Anyone recommend a GUI?

[spielberg]

I'm completely new to Linux/s so please give any advice in VERY simple terms!

Does anyone know of another GUI I can put on the machine? Also eventually I'd ideally want to delete the kid friendly front end that's pre-installed - anyone have any guidance?

Lastly not relevant to the question but just a celebration - I'm really very impressed with the quality of the machine - I'd expected something far more plasticy and had seen a comment about a ZX Spectrum like keyboard which is happily completely wrong.

[genericname1]

you'll almost certainly have to compile it but i'd suggest fluxbox. it's small and fairly fast.

[rmotters]

Personally,  I like Ubuntu's Netbook Remix frontend.



I have it running in a VMWARE instance of ubuntu to have a look. I am going to give it to my daughter to play with and see what she thinks.

Only trouble is that is a GNOME frontend and is designed to run on a Atom processor (EEE PC, etc). Needs a bit of investigation.

I have other priorities at the moment.

[genericname1]

I've have thought a gnome front end would be rather slow on a 400MHz processor, you'd need to compile for a MIPS processor and I suspect you'll be lacking the -dev files to compile against

[rmotters]

I am not too sure if it is going to require a full gnome install. I will check out the source code. I am currently look at getting some educational software compiled (tuxtype2 and gcompris).

And if you think a full gnome install is going to be slow, check out this geek and his KDE installation.

[Jay]

Impressive stuff!  Glacial performance with KDE I'd imagine.

If you get the software working, it would be great if you could share it.  Gcompris would help my 4 year old get a bit more out of his laptop that playing on 'paint'.

Littlelinuxlaptop.com would be a logical place to get it hosted if you do.

[LeHancock]

lol I am the geek who cross-compiled KDE on his onet. As some of you have mentioned it does a tad bit slow but it is very responsive. Currently I have not uploaded the binaries but I am looking at building a new Distro for our small Linux laptops,  see http://trendtac.hyves.nl/forum/2313735/xmf7/New_Distro_Ideas/

I have compiled Fluxbox and you can download it here...
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/l.hancock3/fluxbox-1.1.0.1-R3-01(20080916).info
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/l.hancock3/fluxbox-1.1.0.1-R3-01(20080916).xap

I ve just had a quick look at Gcompris and it has alot of dependencies, Python, pygtk, gnome Python. Currently I have other priorities elsewhere.

[jaykay]

Thanks LeHancock, I have installed the fluxbox but cannot find it in the os, can you tell me what I'm looking for, nothing in themes??

 

JK

[LeHancock]

After installing it you will need to create a startup script invoking fluxbox to run. The easiest way to do this is by creating a file in /etc/init.d/
cat > /etc/init.d/start.flux << "EOF"
#!/bin/sh
export HOME=/root
export PATH="/usr/X11R6/bin:/gpe/bin:/gpe/sbin:$PATH"
#Change dpi value to adjust font size
Xfbdev -dpi 96 -mouse /dev/input/mice,5 &
export DISPLAY=:0.0

my_locale=`cat "/etc/init.d/locale.data"`
export LANG=${my_locale}
export LC_ALL=${my_locale}
export XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM
export GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"
dbus-launch startfluxbox
EOF

Now if you want it as your default desktop change the line in /etc/inittab from...
tty1:once:/bin/sh /etc/init.d/start
to
tty1:once:/bin/sh /etc/init.d/start.flux

Lastly run /usr/bin/fluxbox-generate_menu. Reboot and you should be all done now.

[RockDoctor]

After installing it you will need to create a startup script invoking fluxbox to run. The easiest way to do this is by creating a file in /etc/init.d/
cat > /etc/init.d/start.flux << "EOF"
(SNIP)

This implies that you have some way of getting at a command line, which I haven't figured yet.

[oldbloke]

Rockdoctor,

I believe what you need is xTerm from here

http://www.littlelinuxlaptop.com/software.htm

That will give you terminal access.

Martin

[fu53b0x]

Hi

I installed the Fluxbox gui as outlined above and it works fine...

...(i did manage to 'brick' it but with help from the command line and google i fixed my stupid error and i learned a lot as well!)

I've managed to poke about and tweak things and i am far more satisfied with my LLL. So thanks for the instruction! (the trendtac.hyves.nl site has some very useful content on it as well)

...now i'm off to learn about this cross-compiling lark so i can get more software to play with!

[siscor]

LeHancock: I've installed the fluxbox but I can't get the wireless or any other applications that I have installed in the menu, some of them like Office are, but not all.
It's any chance to know how could I do it? (I'm a completely newbie in Linux) Thanks!

[genericname1]

erm, look up the documentation online, somewhere there's a config file for the menu

[bafni]

Now if you want it as your default desktop change the line in /etc/inittab from...
tty1:once:/bin/sh /etc/init.d/start
to
tty1:once:/bin/sh /etc/init.d/start.flux

this line in my inittab reads
tty1::once:/bin/sh /etc/init.d/start >/dev/null 2>&1

what do I edit this to?