Re: X is giving me a headache.
*-MallarJ@aol.com
|
| X is totally confusing me at the moment. Or rather, how to get it all
| working, where are the good window managers, etc.
There is a web page dedicated to window managers for X. There you can
see most of them in action. I don't have to URL handy, but a search
should find it. I'll dig it up if anyone asks.
| I've about given up on KDE. I have read a lot about KDE and how good it was;
| how many "great product" awards it is receiving, and wanted to install it as
| my WM. However, as you know, there aren't any .deb files for the 1.0 release.
| (Why are there 1.0 releases [and .deb files] for bo but not hamm? Wasn't bo
| under the same license hamm is under??)
|
| I don't want prerelease (v1.1) software at this point (because of
| instability), and the .deb files I can find are for bo - and they want old
| versions of libraries that are giving me conflicts with what I have already
| installed. Is it worth it to just pull out my new libraries to get the bo
| version installed so I can turn around and upgrade again when the hamm release
| finally comes back? Will bo versions run on a hamm box?
It's quite sad. KDE is an excellent product. I thought debs for 1.0
would be on ftp.kde.org. You could try asking coolo@kde.org as he
is/was the KDE maintainer. I don't think I'd try to downgrade to bo
just to use KDE. Getting bo packages to run on hamm won't be easy
either (a big think happened between bo and hamm).
| Then, I thought I'd take a stab at compiling the source code for KDE. BIG
| mistake. Evidently, I don't have all the X includes it needs, and damned if
| it'll tell me what they are - it (./configure) just says they aren't there. I
| started to just grab them from the XFree86 site, but I'm not sure what to get,
| or if I really need all 140M worth of X11 source just to compile KDE.
Don't. Everything you need to compile KDE should be in Debian. You
need the -dev packages in addition to all the libraries. For instance,
you need both xlib6g and xlib6g-dev. You also need many others. Too bad
we haven't implemented source dependencies yet. :-(
If you still want to compile KDE after this message, just send me the
errors as they come (the error message and config.log) and I'll tell
you whick packages to grab.
| So, I thought I'd try Window Maker, since I've seen references to it here and
| there in this list. Well, I'm in just about the same boat - no binaries on
| the Window Maker site, and the source compile instructions say I need the X
| includes. Hurumphf...
|
| I did check ftp.debian.org for the Window Maker files, and of course, they are
| for version 0.14 - even though the new version is 0.20.
0.20 is in frozen is you are willing to take the (small?) risk.
| Maybe I'm expecting too much. All I'm after is a good windowing system for my
| new Linux. One that I'm not going to have to reboot to fix all the time - I
| have Win95 for that. One that provides the features I should expect from a
| window GUI - scrollbars, flexibility, ease of use, compatibility, maybe some
| pretty backgrounds and title bars - and a clean looking interface.
Most tastes should be catered for. I'm looking at icewm with blueice
theme and xsnow to get the christmas spirit now. Quite nice. I've
actually written a small utility called randomwm that picks one wm
out of a list randomly each time i start a session. I love surprises.
If you are interested, I can send you a list of the environments that
I think are worthwhile.
The main problem is that some apps are ugly, but that's the price I
have to pay for flexibility...
| Should I just shut up and download the old versions of the window managers
| from the ftp.debian.org site? Or is there a way to get up to date versions
| without having to download the source files to things I don't really need -
| like X11 - the binaries are just fine, thanks. Can I just get the include
| files for X, will that placate the compiles for KDE or Window Maker?
As noted above, you could try to upgrade to frozen (slink). It is
starting to stabilise and I would have no problem recommending an
upgrade to the current frozen. Works great for me.
| I wont even go into the errors I'm getting from startx - connect error 11 and
| connect error 2 - I'll try to figure those out on my own before I come here
| for help. But at this point, I'm beginning to think that console mode is my
| best bet for a while.
X can be a pain to get started. I installed it on a friend laptop the
other day, and the first try resulted in some hippie, floating
pastell colours. :-)
| Comments, assistance, and tranquilizers will be greatly appreciated.
Would a virtual bottle of whisky help?
--
The only way tcsh "rocks" is when the rocks are attached to its feet
in the deepest part of a very deep lake. (Linus Torvalds)
olet@ifi.uio.no [-: .elOle. :-] olet@debian.org
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