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I was at a Linux convention in Amarillo in 1999 held by the local Linux Users Group (which seems dead now). There were a couple of people there discussing this very item (though one person insisted that it was "in theory", but I got the feeling that he had an exploit working already)....

Personally, I like Blackbox or IceWM with ROX file manager. I run a small K12LTSP in my classroom, and the kids have now problem with the IceWM/ROX filer combo. And these kids are all Win9x/XP users. The school has WinXP on all the computers - except mine {-:

Blackbox and BBKeys
minimalist type approach, not too resource intensive, looks nice, usually acts nice.
cntrl+shift+numlock to allow you to use the numpad of your keyboard to move the cursor around, 3 button functionality; really cool, i dont have a link handy, but basically hit those three buttons and your numpad becomes a mouse, choose between the 3 mouse buttons by clicking one of the top (nearest to the top of the keyboard) 3 buttons in the numpad, click with 5, click and hold is either 0 or . or something like that... for those apps you still need mouse you still dont have to move your hands off the keyboard...
put these 3 pieces together and you have a relatively good-looking, nice-acting, not-resource intensive, no hand moving between keyboard and mouse for the lazy among us... -donkey

BlackBox is highly configurable, too. I was bored one day filling in at one of our data centers and decided to switch the Ops workstation to use BlackBox. One thing I wish KDE could do is run a program like CMatrix in the root window... :-)

-B

don't forget blackbox and fluxbox

If you go for small and fast, then you should try blackbox and it's child Fluxbox.
Fluxbox has some nice added features.BB takes around 1,5MB RAM, Fluxbox is at ~1.6MB and their speed in usage is unbeatable.Unfortunately there are no real docs.

First of all, bothe KDE and Gnome are fine products, blah, blah, blah...

I used to use Gnome and Sawmill(/Sawfish) as my desktop manager, and was always
looking for ways to speed up performance, but had recently found another solution:
don't use a desktop manager.

For the past few months, I've been using Blackbox with a few other utilities
(bbkeys, Rox, etc.) for key binding and those times I want a graphical file manager.
It's great, since I don't have any memory allocated to things I won't use.

I know many/most of you out there aren't using either Gnome or KDE, and was wondering
your opinion on it. What have you missed/wanted from using a DM?

So you paid for Windows and now you feel like they're all yours and nobody else's, eh? :-)

on my zoomin' fast 700mhz box crapped and I'm sitting here with a copy of windows 2k, xp, rh 7.1, caldera 2.3.. Interesting dilemma.

Well, I can tell you what I would do. But you already know what I would do. This is Slashdot, after all. Answer: Install Debian.

Seriously, I think you'd get a lot more out of RH 7.1 than 2K or XP. Why? I've used Linux as a desktop OS for years now, and I made the complete switch last May. I haven't been to Fry's once. So I've saved lots of money. My machine has been up continuously since then, BTW. And I play Tribes2 and RtCW quite a bit. (But I also use Star Office a lot). Now, I've had to ssh into it from another machine in my office to kill -9 a game or whatever, but I never reboot.

As far as the Caldera - RH argument, it's a matter of choice really. RH might be more "dynamic" maybe. It's certainly being updated more. Quite a few RPMs out there too. Go with what you know. Of course, real men use a Linux with apt-get, yada yada yada... (They make you say good things about Debian on /. regardless of the fact that it's all Linux and all good. :-)

(writing this on my 486 laptop running win95 WOOT!)

Ugh. Maybe Linux there as well? RH 5.0 runs fine on my P100 laptop. XMMS streams to the stereo. I tried WinAMP and Win95 on it and it wouldn't even run.

So... What should I go to? I got a better box for games, and I really don't like playing around with linux on a 200mhz 64mb ram machine with a 2 mb vid card.

Oddly enough, you have a machine which is almost perfect for Linux. It's not powerful enough to run the latest MS (or other) apps, yet you could run a minimal Linux install and get added life out of that box as a word processor. Since the box is old, there should be very little wrestling with drivers. As far as GUIs bringing you down, try Blackbox. It's very minimal (yet very full-featured) and should serve you well.

From those who have - how is koffice compared to the standard MS suite?

Well, I use Star Office 6 even at work now. Guy says he wants "powerpoint", I give him slides. Need to look at Excel sheets, I open scalc. As far as KOffice, I don't know. I've had more than once experience where KWord just quit on me. Vanished. No core file, no syslog error, nothing. Just gone. I save a lot when using either it or KWrite (which is worse; KWrite goes down more than a White House intern). I'm using older versions, sure, but I was not too impressed with the stability. Now Kate... wow. There's an editor. Sure, it's plain text, but it's a real good example of a stable app. At least in my experience these last few months. Does syntax highlighting fo0r Perl, C and SQL, too, so that's a big plus. Of course, I've turned in memos/meeting notes, whatever printed two-to-a-sheet with enscript or with line numbers before, so...

What about file compatibility problems (can I take stuff to school?)

You should be able to move files between home and school. Make sure to save in native format (Star Office will ask what format you want to save it in). I've exchanged Word 2000 docs with Star Office 6 and back again. Every once in a while I get a document that saves to like 8MB (when it should be like 400K). A resave helps sometimes.

I haven't been able to get simple Word or Excel macros running. I haven't tried, though. I don't want to run macros if I can help it.

Speed - how is star offices speed - I'm assuming x is a lot faster on this box than on the 200, but are there any issues?

Star Office 5 is about as fast as a wounded prawn. It will literally suck the life force out through your face. One should be paid to use it. The Star Office Beta 6, however, rocks. Worlds better. It has warts, sure, but it's beta. (Do you really think any software -- which had a ship date -- that came out of either Redmond or Mountain View had anything like the QA it should have had?) I've been using beta 6 since it came out and haven't noticed anything overly weird (except a deep-seated and possibly misguided reliance on Java). Me and a few other gus use it for work, so it's good enough I guess.

Any "major psycotic hatreds"?

Visio. I hate Visio. And sometimes I hate project managers, too.

Any comments / advice from people who have done the switch?

I've been using nothing but Linux for months now -- like I said -- and I wouldn't go back. Hell, I couldn't. Deal with XP and it's sugary GUI and nasty licensing/copy "protection"? Not a chance. Pay for Apple hardware? I'll save for my kids college funds instead and run Linux on older hardware. And why not? Linux runs great for me. I love being able to right-click on the desktop and get an xterm where I can write a shell script that goes into cron. Networking works, I have every compiler I'd ever want, a choice of GUIs, lots of customizing, I use ssh tunnels, scp is fine, samba keeps me and the wife in sync, games are fine and I just don't spend any more time or money on the upgrade mill. And BTW, check out Opera for Linux. I've paid for the Win32 and Linux versions of Opera. Everyone who's taken time to look at Opera has loved it, at least in my experience (which is predominantly IE users).

-B

I've used blackbox as well for small linux boxes and it's got everything I look for in a window manager with the advantage of being very small.

I'm not sure I would use an old distribution though. If you ever want to upgrade things, it's a pain in the ass because you go through this massive dependency upgrade first. I have a RedHat 5.2 server still and as soon as I can, I'm going to install a new distribution version on it rather than upgrade all the pieces one at a time.

Instead of using an old distribution, I would suggest use a more recent distribution and uncheck all the boxes and install just the things you need. Maybe even use one of the tiny footprint distributions out there--there are a lot of them.

alright, you start and I'll sit here in the corner with my blackbox.

• XWC*
• and
• Blackbox

very nice. You can combine it with DFM, and a couple of dockapps. I suggest asmix, ascd and grellm.

*I couldnt' find the xwc homepage, but that's the foXcommander, which builds on XWC.

It actually is possible to run a snappy window manager under X. Unfortunately, the two main contenders for Linux/Unix desktops are quite heavy and slow, but that is gradually changing.

But if you have the time, check out Blackbox. It starts up on my AMD 350 (while running Apache and Tomcat) in literally 4 or 5 seconds. In fact, most of that time is spent just starting X itself, and blackbox only adds about a second to the startup time. (enter "xinit", then run "blackbox" in the bare terminal window)

It is one of those forgotten projects that shows the possibility of a truly nice sleek, fast interface, with minimal fuss. I understand that it not yet a desktop for the clueless public, but it shows the possibility. It's time for someone to pick this one up again.

There is also the UDE project, which has some very interesting ideas, even though it is pretty rough at the moment.

I think BlackBox has the right idea, efficiency. And they've done a fair job of giving it the ability to 'look good' at the same time.

Maybe it's that Aqua and OSX come across as bloatware to me. I get fed up with programmers/developers that program in such a way that (to me) says, "I'm writing for a G4 800, and my software is the only thing that will be running". Hello ... some of us like to have 15 to 20 apps running at the same time. You have to be efficient even with a phat computer. Look at the majority of Sun's software. It's custom coded for the hardware, and has no frills attached. It gets the job done the most efficient way possible.

Efficiency and organization ... wasn't that the origonal point of a computer? I think we've lost that in the past few years of desktop computer development. It's something we need to take back. Linux was making good headway, but it's been said a few times in other threads that it's becoming bloated as well (I think it was a ML 8.1 post ...). If you want to relate efficiency and organization to the Aqua argument, ditch Aqua. It takes up too much room on the screen for making it pretty. It also weighs to heavy on the already labored processor. They're trying to make everyone happy, but they making everyone tired of waiting ...

I say to Apple's way of UI design, "STOP WASTING MY MOTHER-FUCKING TIME!" -- Al Pacino as Vincent Hanna in "Heat"

~LoudMusic

Try using Blackbox. It uses very little memory and can be prettied up pretty good if you want. I use it on all low mem computers when KDE just crawls.

If you thought those were aliens then you obviously missed one of the most important "messgaes/plot" of the movie.

Those were NOT aliens... those are the future generations of AI "robots" that have survived once the human race has become extinct. They are Davids "descendats"...

--
Amarillo Linux Users Group

1. I use exactly two types of GNU tools proper: the gcc suite and the shell utilities suite. Period. My GUI is composed of X and the awesome BlackBox WM. I use vi as my only editor and good old Netscape 4.75 as my only web browser. I find it hard to call the system I use a "GNU/Linux" system.
   
   
2. Granted, without GNU there would be no Linux (thank you gcc, thank you glibc, etc.) Okay. Right. But if that's the only reason why we should call it GNU/Linux, then it should really be Turing/VonNeumann/Djikstra/.../ATT/MIT/GNU/Linux. Hey, if you consider that many graphical apps, even in the very GNOME project, were simply copy/pasted from their Microsoft equivalents (even Miguel says it), you should even add "Gates" somewhere in the name ! (Not to mention the outstanding contribution to the whole Open Source movement bringed by Microsoft's monopolistic practices :o)
   
   In the end, I suspect the perpetual braggling from GNU will prove tiresome enough that people will actually switch everything they can to non-GNU software (KDE everywhere !) just to avoid having to feel guilty everytime they mention their OS under the name of "Linux".
   

They were using the Netpliance iopener for email to inexpensively keep in contact with family and friends. Netpliance had some major financial problems and discontinued the 800 number support, which left my relatives high-and-dry after they became hooked on email.

I've modified their iopeners to run Linux. I set them up with Blackbox as the window manager because the iopener is rather underpowered. The iopener's function keys have iconic labels instead of F1-F12: a weather key with a cloud on it, a news key with a newspaper on it, etc, so I've configured bbkeys to run Netscape and pass the appropriate command line arguements to display the correct URL or email option. (I would have used Mozilla, but it's email support was too slow - 20 seconds to display an email vs 2 seconds in netscape).

Last year my mom traveled the country visiting relatives with her laptop and scanner and digitized all the family photos she could lay her hands on. So, as an added bonus, the iopener is also an electronic picture album and runs CHBG as a screensaver when the system is idle. The grandparents really love this feature.

Sure, I could have done this using Windows, but the non-upgrade price of Windows(since the iopener's originally ran QNX) would have been about twice the cost of the hardware I purchased to convert the iopeners.

Some may laugh at this... but I remember my first "lan"...

it was put up using duct tape...

Reason?: We lived in a campus residence hall, and were not allowed to make any alterations to the rooms/hallway... so what to do when %70 of the people in the unit have PCs.... aahhhh the days of warcraft, command and conquer.... and yes... even file/print sharing... [between all of us, there were at least two laser printers, one color printer, and a 20gb drive... {which at the time was HUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEEEEE}

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Amarillo Linux Users Group

Yes, it's good to see companies undertaking real, useful projects - and actually throwing money and resources at it.

Yet I can't help thinking about how all of this will only be helpful for KDE users.

Of course, GNOME users (or even people who don't use desktop environments at all - personally I use X and the BlackBox window manager, period) can actually use KDE software - if you've got a few tens of megabytes of RAM to waste. I'm afraid I don't.

I know, competition is good, but... Damn the desktop war. Really.

Thomas Miconi

You're right, and if you read and followed the docs, then your sound card was properly configured for *RedHat*. Your problems with *KDE* are a separate matter. Did you read the KDE docs? KDE is an application, and you should be expected to read the docs for that as well.

Maybe some people don't want their windows manager or desktop enviroment making alot of foolish sounds (I, for one, do not. That's why I use Blackbox). Should sound be forced on these people who still want the other features that KDE might provide? I think not.

-B
benjones@superutility.net

Diversity good. If mutations weren't everywhere, not as many things could survive a changing environment.

As artificial life research (read: hundreds of underpaid graduate students :o) has shown, while it is true that mutations are an important part of evolution and adaptativity, the most efficient tool for optimizing a population is still sexual reproduction (ie crossing-over between similar-but-different genotypes).

We can see a brilliant example of this in the distro problem: distros evolve not only by inventing new things, but also by borrowing from each other. Imagine if Red Hat or Caldera or Debian could prevent others from using this or that package in their distro ! Same thing for Gnome/KDE (disclaimer: I use X & Blackbox, period :o) : they get better and better by inventing new features, but also by borrowing each other's inventions and adding them their own little tweaks.

For the benefit of us all :o)

Thomas Miconi

Unfortunately when they advertise that the system does "40 mbit", they usually dont mean to the consumer, but to the HFC side (coax side) of the link.

The modem then further restricts the user. Example: the cablemodem that I am now using has 30mbit to the HFC side (which is shared between myself and the neighborhood) but is restricted to 768/64 .... [most locations elsewhere are now 1024/128, but there may be service as low as 64/64 and as high as 3072/1024 or "unrestricted"]... They usually limit the speeds to ensure "Network quality of service"...

--
Amarillo Linux Users Group

I'll be interested to see how their windowmanager looks and functions. Earlier this year, the lead developer of Blackbox moved to Norway to work for TrollTech. Blackbox is a nice lightweight wm and I think it will be interesting to see if this new windowmanager bears any resemblance to blackbox.

I totaly understand the allure of a clean UI, hell i use black box ;) Yet, NS6 UI hasnt angered me yet, to the point of using something like Skipstone. im sure the day will come, sooner, rather than later ... and the theme is kinda cool.

Until that day comes, I do relish in the fact that NS6 UI's is driven by xml ... so one can hack away at it ... till one is content. I just dl'd this release, and messed with it a bit. Removed those anoying links on the bottom. Now the NS logo links to nowhere ... yea these are simple hacks, that really dont do much for speed... but remove some anoying things (in my oponion).

Next on my list is to possibly replace the logo with a slashdot one ... and link it to slashdot ;) ... that and hack out the sidebar. If I want a sidebar, id use IE ... i use NS because it isnt IE, and I really dont like the whole "Oh MS has some new GUI idea lets copy it mentatlity" ( No offence here ... just a little steam)(I also realize that this idea prolly really came from Opera to begin with...) .

My only question is, how long be for Apple and its stupid lawerys try to pass the theme off as being an Aqua rip-off and sue?

noone has mentioned it yet so its
here. Loads up in under half a second.

I'm not sure why it is that there can't be a small, efficient, simple, window manager for X.

There are plenty of small, light window managers for X11. You just havn't found them. Since they're all over the place, I imagine you havn't found any because you haven't looked. Examples: Sawfish, BlackBox", and LarsWM. Just to name a few.

maximize a window so it fills as much of the screen as possible without overlapping things you don't want it to

That's a configuration error. The three window managers I use on a regular basis(Enlightenment, Sawfish, and IceWM) all support this feature.

No offense, but if I had any moderation points, your post would quickly be rather to (-1:Troll). Pretty much everything you railed against is configurable at the user's end. You're not bitching about KDE and GNOME, you're bitching about what Corel Linux uses for its default desktop(or Debian, or Red Hat, whatever). Sure, it might take you a bit of work to get things "just right", but it can be done. Pretty easily, too. So, most of your post is not only trolling, but also *WRONG*, as in incorrect. Sorry to have to break the news to you.

Dave
'Round the firewall,
Out the modem,
Through the router,
Down the wire,

I wonder if Spam has anything to do with throttleing the traffic on SMTP and NNTP traffic.

I use a third party NNTP provider, and would not be happy to have my paid for NNTP access throttled in that way {though I DO understand if spam prevention is part of the reason for the throttleing).

This also makes me wonder how long it would be before the commercial NNTP providers start advertising "Get around NNTP blocks, connect to us on ports 119, 2000-30000" {kind of like what AOL had to do to allow its IM clients to connect through firewalls and other network blocks}.

--
Amarillo Linux Users Group

Although aluded to, but not directly mentioned, there is also a growing (and yes, I may be slightly biased here) LAN party scene happening all over.

http://www.lanparty.com/
or
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/lanparties.pl

for a link to a local LAN party near you.

--
Amarillo Linux Users Group

it will probably have the same limitations that things like the home control systems have (like the x10 firecrackers). The control singnal is limitied to within a master circuit breaker... (ie: within the same phase loop)... So unless your neighbors share the same electric meter, they should not be able to see your network traffic...


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Amarillo Linux Users Group

They should probably have some sort of password and encryption scheme much like 802.11 wireless has. This is to prevent the above mentioned problem, as well as having the ability to have "multiple" mini-lans in the same home... (kids network for internal fileshares vs. access to internet capable network)

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Amarillo Linux Users Group

I like redhat, but I too noticed that sometimes they add "features" the way that they think things should be done.

A few more issues:
1-Broken version of the ISC dhcp server is the one included with the distro for the longest time.

2- use of pump instead of dhclient

3- PCMCIA support not in standard locations

I really wish that they would include a step-by-step list of changes to the kernel that they make with patches / links to patches that they use so that an avereage user can "redo" a kernel on their own..

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Amarillo Linux Users Group

The main USB support is in the development kernels (2.3.x) and will be in 2.4.x. There is a patch to backport some of the drivers to 2.2.x; unfortunately in many cases it still means that the kernel will need to be recompiled...

http://www.linux-usb.org/ for more details

The backport (currently for 2.2.14)
http://www.suse.cz/development/usb-backport/

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Amarillo Linux Users Group

concentrate on getting USB more stable for 2.4
get more USB drivers written

http://www.linux-usb.org/

Get the HOWTOs updated for 2.4 (advanced netfilter rules for example on how to have load balance two interfaces {cable / dsl} to use the bandwidth of both links as one when both are operational, and if one fails, the other takes over. Supposedly 2.4 should be able to do it....



--
Amarillo Linux Users Group

Check out Blackbox if you want to find an incredibly fast, efficient, and well coded window manager.

because ethernet addresses are neccessary for the protocol to work. cpu ids are NOT required for basic operation of the chip...

--
Amarillo Linux Users Group

Not to start another versioning discussion.. :-)

but xfree 4.0.x + kernel 2.4.x WOULD make for a logical major version change... Unfortunately the logic in version numbering has long been basterdised....

--
Amarillo Linux Users Group

• A domain squatter.
  
• eMail hijacker.
  
• Intellectual Property theif.
  

Hmm.. according to them, there was a security breach today...

Just posted to their web page (http://www.usb.org)...

"USB-IF Members Only Area Security Breach:

Dear USB-IF Members,
Due to a security breach discovered on Tuesday, 29th February 2000, all USB-IF member passwords have been changed. Member representatives will receive an email with their new passwords by today afternoon. We apologize for any innconvenience this may have caused everyone. We are working on resolving the issues around this."

--
Amarillo Linux Users Group

Yes..
Lookup MARS NWE... (nwserv)



--
Amarillo Linux Users Group

That is exactly how I was able to get Linux "in the door" at many locations.

The ability for linux to understand many of the legacy protocols is definitly a great plus. It is great for a small buisness that has a few machines and is in need of a cheap (as in $$$) solution to replace or to communicate with some piece of hardware that they can no longer find. NetBEUI, although being an old outdated protocol, is still in use..

For many small buisnesses, once they see that it can solve one problem.. the next question I usually get is in the line of "so... what else can this Linux thing do..."

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Amarillo Linux Users Group

I wonder if that is all what the "library" is...
Just a link to a "built in" decoding key for their hardware so that software can be written for their hardware... [a key based on a licence they may have already had for the windows platform, or was purchaced for "unlimited" linux versions]...

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Amarillo Linux Users Group

For the freeDSL one, be careful.... The fine print on one says that they also get the right to switch your long distance to their service; and that if you disconnectt within than 3 (or was it 5) years, you owe them a disconnect fee that is over US$500.00 + a $125.00 DSL activation fee.......

Amarillo Linux Users Group

Thats what the "dream" of a proxy cache hiarchy system was supposed to achieve.

as an example, nlanr's ircache project advocating the use of proxy cache servers all over to reduce the "load" on final servers,and reduce bandwidth requirements of border links. [any proxy cache software can be used, but they use squid



Amarillo Linux Users Group

Yup.. I have personally witnessed this.. Rather than fix problems when the "white hat" informs them of the problems MONTHS before it is exploited, they ignore it...Then when it IS exploited, they point the finger/guns at the "white hat" that was dumb enough to inform them of the problem in the first place without getting a liability waiver...

Amarillo Linux Users Group

Good to know. One thing I wonder though, why wasn't scoop from freshmeat introduced?
--
Gregory J. Barlow
fight bloat. use blackbox.

I hope Kurt Gray made a mistake and that Larry isnt that clueless about his own holdings. Trae did indeed found themes.org, but he doesn't work on it anymore, he runs linux.com. As the project manager of bb.themes.org, I have been privy to enough events to know that VA is more interested in politics and hype than the open source community. Hey, they are out to make money just like everyone else, but I doubt we will see any articles on /. to the tune of "VA is the Microsoft of the Linux world" like we got with Red Hat. When VA went public, lots of people got "the letter" but curiously, none of the people who volunteer at themes.org did, even though themes.org was the most popular site in VA's stable of web sites until yesterday. Ever notice how every VA web site is redesigned whenever there is a trade show? This mandate alone has seriously kept themes.org from completing a decent design that loads well in any browser. Will we see a /. redesign every time there is another trade show, too? VA has always scared me, but now that they have such wide reaching potential to hurt the community, I am more scared than ever.
--
Gregory J. Barlow
fight bloat. use blackbox.

I am quite fond of fvwm2; others like WindowMaker or AfterStep. If you have a slower computer, blackbox is very good. Be aware that with any of these, but especially fvwm2 or blackbox, you will feel as though you've gotten a processor upgrade. Everything is faster. Part of this is the lack of Gnome/KDE stuff running. Part of this is that these window managers are significantly faster than E or kwm.

Personally, I'd like to try out sawmill. It looks neat, and it uses Lisp to control everything. Pretty cool.

FTE is a /wonderful/ text editor.. Every time the old vi/emacs holy war starts up in my office, I hold up my beloved copy of FTE.

If you're looking for a simple, elegant WM that supports multiple workspaces and theming, go check out Blackbox, which is about as simple and elegant as they get. If you're really bold, after you've learned the 0.5x.0 interface, try out the 0.60.0 Alpha branch, which is at least as stable as the Enlightenment 'stable' releases and has even more themability.

It even supports WindowMaker's dockapps!

Disregard the previous message, I just hopped on over to the Blackbox website and saw that they have a newer version. The changelog states that they have applied a fix to this particular problem, I am recompiling now. BTW, thank god for setup.sh, it is automatically building a RPM from the tarball I downloaded to replace the Blackbox RPM that I have installed currently. Y'all should try it, setup.sh builds RPMS from any tarball that is built using GNU Autoconf and has a LSM file.