[Blend-fluxbox-devel] Wiki update

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Stephan Foley (2015-12-31 08:55:05)
> Hi Jonas, I'm going to make an effort not to top post today :-)

Much appreciated :-D

> Web browser: iceweasel
>
> Email client: I don't use...is icedove good?

Depend on your definition of "good".  Iceweasel and Icedove are both 
nice, but not very lightweight.

For lighter alternatives, have a look at Midori for web and either 
Sylpheed or claws for mail.

Overall, the lightest would be if we could restrict ourselves to code 
linked against GTK+ 2.x - i.e. avoid GTK+ 3.x and Qt.

The toughest ones to let go of in my experience is web browsing (none of 
the GTK+ 2.x based browsers come close to Iceweasel, so the question to 
ask is if Midori or other similar ones is _adequate_) and network 
management (only one properly integrated with Debian nowadays is 
network-manager - question is if if wicd is adequate).


> Sound: Sound is a little difficult to deal with in Debian. My current
> solution is to install "alsa-utils" and run "alsactl init" as root
> after first install. Then I use "pavucontrol" as a user. So, this will
> all have to be looked into.

Through the tools you mention you indirectly agree with my suggestion to 
use Pulseaudio (and ALSA as backend on Linux - our blend should skip 
that when installed with kFreeBSD or the Hurd...).


>> Video player?  I recommend mpv.
>
> I have installed:
>     gecko-mediaplayer
>     gnome-mplayer
>    - vlc
> but, let's use mpv for now.

gnome-mplayer is gone in testing/unstable - the replacement is gnome-mpv 
which I will include (but avoid vlc unless you insist - I personally 
find it too bloated and not really providing benefits despite its fame).


>> Terminal emulator?  I recommend rxvt-unicode-light
>
> I got a thing for xterm...it has a nice option to set borders inside 
> the window frame. But, I'll put rxvt-unicode-light on the list.

Reason I favor rxvt is not for its visual charm but that it is extremely 
lightweight and fast: Xterm and all libvte-based terminal-emulators are 
slow to scroll because of their support for vector-based fonts.  The 
-light flavor of rxvt is compiled without such support and additionally 
can be run as a daemon spawning clients for each terminal session (by 
running "urxvtcd" instead of "urxvt" saving even more memory.

Here are some tweaks I apply for rxvt (not all at once - some of them 
collide with others: I symlink wanted parts into /etc/X11/Xresources/): 
https://source.jones.dk/local-COMMON.git/tree/X11/Xresources

You can clone all those tweaks with this command:

  git clone git://source.jones.dk/local-COMMON


>> Should terminal (real tty) be configured?
>
> Yes, especially configure terminal and bashrc. Very important.
>
>> gksu nowadays link against gnome-keyring which can be avoided by 
>> instead using caja-gksu.  Should we do that?
>
> OK, will replace gksu with caja-gksu. I don't like gnome-keyring 
> either. Actually, I don't like gnome for a lot of things! But, they do 
> good apps, I'll give them that.

Whoops, I was too quick: caja-gksu is only a wrapper around gksu itself.  
Can we try avoid gksu altogether for now - or are you certain it is 
really needed?  If need is for udevil to work, then maybe udiskie (just 
entered unstable few days ago) is a better alternative.


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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