A brightly wrapped box of broken toys

[kortsen]

Hello.  My name is kortsen and I'm a LinuxHolic.  It has been 3 months since I last booted Windows.  My hardware is a Toshiba laptop with a pIII-M 1ghz chip, 256 meg of ram, 20 gig HD, nVidia GeForce2 GO video, and bizzaro WiFi card.  The hard drive was partitioned half-and-half for Windows and Kubuntu (plus a swap partition) but I decided to do something useful with the NTFS partition, so I thought about looking at other distros.  I was telling my Brother-in-law about Kubuntu but he wasn't interested because all his production machines use Slackware.  As a former Senior Systems Analyst for Unisys (going back to Sperry Univac) and independent coder for a very large US firm I had a lot of respect for his opinion.  And VectorLinux popped up on the Kubuntu support forums in a discussion about easy to install and use distros.  I figured I'd give it a try.

Coming from Kubuntu to VL, I am getting frustrated.  Most of it stems from trying to switch from KDE to XFCE. I was a BillyWare user for over a decade so KDE was a natural choice.  XFCE just isn't intuitive.  But there are some basic things that just don't work.

I have already resolved 2 issues with help from toothandnail to get my system dual-booting VL and Kubuntu and from Uelsk8s to get my WiFi working.  But that was because 1) I couldn't boot to Kubuntu after installing VL and 2) the WiFi drivers were in the wrong folder.

There are 3 applications I use on every system; Opera, Firefox and Thunderbird.  Kudos for including the first 2.  But my next big frustration was with the package manager.  I should have known I was in trouble when I got a message that "... the problematic Update feature has been disabled."  I selected Thunderbird for installation and was told it had unresolved dependencies.  So I installed the missing package (Orbit) and installed TBird.  Isn't that the job of a good package manager to resolve?

I'm still fighting to get my desktop set up the way I want it.  I have yet to figure out how to edit the menues and add launchers to the taskbar.  Then I'll work on finding a package manager that works.  Then play hide-n-seek with my CD-ROM.  I'm almost afraid to plug in my thumb drive to see what happens.

[M0E-lnx]

Gslapt should isntall any missing deps for Tbird if they are available for install
make sure you have the correct repos enabled, (add packages, testing, extra, and patches for better odds)

Your thumb drive will be just fine. Plug it in

[kortsen]

I found one answer to my previous post, and I don't like it.  I was reading http://www.osnews.com/story/3974 and came across this passage.

The Slackware package tools do not handle dependencies. The means to handle dependencies does not exist in the "format" of Slackware packages either. This can initially scare away users . . .

SWING AND A MISS!  STRIKE ONE.

[kortsen]

Gslapt should isntall any missing deps for Tbird if they are available for install
make sure you have the correct repos enabled, (add packages, testing, extra, and patches for better odds)

I selected Thunderbird for installation and was told it had unresolved dependencies.  So I installed the missing package (Orbit) and installed TBird.

It wasn't a repository issue.  Orbit was there.  I scrolled up to the "O"s and selected & installed it.  Then I selected TBird again and installed it.  All in the same Gslapt session.  I had to double pump the install because

The Slackware package tools do not handle dependencies. The means to handle dependencies does not exist in the "format" of Slackware packages either. This can initially scare away users . . .

[wcs]

I have yet to figure out how to edit the menues and add launchers to the taskbar.

For the launcher, right-click on the panel, choose "Add New Item", pick "Laucher", add more items to it if you need, choose an image for the launcher (either the one on the list, or choose other to browse for an icon -- you'll find several icons in /usr/share/pixmaps), type in the command for the program you want to run.

The basic menu structure is in Setting --> Menu Editor. The application menus, however, are dealt with by reading .desktop files that are in /usr/share/applications . If you open one of these desktop files (right-click on it and open with a text editor), you'll be able to change the Category where it goes and the command that they run. To add a new menu entry, you'll need to create a new .desktop file and put it there; to remove it, delete the corresponding .desktop file or place it somewhere else. Granted, it's not as easy as in KDE, and takes a while to get used to. I have a sample desktop file that I use whenever I want to add a new program to the menu. Change accordingly. Categories can be Office, Network, etc. (Multimedia is AudioVideo, though... I know, it's weird). Place the icon are in /usr/share/pixmaps.

Example:

Code:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Lyx
Comment=Document Processor
Exec=lyx
Icon=lyx.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Application;Office;

[wcs]

The Slackware package tools do not handle dependencies.

But the vector linux ones do...
slapt-get handles dependencies just fine, and gslapt is a frontend to slapt-get.

Although it has occasionally given me problems, for example by wanting to remove more packages than it should. That seems to be a slapt-get issue and not a repo one (although this is rare).

The reason that Thunderbird failed is definitely a repository one. The problem is in the Thunderbird package, because it searches for a package with the name "orbit2-2.14.8-1vl59". The package is named orbit2 and therefore it is not found. Thunderbird will need to be repackaged for that to be fixed.

[kortsen]

The Slackware package tools do not handle dependencies.

But the vector linux ones do...

I had read MOE-lnx's profile and visited his website while you were typing.  I figured that if anyone knew, it was him.  I was prepared to be corrected.

[kortsen]

The basic menu structure is in Setting --> Menu Editor. The application menus, however, are dealt with by reading .desktop files that are in /usr/share/applications .

I had muddled through the Menu Editor and what I wanted to edit was listed as

               ---include---      system

Is that the desktop files you mentioned above?

[wcs]

The reason that Thunderbird failed is definitely a repository one. The problem is in the Thunderbird package, because it searches for a package with the name "orbit2-2.14.8-1vl59". The package is named orbit2 and therefore it is not found. Thunderbird will need to be repackaged for that to be fixed.

I've posted this issue in the Package News and Updates forum.

[wcs]

I had muddled through the Menu Editor and what I wanted to edit was listed as

               ---include---      system

Is that the desktop files you mentioned above?

That's it... Xfce is yet to produce a proper menu editor. Until then, only through the .desktop files in /usr/share/applications .
I know it sucks, but since I've gotten used to it, I don't even notice it.

[kortsen]

I know it sucks, but since I've gotten used to it, I don't even notice it.

It seems like a rather rude introduction to my new desktop, but once I plow through and get all the basics tweaked I will 1) know how to do it, and 2) rarely need to do it again.

[wcs]

True.
One rather annoying thing thought is that when you change the file, sometimes the effects only show up after logging out and back in.
The best way to do it (in my opinion) is to move the file from /usr/share/applications. The menu entry will instantly disappear. Then make whatever changes you need. Copying it back to /usr/share/applications (as root) should instantly make the icon appear in its place.

[kortsen]

BTW: MOE-lnx was right about the thumb drive.

[Joe1962]

If you are used to KDE you don't really have to suffer, you have 2 more choices besides learning XFCE: install KDE (from the repos) on 5.9 Standard, or use 5.8 SOHO (until 5.9 SOHO comes out). In VL, the SOHO edition uses KDE by default, Standard is a light-weight variant.

[uelsk8s]

kortsen,
The obit2 problem was My fault. When I created the package I left out the architecture info it is named orbit2-2.14.8-1vl59 and should be orbit2-2.14.8-i586-1vl59 the package manager cannot find it because of that.
I am working on resolving the issue.

Sorry for the inconvenience,
Uelsk8s