Porteus Pantheon Edition

[tmoulder99]

I just switched my main distro from Linux Mint 17 XFCE to Elementary OS Freya. The Pantheon desktop is just beautiful. Suggestion, Porteus might want to look into adding it as an option.

Thanks!

TM

[wread]

Simply Tétrico....... (spanish)

[Blaze]

Elementary OS Freya Beta 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXKWFQIj ... detailpage

[francois]

I have been working with it. The elementary ubuntu clone is surprisingly efficient on my older msi-340-x laptop. For sure I would like that desktop environment for porteus. How about you wread?

@tmoulder:
Maybe we should work on it. But before have a look at the mechanics of porteus xfce desktop:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=3727

Then maybe trying with some guidelines of archlinux to build pantheon:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pantheon

[brokenman]

This is a huge task. Pantheon uses an ubuntu base plus their own stuff written specifically. So first you rely on canonical's base and then have to wait for pantheon to integrate it. From what I have seen ubuntu is a patch haven with patches and repatches so you would be forever updating/breaking and reupdating. On top of that you will no doubt need packages that don't exist in slackware-14.1 for example I would bet that PAM is required and if I remember correctly wayland ... or something that was written based on wayland. Even GTK3 needs special ubuntu patches. Pantheon is available in gentoo so perhaps using a chroot you can find all the dependencies. Good luck.

[wread]

@all
After reading the previous posts, specially the statements of Jay, I mean this OS lacks the trend of innovation we should follow.

Our first line at present, should be to react promptly to the economic-power-forced innovations introduced in the market, to get Linux out of the way. I think our administrators are doing hard in this direction and a proof of it is the care they are putting on the Uefi fact.

Other lines of research are now Xcb, Wayland, Jit, LLVM and related. As soon as these innovations are exhaustively tested and surely adopted by Slackware, we will have them in Porteus, I guess, keeping us at the bleeding edge.

Maybe Pantheon is a case of study, as it touches some of the above mentioned themes; but making an official DE for Porteus out of it, seems not to be pertinent now.

Old machines will die, they diminish in number with each day, being substituted by new ones, mainly 64-bit Uefi and touch screens. So the finest work done as yet should be extended following the market trends.

We should keep concentrated on this target.

Cheers!

[donald]

Hi wread
--> trend of innovation <--?
Stay cool, lay back and let's see...I tend to "buy" things which are proven to be good.
Let the "early adopters" sort them out.
e.g.
I don't want this crap called systemd, that pulls everything in and deprives me control.

--> Old machines will die <--(define "old")
Yes, sooner or later, but not that fast...they will go to the "not so rich" first.
Should we leave them alone..without an OS..??

[bdheeman]

A few years ago I switched over to Debian 'testing' from 'stable' and then ArchLinux, which I had been using i.e the one known as a most bleeding edge and rolling release for a year or so. I reverted back to Debian 'stable' after I fed up with the updates imposed by the so called bleeding edge and rolling releases.

Many distributions gain popularity only because of marketing; BTW, is not the Debian 'testing' first bleeding edge and rolling release distribution? I know ArchLinux boasts of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid), but what that has to do with the end users? Furthermore, they people know it well that the ArchLinux is not that easy (simple) to install, configure, update and, or upgrade for amateurs

Interestingly, Slackware SLS was the first and only available when I started using Linux and still like it a lot due many reasons; I do not intend to restart a religious war again over here, but I now profess stability over experimentation.

IMHO, most of the Unix and, or Linux distributions have diverged from original Unix philosophy

As for Porteus and Slackware are concerned we should/must work hand-in-hand with our upstream and contribute back what's most desirable and, or needful only; see also https://tails.boum.org/contribute/relat ... _upstream/

[sean]

@ donald,

Right on, I agree 100% about "systemd"!

Red Hat's effort to become the de facto "Microsoft" of "Linux"

As far as Pantheon goes, it looks like "wread" and "brokenman" have the correct idea.

Sean

[francois]

I like very much these critiques that I hear about ubuntu and archlinux: they exactly pinpoint the cons of these distributions. Thanks brokenman for these explanations to non-developpers, they are appreciated.

Maybe here what is important is to seize the innovative features of elementary and build on it.

I thought that wread's academia edition was quite alike elementary in terms of looks. What is nice about elementary is the effort to simplify the interface. Enough creativity there that made them one of the top distribution actually on distrowatch. Or is it their mac look? Elementary has a few interesting features like a private browsing option for midori. Maybe we could have this too. And the ability to automatically save the file with scratch is also a winner. There must be some way to set mousepad to behave the same, I imagine.

Thanks bdheeman for pointing to tail, a debian based distribution that works completely from ram for secure networking. For a review:
http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/reviews/tail ... al-privacy
... For the less technical savvy people that may need to use Tails to avoid detection, it makes for the perfect tool.
Verdict
As secure as it claims to be, Tails is also very easy to use. Handling all the security and privacy functions such as setting up tor, rerouting and wiping the RAM on shutdown automatically, all the while letting you know what it’s doing, Tails is everything it sets out to be...

This is a good discussion to precise our needs for porteus 3.1 wishlist:
http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=3801

[brokenman]

I have to take my hat off to the folks at Pantheon desktop. It really is a visually appealing desktop and they have kept to the KISS principle for the interface. In this respect I agree with Francois. It really is nice looking. My only problem with it is the base it uses and the elements creeping into that base, and eventually into the majority of unix-like systems. Systemd, wayland, pulseaudio is an example of this and there is much hot debate on this topic. I am glad Pat chooses to sit back and watch and then integrate stuff into slackware after it has a proven track record.

I started creating and using gnome3 desktops for Porteus and gave up after each new release broke things that were then patched, and then the patches were patched. You are always chasing your tail and moving further away from stability. In this respect I agree 100% with bdheeman. What happened to the text based configuration file philosophy of unix-like systems?

I think my future focus may be in the direction of ARM and touch devices for Porteus. Perhaps also a super stealth version simiilar to tails.

[fanthom]

lets heat up the discussion a bit (remember: this is only my personal opinion biased on KDE.x).

What's so special in Pantheon?
nothing.
nothing what KDE4 wouldnt have long time ago in regards to beauty and eye candy. besides - kde4 is way more functional and not limited on a purpose by devs (Pantheon fanboys will call it a 'simplicity' ).

Why Pantheon is so successful then?
because whole GTK land is in a deep crisis after introducing gtk3. they are looking desperately for each new desktop which would replace Gnome2 (only DE which could compete with KDE.x)

let's list them:
GNOME3 - failure since the beginning
Unity 7/8 - same thing
XFCE - they are sticking to gtk2? for how long?
LXDE - dead already. moving to qt (LxQT)
MATE - gtk2 has no future. moving to gtk3? same troubles as DEs listed above
Cinnamon - only DE which can do something (after heavy tweaking)
Pantheon - what's the point of this? we have Cinnamon already

why can't we just move to qt and stick to either KDE4/LxQT?
all problems solved

[tmoulder99]

Pantheon shows a definite design philosophy, one influenced heavily by chrome os.

How hard would it be to recreate the look and feel under LXQT? You could even give it a cool name - call it "Parthenon" or something

Or better yet, "Sparta"

[francois]

Example of Qt usage in linux based system (from wikipedia Qt article):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(softwa ... olkits.svg

[francois]

Pantheon: lets think about it what is there in terms of interface and behaviour that is not possible with porteus. Lets follow fanthom line of thinking. What is included in pantheon simplicity? (I try here to put these characteristics in decreasing order of importance and might rearrange them.)

Which I like:
- surprisingly fast boot of the os, in addition seems to me that the applications are more responsive (though I would have to compare the two os with exactly the same packages with porteus xfce in always fresh mode)
- the same non-clogged interface each time that you start the operating system. Some kind of always fresh mode that you can modify with the option keep in the dock.
- big icons at the bottom, your favorite packages.
- an access to additonal programs thru the top bar, you have no choice these are big icons, with the possibility of viewing them readily sorted in different categories. A few contextual informations about wifi and time and poweroff button.
- the choice to start these icons in root mode, though each time you have to issue your root password
- scratch a text file manager which saves automatically your files
- midori a browser which comes in private mode (is this a false security, this is not tor bundle or tail!)
- the great availability of softwares that comes with ubuntu or debian.
- fast installation of softwares as they do not have to be transformed into modules

Which I do not like:
- ubuntu behavior: it grows really fast on your partition. It is not that easy to set aside (porteus there is optional folder) or to get rid of the packages (apt-get remove...), some say that you often get caught with unnecessary dependencies or programs
- this obligation to subdue to root password each time you want to be root
- limited access to partitions on your hdd (linux security reason)

What do you see yourself?