MX Linux Forum

Posted: **Thu May 24, 2018 7:15 pm**

I set up MX 17 on my friend's computer yesterday. One thing would be useful for easy customization, and that's a selection of custom start icons preloaded into the distro. I've seen some around the forums, could these be used?

Posted: **Thu May 24, 2018 7:48 pm**

That could be cool, if you haven't seen them there's quite a few over on the website available for download, too https://mxlinux.org/user-contributed-icons

Posted: **Thu May 24, 2018 8:24 pm**

I knew I'd seen them somewhere

It would be great if they can be applied "out of the box".

Posted: **Fri May 25, 2018 12:48 am**

rich wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 7:48 pm That could be cool, if you haven't seen them there's quite a few over on the website available for download, too https://mxlinux.org/user-contributed-icons

Look through this thread for all of Antechdesigns' Start Buttons for MX.

viewtopic.php?f=116&t=42449&start=60

The last 2 pages, especially, have very pretty MX start buttons in a whole range of colours.

Presently I don't think they can be applied OOTB because:

1. to do so you would need to have all of these icons on the default iso;

2. The Start button is actually the Whisker Menu program, which is added to the panel as an applet/launcher item. If you want to specify what icon is displayed on the panel for the Start button applet, you have to right click on it, go to Properties (I think) and manually change the icon displayed by selecting any icon that is saved somewhere. I'm not sure if that could be automated even further, although I could be very wrong.

It's not really like XFCE Appearance settings for applying a general icon set or gtk theme for the whole system.

Posted: **Fri May 25, 2018 8:27 pm**

I am simply looking at the start menu icon, not a theme.

It would be incredibly useful to have a good mix of icons for the start icon upon installation, and the desired icon can be easily selected. It seems a shame to have a mountain of good icons on the website because they will be missed by users who don't come to forums.

If adding extra bloat to the distro is a concern then I'll try and ease your worries.

I've got some image optimization software, and it does a great job of reducing the file size of images. I have tested a couple of start icons and found their size reduced from >20KB to ~2KB. The optimized images produced are indistinguishable from originals. I would post an example, but I can't figure out how to post an image

I will be happy to optimize start icons I can find on the website and forward them on if you so desire. They will offer users plenty of choice without adding to the distro size.

Posted: **Fri May 25, 2018 8:50 pm**

colin_b wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 8:27 pm ...
I would post an example, but I can't figure out how to post an image

When you write a post click below Preview / Submit the field "Attachments" and than Add File.
Further you can choose display inline

Posted: **Fri May 25, 2018 8:59 pm**

with kind permission of antechdesigns < www.opendesktop.org/member/455534/ > (pursuant to Creative Commons Licence)

You're a genius

Here's an example of optimization.

Original image:

MXStart2.png

Optimized image:

MXStart2_opt.png

Posted: **Fri May 25, 2018 9:03 pm**

Doh!

I attached 2 images and only one posted.

I'm not very good at this.

Posted: **Fri May 25, 2018 9:10 pm**

colin_b wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 9:03 pm I attached 2 images and only one posted.

We do currently of a bug in the system. If you post more than one image, do not preview ;=), just submit!

Posted: **Fri May 25, 2018 9:13 pm**

with kind permission of antechdesigns < www.opendesktop.org/member/455534/ > (pursuant to Creative Commons Licence)

OK, last attempt.

Original image:

MXStart2.png

Optimized image:

MXStart2_opt.png

Posted: **Fri May 25, 2018 9:18 pm**

That's nice and what a difference in size, remarkable!

Posted: **Fri May 25, 2018 10:55 pm**

Let's say a pack of optimised (thanks for the offer, BTW) start button icons is added to the ISO or made available for install via MXPI (which answers point 1 of my previous post) , is that the answer to your request?

Or is your request also for a tool to help apply the said icons (point 2 of my previous post) ?

In other words, would you consider the current manual application of a start button icon, but from a set of pre-installed start icons , as being able to "apply it out of the box"?

Posted: **Fri May 25, 2018 11:05 pm**

asqwerth wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 10:55 pm ...would you consider the current manual application of a start button icon, but from a set of pre-installed start icons , as being able to "apply it out of the box"?

That's what I was seeking, my apologies for not making things clear. People who want options then have them "out of the box" - they simply pick the icon of their choosing via the whisker menu's right click properties option.

Posted: **Sat May 26, 2018 9:04 am**

MX's whisker menu by default points to /usr/local/share/icons/ so it actually probably wouldn't be an issue to put more images there. Speaking as a non-developer, of course.

Posted: **Sat May 26, 2018 9:58 am**

colin_b wrote: Fri May 25, 2018 8:27 pm I've got some image optimization software, and it does a great job of reducing the file size of images.

What is the name of a program?

Posted: **Sat May 26, 2018 1:00 pm**

Ulead SmartSaver Pro. It's ancient Windows software.

Posted: **Sat May 26, 2018 4:00 pm**

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 12:44 am**

I have optimized all of the icons at viewtopic.php?f=116&t=42449&start=60 - antechdesigns has done some great work.

There are 62 files. The original size of the files was 1.4MB, and I gave reduced it to ~240KB with no loss of visual quality.

Do you want the files individually posted here, or can I forward them on in a zip file?

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 2:03 am**

Whoa! Thanks! Pls zip them up in a single archive.

If it's too big to upload to a forum post here, you could just provide a cloud link.

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 1:03 pm**

with kind permission of antechdesigns < www.opendesktop.org/member/455534/ > (pursuant to Creative Commons Licence)

Hopefully they are attached...

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 1:08 pm**

colin_b wrote: Sun May 27, 2018 1:03 pm Hopefully they are attached...

Yep, they're good!

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 1:48 pm**

Not as easy as you think to make good looking icons. Made one up today nice blue background fading out towards the top above the MX logo. Added it to the panel and just looks similar to the standard icon with an ugly white line across the top. Back to the drawing board!

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 4:58 pm**

Ok, I can package them up.

what do you want to call the package? mx-start-icons-extra?

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 5:05 pm**

What about using mx-icons as the general name, so here mx-icons-start

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 9:06 pm**

with kind permission of antechdesigns < www.opendesktop.org/member/455534/ > (pursuant to Creative Commons Licence)

I've redone the names, and as a result I'm somewhat cross eyed.

The icons are now in a semi-logical order.

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2018 11:15 pm**

Thanks to your suggestion, colin_b, the collection of Start icons is being packaged for MX by dolphin!

I added an attribution notice to the collection to recognise antechdesigns' copyright and creative commons licence terms.

It'll take some time for the package to be pushed to the repositories.

Installing the package should add it to the same folder location as the default start icon, so that it's easy to change the icon for whisker menu.

Posted: **Mon May 28, 2018 5:42 pm**

It's good to know antechdesigns icons will be a part of the distro. The icons will add numerous classy customization options OOTB, and that makes me smile

Just out of curiosity, since I've got the image optimization software dusted off I am wondering if there are any other images in the distro that could be optimized. PNG, GIF and JPG can be optimized. I'd be happy to give it a bash if I know where the images are hidden.

Posted: **Tue May 29, 2018 10:35 am**

colin_b wrote: Sat May 26, 2018 1:00 pm Ulead SmartSaver Pro. It's ancient Windows software.

Thank you.

Posted: **Tue May 29, 2018 5:41 pm**

As a footnote, I had a dig around and found the MX wallpapers that come with the distro. There are 12 files, one is a JPG and the rest are PNG files, and the total size of the files is 20.3MB. I converted the PNG files to JPGs and did optimizations which reduce file size but not quality, and the resultant size of the 12 files is 2.8MB.

Do you want the optimized JPG files?

Posted: **Thu Jun 07, 2018 2:20 pm**

Just an update:

Antech's Start Icons collection can now be found in the Popular Apps section of MX Package Installer, under the "Icons" category.

Posted: **Thu Jun 07, 2018 2:25 pm**

colin_b wrote: Tue May 29, 2018 5:41 pm As a footnote, I had a dig around and found the MX wallpapers that come with the distro. There are 12 files, one is a JPG and the rest are PNG files, and the total size of the files is 20.3MB. I converted the PNG files to JPGs and did optimizations which reduce file size but not quality, and the resultant size of the 12 files is 2.8MB.

Do you want the optimized JPG files?

We would like to see them, thanks. That would be great. Could you PM Stevo with that info?

Posted: **Thu Jun 07, 2018 2:50 pm**

Are you using the jpg optimization packages available in the repo?

Have you tried guetzli, which is pretty slow but is supposed to be good, too? We have in the MX 15 test repo, but not in the MX 17 yet (fixing that right now).

Edit: Here are MX 17 packages: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1W5Axb ... 5cmkKuxYwU

I converted the png images in the MX manual to jpgs and ran those through optimizers back in the days when we were fighting to stay at 700 MB, but I'm haven't been packaging that or the artwork for a while. Theme packages were the closest. Maybe I can shrink some jpg wallpapers in the new komorebi package, though--check that out in the test repo for some animated wallpapers, too.

Posted: **Thu Jun 07, 2018 3:01 pm**

I'm going to add here that the artwork packages are all hosted in our github.

mx17-artwork
mx16-artwork
mx15-artwork

and are also available in the wallpapers section of MX-Packinstaller->Popular Apps.

Posted: **Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:33 pm**

Stevo wrote: Thu Jun 07, 2018 2:50 pm Are you using the jpg optimization packages available in the repo?

Have you tried guetzli, which is pretty slow but is supposed to be good, too? We have in the MX 15 test repo, but not in the MX 17 yet (fixing that right now).

Edit: Here are MX 17 packages: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1W5Axb ... 5cmkKuxYwU

I converted the png images in the MX manual to jpgs and ran those through optimizers back in the days when we were fighting to stay at 700 MB, but I'm haven't been packaging that or the artwork for a while. Theme packages were the closest. Maybe I can shrink some jpg wallpapers in the new komorebi package, though--check that out in the test repo for some animated wallpapers, too.

I have just downloaded guetzli on MX 16 but I can't get it running. I'll have a try on MX 17 later. It'll have to be good to drag me from Smartsaver Pro though. SSP is one of the few reasons I've got Win7 in a Virtualbox - it is fast, simple and highly effective. The distro wallpapers I optimized have been converted from PNGs to JPGs. The file sizes are significantly smaller, but through some tweaking you'll be hard pressed to see a visual difference.

Can I upload the JPGs to the forum as I have never used Dropbox or Google Drive (I've never had the need to do so).

Posted: **Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:54 pm**

You could upload them to a third-party site like postimg, too. No signup necessary.

guetzli is command line only...

guetzli inputfile outputfile

Posted: **Thu Jun 07, 2018 11:31 pm**

I will try postimg later, it's really late here (4-30AM).

Stevo wrote: Thu Jun 07, 2018 10:54 pm guetzli is command line only...

guetzli inputfile outputfile

Oops, no wonder I couldn't get it to work. I'll stick with SSP because it allows real time comparison of original and optimized images.

Posted: **Fri Jun 08, 2018 10:05 am**

The optimized wallpapers are at https://postimg.cc/gallery/13czo6jo8/

Posted: **Fri Jun 08, 2018 8:37 pm**

with kind permission of antechdesigns < www.opendesktop.org/member/455534/ > (pursuant to Creative Commons Licence)

I've optimized the login images. Unlike the wallpaper images I went for compression over quality since they are only seen briefly. The images have been slightly softened to increase compression. The total file size has been reduced from 2.3MB to 527KB.

The login images are at https://postimg.cc/gallery/dppf3us8/

Posted: **Sun Jun 10, 2018 12:37 am**

Just out of curiosity, are the optimized images useful?

I don't want to waste yours and my time doing more if they aren't needed.

Posted: **Sun Jun 10, 2018 2:45 am**

What I think is cool is that you had an idea, brought it up, and now it's reality.

Code: Select all

$ apt show mx-icons-start
Package: mx-icons-start
Version: 18.05.01
Priority: extra
Section: xfce
Maintainer: dolphin oracle <dolphinoracle@gmail.com>
Installed-Size: 262 kB
Download-Size: 217 kB
APT-Sources: http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo stretch/main amd64 Packages
Description: additional start menu icons

I love that about opensource, and this distro in particular, very accessible. I'll leave it to those more closely involved to comment on the optimized images, but I know I know I don't mind saving a few Mib here and there! Thank you for your contributions
:yourock:

Posted: **Sun Jun 10, 2018 4:02 am**

colin_b wrote: Sun Jun 10, 2018 12:37 am Just out of curiosity, are the optimized images useful?

I don't want to waste yours and my time doing more if they aren't needed.

I don't really know. I'm guessing it might help reduce the sizes of the artwork-packages somewhat, so the packaging team might find this useful, as well as Adrian who uploads the monthly updated isos.

But I'll leave them to respond.

Thanks for doing it anyway!

Posted: **Tue Jun 12, 2018 8:46 pm**

with kind permission of antechdesigns < www.opendesktop.org/member/455534/ > (pursuant to Creative Commons Licence)

Thanks for your replies, your comments are greatly appreciated. My delayed response is due to a knackered modem.

I am going to continue to optimize images as I'm a bit OCD about those which have a huge file size. If the images are of use then I'll be happy

I've had another bash at the login / grub images. I have reduced the image sizes by 60%, greyscaled and optimized them. They look better, and the total size of the files is down to 212KB.

The files are at https://postimg.cc/gallery/16vqqgtso/

Posted: **Wed Jun 13, 2018 12:23 am**

I ran guetzli on your reduced images, and it reduced them further by 10-20%. What would be really nice it we could shrink then all with Linux tools like imagemagick and guetzli on the command line, so we could just run a script on the folder full of images.

After running guetzli on them, I couldn't see any change at all when switching the original and reduced version in nomacs.

Who's in charge of the github for the artwork packages? That's where the new files need to go.

Posted: **Wed Jun 13, 2018 7:05 pm**

with kind permission of antechdesigns < www.opendesktop.org/member/455534/ > (pursuant to Creative Commons Licence)

Batch optimization is not recommended. While some images optimize without problems others will suffer from artifacts, and these artifacts can be real bad. A friend of mine batch file optimized images I had previously optimized for his website in the hope of saving a few KB. His images were trashed - fortunately I kept copies and his website was easily returned to its full glory.

Quality optimization requires the images to be dealt with on an individual basis, and this is Smartsaver Pro's specialist subject.

I have redone the grub / login images, they have been slightly softened. This has reduced the total size of the files to 160KB.

The files are at https://postimg.cc/gallery/2r1bb1wd4/

Posted: **Thu Jun 14, 2018 3:34 pm**

Moderator
Post deleted

Links were to Exclusive Content without permission to distribute
"Original Content Only available on opendesktop"

Posted: **Thu Jun 14, 2018 4:53 pm**

Six wallpapers from Auro Kumar Sahoo viewtopic.php?f=129&t=44427

Wallpapers at https://postimg.cc/gallery/l6xb4xxq/

Softened grub / Login images at https://postimg.cc/gallery/dsh641qm/

Posted: **Thu Jun 14, 2018 8:44 pm**

Would it be of benefit if I optimized the wallpapers at https://mxlinux.org/wallpaper17?

It would save bandwidth, but if this isn't an issue then I won't bother.

Posted: **Fri Jun 15, 2018 12:18 am**

Have you read your private messages yet?

Please do that before continuing.

Posted: **Fri Jun 15, 2018 12:20 am**

asqwerth wrote: Fri Jun 15, 2018 12:18 am Have you read your private messages yet?

Please do that first before continuing.

Posted: **Fri Jun 15, 2018 6:15 am**

@colin_b,

Regarding your last 2 posts, for each and every picture, you will need to check the copyright. If there are no express terms permitting distribution/modification for a particular wallpaper, then you have to seek the creator's express permission. The MX community wallpaper page has a link below every wallpaper hosted there. Click on it and you will see the author/copyright details.

Also, have you checked with Auro? I note that your picture hosting page with his wallpapers does not contain any attribution notice nor a reference to the copyright licence terms that each of the pictures falls under.

Posted: **Fri Jun 15, 2018 6:28 am**

asqwerth wrote: Fri Jun 15, 2018 6:15 am @colin_b,

Regarding your last 2 posts, for each and every picture, you will need to check the copyright. If there are no express terms permitting distribution/modification for a particular wallpaper, then you have to seek the creator's express permission. The MX community wallpaper page has a link below every wallpaper hosted there. Click on it and you will see the author/copyright details.

Also, have you checked with Auro? I note that your picture hosting page with his wallpapers does not contain any attribution notice nor a reference to the copyright licence terms that each of the pictures falls under.

From the Forum Rules:

Any background image or other artwork submissions must include copyright information and explicit permission of the image's original creator to use the image. This includes a direct post of the image or links to a compiled image archive.

Posted: **Sun Jun 17, 2018 2:17 pm**

I have retired Smartsaver Pro. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

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