Slackware, Sid, lags + Nvidia 334.21

To make this shortish story a bit longer, let's start with that I clean-installed Slackware-current over my 14.1 ... because after last patches etc it had developed various quirks which annoyed me a bit. And when the choice is between spending x-hours hunting mysterious faults or spending some 3 hours with new and virginal install/rebuild - I'll pick the last one, period.
Install and rebuild were quite uneventful - nothing to whine over ... Maybe of the contrary - some 2-3 bugs with apps in 14.1 had resolved themselves meanwhile. And it helps to have previous install-list of apps, deps and shit.

But when attempting to install (previously used in 14.1 ) binary Nvidia driver 331.49, I had sudden 'unknown libEGL.so' problem, and no install. So I went for the latest beta - 334.21, which installed with no problems.
... Well, week before or so also smxi in my Debian Sid had got the same driver installed (after Xorg update, as the 'current nvidia'). And I had started to experience some lagging with mouse and keyboard. Sorta, occasional 1-2 seconds before slider moved, or mouse click registered or typed letter appeared. Bloody annoying, that! But, frankly, I thought that the culprit is some other critter of myriad of Sids' upgrades - and that it goes away with next bunch.
Now, after I installed the same driver to Slackware - and at once started to experience lags, I sure reconsidered. As an afterthought - it was most probably some kind of not-syncing between this Nvidia driver and Compton compositor.
Anyway, I didn't want to part with Compton, so I downgraded the Nvidia driver - and successfully, despite:

1. Slackware - previous installers' libEGL crap and no install.
I went to runlevel 3, did separate
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-334.21.run --uninstall
without letting Nvidia to restore previous xorg.conf (no idea if that matters), then slackpkg search mesa && slackpkg reinstall mesa-9.1.7-x86_64-1 to be sure I don't have leftovers from Nvidia (as I heard, Nvidia overwrites some of mesas' files). Then:
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-319.49.run
with 32bit support and 'yes' to overwrite xorg.conf.
Success, no whining from installer, AND - no more lags!

2. Sid. Not with smxi help this time, but manually:
telinit 1
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-334.21.run --uninstall
That finished with installers' ominous whine about leftover symlinks. Whatever... I decided also not to bother with mesa and press on and see what happens:
sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-331.49.run
'Yes, do install' - to installers' worry about 'maybe runlevel 1 is not good...'
With 32bit support, 'Yes' to overwrite conf.
Success, and no more lags!

Simpleminded conclusion: If you experience lags (especially after pointless upgrade to latest/greatest Nvidia driver), try downgrading a bit. Beta really was Beta, in my case.

Removing kits, in Sid

I am not exactly sure why I write this... but there might be two main reasons - I wasted enormous amount of time (80% of this googling crap) and need to get at least some kind of visible outcome. And secondly - it might be of help to someone as of 'how not to get results'.

The idea was to see if I can get rid of *kits in my Debian Sid. And possibly of PAM too. This last one I left aside pretty fast - too many unavoidable deps.
What consolekit and policykit do and why they are also shitty and unneeded part in single-user desktop, that can everyone google themselves.

In my Debian Sid I got such deps for kits: they and their libraries, and Lightdm. That was all, and life seemed rosy.

1. I removed lightdm and replaced it with slim (has optional consolekit dependency) from Debian repo.
As a by-thought - Slims' login-screen looks, frankly, like shit... But slim is real light-weight and easy to configure: /etc/slim.conf and themes reside in /usr/share/slim/themes. Graphical part of themes are quite extensive - and not so trivial to change. If pointed to correct folder, slim lists all your sessions automatically.
But never mind that - of course the debian slim had been compiled with consolekit support.

2. Recompiling slim with -DUSE_CONSOLEKIT=no. My installation needed additionally libpam0g-dev for that.
After playing around with original source - I even got it 'made' (after endless tries and some conf and parameter changes) - I decided for making proper debian package.
So I played several evenings with pbuilder and cowbuilder (there are tons of material to read, some heavy packages to install and not very simple conf to conf). I managed to create quite an impressive mess - and finally went for simpler way and used dpkg-buildpackage.
In very concise way, whole thing was like that:
apt-get source slim   # downloads source packages to current folder and unpacks tars in correct way.
-DUSE_CONSOLEKIT=no  - change it in /slim-unpacked-source/debian/rules
change conf in /debian/patches/slim-conf.patch to reflect your situation (less to do afterwards)
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b  # in source folder
and there should be new slim.x.x.deb in sources root.

3. Removing vanilla slim and *kits.
Went to console, killed slim and X, then removed slim, policykit, consolekit and deps. Installed:
dpkg -i slim...new-one.deb
Rebooted.
X did not start and dbus did not start (despite I had the second one in .xinitrc).
Manual dbus-launch worked but then X claimed to have a segmentation fault. Bugger!
I reinstalled consolekit - and X started without any problems... Double bugger!
To cut it short, after trying several things - to (unsuccessfully) root out consolekits' leftovers, I threw a towel.
Shame-facedly, I reinstalled both kits. That's that - a defeat.

At the same time - there are cases of successful removals. So, it can be done. I suspect that without display manager (but I wanted to keep it), linux-with-no-kits is possible.

Vsido 2, review-like

| Informational note, 2014, Vsido = Fluxbox only, pulseaudio, systemd |

Generally, I quite hate writing reviews. In this case, there are two reasons for installing Vsido and reviewing it: First - the nostalgic one - Vsido was my first real Linux (means, not Ubuntu-based). So it can be taken as homage to VastOne. Secondly - I have problems with Fluxbox in Slackware and wanted to compare confs with other Fluxbox.
Fortunately my gratitude to VastOne doesn't forbid me to whine and bitch over Vsido 2. So, let's...

The story of installing Vsido ver.1 is here.
I wrote iso (64bit, 16.oct version) to USB with Unetbootin, and booted to Live without any problems.
Desktop layout has remained quite the same as in ver.1.: Conky up-left, and (hidden) dock-thingy (lxpanel) at bottom-center. Newcomer is Wicd icon in up-right corner. Wallpaper is the same as Vsidos' website header... well, it's better than previous one.
If one doesn't use wireless, then wicd should be promptly uninstalled. I also would uninstall lxpanel and replace it with tint2 (which is already installed, and used in Openbox). I like my launched apps nicely visible, as also three icons (terminal, spacefm and firefox) and system tray. And I do not like launch-once-docky-type things at all.

So, let's install (installer is in System menu).
There is quite a lot of explanatory text here and there - which is good. Gparted is for partitioning. Then comes nice compact menu for creating user, passwords and computer name. After that comes choosing timezone and lastly, grub install (which has all needed choices).
Whole install took less than ten minutes.
Vsido boot was normal (fast) debian. Display manager is - as previously - LightDM, but in it's new and moronic form. I logged in and was greeted by first-time script. I let it dist-upgrade - which is, in my opinion, a bit dangerous thing. What happens if there is, say, big xorg update? Anyway, update was successful - and biggish as always with Sid. Script installed apt-xapian-index, which is great (creates seach-box into Synaptic). The script offers also to install cups, java, Libreoffice and some more things.
One can do the same - and more - through pre-installed smxi script. But I suppose welcome-script is good thing to have.
There are - additionally to default Fluxbox - Openbox, i3 and Xfce installed. Which is quite a lot of options.

Fluxbox menu.
First, why is Spacefm represented with general icons? Spacefm has very nice original icon - why not to use it?
And here comes my loudest whine: the menu structure and app distribution in submenus are bloody strange!
- Settings: Why is Gparted there? Why is Disk Manager installed at all?
- Accessories: Why are Lxappearance (and, by the way, 15pt font size for text is way too big) and Nitrogen here? And Htop??
- Development has Xcalc in it!?
- Fluxbox menu should sit in Settings, as submenu, and not as separate menu.
- Internet: Why to have Wicd and Ceni both installed?
- Multimedia: So, Vsido got pulseaudio installed this time... well, fortunately there is 'purge'.
- System: Not sure if Gdebi and Aptitude are good for anything.

Now, app choices doesn't really matter - everyone has to make their own picks anyway. But - sticking apps into absurd places certainly is irritating. And having a bit more consistent menus through different sessions would be definitely bonus too.

Everything what was installed seemed to work - except Iceweasel, of course (bookmark toolbar not functioning. Also - whole menu was grey and fuzzy-looking.).
Net was picked up without any problem. Initial memory usage was pleasantly low 125 megas.

Openbox.
The same look - but dock-thingy is created with Tint2 and it's not hidden here. Terminal comes transparent by default - and that's not a good thing. When terminal happens to be on top of white app, it's unusable.
Menus - A lot better here, but:
- Compton sits under Graphics... really, now...
- Audacity is missing in Multimedia. Not that I would use it, but why inconsistency?
- I would put Tools and System menus together.
Font size in menus (in Fluxbox menu too) are too big and look like childrens' book.

i3.
Well - i simply couldn't open anything there, who knows how it's supposed to work. Fortunately console and killall helped.

Xfce.
Dock is created with lxpanel and is hidden. Menu looks textvise better than boxen ones. But it has huge problems with icon sizes - there are at least 3 different sizes all mixed up. And there are double entries.
- Settings has Openbox Configuration Manager sitting there.
- Accessories has Nitrogen - which should be in Settings; Spacefm is doubled, and with different icons; Root Terminal shouldn't be in this menu at all.
- Internet has two Iceweasels.
- Multimedia has two gmusicbrowsers (and icons are of different size.
- Other has 'Fluxbox menu' and 'Openbox'. No, I didn't try...
- System has two Spacefms and two Xfce terminals.
So, Xfce session looks quite untuned. Maybe it's time to drop it? Vsidos' forum leaves impression that there isn't very much Xfce users... if any.

Now, if all previous left the impression that I hate Vsido - then no, I do not. As far as Linux distros go, Vsido is one of the best.
It has pleasant clear-cut installer and installs without any problems. It works. It's fast and lean. Fluxbox and and Openbox are good bases to personalize onto. And all those whined-over menu things can be fixed in an hour. But experimental Iceweasel is a pile of crap and should be purged as a first thing.
I think I liked first version of Vsido a bit more. Not sure why... maybe it's this first love thing. Second version seems to be more advanced-user oriented. Which is a wise move - I guess that there aren't very much noobish Vsido-users in existence.
... And I did not manage to fix my Slackware Fluxbox. Looks like, maybe, a compile-time.

Netinstall Jessie to Sid, Openboxed

After dist-upgrade two weeks ago serious problems appeared in Vsido (Sid with experimental repos enabled) - CPU-usage went up, as did memory-usage. Some people couldn't even boot... - (upgraded) xorg and nvidia driver conflicted.
So I thought of flying a bit lower (without 'experimental') and netinstalled pure 'sid' from scratch. Well, and I had messed up my Vsido a bit, while playing around.

Do take a look to previous netinstall post here.
What follows here is mostly what I found to be 'different and strange or silly'.

Making Sid:
Rebooted after install and went stright for /etc/apt/sources.list.
Changed things to sid:
#sources to sid
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ sid main non-free contrib
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ sid main non-free contrib
# added debian multimedia
deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org sid main non-free
Security (added by install) goes out - no such thing in Sid.

One can add some repos. But - you have to install also their keyrings:
aptosid, siduction (I did not try them), spacefm (no success, keyserver timed out)
- sudo apt-get install deb-multimedia-keyring
- apt-get install also to: aptosid-arhive-keyring, siduction-archive-keyring
- with spacefm it's a bit different, as root, do:
gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 0x01937621 0x107165A1
# when successful,
bash -c 'gpg --export -a 01937621 107165A1 | apt-key add -'
But as said, no success here - and I installed it from downloaded 'deb'.

When sources are ready:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Everything seemed to be fine - no errors, no things 'not upgraded'.

Making ze colorful picture:

Then I installed Openbox and other essentials:
Only thing I thought of doing differently was swapping xfce4-terminal to roxterm. But, xfce4-terminal wanted a lot less deps - so it stayed.
Lightdm install with --no-install-recommends gave 3 times less dependencies. A lot of gnome trash went away. Lightdms' version 1.6 is already this new fucked-up one - no hackable greeter.ui file, no session picker in center-menu.
As a side-note: If using Synaptic, also do not forget to remove 'check' from Preferences 'install reccommends by default' - saves you from a lot strange junk.

Reboot.
Installed smxi and when trying to install Nvidia drivers, got message that kernel 3.9.1 amd64 (installed by Debian Installer) has no headers and there isn't any in repo too. Doh! I decided not to think too deeply over it, and installed liquorix 3.8.13 kernel - and Nvidia installed without problems. Strange, though.
One more observation: If you want to clean up useless xorg drivers with smxi - you have to run xorg at least once before.

Rebooted for new kernel and, as usual, ran sgfxi in console to get that installed Nvidia working (it goes like that every first-time-installation).

Holy moment! Login to Openbox ... and do all usual stuff (again, look up the previous openbox posts).
Let's list here only some strange happenings, odd outcomes:
- When Debian had still first, native kernel, then booting text ran small. After change to Liquorix, text turned big (res 640). Changing resolution bigger in grubs' conf doesn't work... Me, baffled. 
Edit: Took whole menuentry from Sids' grub.cfg, made 41_sid file in master-Grub /etc/grub.d, copy/pasted menuentry - and Sids' console resolution turned to nice 1024x768. I guess that crucial lines here were (omitted by master-grub):
set gfxpayload=keep
insmod gzio
Irritatingly, I also got several penguin pictures displayed before initrd load... got rid of them by adding following kernel parameter: 'logo.nologo'. Edit ends

- Compton: As usual, missed a lot of deps. I installed everything, even asciidoc. But, 'make install' failed anyway - with some line in source error. Jeez... so I ended up copying the comptons' executable to /usr/bin as per usual.
- Showdesktop and exit scripts didn't work. Both are python, so I installed a bunch of python stuff - thinking that error is there. It wasn't - it was missing 'wmctrl'.
- I did adduser username sudo (which was complitely ok), and was a bit confused why it still didn't work. I forgot to install 'sudo', that's why ...
Moral here is - it pays of to make precise list of 'essential things to install' - and also to follow it.
- For some reason my boxes bios clock lately insist of being 3 hours incorrect... Here helps installing 'ntp' which then takes time from nets' server.
- Firefox doesn't save to ntfs partition... ups, file manager too. Need to install 'ntfs-3g' and 'fuse'. Last time when Openboxing Wheezy, I got them probably automagically when playing with smxi.
- And one more funny thing: I happened to stick mother-in-laws' Kindle to my Linux box - and bloody thing refused to accept 'umount' as eject. Well, you have to install 'eject'... then it ejects.

Everything seems to work now (knock the wood). Memory-usage is the same as with my Vsido install (unborked) - 160M. And no funny peakings with CPUs. 

Vsido, overview and tips

I happened to visit the blog of IgnorantGuru. I followed a news-lead to IGurus' article about the current state of Linux. It was quite illuminating reading, especially, because I myself had started to think quite similar dark thoughts about how Linux development is being strangely rotten last two years or so.

And when clicking around there I found myself in place called vsido.org.
It is rather unpretentious home of very fresh Debian Sid distro called Vsido. It compares itself to Crunchbang (a scary thing to n00b like me). Despite that I downloaded, made USB (Unetbootin) and installed - successfully.

Install was kinda usual, maybe a bit longish, but nothing overly scary.
I installed Vsidos' grub to its' root, updated my master-bootloader  and booted smoothly to Vsido. Lightdm is for login.
First-time desktop greets you with more-than-nice script with various options: system updater, installer (printer, java, LibreOffice, dev-packs, OpenSSH, LAMPStack, and couple of other things).
There are three sessions installed:
- Xfce session has Conky ribbon on uppper-edge and tint2-dock bottom-edge. Main menu opens from desktop right-click or from launcher in dock.
- Openbox looks exactly the same.
- Fluxbox looks also the same - but with graphical glitches and strange behaviour. Removed it promptly. (Edit: Fluxbox in next mini-release ISO didn't have those problems.)
- And there is 'default session' - Openbox again (which changed to Fluxbox in later releases). When exiting from there with 'Restart' it totally froze...
It's impossible to install some Xfce panel plugins... and trash plugin simply didn't work | Edit: Trash didn't work because I replaced Thunar with Spacefm and Xfce trash plugin is connected only with Thunar. But Spacefm has also its own trash-plugin) Edit |.
Then there are currently three upgrades which doesn't upgrade because of dependency problems... That's Sid, alright.

First things - get into virtual terminal (CtL+ALT+F1), sudo su, and run smxi script. And READ what happens, and respond correctly (or else!).
OK then, everything installed, including new freshly installed video driver. Awesome script!

After that, I did the following:
- Removed Tint2 from Xfce (and 'kill panel script') - took them off from 'Startup'. Created new xfce panel, confed it.
| Edit:  And afterwards changed back to tint2. Retaining uniform look over your various desktops is actually a good thing. Edit |
- Shortened Conky info-strip - deleted some things in ~/.conkyrc.
- Synaptic 'Quick Search' field was missing. I had encountered this before and always thought its 'silly Synaptic different-version thingy'... But, it's not.
What you need to do is:

sudo apt-get install apt-xapian-index
#after that might need also
sudo update-apt-xapian-index -vf

Open Synaptic after that and it sprouts new nice quick-search field!
Additionally: If your Synaptic suddenly is NOT starting from Menu (and when starting it in terminal with the same command, asks USER-passwd): Change launcher command (synaptic pkexec) to gksudo synaptic.
- Make Spacefm to your default File Manager in Xfce too. It trumps Thunar by - maybe - ten times? By the way, it's made by the same already mentioned IgnorantGuru. And no - you can't remove Thunar, it's like Internet Explorer of Windows to Xfce, very integrated, yes, sir.
- What aliases we have preinstalled? Type 'al' in terminal and you'll see.
- How to make your terminal more colorful? See here.
- A BUG, or something: new Xfce Panel whines sillily every time you login: delete .cache/sessions, logout without 'save session' checked, login and no more whining.
- Iceweasel, the bastard Firefox, didn't have 'add new tab ' after tab... you can add general one from 'cutomizing' menu. Bookmarks Toolbar didn't work... | Edit: as of 20.03.12 upgrade, both issues seemed fixed... then after some days, Bookmarks Toolbar failed again. So I 'removed' Iceweasel and installed Firefox. And strange is - evil Firefox has no problems with working. Iceweasel problems, of course, are not Vsido problems.) Edit |

... I like Vsido. It's definitely a place for finding new exciting things - like there IS thing called 'virtual terminal' and such... :)
If you are an outgrown n00b craving new challenges - after Ubuntuland, Vsido is more than interesting, but not overly complicated place to proceed ones' education in.  
Recommended!