hello

i have recently made the switch from KDE to Fluxbox (although I have kept my old KDE desktop as well), with the intention of cutting down memory and cpu strain and creating a more refined system. KDE feels too sloppy now! I have a few problems and questions though which i thought you might be able to help me with...

First of all, idesk appears to be FULL of bugs - "locked" never stays on true (it switches back to false), the links dont do anything when i click them, they blur, they duplicate and screw up when i move them. On the plus side however as eye candy they look wonderful! lol I used a slackware package to install them, but when i try compiling from source they won't even execute!

Secondly, i was wondering if there is any way to create a snazzy transparent embedded prompt on the desktop - maybe eterm or aterm? I would also really like an embedded media player and device manager - any advice?

Finally a non-flux question - my boot up takes some time not considering i have an optimized 2.6.11.10 kernel. The executables that take the longest are rc.hotplug and ldconfig but I understand these are important for hardware hotplugging and library configuration respectively. ldconfig is obviously taking longer and longer as i install more libraries!! Is there anything I can do?


Cheers guys, Fluxbox is fantastic and VERY efficient! It actually looks better than KDE in many ways.

Mike =)

Well I think there are other packages to make icons on fluxbox. Fbdesk maybe.

Yes this is possible with Eterm for sure. With Aterm too or so I hear but I use Eterm. Easiest is to start of with an Eterm with borders etc. Now go into the menu and turn everything off. Then you can start with "Eterm" You can also edit the user.cfg and theme.cfg files in .Eterm/themes/Eterm/ . I think most if not all is in user.cfg. Only the colors are in theme.cfg but depending on your background color you might want to change the defaults.

For the other question I don't know except deleting unwanted libraries

1) What version of iDesk are you using? I had quite a lot of problems with it also a while back but upgrading to a more recent version fixed it them. A quick tip, however you start it, add sleep 2 before that so fluxbox has time to draw your wallpaper before iDesk starts and grabs your background.

2) With your embedded terminal, I've heard of programs out there to do this but never found one that actually worked. There's a few that will write log files to your root window and do so quite well. root-tail and xrootconsole to name a couple. They aren't interactive however, in that case your best bet would be a maximised borderless transparent aterm or eterm. aterm is lighter on the resources so take your pick.

3) With your embedded media player and device manager, I believe you're talking about desklets. the come in the form of gDesklets, SuperKaramba and adesklets currently but there's another good one on the way gDesklets requires most of GNOME to be installed and uses it's base libraries to draw. SuperKaramba requires KDE and uses K functions to draw it's displays. adesklets is the "light-weight" solution, its only requirement is imlib2 and is pretty cool. There aren't as many desklets around for it but they're easy to write and I've got a few available that aren't available on the adesklets site and I know a few other people the same so you should definitely be able to find what you're looking for.

4) Your boot process can be sped up considerably by disabling hotplug and adding only the modules you require to /etc/modprobe.conf or whichever the file is on Slackware. I've compiled a kernel with support for my hardware compiled in, not as modules. The only external modules I load are nvidia and lirc_*. I don't know how this is done across distros but in Arch you can background daemons so your boot is faster but you can't tell if they succeeded or not. Small price to pay on a stable system, maybe something you might want to look into

check out this thread for making Eterm transparent and borderless...

good stuff guys thanks a lot - i managed to get yab working on adesklets with the aid of a script (it was disobedient at first!) and it has replaced idesk. I've got it working as a device tool (partly for show but its actually quite useful)

I'll have a look at that thread about embedded terminals - that would be quite cool to get working as for embedded xmms im ok with the skinned one for the moment, but if i see a good enough embedded skin for it for adesklets i might be tempted!!

here is my flux desktop as it stands at the moment after about 3 or 4 days of customizing - im quite content with it ...

http://www.theinformationleak.com/li...luxdesktop.png



gKrellm rules btw! and Xscreensaver is much better than kde's screensaver tool!!

I find torsmo to be closer to my tastes than gkrellm, that's just a personal preference though.

i chose adesklets over gdesklets for the same reason i think - fewer dependencies, less memory and cpu usage etc. but gkrellm looks so nice i decided i could afford some cpu time and libraries to use it!


one thing i was looking into recently (unrelated but interesting i think) is the selection of 3d file managers we have for linux. its just a shame they are not more developed, as they are great fun to use. FSV is good for exploring directory trees, i just wish the coder had made it look a bit more like irix FSN from jurassic park! lol does anyone have any suggestions for good graphical file managers (i've recently moved from konqueror to rox but its not good for everything) or any thoughts on 3d ones?


thanks

I've never actually used a 3d file manager before. I've spent a lot of time on my ROX setup and it suits me quite nicey at the moment