New Direction thoughts

[VastOne]

I am contemplating the following and would like your feedback...

Xfce 4.10 gone

FluxBox as Primary, with OB installed but not much emphasis on it ... It remains static so that is a given.  My objective would be to have VSIDO as the ultimate FluxBox distro

Move back to debians stable kernel 3.2.0.4  I have noticed incredible memory usage from the newer kernels and I think trying to stay bleeding edge in that context is dangerous... the 3.2.0.4 kernel is solid and works with VSIDO's smxi stub... and in all reality, for those of us who want a newer kernel, smxi is the optimal tool

Move to pulseaudio... It has grown up and the amount of tools it has vs the space it takes up is a hands down decision... It does not replace alsa, but augments it

The nexus of this is a more focused VSIDO future and a smaller footprint on the ISO's... The new test ISO is a full 100 MiB smaller (617MiB) than what is available now (717Mib)

Please chime in and let me know what you think...

I appreciate it

[PackRat]

Drop openbox, just go with fluxbox.

Will you be removing all of Xfce (thunar, terminal, mixer, etc ..)?

I'm really starting to like spacefm, the xfce terminal and mixer are good apps though.

Maybe remove some other apps as well - medit is default editor (your fav, I believe) so geany doesn't need to be included, unload a couple gnome dependencies as well.

Given the thread about issues with Umplayer and CD's, maybe swap that out as well.

[VastOne]

Not all of xfce will be removed... The terminal will stay and the notifier, but both of those are independent of Xfce proper, so it is easy...  The mixer is gone because it requires a near full install of Xfce to use it , but with Pulseaudio you get one hell of a mixer replacement

I forgot to list Geany as removed also.. thanks

Any suggestions on gnome dependencies?  I have tried to remove them... this is not a scale down of the original build, but a completely new build... I was able to be very selective in the apps based on what I wanted and what is known

Thanks!

[VastOne]

As far as UMplayer and CD's, I think it is a huge stretch to remove a quality app because Debian does not see a cd as a file system and it is not built into UMPlayer... just for cd's

I never thought to look at UMplayer plugins as a fix, there may be some

[VastOne]

Thunar, the xfce-panel and mixer can be added to the vsido-welcome ... as a matter of fact, thunar and the panel are already there so adding the mixer would be easy

I am leaning towards dropping OpenBox as well

[VastOne]

Regarding the kernel, the latest is Sid is 3.10.2 and appears stable... Over this week of testing I will verify that

[surio]

Well, I am a #! IRC regular. I help out in whatever way that I can in that room, and based my own personal experience as well as fielding ad-hoc support requests,  kernel 3.2.0.4 is getting a bit long in the tooth, and the stable libraries are getting stale, even for die hard #!-ers as well as debian stable proponents.

I bit the bullet and jumped ship to VSIDO from #! because of the library dependencies lagging behind for every application, and big problems with wifi (broadcom) with the stable kernel. Ubuntu, which uses testing version, did not suffer these issues, and so I knew moving to unstable is just one more necessary step for my config. Basically, Broadcom will be a big bug bear with 3.2 and your IRC/forums support overhead will go up disproportionately to the momory savings   I have rarely, if ever, noticed increased memory consumption as an overhead in my time spent with vsido (it is my no.1 go to debian session these days), and frankly it has proven to be so good, I've not logged into a #! session in months. The last time I did log into #!, I installed smxi and upgraded to 3.10.2 aptosid kernel. It was not easy, as I had to upgrade many libs/apps to unstable in order to bring the kernel forward, but since my #! upgrade, #! never had wifi dropping every 5 mins on me. All my ubuntu spins now sport 3.8+ kernels, and work smashingly well on my config. 

The gist of all this is that, I hadn't noticed a spike in memory in my constant VSIDO usage over the last 5 months or so. On the other hand, the newer kernels and libs have been so good in playing with my hardware and providing me with good service (which debian stable kernel and libs did not), I have upgraded all my other debians to unstable repos! Ha.

@Vastone, out of interest, by what proportion has the newer kernels increased the memory consumption?

Re: XFCE, I only use a few aspects of XFCE, the ones you mention anyway. If someone wants to go full XFCE, there's always siduction or aptosid XFCE isos...

Re: Openbox, please don't remove it completely. I do log into OB regularly and find it just as nimble as fluxbox.

If it is not too much trouble for you, please run this "small and stable ISO" separately to the regular ISOs that you roll out. The SID in VSIDO stands for sid -- debian unstable (I hope), and personally, I would prefer to have a sid based vsido humming on my machine -- willing to live with the additional memory usage trade off. Because the alternative (for me at least) is constant fiddling with wifi and other things to make it work (which I am frankly fed up of)

Re: geany isn't too bad, and as such I would advice against removing it. I use geany:medit 50:50. They are tools for different occasions.

Re: GNOME dependencies, I've installed a few additional apps on my VSIDO after installation (Vim and some image app), and your GNOME dependencies have saved the day for me, in keeping my download sizes and download times much more manageable. It is a one time overhead for people with poor net connections to download a somewhat larger ISO, but have the dependencies as a "future-proofing" for future.

Let me know what you think of these points I made. If I recall anything, I'll drop by again.

[PackRat]

Sorry, what I meant was that I think geany has a couple of gnome/gtk dependencies that medit does not require, so removing geany removes them as well.

Just looking through the default menu, there doesn't appear to be any gnome apps that would have dependencies; just the usual gtk apps and a couple qt apps.

the 3.10.2 kernel is stable on both my desktop (testing) and laptop (VSIDO). Runs a bit hot on my laptop (HP).

[VastOne]

I think keeping with the SID kernel is the way to go as surio pointed out, there are too many issues with the older kernel.. thanks for that surio

OB is so tiny as to not really matter keeping it or not... but by being a FluxBox only distro has certain advantages

As far as what I am seeing with the kernels is after each Liquorix update there are bumps or reductions on each app I run... it is just inconsistent and bothersome for me.. not really a major problem but one that frustrates me as the kernels seem to destabilize too much

I will not maintain two different ISO builds... that is too much to bite off and chew

@surio, thanks for the excellent feedback

[surio]

I think keeping with the SID kernel is the way to go <snip>

OB is so tiny as to not really matter keeping it or not... but by being a FluxBox only distro has certain advantages

I will not maintain two different ISO builds... that is too much to bite off and chew

@VastOne,
I knew 2 separate ISOs is overkill, but OTOH, if we're going to remain up-to-date/sid based all the way, then I'm one happy chappie. 

I've grown to like openbox and do use fluxbox distros as well (salix and antiX). But, I am keen to understand what you mean by "being a FluxBox only distro has certain advantages"?

Ciao for now.

[VastOne]

I bumped it up to the latest sid kernels 3.10.2... It caused the size to jump from 617MiB to 648 MiB... still manageable

As far as the question regarding a FluxBox Distro and it's advantages, as far as I know there is not a known distro at all that has only FluxBox

[PackRat]

^ SalixOS (slackware based) has a fluxbox spin.

just curious, were you going with systemd, or sticking with the debian default? What about EFI?

[apprentice]

as far as I know there is not a known distro at all that has only FluxBox

well there is/was this
and this
or maybe this

all old mind you

although far from a regular here

strip out anything you can
i think ive said this before but
everybody uses different stuff
i bet i use a different final four (browser, filemanager, terminal, editor) than everybody else
apt-get is our friend
and smxi does all the hard work

i can add my beloved openbox back in
even though flux kinda grows on ya

anything having to do with better sound is ok in my book
and if thats pulse...

and once you get ikey's installer happening
when ikey gets ikey's installer happening

winner

[VastOne]

^ Those are great points... and along the same thoughts that I have.  I want to focus on a simple base that each SID user is more than capable of turning into what they want

I have ikey's installer and am just now beginning to fiddle with it

I appreciate it apprentice!

[VastOne]

Here is the link to the latest ISO for testing