On Sunday 18 February 2018 23:57:08 deloptes wrote: No major problems now, but this is after going through the process I described. Before that, I ran into similar problems not only on the 'buntus, but on several other distros as well. However, another user (Brian Durant) made what seems a useful suggestion: to install "a base, mini, server (or whatever it is called) version. After that, you just add the Trinity repos to the list that your distribution uses." I think the problem is one of too much other stuff from other distros, not enough Trinity. Anyway, I do not geek for geek's sake, and am not trying to one-up anybody. Building my own system is the only way I can afford to keep a working computer, and actually get work done; it is a matter of survival for me. Bill

William Morder composed on 2018-02-19 02:30 (UTC-0800): +1 I rarely do otherwise. :-) -- "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/

On Monday 19 February 2018 07:36:57 Brian Durant wrote: Thanks for the checklist of pkgs for minimal installation. It mostly resembles my own, with a few exceptions; but those items look useful. Also, I am interested in running Devuan over Debian, because I am less than enthusiastic about my systemd experience. It seems like systemd interferes with certain operations. I set out to learn Debian first, before trying Devuan; because I was used to running the 'buntus, and unfamiliar with the differences in a Debian system. Now that I've got Debian under control (except for systemd), I think maybe I'm ready to go for Devuan. So if you can offer any advice about making the switch, I would be most grateful. Devuan repositories (including the onion links) are already in my sources.list. And I now have a second computer, and more liberty to explore and experiment. Bill

On Monday 19 February 2018 11:46:42 Dan Youngquist wrote: TDE is not much trouble at all for me now; but it was a long time getting to here. I think maybe it's because I do a lot of different kinds of work, and use maybe more different kinds of software than other users. (My root partition is currently 16 gb, and according to kdiskfree I have only 741 mb of free space; on installations of 'buntu or Debian distros (since about 2012 or so) I generally reserve 20-30 gb, until I figure out what goes well together. I use a lot of packages from KDE, Gnome, and third-party repositories; although I waited until I got my current system stable before I installed these, so they were not the problem. Once I get everything stable, then I usually customize my system quite a bit; and I also reduce the size of my root partition. For ten years I ran Kubuntu Hardy 8.04 on a separate partition, and it ran without a hitch. TDE looks almost the same, but changing over from one to the other was not exactly seamless. If I always had an extra computer for experimentation, and unlimited time to explore the wonders of Linux, and no pressing deadlines or commitments, or a life outside my computer, then I would probably have sorted out these issues long ago. Also, I used to have an entire room of my home filled with nothing but computers and computer parts, with five or six computers always up and running, most of them connected to the network and on the Internet. But now I have been trying to do the same work using only one computer; and now, with a spare laptop, with two computers. At present, I have no complaints. I always assume that it is my responsibility to improve my own computer skills; but everybody geeks for fun. Now that I've got my Debian system running pretty much like my old KDE3, I am starting to question and analyze what were the obstacles to an easier transition. My crazy idea is that if talk about some of these issues, we might come up with some solutions that work for relative n00bs (who know even less than myself), and which will ensure the long life of the TDE project. And by the way, not everybody "out there" takes a favorable view of TDE; for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/11gf0d/the_problem_with_trinity_des… (with lots of snarky comments) and more here: https://www.reddit.com/search?q=Trinity+desktop&restrict_sr=&sort=r… I want to see TDE survive and improve. If not for TDE, my inclination would be to move to a cave up in the mountains, then build my own operating system and desktop using stone tools. I don't think it's the fault of the devs, etc.; I think it has more to do with the internal politics of the Linux communities. But that's another thread. But I think maybe the way forward is to get TDE into the regular repositories, rather than to sit at the children's table. Bill

On Monday 19 February 2018 10:03:11 deloptes wrote: Ultra-minimalist installation! Yes, I believe that this is the true path: don't install other DEs; use TDE exclusively. My problem, though, has been that I need to have some kind of working system, with a usable DE; then I can fiddle with experimental configurations on the side. I used to have a partition with a stable, working OS, usually running KDE3 or TDE, when possible, while on a separate partition I would experiment and learn. Now that somebody gave me an old laptop (Sony Vaio), I can try to create a system that runs only TDE from the start. But then you must start out running everything from a shell, am I right? because you don't yet have TDE installed? Sort of like Puppy Linux or one of those distros? My other trick has been to save all the downloaded pkgs, figure out which ones play well together, save them somewhere in some kind of order, then run sudo dpkg -i -E -G /media/<wherever>/*.deb After that, I just run sudo torify apt-get -f install to correct any missing dependencies; and of course add those pkgs to the pool of working pkgs. Bill

On Monday 19 February 2018 11:18:49 Felix Miata wrote: Not hard at all, if one knows the script. But I don't run Redhat, so I would have to adapt it to Debian. It seems to me that there are many more people out there who would like to run a Linux system with TDE, but they cannot find this sort of information. This is why I've started this thread. Maybe we can create some pages somewhere and post this kind of information. Bill

On Monday 19 February 2018 13:49:16 Felix Miata wrote: Yes, I am familiar with this page. I have it bookmarked, added all the lines to my sources.list (and add new lines as TDE gets updated). I just comment out the lines I don't use, then delete them as I progress through upgrades. The commands for apt-get: that is all I use for downloading and installing pkgs. I don't use synaptic or any of those tools. Otherwise, I use dpkg, if I have saved pkgs; or when my network is down (which happens more often than seems normal where I live). Yes, the information pages are not easily accessible. Only after you have thoroughly explored the Trinity site do you know where to find things; but that's only because I've bookmarked all the important pages. For somebody who is just starting out, it is like searching in the wilderness, equipped with nothing - not compass, map, flashlight, nor signposts. That's one of those items that I would like to see improved; because, as I've already said, more users for TDE would be of some benefit to all of us ... that is, if we want to keep using TDE into the indefinite future. This is a net install? I like that. Thanks for your information. Bill

E. Liddell composed on 2018-02-19 19:15 (UTC-0500): 11pt physical would be a fine and dandy size in that context, but specifying 11pt in any "current" web browser other than one using the KHTML engine gets you 11px, which can be vastly different from 11pt, depending on screen density. CSS since 2.1 or thereabouts made the px unit exactly equal to the pt unit, making spec-compliant browsers unable to specify accurate physical sizes unless physical screen density is equal to 96 DPI. KHTML (Konq) never complied with this spec, while Gecko browsers do offer a workaround for those willing to write custom rules using its proprietary mozmm unit. If you s/11pt/.917rem/ in #mw-navigation on screen.css:64 you should get a close approximation of 11pt "physical" size if the near universal default 16px/12pt remains in effect in the browser in use, and if you are using any moderately recent 100% spec-compliant browser (which excludes Konq, which has no rem unit support). However, as long as you retain the 170px sidebar width, you'll find the same problem with overflow I see here as the user's screen density deviates above 96 DPI. s/170px/10.625rem/ for div#mw-panel in screen.css:590 might be enough to fix the sidebar width, but doing that would undoubtedly create need for other sizing rule adjustments. http://fm.no-ip.com/SS/KDE/tdeCSS20180219.gif shows what I see. 11px CSS equates to 30.25% of my browser's default 12pt (20px) size. -- "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/

On Monday 19 February 2018 20:47:06 Felix Miata wrote: To put that into further perspective, running firefox on wheezy with 1920x1080 screen, I have to hit the ctrl+ 6 times to get it up to a really comfortable reading size on the wiki's front page for these old eyes. It starts out with characters nominally 3/32" tall. Readable if I lean in to bring my trifocals into focus, but not pleasantly so. -- Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

William Morder composed on 2018-02-20 00:47 (UTC-0800): It's not hard to understand. The vast majority designers are copycats with good or better eyesight. They use templates or otherwise copy what has been copied before. Screen quality goes up by increasing physical pixel density. To compensate for the physically smaller pixels that equate to higher density, designers buy progressively bigger desktop screens, and keep on copying what they were copying. For the rest of the world, without unlimited funds to keep buying tax-deductible bigger screens or unable to handle bigger, heavier laptops to compensate, fonts shrink. Astute designers, of which very few apparently exist, size using units that adjust to user settings and take density into account. That means using the various relative sizing units (not using px or their pt equivalent), rather than the contortions and distortions produced by scripts that aim to "respond" (in arbitrary fashion, using px units) to various px values probed for. -- "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/

On Tuesday 20 February 2018 13.31:28 E. Liddell wrote: That's a problem TDE will have to address too, globaly. I've had a (short) encounter with an HiDPI screen (which is another example of basic stupidity, as HiDPI may be nice for video, maybe gaming, but is totaly useless for work) and TDE was really a pain, because it was designed in a time where such resolutions did not exist and is bitmap based. Windows 10 adapts well, even Gnome 3 can more or less cope with it. So I's say either we provide good bitmaps for HiDPI (I'd be happy to help there), or we turn to scalable elements (seems quite a rewrite), or in the end TDE disappears, because new laptops all come with HiDPI, even cheap chinese ones. Why is another question - the screen in front of me is a 27" , 1920x1080 one and I can't see any reason for changing it. Thierry

On Tue, 20 Feb 2018 13:43:19 +0100 Thierry de Coulon &lt;tcoulon(a)decoulon.ch&gt; wrote: TDE already has SVG support for some things, but it may need to be extended into additional parts of the UI (lacking a HiDPI screen to test, I can't say exactly where those would be, though). Other than that, the main things needed would be better support for font scaling, and at least one window manager theme and widget set designed to flex without looking utterly ugly. I think. I'm starting to think I should be looking for a HiDPI screen I can stick on the Raspberry Pi cluttering the shelf above my desk, so that I can at least float a sane minimal proposal . . . Two reasons that I can think of: talking points for marketing, and economies of scale in production. Nothing to do with end users, in other words. E. Liddell

On 2018-02-20 08:33:11 William Morder wrote: Which also explains why developers have (seemingly unanimously) adopted pastel themes, which make it so hard to distinguish different icons.

Brian Durant wrote: +1 it is not that hard if you know how to work on the console, but for a person who does not know how to edit a file with vim, it might be a big challange Wasn't there a live CD of TDE? regards

Looks like nano, except nano has pretty colors :-) nano is installed by default by Debian, pico package is alpine-pico Greg On Monday 19 February 2018 11:32:53 am Dan Youngquist wrote:

E. Liddell wrote: Regarding editors If you have not heard of, there is "ne", which is my favorite command line editor - unfortunately is not installed by default in debian and is not available on other distros. It is however impressive. I can recommend

William Morder composed on 2018-02-20 11:58 (UTC-0800): Not counting sed and email, the editors I use 99.8%+ of my time on Linux are those built into OFMs, which for me are Midnight Commander and FileCommander/L. ~.01% or less of the time that no OFM is or can be made available, I use Nano. Usually if MC isn't installed I try installing it first before trying any fallback. MC in Konsole is one of the bits that hooked me on KDE back around the turn of the century. -- "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/

Leslie Turriff composed on 2018-02-22 23:28 (UTC-0600): And thank you! OS/2's editor is the only GUI editor I ever liked. On openSUSE 42.3 KDE3, its installed size is 65KB, but required 3.5MB of previously unneeded deps. :-p -- "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/

On Monday 19 February 2018 12:51:19 Slávek Banko wrote: Yes, thanks Slavek! I am a great admirer of your work. However, I've tried most of the live CDs (at least, the 'buntus & Debian): From the list on that page, I've tried: Exe Gnu/Linux PCLinuxOS (external) PCLinuxOS (internal) Q4OS Slax with Trinity Ubuntu Nightly Ubuntu Releases Ubuntu (thirdparty) I tried every Ubuntu TDE release from 10.04 through 16.04. 14.04 and 16.04 worked pretty well, but I still ended up having problems. (System freezes up, or network problems, or sudden crashes ... the list is long, but my method is to get rid of non-TDE stuff, or to disable some configurations in KDE, Gnome, etc.) I described this in more detail in other messages. They got better and better, but thus far do not work as well as my taking the scenic route when installing Debian and then TDE. Bill

On Monday 19 February 2018 11:35:42 Brian Durant wrote: Yes, thanks. That is clear and straightforward. As I said in answer to Felix Miata's comment, I would like to see this information posted somewhere, either on Trinity's site, or on user pages, forums, whatever. (Although I suppose the Devuan question isn't really specific to Trinity, we could still link to such information.) Bill