How-to convert antiX to an XFCE4 based Distro (tutorial)

[jackdanielsesq]

Hi

Yessir ... indeed I did, also kde5 .. everything works, albeit with very little kde gingerbread,
and the iso keeps on growing, but without all the kde & mx-tools functionality ... remember
I am only doing this to circumvent SF crappy SSH/SFTP ... their web interface has a 1GB limit.

Having said that, we have built & distributed several hundred 1.3GB MX+KDE+SOHO iso's out
in the wild that are running beautifully in production machines ... appreciate any/all help,
its for the benefit of the entire MXL family ...

Also just completed a 950GB iso of MX-18-KDE which I hope to upload soonest ... we stripped
xfce in its entirety & installed kde - works like the proverbial charm ... more later

Regards

Jack

Have you also installed xserver-xorg-legacy?

Have a look at this thread:

https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic ... tallation/

[Moltke]

Have you also installed xserver-xorg-legacy?

Have a look at this thread:

https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic ... tallation/

Shouldn't be? or should be? I tried and got some errors while running startx, only working with root; "sudo startx" but not with demo user. I'm trying from a usb stick with antix 17.4.1-core.iso x64 with persistence enabled, by the way, can't mount a sd card, it doesn't even show with "lsblk". Regarding xfce4, I get some permissions errors "cannot open /dev/tty0 (permission denied) and some other regarding I/O operations which aren't allowed either. In case you wonder yes, I installed everything from the demo account, never got into root.

[anticapitalista]

Install xserver-xorg-legacy and follow the instructions in that thread.
To mount a sd card you might need to install more packages (don't know off-hand which ones though).

[Moltke]

Install xserver-xorg-legacy and follow the instructions in that thread.
To mount a sd card you might need to install more packages (don't know off-hand which ones though).

I figured it out and finally managed to start xfce as demo. I needed to run

Code: Select all

sudo chmod u+s /usr/bin/xinit

Now I need to figure out how to make lightdm work. I didn't have so much trouble installing and running xfce4 and lightdm in Arch lol How could I find which packages do I need to install in order to mount the sd card? Also, and sorry to be such a pain but, how do I enable "tap to click" since I can't seem to find a solution. Check it out :)

[Moltke]

I have just published a tutorial on converting antiX (specifically alpha2 version of antiX19) to an XFCE4 based Distro. You may view it here:
http://eirenicon.org/2019/05/26/convert ... -tutorial/

Be advised: I believe the tutorial should work with version 17.4 of antiX but I have not tested using that platform.
Note: This is a learning tool. Not intended for 'production'.

You may copy or use the tutorial, as suits your need(s). As with all my work, no guarantees are expressed or implied. If you break things you get to keep all the pieces. :lipsrsealed: Practice safe computing!

I realized something, in this instructions

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sudo apt-get update -y;sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg x11-xserver-utils xfonts-base x11-utils lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter xfce4 xfce4-power-manager xfce4-power-manager-plugins xfce4-taskmanager blueman bluez-tools pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pavucontrol -y --allow-unauthenticated gvfs gvfs-backends light-locker lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings lxpolkit desktop-profiles greybird-gtk-theme catfish xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin kupfer xfce4-terminal thunar-volman thunar-archive-plugin tumbler tumbler-common tumbler-plugins-extra pulseaudio pavucontrol pasystray paman

there's actually no need to install any X related package since they're already present in the system, otherwise we won't get to a desktop, which we do; icewm or any of the others. So those instructions should look like

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update -y;sudo apt-get install  lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter xfce4 xfce4-power-manager xfce4-power-manager-plugins xfce4-taskmanager blueman bluez-tools pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-bluetooth pavucontrol -y --allow-unauthenticated gvfs gvfs-backends light-locker lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings lxpolkit desktop-profiles greybird-gtk-theme catfish xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin kupfer xfce4-terminal thunar-volman thunar-archive-plugin tumbler tumbler-common tumbler-plugins-extra pulseaudio pavucontrol pasystray paman

this will decrease the downloading time and size.

[manyroads]

I often recommend over installation so that the current version of things are in place. You certainly are free to cut them out, as you wish. But if you look at a lot of my tutorials, you'll see that. Lately I'm starting to remember to leave a note to the effect of 'you may or may not need all of these items'.

[Moltke]

I often recommend over installation so that the current version of things are in place. You certainly are free to cut them out, as you wish. But if you look at a lot of my tutorials, you'll see that. Lately I'm starting to remember to leave a note to the effect of 'you may or may not need all of these items'.

Ah, that makes sense.

[Richard]

@manyroads,
Downloaded and installed antiX-19-b2-full-386 on my EeePC, update& full-upgrade, and then applied your tutorial, all except for the last Code line, since I wanted to wait and see which I preferred.

Installed Double Commander 0.9.5, changed the desktop, made a few other Xfce specific tweaks and it works great on EeePC using 85GB after startup.

Now to start learning the antiX tools and perhaps try some MX Tools, if necessary. I used IceWM for several years on laptop & desktop, but really prefer the same or similar OS/DE on my personal computers. Just lazy that way.

Thanks for the tutorial. You are making it possible to have similar DE on laptop and netbook.

[manyroads]

You are welcome Richard. I'm going to do a similar thing. I'm playing with bspwm/ i3/ xfce combo to force my old mind to think out of the box. My thought is to make all work off the ssame base. I think I'll be forced to choose two of those three. i3 & bspwm seem to conflict or contend for a couple of the same resources which tangles things up. I can say that bspwm & xfce cohabitate on the same platform very nicely. Shifting between the two is interesting & fun for me.

Given your resource constraints have you tried any of the following low resource consuming tools for your use?
-- ranger/ rifle a file manager
-- mocp a music player
-- roxterm (I think might be better than xfce4-terminal)
-- rofi (app launcher, navigator, window task 'tracker', +++
-- dunst a notification tool

You might find one or two very useful and resource 'frugal'.

Edit:
Here's an image of rofi so you can see the 4 options I have set, see yellow screen bottom banner. The are I think, 6 options you can use, or maybe just 4.

[Richard]

I'll give those a try.
1 GB RAM with Atom 270 can get right with more than 2 or 3 apps at a time. Those should reduce the pressure on the RAM.

Thanks.