Re: A swim in icewm, and a choice of applications.
On tir, 2005-09-27 at 21:02 +0200, Harald Thingelstad wrote:
> Last developer gathering, organizer Trond Mæhlum told us how they used
> Skolelinux (and other Linux platforms) at the local schools.
>
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2005/09/msg00115.html
>
> One detail; they used the icewm window manager, and for two reasons:
> 1) It's lightweight. For reasons of work, I can very much understand the
> idea of fitting as many terminals onto a server as is possible.
> 2) The menus are very easy to edit, even for an amateur. It's just a
> text file, and can easily be spread over the whole site.
> (The kde menu editing apps are not in user interface heaven yet,
> sorry. :) )
Both teachers and students are happy with icewm. There's a third reason
also. Our icewm defaults to the theme "xp-new" which makes it look like
Windows XP. This is what most teachers and students have at home, so
their Skolelinux desktop look familiar. One does not have to like this,
but it _does_ work for us.
> Another issue is the choice of applications. Based on more than one and
> a half year of bugging and ideas from teachers, it's a great step
> towards functionality.
Exactly
> I've used some time reimplementing this in a Skolelinux setup.
> Skolelinux-Sarge-pr05, that is. And, as always, I learnt something.
> Time to share and see what happens.
This is just excellent. I have been trying to this, but have not found
the time. The thing is, we have been using K12LTSP on our
terminalservers. I would like to move those servers to Skolelinux or
maybe Ubuntu even. But since K12LTSP already has everyting that Harald
writes up here, it has been the easy way out. Making a K12lTSP
installation talk to the Skolelinux LDAP base is as simple as launching
"system-config-authentication", select ldap and write the ou-string.
Click apply and presto! No manual editing of any files.
> The Linux programs used in Mæhlums list are:
--snip--
> Note there are no mail applications in the list above. There should be,
> not?
We have set up Egroupware for mail, calendar and fileupload. It's not
completly ready for production yet. In our menu, there will be an
application called "Egroupware" which will launch Firefox and point it
to egw. So yes, there should be a mail application.
--snip--
> My biggest problem with icewm so far is with nautilus.
> Once you run nautilus, this beast takes over the desktop background and
> basically never quits until you kill it. Not even when you try to log
> out. Nautilus stops the logout, and you can't log out until you've done
> "killall nautilus" (or similar).
We ran this without Nautilus last year. A clean icewm install leaves an
empty desktop. With no context menu from the right mouse button. This
year we put Nautilus in to enable desktop backgrounds and the context
menu. Programs like Openoffice also seems faster with Nautilus running
in the background. Keep in mind that using Nautilus demands more
resources that running icewm alone. So if desktopbackgrounds and context
menus aren't important, icewm uses very little cpu/ram on the server.
> Icewm lets you run a shutdown script, but it won't run before nautilus
> is gone, so that doesn't work either.
> Any ideas?
My /etc/X11/gdm/Sessions/IceWM contains this:
# use nautilus?
/usr/libexec/gnome-settings-daemon &
/usr/bin/nautilus &
Why it does not let you log out, I don't know. I can not find something
that kills nautilus at logout? Can you try to put the lines above into
your icewm startup script?
Let me know how it goes.
> Planning to do a reportbug soon, but some more meat would be nice.
Totally agree.
>
>
> For my rewritten menu (plus this mail, and more), Ill put it up in
> http://d.skolelinux.no/~harald/menu/
Hey, my menu in English :)
>
> Download, have a look at it, and if you need it then put it in
> ~/.icewm/menu or /etc/X11/icewm/menu
>
> And thus the basics are covered. Menu items not found won't show up on
> the menu, so no worry with the MSwindows apps mentioned there.
This is correct. References to non-existing applications will not show
up.
Another nice thing about Icewm. If you change a menu-item, remove it or
add a new one. It shows up in the users menus instantly. No logout/login
required.
Best Regards
Trond Maehlum
> Have a good night.
> Harald
>
>
>
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