Xfce on DSL?

silenceofnight · 03-11-2007, 08:35 PM

Question one:
Is it possible to install xfce to damnsmalllinux? (I did a full HD install of dsl)

If so, then my Second Question is:
Where can I get pkg-tool / why don't I have it?
I downloaded the graphical installer, put it in /home/dsl and ran it using:

Code:

$ xhost +localhost
$ su
# ./xfce4-4.4.0-installer.run

That seemed to work, it verified the installer, then did some other stuff, but it stopped with the error:

Code:

package config tool not found

(I'm not sure I'm quoting that exactly).

After some googleing, I discovered that it needed pkg-tool. Am I right? Do I need that? How do I get it?

Thanx for any help

weibullguy · 03-11-2007, 09:49 PM

You need a utility called pkg-config.

Code:

wget http://pkgconfig.freedesktop.org/releases/pkg-config-0.21.tar.gz &&
tar xzf pkg-config-0.21.tar.gz &&
cd pkg-config-0.21 &&
./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make

Now, as the root user

Code:

make install

Gzou · 03-12-2007, 02:33 PM

even if you get pkg-config installed, xfce might still not work. Here's an explanation:

pkg-config is a utility used to check if certain packages are installed in the distribution. (depending on what your installing, in this case xfce might check for things like gtk, gcc, pango, cairo, libpng, libtiff, etc) A package, when installed from source, produces a .pc file which contains information on where and what packages on are your system. these .pc files are stored by default in /usr/lib/pkgconfig and that's where pkg-config goes to check what packages exist.

I'm telling you this because the aim of DSL is to be as small as possible and stay under 50 MB. to make space DSL removes any unnecessary files that are not needed to make things work, including these .pc files. So you might have all the packages on DSL that you need to make Xfce work, but without .pc files pkg-config will tell you that they don't exist.

Also, Xfce might need to compile some stuff, and in that case it'll header files from the libraries (.h files) which DSL also removes to make space.

If after pkg-tool Xfce doesn't work, I'd recommend trying to look in mydsl to see if somebody already made a xfce package for DSL. I also heard that there's N-DSL (not so small a damn small linux) that uses more gtk2 programs. Maybe you could see if they have made a xfce package.

Otherwise you could try finding something like a slackware xfce package and gunzipping it, but this is not recommended as first choice because different distro packages don't always mix an' match

silenceofnight · 03-13-2007, 10:13 AM

I don't really care what distro I use. Would it be better just to find one with xfce preinstalled?

Gzou · 03-14-2007, 08:07 PM

If you don't care what distro and all you want is Xfce, then yes

I've got Zenwalk installed on my machine that uses Xfce and it works pretty good. There's also Xubuntu that I know of that uses it. Otherwise you can always do a search on distrowatch and find one to your liking.

LuxeSaber · 03-14-2007, 11:13 PM

I have tried XFCE on a few live-cds and fell in love with its simplicity and useability! I have XFLD which is a live-cd, but once I discovered Xubunutu I never went back! I use Xubuntu as my main linux distro now and it works great! I tried to get Zenwalk working but it would always give me errors. I had no issues wiht Xubuntu at all, and its easy to add new programs.

I recommend Xubuntu.