While I realize IceWM is very fast and streamlined, it's a little too lean for my taste. For what it may be worth, I've found Mint Mate works very well with Andy's nice distro. It makes it easy to add desktop icons, edit menus and work with other (non-ham) programs. If you have a computer that is not ancient (in computer years), you might like to try it. I've found it works fine with a 7 and 10 year old machine, but both have 2 Megs of memory. If you have a machine with less memory (and certainly if under 1 meg), you might have a less favorable experience.
I first installed Andy's distro, then downloaded Synaptic and used that to install Mint Mate. No hitches, menu clean-up was easy and the ham programs seem to work fine.
73, Joe, KE1U
Last edit: Joe Hutcheson 2015-12-24
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
If you have added and updated the repositories, you could download Synaptic and have it install Mate-Desktop-Environment or Mate-Desktop-Environment-Extras, or you can do it quite easily with commands:
To install MATE, choose ONE of the apt-get options below.
This will install the base packages required for a minimal MATE desktop:
I installed version 19_super_early_alpha in VIrtualbox OSE, and then executed the commands you described above. After logging out and then back in, things worked pretty well.
The only oddities that I noticed were:
a) some programs were listed in the wrong section of the menu
b) customized menu options for Documentation and command line programs were (not surprisingly) not picked up by the MATE environment
I suspect that each of those could be fairly easily remedied.
Glad to hear it worked for you, Andy. I had a similar experience with the menus. If you click on System and then Preferences, you should see "Main Menu" as one of the listed tools. This allowed me to edit and fix items that Mint put out of place on the menu. Anything that does not show up at all probably needs a .desktop file added (or moved to where most of the other applications' .desktop files are stored, such as usr/share/desktop-directories). The ability to manage the menus and icons with easy GUI tools was what led me to settle on the Mate environment, as my Linux experience is fairly limited. I tried some others, including LXDE, but found the menu misplacement was much worse and menu editing harder to manage, at least for someone like me who has only a basic sense of Linux file system structure, etc.
A couple of other Mate tips:
To get Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal window, go to Control Center/Other/Keyboard Shortcuts. Scroll down, select terminal window and then hit Ctrl+Alt+T simultaneously.
If the terminal window looks screwy, open Terminal Window, then use the menu at top to select Edit/Profile Preferences. In my case de-selecting "Use the system fixed width font" near the top of the General Tab resolved the problem. I also prefer black background with white print, which you can select (along with other color schemes) under the Colors tab in the same tool.
Right-click on the desktop and you can select any number of windows themes and backgrounds, with more available online (linked in the destop manager when you right-click).
By the way, regardless of which environment is used, be sure your username has access to dialout if you use a USB rig or sound interface. If "ls -l /dev/ttyUSB" does not list a dialout group, use the following command (thanks to West Mountain Radio for explaining this!): "sudo usermod -a -G [your user name]" . Of course, substitute your username for the text in the brackets, and do not use brackets. For example, for me this would be "sudo usermod -a -G joe"
Mint and its Mate environment uses different app names for file management (caja), text editor (pluma) and others. A lot of info is availalbe at linux.mint.com. Of course, you also can install your favorite apps using the Synaptic package manager.
Good luck.
Joe
Last edit: Joe Hutcheson 2015-12-24
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
While I realize IceWM is very fast and streamlined, it's a little too lean for my taste. For what it may be worth, I've found Mint Mate works very well with Andy's nice distro. It makes it easy to add desktop icons, edit menus and work with other (non-ham) programs. If you have a computer that is not ancient (in computer years), you might like to try it. I've found it works fine with a 7 and 10 year old machine, but both have 2 Megs of memory. If you have a machine with less memory (and certainly if under 1 meg), you might have a less favorable experience.
I first installed Andy's distro, then downloaded Synaptic and used that to install Mint Mate. No hitches, menu clean-up was easy and the ham programs seem to work fine.
73, Joe, KE1U
Last edit: Joe Hutcheson 2015-12-24
Hi Joe,
I wonder if you could tell us how you got Mint Mate to work. Perhaps others would be interested.
Thanks, and 73,
Andy
Hi Andy,
I found useful installation information at:
http://wiki.mate-desktop.org/download
and at:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/08/install-mate-desktop-ubuntu-14-04-lts
If I recall correctly, I opened a terminal window (Ctrl+Alt+t) and then executed the following commands, one at a time:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-mate-dev/ppa
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-mate-dev/trusty-mate
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
If you have added and updated the repositories, you could download Synaptic and have it install Mate-Desktop-Environment or Mate-Desktop-Environment-Extras, or you can do it quite easily with commands:
To install MATE, choose ONE of the apt-get options below.
This will install the base packages required for a minimal MATE desktop:
sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment-core
This will install the complete MATE desktop:
sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment
This will install the complete MATE desktop including a few extras:
sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment-extras
Joe
Hi Joe,
I installed version 19_super_early_alpha in VIrtualbox OSE, and then executed the commands you described above. After logging out and then back in, things worked pretty well.
The only oddities that I noticed were:
a) some programs were listed in the wrong section of the menu
b) customized menu options for Documentation and command line programs were (not surprisingly) not picked up by the MATE environment
I suspect that each of those could be fairly easily remedied.
Thanks for providing this information!
Andy
Glad to hear it worked for you, Andy. I had a similar experience with the menus. If you click on System and then Preferences, you should see "Main Menu" as one of the listed tools. This allowed me to edit and fix items that Mint put out of place on the menu. Anything that does not show up at all probably needs a .desktop file added (or moved to where most of the other applications' .desktop files are stored, such as usr/share/desktop-directories). The ability to manage the menus and icons with easy GUI tools was what led me to settle on the Mate environment, as my Linux experience is fairly limited. I tried some others, including LXDE, but found the menu misplacement was much worse and menu editing harder to manage, at least for someone like me who has only a basic sense of Linux file system structure, etc.
A couple of other Mate tips:
To get Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal window, go to Control Center/Other/Keyboard Shortcuts. Scroll down, select terminal window and then hit Ctrl+Alt+T simultaneously.
If the terminal window looks screwy, open Terminal Window, then use the menu at top to select Edit/Profile Preferences. In my case de-selecting "Use the system fixed width font" near the top of the General Tab resolved the problem. I also prefer black background with white print, which you can select (along with other color schemes) under the Colors tab in the same tool.
Right-click on the desktop and you can select any number of windows themes and backgrounds, with more available online (linked in the destop manager when you right-click).
By the way, regardless of which environment is used, be sure your username has access to dialout if you use a USB rig or sound interface. If "ls -l /dev/ttyUSB" does not list a dialout group, use the following command (thanks to West Mountain Radio for explaining this!): "sudo usermod -a -G [your user name]" . Of course, substitute your username for the text in the brackets, and do not use brackets. For example, for me this would be "sudo usermod -a -G joe"
Mint and its Mate environment uses different app names for file management (caja), text editor (pluma) and others. A lot of info is availalbe at linux.mint.com. Of course, you also can install your favorite apps using the Synaptic package manager.
Good luck.
Joe
Last edit: Joe Hutcheson 2015-12-24