VL-Light?

[nubcnubdo]

When I was comparing xine and mplayer, I very distinctly recall reading a disclaimer on mplayer's website that it was intended for computers over 500 MHz. This disclaimer has been echoed in several comparative reviews of media players as well. On the other hand I have personally experienced xine playing a DVD smoothly on a 350 MHz computer, and I would speculate that xine would work passably on a 300 MHz box with sufficient RAM.

Re: mplayer...honestly, I have trouble with the GUI. In fact the interface is such a pain that I have not taken the time to use it enough to remember how to use it next time.

[uelsk8s]

here is what i have so far: http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/Uelsk8s/iso-test/VL5.9-Light-A1.2.iso
choose the vesa option when you get to the xorg setup screen.
when you get to xdm you type username and password then enter for jwm or F1 for fluxbox
the menu's for jwm and flux are not fixed yet and I need someone that can make new ones, when we get an apps list together.
opera doesnt play flash too well , and you will need to get sdl and openal for mplayer to work
let me know what you think

Uelsk8s

[Witek Mozga]

WM, I think VL Light is already in the way, perhaps the time of "dont do it" is gone and is time to be constructive and help to define it

OK. Ranting time is over. Anyway I cannot imagine usable desktop without konqueror and k3b. For me then the VL-light version is:

- terminal
- mc, nano/pico
- wget
- dev tools (gcc)
- IceWM desktop with icons
- simple file manager (ROX)
- Sylpheed (mail)
- torrent client
- mplayer (gui not necessary) and mencoder with codecs
- xmms
- xpdf
- xarchiever
- geany (versatile text editor)
- k3b
- konqueror (as browser and powerfull tool for ftp, file-managing, etc)
- gslapt with big repo
- (optionaly wine)
- (optionaly knode)

no games, no ati/nvidia drivers, no flash, no office software, no xfce

I`m not sure how much space these would take but should fit within 300MB.

[nubcnubdo]

I hope we can avoid the implementation of apps run without GUI (eg. bashburn, mplayer), because this amounts to having unlisted apps that many users will not even know are there.

vlc
xine
xmms
abiword
grafburn
xpdf
dillo
geany
JWM/IceWM
xarchiver
wget

Undecided: Opera, wbar, gnumeric, Xfe, terminal

VL Lite is starting to look a lot like Puppy. I think we can do better than ROX file manager. I do like the one-click functionality of Puppy. (Everything opens on one mouse click.)

[rbistolfi]

A .desktop could be made for some of them, like "htop". Also some files like the video ones could be associated with mplayer by default, in that way you keep the goodies of cli apps without loosing "usability".
 

[nightflier]

here is what i have so far: http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/Uelsk8s/iso-test/VL5.9-Light-A1.2.iso

Uel, you are a saint! This is the kind of fun a small and responsive community can come up with 

Before you really can use this one, it is necessary to edit your menu so you can launch a terminal. I just replaced the "terminal" entry with "xterm".

I would suggest copying the default /usr/etc/system.jwmrc to a .jwmrc file in each user's home dir. That way it's easier to configure and customize. Fluxbox already has it's config file in the .fluxbox dir. How about just creating a menu entry "Edit menu" that launches the config file in a text editor?

I can take on the task of doing the menu files.

[nightflier]

VL Lite is starting to look a lot like Puppy

It may "look" that way, but the differences are substantial. VL is a traditional "install to hard drive" system that can easily be expanded using the repo, Slackware packages or by compiling from source.

[nightflier]

Interesting: According to htop, JWM used 8-10 MB more memory than Fluxbox (mid 40's vs. mid 30's). That is a very significant difference.

I took out the entry in .jwmrc that set the background wallpaper and voila! JWM now uses slightly less than Fluxbox. This way it shows the background from the login manager, which looks very good, by the way.

[uelsk8s]

we have to thank m-ake for that BG, it is very nice.
So you have it running there with less than 40mb ram?

[nightflier]

Cold boot to JWM with htop in xterm shows 37 MB. This is with static IP, no services enabled.

I bet it can be tweaked even further. When I tried a similar minimalistic setup in 5.9 Std, I got 36 MB when using Fluxbox.

Edit: Going through TUI login, no bootsplash, and issuing startx, it weighs in at 31 MB (no wallpaper).

[Freeman]

vlc / xine
xmms
abiword
grafburn
xpdf
dillo
geany
JWM/IceWM
xarchiver
wget

It would be fun to have: JWM/Fluxbox and IceWM... I like the simplicity of IceWM, I guess older users with less great hardware, are also custom to use IceWM as they did with VL 5.1 in the days

Abiword, I think is a little to heavy... dunno.. someone?

Code:

Undecided: Opera, wbar, gnumeric, Xfe, terminal

Didn't we allready decided to have Opera and Xfe in?

Code:

I do like the one-click functionality of Puppy. (Everything opens on one mouse click.)

This would be nice to have. Desktop icons, no one admits they want it, but in the end, everybody uses them So I think it would be great to have them in.

Did I allready told you guys that I love Grub?

[uelsk8s]

Alpha-1.3 is up
http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/Uelsk8s/iso-test/VL5.9-Light-A1.3.iso
added xgalaga
added siag office suite
upgraded opera to 9.50b1 its the only one i could get to do flash

[M0E-lnx]

Downloading to try this evening

[nightflier]

howto install Puppy to hdd
...

Maybe this should go in the HOWTO section? 

Anyways, I know that it is possible to do this, but that is an add-on to a distro which is designed to be run "Live".
Now off to the next release to get some more play in before I go off working!

[uelsk8s]

i just remembered this
http://vectorlinux.osuosl.org/Uelsk8s/iso-test/VL5.9-Light-A1.2to1.3.delta
7.3mb