New Direction thoughts

[surio]

As I mentioned previously, antiX and salixOS are both dedicated fluxbox distros. But neither of these are "sid" based, effectively leaving that claim to fame as VSIDO's of course.   

Oh, and like someone mentioned, I do hope we're still init based rather than systemd based.

[dizzie]

We can turn this into "favorite 10 apps" but really? Geany, who use that anymore (well except surio ) medit is simple, and it can even "hibernate in ram" and it remembers your last files (just like a webbrowser). Screw Geany, if you need it, apt-get in

[jedi]

My favorites are already all there.  I've been riding this ship for a year come Sept. 12th.  (if memory serves)  From the beginning, the whole idea was to be based on SID.  This, I hope, never changes.

The latest Liquorix Kernels are the ones always ran on my lappy.  Once in a great while I'll notice this iteration or the next will cause MINOR heat or memory issues.  Not enough to worry me to the point of not using them, or that harm will come to my lappy.  My beef with Liquorix was at the very beginning of the project, and that involved Bumblebee which I solved.  Now, thanks to dedicated graphics I no longer have to deal with Bumblebee!  I guess what I'm trying to say is that going backwards to the Debian stable Kernel seems to be to much of a step backwards.  After every install, I immediately run smxi and switch to Liquorix sources anyway so I guess it really isn't an issue...

Never used Geany, just always seemed to 'bulky' to me, and Medit works.  After playing with Pulseaudio the last couple of days, it is a real gem and a winner IMO.  Definitely a 'keeper'!

As to iKeys insatller, I've tried it out several times in the last couple of weeks.  It is very nice looking/polished, but lacks all the functionality the current installer has.  UEFI+GPT may be the wave of the future, but it isn't quite here yet.  We aren't the only FOSS community with ambivalent feelings towards UEFI.  Intel forced it on all of us.  The thing about Linux is that lots of people are able to use older hardware and maintain it's viability with Linux and have no hope of achieving an EFI bootable machine, short of a new purchase.  I think it is a good idea to maintain some interest in it and even continue to try to implement it with VSIDO, but it's not anything we needed "yesterday".  I know the argument is for the amazing 4 second boot time, but I'm sorry, I almost never reboot!  And furthermore, anything booting in less than 30 seconds still amazes me as I've been in the computer industry since 1983.  I remember having to "Park" the hdd for crying out loud.  Back then had someone told me we'd be looking at less than a 30 second boot times, I'd have shrugged them off as delusional.  (remember the card punch machines and how long it took to just power one up?)

VSIDO is a perfect gleaming example of a SID distro, and even makes a great argument for Debian to rid it of the "unstable" moniker.  If the guys at Debian are watching or listening, they'd see VSIDO as the "perfect" example of what a "Rolling Distro" is and should be!  There is nothing "unstable" here unless you count me and lwfitz...

[VastOne]

^ Nice feedback Jedi! So long as I get feedback that the 3.10.2 kernel that is from SID is fine, that will be what we use... Specifically I need to hear if you and dizzie have issues with it with the blank no cursor black screen

@dizzie...   

Regarding ikey's new installer, I have not used it at all yet... The one I had some people testing was his original from 3-4 years ago... This new one hopefully will handle some things better but all in all I am quite comfortable with the current installer

When it is cooler, I hope to resolve it all with a Debiani-Installer, but that will have to wait a bit

[PackRat]

Reconfigured my vsido to mirror the planned release. I like it, sound quality is better with pulseaudio, never really used xfce so it's not missed. Will miss geany, but medit is solid.

Going to be a good release when you're done.

[VastOne]

Here is the total package list if you are interested PackRat


And Thanks!

[statmonkey]

Just my 2 FWIW. I agree with surio that my whole point for running Vsido is SID.  I think you have the right idea with fluxbox but I really am an OB user and while there are stable OB distro's there is not much that I can think of that is a solid SID distro with OB (maybe Semplice? can't remember and it's been a while since I looked at it).  I really haven't used fluxbox much but sure I could get over that hump and if you want OB there is not much to put it in.

SID from the start is the critical issue for me.  I wanted something that would save me the time and effort of going through a full Debian install and give me a basic working environment quickly with at least most of the things I want. At the moment, Vsido gives me exactly what I want.  Not saying that change is not a good thing.  For me anyway having SpaceFM and Udevil there are important since both installs still require some handwork otherwise and see that as kind of a good rule of thumb.  There are several things (pulseaudio would be one) that installing is rather laborious and I would think most people do end up adding them. 

While going to the most bare bones possible sounds good there is a risk of going too far the other way, if it becomes too bare bones I might as well be installing Deb SID.  I would guess you aren't talking that bare bones.

Per the comments regarding pulseaudio, I agree that would be a good addition as a complement to alsa.  I have already personally gone that direction.  I never look at the XFCE stuff, don't remove it but never open any of it that I know of so losing that would just mean less weight from the start in my book.  There are lots of things I never touch or bother to remove like synaptic or thunar or medit for that matter.  I hold Geany in pretty high regard (due to plugins, templates and scripts I wrote for it) though it would be no issue to swap things out if you go that direction.  That said, as apprentice points out we all have our little favorites and that just goes with being a 'nix user. 

I really like what you have done so far though and the only deal breaker for me would be dropping SID (or if you decided you wanted to run Gnome or KDE).  Almost forgot.  I have become a huge umplayer fan thanks to Vsido.  Really a nice little tool to have around.

[blaze]

VastOne, just do what you feel is the right thing to do for you, you are after all the maintainer.   

[VastOne]

@statmonkey

VSIDO is and will always be SID... having the 3.2 kernel is the standard install even for SID if you still used the old business card install.  I am going to keep the SID kernel as the default kernel, per the points that surio brought up

Geany can and probably should be added to the vsido-welcome script ...

I appreciate the feedback and kind words, thanks!

[lwfitz]

Alot of good feedback on this one.

I have a dilemma. I not only use geany but I also use thunar so seeing them go is a bit sad but Im also all for removing XFCE and OB.

Adding some of the xfce apps to vsido-welcome is a great idea (maybe just add xfce as a whole to vsido-welcome?).

VSIDO as the pure Fluxbox distro would be absolutely fantastic! Whatever is decided Im all in and will do my best to break whatever is thrown my way 

[VastOne]

Thunar and the xfce4-panel are installed from vsido-welcome now...

On the new one I took it out, but I think it should be back in... on that I will also add Geany

Thanks lwfitz!

[VastOne]

I have a dilemma. I not only use geany but I also use thunar so seeing them go is a bit sad but Im also all for removing XFCE and OB.

Setup both Geany and Thunar for install during the vsido-welcome script

Here is the link to the latest ISO for testing

I am pretty sure this will be the final based on further testing

[lwfitz]

^ Thanks! Downloading now. Is xfce needed for thunar or geany? Maybe its time to just get spacefm smb shares working properly.

[cobaltwolfe]

Will be downloading this as soon as get back out to internet. Been following the discussion and its sounding like its going to be awesome.

[VastOne]

^ Thanks! Downloading now. Is xfce needed for thunar or geany? Maybe its time to just get spacefm smb shares working properly.

Not all of Xfce4 is needed for Thunar... just what it needs...

I think that statmonkey here and of course ignorantguru (spacefm developer) would help in solving the smb issue with spacefm and that would be a win win for everyone