What's Up With PCManFM2?

Image via Wikipedia

PCManFM has been a popular replacement for the Nautilus file manager on the GNOME desktop because its light and fast, though still featureful enough to handle automatic mounting of hotplugged drives and other modern advantages. The file manager is probably best known for its placement in LXDE and, by extension, the new Lubuntu. I've written about and praised LXDE many times before for its ability to revive Win2000-era laptops.

Well, Hong Jen Yee has decided that several prominent bugs cannot be solved without a major rewrite of the file manager. He has chosen to break out the basic file management functions into a separate library in order to make embedding into other applications easy.

What are Hong Jen Yee's goals?

1. Support glib/gio and gvfs but still keep the original performance and memory usage.
   I know many people don't believe this and think using gio/gvfs from gnome will make it slower and heavier. Indeed many program using gio/gvfs/gnome are slow, but trust me our PCManFM won't be one of them. Many people said that GTK+ programs are slow and not lightweight, but as you know, PCManFM already prooved that they are wrong.
2. Seamless access to remote file systems such as sftp, smb, and ftp (provide by gvfs)
3. Trash can support (provided by gvfs)
4. Separate the core functionality to create an independent library named libfm for use in other desktop applications and make it a seperate project
5. Better drag and drop handling and supports XDS (X direct save)
6. Smaller code size and better structure
7. Better compatibility with other programs (Due to use of glib/gio)
8. Make best use of the new features provided in the latest gtk+
9. Better desktop and volume management
10. Use the file manager widgets provided in libfm to replace the default file dialogs in gtk+ by preload the lib with LD_PRELOAD
11. Gvfs dependency is only optional. If the dependencies of gvfs is not acceptible, we would like to fork gvfs and provide a stripped down version without gnome dependency. (long term goal, low priority)

PCManFM version 2 is still under heavy development but is now available in the Alpha3 of Lubuntu, available now. You can try it out there. The final version should be out by the end of March, in time for a Lubuntu 10.04 release.

I'll put up a review of the file manager and LXDE desktop soon. Until then, see the screenshot from OMGUbuntu (link below under "related").

Related articles by Zemanta

• Lubuntu Alpha 3 Released (omgubuntu.co.uk)
• Michael Rooney: Why I Switched from Ubuntu One back to Dropbox (mrooney.blogspot.com)
• Installing a Tabbed File Manager for Gnome in Ubuntu (helpdeskgeek.com)

Knoppix Kicks KDE to the Kurb, Loves LXDE Lately!

Image via Wikipedia

Knoppix has always used KDE. Shockingly, that has changed recently according to Download Squad and Linux Magazine. LXDE is now the choice for the father of Live CDs and prominent Debian prodigy.

Download Squad says:

Lat[sic] month Knoppix 6.0 was released, and it's even faster and prettier than earlier versions. But it's still designed to run well on older and slower computers. Among the changes in version 6.0 is the switch from the KDE desktop environment to the LXDE graphical environment. LXDE is light weight and loads quickly, but it's capable of offering all sorts of visual candy including Compiz desktop effects.

Knoppix 6.0 also boots twice as fast as Knoppix 5, and comes with fewer applications preloaded, which helps keep the size down. While the main disk image weighs in at 645MB, it can be remastered to use 256MB or less.

You can also now save your settings after shutting down the system by creatng a persisent boot image.

LXDE is an awesome new DE that I use for all my old Win2000-era laptops. It runs great in 128MB RAM with Debian or Ubuntu as the base so there's no surprise when Linux magazine says about Knoppix on netbooks:

Knoppix has always been regarded as one of the most versatile Linux distros out there, but the latest version of the venerable Live CD Linux distribution has got yet another trick up its sleeve. Thanks to its excellent hardware detection, blazingly fast boot process, and the lightweight LXDE desktop environment, Knoppix 6.0 makes a perfect distro for netbooks. In fact, it supports all hardware on ASUS Eee PC 701 and 900 as well as Acer Aspire One right out of the box, including the wireless card. That's right, you don't have to fiddle with ndiswrapper or install a custom kernel in order to make your wireless card work. Knoppix 6.0 also detects the graphics card correctly, chooses the proper screen resolution, and enables Compiz Fusion 3D desktop effects. Even with 3D desktop effects enabled, the system feels very snappy.

Congratulations, Knoppix, on staying so relevant for so long!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Knoppix 6.0 Linux LiveCD replaces KDE with LXDE (downloadsquad.com)

Debian Lenny due in two days -- What can you expect?

Image via Wikipedia

Despite delays, Debian Lenny is due on Valentine's Day, February 14th, and there are sure to be many users who fall in love with one of the original and most stable Linux distributions around. What will you find in the release?

Stability

The Debian devs spent an extra five months past the planned launch date making sure that the system is as bug free as possible. Lenny will be supported for two more releases, translating into about four years of support.

A Butt-load of Packages

There are somewhere in the range of 14,000 packages (miksuh corrects my number to 22,000), supposedly more than any other distribution. If you're used to Ubuntu, you'll find just about every package in Ubuntu's repositories are in Debian's, plus some.

Because of the long freeze during bug fixing, though, many of these packages are behind the six-month distributions. They are actually mostly on par with Ubuntu 8.04. The highlights are:

• Kernel 2.6.26
• Gnome 2.22 (mostly -- Nautilus and the panels are from 2.20 because of gvfs problems).
• KDE 3.5.9 and 4.1
• XFCE 4.2
• LXDE 0.3.2.1
• Hildon 2.0.7 (a desktop for embedded systems)
  
• Xorg 7.3
• OO.o 2.4
• Firefox 3
• Apache 2.9
• MySQL 5.0.51
• PHP 5.2.6
• Ruby 1.8 and 1.9
• Python 2.5.2
• eGroupware 1.4
• Horde 3.2 (groupware platform)
• Xen and KVM

What's missing from the line-up?

• Adobe Flash
• Some hardware firmware, especially for wireless devices.
• Non-free programs like Parallels in the Canonical Partner repository.

A lot of the missing packages can be found in Debian Multimedia, a third-party repository. Thanks, miksuh, for reminding me to mention it.

Many Platforms

Debian supports a huge number of architectures. In addition to the normal x86 and AMD64 arches, there is support for armel, mips, sparc, and others. Debian will run on just about anything, which is why Debian already runs on the G1 Android phone.

An Easy (But Textual) Installer
Debian's installer doesn't look nearly as pretty as Ubiquity (Ubuntu's installer), but it is actually the same one present in the Ubuntu alternate install. Very few questions require any thought, and the default answers are acceptable for most normal installs.

What the textual installer gives Debian is cross-platform installability. The same installer works on all supported platforms.

As miksuh pointed out in the comments, and I completely forgot, there are other options:

• A GTK installer which has exactly the same dialogs as the text editor, and
• You can install from the Debian LiveCD project.

Desktop Choice

As mentioned in the first section, Lenny offers a number of great desktops to choose from. In addition to Gnome, KDE, XFCE, and LXDE, there are truly minimal choices included EvilWM, DWM, FVWM(-Crystal), IceWM, TinyWM and Window Maker. Debian is anything you want it to be.

Security

Debian is secure. Neede patches are now applied before the first boot. Packages use GCC hardening in some cases. Other hardening has occured, setuid inaries have been reduced, and the number of open ports has been furhter limited.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Why Ubuntu users should care about Debian (arstechnica.com)
• Debian 5 release approaches... binary blobs included (arstechnica.com)
• Delayed Debian plans Valentine's weekend arrival (theregister.co.uk)
• Installing Debian alongside Android on the G1 (makezine.com)