Salix 13.1alpha1

[Duncan_Idaho]

Congratulations Salix Team!
I'm really satisfied with Salix and I'm looking forward to this new release
I'll download it right away
btw I also think evince is a better pdf viewer

[gapan]

Are you planning to include Google Chrome browser as default browser or 2nd option???

Nope.

[steepleone]

Just to avoid tears and blood and a lot more on irc :
I have a netbook (ecafe 900) and wicd wireless interface does not work with my Network controller which is RaLink RT2860 ! The wire wicd works allright though !
steepleone

[Arael]

Yes, we probably won't have a splash screen in the next release. Nothing seems to work consistently for now. Splashy doesn't work at all with KMS, you only get a blank screen instead. There is a workaround, but it's really ugly. There are other solutions that work with KMS, but they don't work at all if KMS is not supported, so they're not a solution either. Disabling KMS completely is not a good idea, my intel refuses to launch X if I do. KMS also gives me native resolution in the framebuffer, which is absolutely great and I'd take that instead of a splash screen anytime. We could have a splash screen if we compiled our own kernel, but we really want to stay compatible with slackware with that, so we won't do that. Instead of having a splash screen, I thought that we could minimize the need for a splash screen and so I've tweaked the init scripts and now my laptop boots into xfce in 32 seconds instead of the 72 it needed before. I also colorized the boot messages a bit, so they're not that boring anymore.

I see now, it sounds reasonable. Thank you for explaining that. I didn't know that the latest intel driver requires KMS.

Don't get me wrong because I don't have anything against the virtual consoles. Actually I'm an everyday bash user. Basically it's my default way for interacting with the machine. My predilection for the splash image was purely aesthetic and I think that terminal emulators in X are more flexible and powerful than virtual consoles. Actually, the only two reasons I use the virtual consoles is when X is not working and I need to fix it up or when I need to start another X session. I could us New Login from the System Menu but old habits are hard to die.

The colored output is really useful. Thank you for that.

[Arael]

Geeks like boot messages and we are...

Well, you are right. Good point. In all my distributions of choice I never had the splash images. Salix 13.0 is the first one and I started to like that eye candy.

Gosh! I'm probably loosing my geekness. I'm grateful to you guys for steering me in the right direction.

[SoleSoul]

Congratlations.
Evince is really a good document viewer. I also think it could be a good default viewer.
It has a problem though: gnome dependencies.
For that reason, a user of Archlinux crated a stripped package in AUR called evince-gtk without the gnome dependencies: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=24416

I'm not sure you'll want to use it because of Slackware compatibility but just to let you know.
If you want to see how they did it you can read the PKGBUILD, it's quite easy to understand.

[gapan]

The evince package we have in our repository has no extra dependencies, other than what's already present in the iso and no specific gnome dependencies anyway, so that's not a problem at all.

[rybarczykbr]

I've tried parole, and I think it is OK, but I couldn't find options to change subtitles language / file.

Viewnior (image viewer) likes to start with a small window.

I think gnome applications are a step further and should be preferred when there is no option at the same level of functionality.

I vote for evince/totem/gthumb combo. They are not that ressource/dependency hungry and make things a lot easier. Also they are the 'standard' which means more compatibility.

[SoleSoul]

Ah gapan, it's very good then. Less problems.

[thenktor]

Are you planning to include Google Chrome browser as default browser or 2nd option???

Chromium is not mature enough for a standard browser, even if it is very fast. So it's not an option for 13.1.