location of the backgrounds folder in MX 14-4.

Open desktop settings just like you did before. Select Folder and then Other...

The file dialog will helpfully show you the full path to their home:
/usr/local/share/backgrounds

Hi guys. Yes, I too have xfce installed on Antix15. Works great. What's more. I am used to it from MX14 so why should I change to a heap of others like Fluxbox, Icewm, etc. (more learning curve and I cannot be bothered)
In fact, I would like to remove these and just have xfce only. How would I set xfce to be the default wm pleez?
Even better still, on my puter I have i7 with 8Gb RAM, so KDE would be awesome for me, but, how to install it successfully?
Thnx. Cheers

I'd use the metapackage Installer (right-click Desktop/Applications/System Tools/). Just check kde4-standard. You might want to add K3b (I don't remember if you need to add Dolphin).

Take a look at the metapackage installer for other very useful one click installs.

Hi luckie.. Thnx for your reply friend.
I will look into this and see if I can get kde installed successfully.
Any ideas on how to remove unecesary WMs like fluxbox, ice eyt?
Maybe Synaptic and just unninstal these?

Hi luckie.. No, metapackage install of kds std does not work for me! (It installed the full kde - the whole lot. Big download)
Now I have to find a way to uninstall it :(
I did this a few days ago and ended having to reinstall the whole Antix15 again.
I also would like to get rid of all those WMs if possible, but how? Synaptic?
Thanks

@goer,
I would try synaptic to remove them.
Read any messages carefully to prevent breaking antiX, again.
Although, I find that I need to install something 3 or 4 times to understand the intent. :)

I would like to know how it goes for you.

With KDE install < does not KDM take over Desktop Environment login screen?

I know slim uses ~/.xinitrc to boot icewm, jwm, etc.........

But I think slim gets uninstalled on a KDE install. At least I seem to remember from the past. Icewm, fluxbox, jwm file size is so small. Ot makes no sense to uninstall them in my opinion. You can uninstall them and rename ~/.xinitrc to ~/.xinitrc.old I guess if going with KDM login manager in place of slim.

Well, I uninstalled 'everything kde' in Synaptic and all seems good. However, when I login, now a session box comes asking me to enter a new session and PW. I would love to set xfce as my auto-login default DM. How pls? Thanks

?

oops, sorry for the double post. :(

I may have to head back to trusty MX14-4 which I like and am used to.
Its friendlier than Antix15 for me.

goer wrote:I may have to head back to trusty MX14-4 which I like and am used to.
Its friendlier than Antix15 for me.

Whatever works and makes you comfy is my mantra.

Most everyone over here is asleep presently. I am only up from a milk run to the fridge. Back to bed for me.

goer wrote:I may have to head back to trusty MX14-4 which I like and am used to.

I like antiX-15 with IceWM on 1 GB netbooks; however, I installed Xfce panel for the deskbar and still keep going back and forth between IceWM and Xfce and MX-14.4.

I am working on a more and more minimal MX-14. From this MX-14 install, I removed all the excess calls from Conky and anything else that expends cycles to keep printing to the screen. It does reduce resource consumption for MX-14. Thinking to try Slim for a bit more.

I'm on the road in oil field towns with some time to play with my only computer, a company provided netbook :) that dual boots Windows XP for class along with antiX-15 and MX-14 to keep XP off the internet. I do find it hard to give up MX-14 entirely. Here's a screenshot of my current MX-14.4 with DoubleCmd7, Firefox39, LibreOffice445 and Dropbox running. Still not as light as antiX, but getting better.

I would suggest trying VirtualBox to try modifying an OS. KDE Standard is most, but not all, of KDE. KDE Lite may be more of what you want. If I'm using KDE I prefer the Standard plus an item or two.

Trying things in a Virtual Machine does not save bandwidth so it's not for everybody. But it can be useful for some.

You might search the forum or wiki for hints for removing WM's from antiX. Slim can complicate things. MX 14.4 uses LightDM for it's XFCE implementation. Which works well. I use KDM here when I install KDE. But LightDM works fine also.