GamesCom Video and Remaining Tasks

[ible]

still waiting for benchmarks? / results?

i know this isn't very scientific, but here's what i could dig up from recent investigations:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/best-lean-linux-desktop-environment-lxde-vs-xfce-vs-mate/

does that mean we should switch to LXDE ?

 

[Linux-SWAT]

I myself don't need a bench.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

I will use either MATE or XFCE, will probably try both. I will also see if I can get CDE working.

 

[levi]

LXDE has come on leaps and bounds since I first used it, but I'm not in possession of any running machines that can run LXDE but not XFCE, so through familiarity, I've stuck with XFCE on systems that can do graphics.

 

[kiney]

LXDE has come on leaps and bounds since I first used it, but I'm not in possession of any running machines that can run LXDE but not XFCE, so through familiarity, I've stuck with XFCE on systems that can do graphics.

same for me. I use XFCE on all my machines, performance is great even on very old boxes.

 

[rSl]

bah, de-gui's are for noobs! console only here!
but... sometimes even i need a javascript browser like firefox for doing special web-thingies, like online-banking etc.,
so a working wayland-backend with a wayland-enabled firefox would suite my needs gui-wise.

btw. x.org is bloatware!

 

[Linux-SWAT]

It's also insecure.

 

[levi]

It is? I mean any project with that many lines of code will have mistakes in it, and it running as root means any that were explotable would be pretty catastrophic, but I don't recall any news of a remote hole in it.

I'd gladly get rid of x for wayland/weston. Actually, digging just now maybe I should try. I only really use a terminal, mplayer, gvim and firefox most days, and gimp occasionally, and according to some yt videos I just looked at, those uses have been reasonable for a year or more. Getting rid of X could be a good thing for my currently crowded usr partition on this machine especially.

 

[WizardStan]

It is?

I forget the exact chain, but it's not a mistake in the code; scraping my weak memory here but there's something inherent in the protocol that was a good idea when it first came out but is now actually a security hole.
I think there was a hypothetical situation where a malicious app could open a hidden window and then "listen" to keys being typed in any other window, including passwords. It was a little more convoluted than that, but that's the detail I remember. And this was a design feature being exploited, one which Wayland does not have.

 

[EvilDragon]

View attachment 29192 View attachment 29193

And this is how Firefox, Gimp or any other GTK follow DPI settings, theme, etc.

You can clearly see that GIMP ignores the DPI in your screenshots.
Sure, the font size changes (as the menus are handled by GTK) but the toolkit icons stay exactly the same size which is the isssue I described.

So the problem is even worse:
It partly follows the dpi and partly ignores it...

I can imagine that FireFox also only changes the font size but ignores DPI when rendering the entire website.

 

[EvilDragon]

I'd gladly get rid of x for wayland/weston. Actually, digging just now maybe I should try.

Not until it works properly.
I tried Weston on ArchLinux with Plasma5 last month (as it fully supports Weston), and besides quite a few rendering errors with some apps, it also totally crashed and restarted Plasma a couple of times...

 

[Grench]

My two cents worth... I have never felt like I was missing anything by using xfce. What I like the most about it is that the OS stays the hell out of the way. Nothing is hidden or buried 6 menus deep to emulate Microsoft or Apple OSs. Just simple and functional with less unnecessary complications compared to Gnome, Mate, Cinnamon.

 

[jeeks]

Uuuh, tiny (probably ridiculous) question from a total hardware noob: Could we update the screen like we'll be able to update the CPU? Like, if someone really, really wants a 1080p screen, could they use the existing LCD cable to connect it to the rest of the hardware?

 

[hns]

Uuuh, tiny (probably ridiculous) question from a total hardware noob: Could we update the screen like we'll be able to update the CPU? Like, if someone really, really wants a 1080p screen, could they use the existing LCD cable to connect it to the rest of the hardware?

It is not impossible, but you need
a) a display module with resistive touch that fits mechanically (there is no standard module so we have to have it customized giving a high minimum order quantitiy - and it is more expensive)
b) a different display adapter board which fits the different backlight and panel connectors
Then you can reuse the display cable.
But beware that an 1080p screen needs much higher data bandwidth and the video data comes from the same DRAM used by the CPU. So the CPU has to wait more often. Additionally all software has to render into a bigger frame buffer and more pixels so that everything will be slower.

 

[FIQ]

I don't really care what we end up with as default (allthough I will probably eventually switch to Openbox for consistency with my other setups), but I have to say that I find the keyboard shortcuts provided by the Openbox configuration in the PND repo is excellent and I would miss it quite a lot if Pyra were to come without it by default. I'm not sure how well used it would be by the general public, but I think it would be liked. In particular, I had a friend who felt that the xfce default setup was a bit clumsy to use due to major touch screen requirements which I suggested openbox@pndrepo to, he found it a major improvement.
To clarify: Ctrl (right shoulder)+up/down works well as alt-tab (Ctrl+left/right switches between desktops, but I never used multiple desktops myself), Ctrl+5 toggles fullscreen borderless, Ctrl+4 toggles maximize, Ctrl+Q quits the running application, which I remapped to Ctrl+Shift+Q because ctrl+q was interfering with some applications. I would say that these shortcuts improved my productivity with the device around five-fold at least.

 

[canseco]

Sure, the font size changes (as the menus are handled by GTK) but the toolkit icons stay exactly the same size which is the isssue I described.

I was talking only about DPI font settings.

System Settings → Display and Monitor → Display Configuration → Scale Display
Then drag the slider to 2

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI

 

[edgex004]

I don't really care what we end up with as default (allthough I will probably eventually switch to Openbox for consistency with my other setups), but I have to say that I find the keyboard shortcuts provided by the Openbox configuration in the PND repo is excellent and I would miss it quite a lot if Pyra were to come without it by default. I'm not sure how well used it would be by the general public, but I think it would be liked. In particular, I had a friend who felt that the xfce default setup was a bit clumsy to use due to major touch screen requirements which I suggested openbox@pndrepo to, he found it a major improvement.
To clarify: Ctrl (right shoulder)+up/down works well as alt-tab (Ctrl+left/right switches between desktops, but I never used multiple desktops myself), Ctrl+5 toggles fullscreen borderless, Ctrl+4 toggles maximize, Ctrl+Q quits the running application, which I remapped to Ctrl+Shift+Q because ctrl+q was interfering with some applications. I would say that these shortcuts improved my productivity with the device around five-fold at least.

So long as I can save my keyboard shortcuts so they can easily be re-implemented every time I flash the Pyra, I will be happy.

I agree that the Openbox PND greatly increased the usability of my Pandora, and it was mainly due to the well thought out default navigation shortcuts. I only have minor tweaks, like adding a keyboard shortcut for dmenu and adding menu shortcuts to switch between bluetooth audio devices. Having the Openbox PND around is great, because it is a major upgrade in usability that can easily be applied after flashing.

 

[iprice]

The Pyra. Is it done yet?

 

[TrashyMG]

Well easy install it's on the repo:

openbox/stable 3.5.2-8 armhf

standards-compliant, fast, light-weight and extensible window manager


openbox-dev/stable 3.5.2-8 armhf

development files for the openbox window manager

 

[edgex004]

Well easy install it's on the repo:

Yep. That along with making a little script that backs up my configuration files to my SD card and reinstalls them after flash will be a fine replacement for our current PND.