Barnix / DebXPde Website - XPde as Default Environment.

[gmwest5]

Our Website is now backup, thanks to arkaine23,

http://www.westnold-developments.uk.tt

and hopefully we will have an ISO up on the Site within the next couple of days.

you can login into the forum from this page or goto http://www.barnix-forum.cjb.net

Michael West
BARNIX / DebXPde Developer
Westnold Developments

[Vintage Season]

Michael, you may already be aware of these resources, but if not I thought I'd mention them here: the XPde Tools (http://kylixapps.narod.ru/) site offers many XP-styled utilities (http://kylixapps.narod.ru/tools.html) (Picture Viewer, Character Map, Paint, Minesweeper, etcetera...), desktop themes (http://kylixapps.narod.ru/themes.html) (Luna, Silver, etcetera...) and other components (http://kylixapps.narod.ru/components.html) (too many to list!) for use with XPde, and these could possibly be included within your project as well.

The site is a tad slow, but still seems to be an excellent resource.

- M.

[sbkryan]

Yeah we do know bout them and have looked at the website - we are planning on implementing some of these in l8r versions but as it stands we want to get the major changes completed

thanks for the info though

Ryan Gosnold
BARNIX / DebXPde Developer
Westnold Developments

[gmwest5]

Barnix 0.3.5 Download Link

http://www.overclockix.octeams.com/Barnix//ISO%20Images/BarnixV0.3.5-EN-29-06-2004.iso


Michael West
BARNIX / DebXPde Developer
Westnold Developments

[gmwest5]

Barnix 0.3.5 Download Link


http://www.overclockix.octeams.com/Barnix//ISO%20Images/BarnixV0.3.5-EN-29-06-2004.iso


Michael West
BARNIX / DebXPde Developer
Westnold Developments

[arkaine23]

Glad I could help you out, Michael. Can't wait to demo your project.

[gmwest5]

thanks arkaine23,

have you had change to download and try it yet

[Vintage Season]

Michael, I am downloading it right now. Two questions:

1) Is the name "Barnix" or "DebXPde"? I personally like the second better, but notice increasing references to "Barnix" again over the past few days.

2) Is there any chance you could post an MD5 checksum for the ISO, so users can verify a correct/completed download?

- M.

[sbkryan]

as it stands the development is called BARNIX

it may be that we use barnix for the development versions and change the name to DebXPde wen we are satified that it is a stable copy but this will be in the furture

as to the md5sum - ill upload it in a sec

Ryan Gosnold
BARNIX / DebXPde Developer
Westnold Developments

[Vintage Season]

Download has completed, and below is the MD5 checksum as I've computed it. Could someone else verify that this sum is correct? Thanks!

- M.

d21b88c5541daab21e199e5879476403 *BarnixV035-EN-29-06-2004.iso

P.S.: When I verify the internal MD5 checksums (./KNOPPIX/md5sums) one file gives the following error:

./boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin: FAILED

... so I'll try re-downloading the ISO and see whether anything changes.

[sbkryan]

That is the correct md5 checksum

[Vintage Season]

That is the correct md5 checksum
So the checksum for isolinux.bin is incorrect, in the internal set? With the image mounted, I get the following replacement checksum for that file:

34a4ab36fc0419830730339cb62950dd ./boot/isolinux/isolinux.bin

Now to burn a disc, and see whether everything boots correctly....

- M.

[gmwest5]

Vintage Season please give us some feed back about what you think of the distro.

Both i and Ryan Gosnold Will help with any problems

Michael West
BARNIX / DebXPde Developer
Westnold Developments

[Vintage Season]

Vintage Season please give us some feed back about what you think of the distro.

Both i and Ryan Gosnold Will help with any problems

Michael West
BARNIX / DebXPde Developer
Westnold Developments
Will do so shortly; at the moment I've still got a couple of tasks running in Windows XP, and I'd like to let them finish before I reboot. :)

- M.

[gmwest5]

Ok Vintage Season

No Rush

just let us know when you have tried it.

Michael West
BARNIX / DebXPde Developer
Westnold Developments

[Vintage Season]

Well, I've successfully booted into Barnix and am accessing this page through Mozilla Firefox (included as the default browser), but am a little puzzled that several obvious shortcuts appear to be non-functional.

Desktop: "Internet Browser," "Command Line" and "Gimp" function as expected, but clicking on "My Documents," "My Computer," "My Home," "My Network Places" or "Recycle Bin" doesn't do anything.

StartMenu: Programs in "StartMenu" > "All Programs" are functional, but the large-icon links above that (those directly above "All Programs") and all of the "My ..." categories appear to be disabled (... possibly a single-click versus double-click issue?) "Control Panel," "Printers and Faxes," "Help and Support," "Search" and "Run..." also yield no result.

Appearance: The taskbar font is oversized, and italicized (and rather unattractive to boot!). Same font appears is currently used for buttons in the desktop properties dialog. No QuickLaunch menu (as yet; if it's there I can't access it, since right-clicking on the taskbar doesn't do anything). Several programs, such as WINE, are still present, although they must currently be called through the xterm "Command Prompt." Appropriate "Start Menu" > "All Programs" shortcuts would greatly simplify navigation, for those not intimately familiar with the included components.

Performance: Seems to load considerably slower than Knoppix 3.4 standard, and accessing programs (those that could be accessed...) causes considerable seeking on the disc. Question: Was the disc re-ordered before compressing the KNOPPIX image, and could this be affecting seek/load times?

Overall five-minute first impression: I know it sounds like I've criticized a lot in the last few paragraphs, but this is still an impressive first public step toward a visual approximation of Windows XP. Would I recommend it as an acceptable replacement system yet? No, since it seems for the moment to be far less functional than even Knoppix 3.4, on which it was based... still, it is a hint of what is hopefully to come! Currently the feel of Barnix may more closely approximate the "Safety Mode" of a Windows installation, but if the performance issues can be resolved this could easily become a viable springboard for non-Linux natives to begin adaptation. With the anticipated adoption of existing XPde Tools, Themes and Components (http://kylixapps.narod.ru/) and a little more development, this could even become a convincing XP emulator.

Need to log off for now, as my wife is waiting for me across town. ;)

- M.

P.S.: Additionally, I've just discovered that the Windows/Logoff button on the keyboard is not currently functional in this system (ideally it should call the "Start Menu" with "Shut Down" highlighted, as in a true XP system). One bright note, however - my scrollwheel mouse is scrolling just fine.

[gmwest5]

Now i Will Explain Some Things About the www.xpde.com Environment


Desktop: "Internet Browser," "Command Line" and "Gimp" function as expected, but clicking on "My Documents," "My Computer," "My Home," "My Network Places" or "Recycle Bin" doesn't do anything.

As this environment with the addition of the start menu was a pre release for this distro, some items were not finished, those buttons which do not work, don't work becuase the havent been configured in the hard coding of the environment.


StartMenu: Programs in "StartMenu" > "All Programs" are functional, but the large-icon links above that (those directly above "All Programs") and all of the "My ..." categories appear to be disabled (... possibly a single-click versus double-click issue?) "Control Panel," "Printers and Faxes," "Help and Support," "Search" and "Run..." also yield no result.
Same as above the only part that works in the start menu is the All Programs section as the other parts havent been coded yet, we may try to contact Jose again to see if he has done any more, but he maynot give us another release.


Appearance: The taskbar font is oversized, and italicized (and rather unattractive to boot!). Same font appears is currently used for buttons in the desktop properties dialog. No QuickLaunch menu (as yet; if it's there I can't access it, since right-clicking on the taskbar doesn't do anything). Several programs, such as WINE, are still present, although they must currently be called through the xterm "Command Prompt." Appropriate "Start Menu" > "All Programs" shortcuts would greatly simplify navigation, for those not intimately familiar with the included components. yes majority of the programs are present we just havent gone into much detail in the structure of the start menu and that maybe done in our next release as i have said before this is still in beta stages. although if you look at the knoopix cheatcodes you can still use kde3.2.2 if you enter the code at startup.


Performance: Seems to load considerably slower than Knoppix 3.4 standard, and accessing programs (those that could be accessed...) causes considerable seeking on the disc. Question: Was the disc re-ordered before compressing the KNOPPIX image, and could this be affecting seek/load times?

It does say in the remastering guides that remasters will be slower and that is becuase it is being changed and we are looking into ways of helping the performance.


P.S.: Additionally, I've just discovered that the Windows/Logoff button on the keyboard is not currently functional in this system (ideally it should call the "Start Menu" with "Shut Down" highlighted, as in a true XP system). One bright note, however - my scrollwheel mouse is scrolling just fine.

yes we do know about the logoff key and reason is in the last version of XPde in 0.4 and the first version of 0.5 when you click to shutdown it would close the environment and the go into KDE and we wanted it to shutdown like it was supposed to and that is why the shutdown button would use the halt command and also the logoff will eventually goto a window manager which Jose is currently working on.

Michael West
BARNIX / DebXPde Developer
Westnold Developments

[Vintage Season]

It does say in the remastering guides that remasters will be slower and that is becuase it is being changed and we are looking into ways of helping the performance.
Yes, I am aware of the speed hit remastering often induces; in this thread (http://mailman.linuxtag.org/pipermail/debian-knoppix/2003-January/001593.html) on the debian-knoppix (http://mailman.linuxtag.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-knoppix) list, Klaus Knopper addresses the question and offers his own scripted method of preparing the image by using file access times as the sorting criteria, and I wondered whether such might enhance the performance of Barnix/DebXPde.

- M.

[gmwest5]

this maybe able to help us but i am not too sure i will get our other developer Ryan Gosnold to have a look at the that post and get him to reply on here tell you wether it willl help us and he can tell me whether it is worth trying.

Michael West
BARNIX / DebXPde Developer
Westnold Developments

[arkaine23]

Bandwidth limit exceeded for this month. My host can torrent our iso's pretty quickly and seed from a server with unlimited bandwidth but a narrower pipe. Not sure if he'll do it for us for just a few days, or if he'll just wait until July 1st... I have messaged him though.

[gmwest5]

thanks for telling me arkaine, i thought there was some sort of problems b4 when i tried to download the ISO at college, i will just continue my download for my teacher when you have your bandwidth again.

[arkaine23]

It's back. What happened is that distrowatch sniffed out my latest update to Overclockix and posted it on their main page, so traffic was heavy.

Also, too much direct linking to the iso files can get us hammered by bots.

[gmwest5]

ok arkaine, well distro watch gave us some advertising anyway which is a good thing for us not sure about ya bandwidth though

[arkaine23]

I don't know about you, but I get a warm and fuzzy feeling when distrowatch takes notice. The servers get hammered at new releases, but I let my host handle that. In an emergency we switch to bittorrent for relief, so its usually no trouble. The pace of development puts out a new iso at least every few months and sometimes a handfull in just a few weeks.

[gmwest5]

Arkaine, is there some kind of problem with your host at the moment as i keep going to go to the home page yours and mine and they dont show up

[arkaine23]

It's working fine for me.

This is what my host messaged me this morning-

Overclockix was directly linked to from distrowatch again
This time I put a mod_rewrite in and have installed mod_throttle. I actually was letting it go because it's the end of the month and I have bandwidth to spare but it's effecting everyone else so I put the mod_throttle back down until I could kill the direct link
I actually think that the direct linking is causing bots to hit the site so now it's going to ab.gif on your site instead of to the iso.
they can still reach it from the overclockix page for now and I can rewrite to accept links from the forums too. I just now did it. Should stop that. The Barnix link will be affected. If you tell me where it's being linked from I can add it to the access file.

There were about 6-10 extremely abusive downloaders using some strange download agent. They literally ddos the server with hundreds of concurrent connection attempts and I think it's been a big part of the problem. A bunch of them fired up at the same time before I went to work this morning and it was incredible to watch them connect.

I messaged him to add your site, your forum, and knoppix.net to be allowed thorugh to get the iso's.

[gmwest5]

thanks arkaine i will try the site again it maybe that i need to clear the cache on my browser

[dietercools]

several obvious shortcuts appear to be non-functional.

I downloaded Barnix v.0.3.6 and also experienced the same issues as Vintage Season told. As I understand this release includes the latest version of xpde (0.5.1) So downloading a newer version of barnix (DebXPde v1.0.0) won't help me then as the previous had already the newest xpde version?

I was also wondering: Is there any tool like xpde which gives me a Win98 look (windows classic) because I like the classic look better. (searching google didn't help me)

One more thing: I really appreciate the job you're doing, but something that is not working is of little use to me, especially as a linux newbie. Can't you put a warning on the website that some things may not be implemented? This saves 600 MB of download!

[GFBurke]

This is a great project - love it.

-Get this thing running stable, quicker and make a full installer. (making it installed would speed it up anyways)
-Impliment the latest Firefox, Nvu, Thunderbird, GAIM, filezilla, Skype, VLC and some form of pod caster.


But deffntly - kick ass man.


burke
ramsinks.com

[gmwest5]

DebXPde 2011.1 32-bit BETA Available for Download!!

DebXPde 2011.1 32-bit BETA is here, this is a very early release of the first version of DebXPde for 2011. This version is the base from which we will now build on until we get to a point where we are happy to release a completed version DebXPde 2011.1

The iso image is 571MB and can be downloaded by either FTP or torrent, the links can be found below:

FTP: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=H19U6E5B (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=H19U6E5B)
Torrent: http://opengw.dlinkddns.com:6969/ (http://opengw.dlinkddns.com:6969/)

As you may or may not know this is only 3 weeks worth of work and we have alot planned for the future development of this distro including the following:

DebXPde Updater - Ability to update your debxpde version without doing a reinstall
Customised Menu - The Menu structure will be customised to look and feel more familiar to Windows computer users.
More Applications - More applications will be included in the future releases, please go to the forum at http://www.debxpde.co.cc/ (http://www.debxpde.co.cc/) and give us your suggestions
64-bit kernel - 64-bit kernel to utilise the full potential of 64bit CPUs
Much Much More....

Those of you that used our distro back in 2004 which was released with the XPde interface will notice immediately that this has gone. This is due to the fact that the XPde interface has not had any further development since that release and is no where near the finished article. We have included the XPde interface but this is not the default user interface we do plan to develop this interface or our own interface in the future but the aim currently is to get an easy to use distro out there.

Follow the development of this project and give us your feedback by going to the website http://www.opengw.co.cc (http://www.opengw.co.cc/) or on the forum at http://www.debxpde.co.cc/ (http://www.debxpde.co.cc/) and even on twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/openGW (http://twitter.com/#!/openGW)

PLEASE NOTE - This Distribution is now based entirely from a Debian 6.0.1 base and not Knoppix.