sugesstions for next Zenwalk version(s)

jakonj · **Posted:** Sat Oct 10, 2009 4:28 pm

Im using Zenwalk for over 5 months (as only os on my pc) and i belive it is excellent distro with a lot of features (i plan to became maintainer of one package that is not on the repos (vqcc-gtk) when i learn how to build packages for zenwalk). I love that you include python, perl, geany, totem, codecs, flash... Xfce is great but minimal, there are many apps... Just dont change this default app list and we will be happy to the rest of our lifes :>
Anyway, since you started to use new compression method for iso images i would like to suggest some things that you should use in next version of zenwalk. Before i start let me tell you something (thats the reason why im suggesting many stuff here): in some counteries there are many people that have no internet (like me)! Keep that in mind when you read this post.
So my 2 cents for next zenwalk release(s):

1. Include kernel sources in iso. Here is why (i will explain in one example): Lets say that you wana install nVidia drivers on your Zenwalk. Your ISP is down for whole afternoon (lets say that some punks demolished isp cables) and you need to compile nVidia graphic drivers but you have no net and you have to finish some graphic work (advertising) in 3 hours. So here are the facts: no net, no sources, no chance to complie drivers in a few... Zenwalk is better than that

I know, it is stupid example but here is another one: i use Zen 6.0. I want to upgrade to 6.2 but only in app section (so i wana upgrade geany, xfce, gthumb... kernel and core stuff will remain from Zen v6.0). By mistake i upgrade kernel too but at the end i notice this: in kernel from Zen 6.2 there are no support for some stuff that i want. No big thing i will just revert to kernel from 6.0. Now that is tricky because there is no kernel source for kernel that ships with Zenwalk 6.0 (beacuse repos use the latest stable kernel that ships with latest Zenwalk).
Another stupid example but my point is that we should get kernel sources for kernel that ships with Zenwalk. There is no need to install sources by default but it would be nice to have that package on disk (just in case).

2. Zenwalk has a great coverage in applications section. There is Geany|Vim, Gthumb, Totem, exaile... Still there are no vector drawing program and audio editing tool. Also we are missing some stuff like video editing tool, 7zip support and murrine engine (it faster than clearlooks so include it in distro by default). Now there are plenty space on iso image so there is chance to make Zenwalk even more complete out of the box

ALso this way we can use zenwalk without bother to go to net and install aplications. face it: people love stuff that just works. I use linux for more than 3 years (as my main distro) and i used a lot Openbox and other geeky stuff but i love to install and just start application without bother. Personally i love to have distro with applications for every single section and thats why im suggesting to add these apps to zenwalk by default.

3. Is there any chance to add bluetooth support in Zenwalk out of the box? I never managed to use bluetooth in 6.0. I simply installed bluez apps and libs and there was bluetooth applet (i enabled bluetooth in services) but no device (dmesg showed that bluetooth device was pressent on system). I will try bluetooth in 6.2 in next week but i would be nice to include it in zen out of the box. After all, bluetooth is cheap, it is standard and it is on almost every single laptop|netbook. Just add it and explain to end users that they need to enable it in "services" menu.

4. Please (and i mean PLEASE) try not to include xfce svn packages. I know that Zenwalk is trying to be good and quality distro but with svn packages there is no chance to be that. Example: in Zen v6.0 there were only svn packages of xfce. Result: maaaaany bugs and pretty ugly expirience. In 6.2 there are no svn packages and system is much better

. I will open discussion about this on forums here so you can check out opinions on this matter

5. There is codec issue. You know, i use codecs (here in Serbia there are no boring laws against those stuff) in zenwalk but there are room for improvements. You can include faad and ffmpeg+ gstreamer support for ffmpeg by default in zenwalk. Still there are issues in some countries about codecs so you can do this: after installation of zenwalk, end users will have to choose will they enable codecs in zenwalk or not. That way you can include even more stuff for gstreamer (since you are using totem).

6. Any cahnce to include wine bu default? Many people are using wine since it is good piece of software (i know that im playing a lot of Neverwinter Nights 1 in my pc).

Keep this in mind: i did not wana say that zenwalk should use every single MB in one standard CD. My goal is to give you look from my perspective and what should zenwalk so it could be totally complete out of the box. As i said: people love stuff that works out of the box. Take this example: ubuntu is popular but there are many stuff missing by default in that distro. When Linux Mint released its first version many ubuntu people dumped ubuntu and went to Mint (despite the fact that Mint IS ubuntu but with better out of the box app list). Zenwalk is builded on Slackware which is one of the greates distros (next to debian, gentoo and arch) available. YOu have strong community behind yourself so give them something that they will talk about. Elive is one of the superB complete distros (by apps out of the box). Why Zenwalk should not be as good as elive? Think of that

Tnx on time you spended on reading this. My English is not so great but i tried my best to make this text easy readable (but there are errors and typos).

p.s. I have no internet connection so dont expect quick answer from me (if you have any question) soon (like in 1 day).

hyperion · **Posted:** Thu Oct 15, 2009 8:48 pm

Thank you very much for your suggestions

Some answers below :

Quote:

1. Include kernel sources in iso.

Please try the new 2.6.31.4 kernel from snapshot, you can build any kernel related driver with it, including nvidia

Quote:

2. Zenwalk has a great coverage in applications section. There is Geany|Vim, Gthumb, Totem, exaile... Still there are no vector drawing program and audio editing tool. Also we are missing some stuff like video editing tool, 7zip support and murrine engine (it faster than clearlooks so include it in distro by default). Now there are plenty space on iso image so there is chance to make Zenwalk even more complete out of the box

Could you suggest a good video editing tool, with few dependencies ?
Inkscape could be added to the ISO, but I'm not sure that more than 2% of the users need a vector graphics editor...
Murrine engine could be a good improvement, I will test it

Quote:

3. Is there any chance to add bluetooth support in Zenwalk out of the box? I never managed to use bluetooth in 6.0. I simply installed bluez apps and libs and there was bluetooth applet (i enabled bluetooth in services) but no device (dmesg showed that bluetooth device was pressent on system). I will try bluetooth in 6.2 in next week but i would be nice to include it in zen out of the box. After all, bluetooth is cheap, it is standard and it is on almost every single laptop|netbook. Just add it and explain to end users that they need to enable it in "services" menu.

Yes, we need to add Bluetooth (I prefer natural girls.... but only french people can understand this joke

)

Quote:

4. Please (and i mean PLEASE) try not to include xfce svn packages. I know that Zenwalk is trying to be good and quality distro but with svn packages there is no chance to be that. Example: in Zen v6.0 there were only svn packages of xfce. Result: maaaaany bugs and pretty ugly expirience. In 6.2 there are no svn packages and system is much better

. I will open discussion about this on forums here so you can check out opinions on this matter

We use stable versions. grabbing the source code from SVN doesn't mean that this code is different from the official tarball : it depends on the moment you grab SVN (sometimes SVN is more stable that the official code, especially a few days after a release)

Quote:

5. There is codec issue. You know, i use codecs (here in Serbia there are no boring laws against those stuff) in zenwalk but there are room for improvements. You can include faad and ffmpeg+ gstreamer support for ffmpeg by default in zenwalk. Still there are issues in some countries about codecs so you can do this: after installation of zenwalk, end users will have to choose will they enable codecs in zenwalk or not. That way you can include even more stuff for gstreamer (since you are using totem).

Someone can confirm this ?

Quote:

6. Any cahnce to include wine bu default? Many people are using wine since it is good piece of software (i know that im playing a lot of Neverwinter Nights 1 in my pc).

Wine could be added by default, I think we will do it, but this has to be discussed first

Cheers
JP

wdphish · **Joined:** Wed Nov 26, 2008 6:44 am **Posts:** 156

hyperion wrote:

Could you suggest a good video editing tool, with few dependencies ?

I don't think there are many video editing tools with few dependencies. One that is already in zenwalk's repo is cinelerra. Another good one is openshot: http://www.openshotvideo.com. However, you will the following deps:
frei0r
pygoocanvas
mlt

but, to build pygoocanvas, you will need goocanvas and to build mlt, you will need swig. Check out the screencasts in openshotvideo.com

HER0_01 · **Posted:** Fri Oct 16, 2009 2:12 am

Maybe for the video editing program you can include the package that allows gimp to edit videos more complicated than animations...not sure exactly what it is called but it could be something worth looking into

jakonj · **Posted:** Mon Nov 23, 2009 8:08 pm

@hyperion

Quote:

Please try the new 2.6.31.4 kernel from snapshot, you can build any kernel related driver with it, including nvidia

Tried but there was no change except my prineter stopped working)

Quote:

Could you suggest a good video editing tool, with few dependencies ?

Yes. Lives is good but it requires xmms and mplayer for extra functions. Jahshaka coul be good but i never tried it in linux.

Quote:

Inkscape could be added to the ISO, but I'm not sure that more than 2% of the users need a vector graphics editor...

This was sugesstion so that zen can be much more complete out of the box.

Quote:

Murrine engine could be a good improvement, I will test it

And writting theme for murrine is easy too. I can help if you decide to use it

Quote:

We use stable versions. grabbing the source code from SVN doesn't mean that this code is different from the official tarball : it depends on the moment you grab SVN (sometimes SVN is more stable that the official code, especially a few days after a release)

True but allow me to say that stable is not stable just for nothing. You are programmer so you understand why is it called svn

Quote:

Cheers

you too

hyperion · **Posted:** Mon Nov 23, 2009 9:03 pm

Code:

And writting theme for murrine is easy too. I can help if you decide to use it

You're welcome

jakonj · **Posted:** Mon Nov 23, 2009 9:47 pm

hyperion wrote:

Code:

And writting theme for murrine is easy too. I can help if you decide to use it

You're welcome

You should give me colour scheme since i have no idea where to start

hyperion · **Posted:** Tue Nov 24, 2009 7:32 am

Use the Zenwalk theme, of course

JP

rybarczykbr · **Joined:** Wed Nov 25, 2009 2:24 pm **Posts:** 7

Hi!

My Zenwalk 6,2 would not save my notebook LCD bightness, so I had to add this to /etc/rc.d/rc.local

echo 5 >/proc/acpi/video/IGD/LCD/brightness

Would be nice to have it saved automatically, maybe write the value to some file.

Thanks,
Gustavo.

hyperion · **Posted:** Wed Nov 25, 2009 2:35 pm

I will take a look ;:)

JP

hyperion · **Posted:** Wed Nov 25, 2009 2:55 pm

What about Gnome Power Manager ? could someone test it et report if it can be of some help ?

Thx

JP

rybarczykbr · **Joined:** Wed Nov 25, 2009 2:24 pm **Posts:** 7

Another tip:

when shutting down Zenwalk takes a long time updating the font cache.
I have disabled the update, by commenting out the lines. Maybe could be possible to use some code to check if the fonts were changed and avoid the slow update.

sicarius · **Posted:** Thu Nov 26, 2009 6:01 pm

rybarczykbr wrote:

Another tip:

when shutting down Zenwalk takes a long time updating the font cache.
I have disabled the update, by commenting out the lines. Maybe could be possible to use some code to check if the fonts were changed and avoid the slow update.

Hey, check this topic out:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=24912&p=127335

adding this to rc.6 will do a check if the font list had changed and decide whether to update the font index or not:

Code:

# Font caching
RECACHE=0
[ -e /etc/fonts.list ] && ( du /usr/share/fonts > /tmp/fonts.list ) && (cmp -s /etc/fonts.list /tmp/fonts.list ) && RECACHE=1

if [ ${RECACHE} -eq 0 ]; then
  du /usr/share/fonts > /etc/fonts.list
  for fontdir in cyrillic OTF TTF 100dpi 75dpi misc Type1 Speedo util encodings; do
        [ -d /usr/share/fonts/${fontdir} ] && \
        (
                [ -x /usr/bin/mkfontscale ] && ( chroot . /usr/bin/mkfontscale /usr/share/fonts/${fontdir} > /dev/null 2>&1 )
                [ -x /usr/bin/mkfontdir ] && ( chroot . /usr/bin/mkfontdir /usr/share/fonts/${fontdir} > /dev/null 2>&1 )
        )
  done
fi

It would be great if something like this was added by default.

Ind-PC_student · **Joined:** Tue Jun 02, 2009 9:56 am **Posts:** 11

I need to ask for some extra software packages:

1 - Homebank personal Finance under office Menu http://homebank.free.fr/
2 - Scribus DTP for home users http://scribus.net office menu as well
3 - Some Games and a games entry on a menu ie. Battle for wesnoth, simutrans, blobwars, card games

If not what about publishing a CD/DVD Add-on.ISO with installable software packages net Pkg enabled?

so what do you think?

aburkon · **Posted:** Fri Nov 27, 2009 2:50 pm

What about Network?amager?
(I'am using T-Mobile web'n'walk HSDPA Stick, but with HSOconnect and I think, NetworkManager is better choiche....)

sugesstions for next Zenwalk version(s)

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