The collected works of ledzep

maxxi.desktop wrote: Hello all, I am baaaaack! Well, I posted (after a very long time) a message on the MaXX Interactive Desktop page asking the community if it was worth continuing the project. Yup! I am more than ready for the task ahead, but not alone. I need people to assist, code and promote the thing.


Your comments/feedback are always welcome.

Regards,

Eric Masson

Thank Odin! I was wondering what happened since things seemed to have been moving along and then, nothing. I installed DR3 onto my older backup Ubuntu box some months ago, loved the way it looked but it was a bit incomplete so I haven't installed it on my newer Ubuntu machine yet. It was missing some must-have basics like support for multiple desktops though maybe that's just my fault in terms of installing it? Anyway, the Irix desktop was always my favorite so I cannot wait to get that onto my Linux computers. I don't think I can help much with coding but I will certainly (and have, in the past) promote its existence and availability for you.

maxxi.desktop wrote:

hamei wrote: If it ran on MIPS-Linux it would be more desirable (to me, anyhow.) A Longson laptop and MaXXDesktop is the closest any of us will ever get to an Irix portable ... (geo excepted )

can't do it alone. but priority will be voted this time. so hopefully the collective will be happy

Well, I hope it can be both (x86 and MIPS) because I don't see how a niche desktop designed for a niche CPU (I can't even find a way to buy one beyond mentions of Loongson netbooks on Amazon that aren't even available anymore) alone can succeed. I do like the idea of a MIPS64 laptop, that would be something to consider buying if it can compete with Lenovo Thinkpads (my current choice) in terms of screen resolution and CPU power.

Hopefully Maxx can end up everywhere , I have a desktop Ubuntu machine and a laptop Ubuntu machine (both Intel i7s) praying for that day.

Holy crap, I wish I could stand in that room when you're finished. It would be a similar feeling to when I went to the California Extreme arcade games show

http://www.caextreme.org/

and just stood there soaking in all the powered up games and hearing all their sound effects.

guardian452 wrote: A lot of users in our hotel management parent company have already transitioned to ipads, since all they really need a computer for is email and office. The IT guys love it, could you imagine them having to support linux desktops???

IT guys having to support Linux desktops? Ya, I can imagine that, I've seen it. At every major visual effects house. They almost all use Linux. The IT guys HATE Windows, hate it with a ferocity that must be at the DNA level. Maybe that should be "competent IT guys", though. There's nothing tough about Linux desktops. Irritating and annoying, yes, but that holds for the other options, too, when you're dealing with hundreds of finicky artists and never-satisfied deadlines. Visual effects runs everything on Linux, all the 3D and 2D software packages like Houdini, Maya, Nuke, Massive, Renderman, Mental Ray, etc., and it makes writing Python scripts to stitch all that together a straightforward issue. Only Photoshop doesn't run on it and that's because Adobe is run by idiots. How is it that Photoshop Elements is compiled for Android yet Photoshop isn't for Linux? Laziness or arrogance, nothing else.

I've only dealt with 2 desktop computers in my life (always used work computers so never cared). The first was given to me and was a mid-sized tower and it was boring and not worth mentioning. But when I decided to finally pony up the money for my own computer and buy all the parts, one case stood out for me, the Thermaltake Level 10 -

http://thermaltakeusa.com/store/Product ... 17&ID=1513

I got the basic black one but now there are other colors. It's a full-size tower which is fine because my computer is in a room, not a compact car or a refrigerator box. I love the styling but, more importantly, the internal design is very well-thought out. It has room to hide the cabling behind/underneath the motherboard, there's lots of room to get at the disk drive bays and power supply, it has a very modular design. And not stupid expensive, either (slightly over $200), it was comparable to other similar-sized cases at your typical Fry's or Best Buy. The stock fans are quiet and once this current motherboard/CPU/Nvidia card combo pisses me off enough I'll just replace them and keep the case because it looks like a condo complex, not a black box.

me4twb wrote: One of my friends has thermaltake level10, its mostly plastic but he likes it. It has a fold out headphone holder, and some stupid fan light controller where you can press a case button and the leds on the fans play different flash patterns, one makes it look like the fans are spinning backwards, another cycles through colours, etc.

Ya, I could care less about lit fans and different colors, I certainly didn't buy it for that. I got it for the tool-less drive installation and the size of it (lots of room) and the cable management and the interesting design (not a boring rectangle) and the amount of drive bays and the ease of access to the various sections. The plastic would only bother me if this was something that supposed to move a lot and keep its integrity. It's more than rigid enough and very stable since it's just sitting on the floor next to my desk, as most computers would be expected to do.

My plan is when I upgrade to the next version of Ubuntu (unfortunately not the LTS one because I've read odd things about certain libraries and programs that one is still using that don't really match the "long-term" claim), I suppose 14.10, I'm going to try Fvwm with a 4Dwm theme because I really want that SGI vibe. And I'll use Gimp and the free version of Houdini and LibreOffice and Firefox and whatever else is available.

Agreed. I gave one of the versions (DR3?) a try but it was missing some basic stuff (multiple desktops) that made it a no-go for me. Assuming I didn't simply install it wrong, of course. But if he's going forward with it that is fantastic as my Plan B is using Fvwm with a 4Dwm theme. Not bad, but not nearly as complete.

jwp wrote:

ledzep wrote: Agreed. I gave one of the versions (DR3?) a try but it was missing some basic stuff (multiple desktops) that made it a no-go for me. Assuming I didn't simply install it wrong, of course. But if he's going forward with it that is fantastic as my Plan B is using Fvwm with a 4Dwm theme. Not bad, but not nearly as complete.

Ah, would you mind telling us which Fvwm theme?

I believe it was this one -

http://4dwm.lumpiarze.nstrefa.pl/

I think it would work but there are some defaults in Ubuntu that I'd need to change before it would be right. For example, after I installed fvwm and this 4dwm theme I was downloading something through Firefox. You know how there is that little arrow pointing down (top right area of browser window) that shows recent downloads? Well I clicked on something, I think it was a right-click to get to an open the download location option, and it opened the new window as a Gnome themed window browser (can't remember exactly). Anyway, it more or less killed fvwm, what few things I could click on were giving me Gnome versions that I didn't want, I couldn't get back to the SGI style stuff. So that would need to be addressed, who knows what other things would kick out of the 4dwm theme like that.

hamei wrote:

bittenbyte wrote: the desktop was not the most valuable part, it did make the experience unique, and usable from a graphics app.

Come again ? The desktop is the user interface. That's the only thing that is significantly different about Irix. Sure, the software was optimized for the hardware but that only counts when you are running a ground-pounding mighty 600 mhz cpu. Other than that, there's .000001 iota difference between Irix AIX HP-UX Solaris NetBSD FreeBSD Plan 9 and DOS.

the interface is what the user uses, thus the interface is what makes the experience different.

Agreed. Having used SGIs back in the day (Digital Domain, Disney) it was always a comfort knowing you could leave those machines up for days upon days (can't say that for any modern PCs I've seen) without incident. I know that's mostly due to the IRIX OS but that value was only with IRIX + MIPS chips. The thing I liked the most was the user interface and that was the desktop (4Dwm or whatever the final iteration was). I want that back! I'm no fan of Gnome or even KDE on my Linux machines, I would so much prefer a fully functioning Linux version of the Magic Desktop. If the Maxx version is what that is then I'd love to have a version of it. I only wish that SGI hadn't been so short-sighted and had licensed or developed that desktop for other systems, specifically Linux. Porting IRIX to the Intel chips, if possible, would have been even better. I would have paid a reasonable price for that.

maxxi.desktop wrote:

TeamBlackFox wrote: Sounds like bugs with your particular setup. Maybe if I have some time soon you could give me access to the source repo and I'll see what I can come up with.

that sounds like an idea. BTW, I tried on three different systems.

cheers!

Would PC-BSD be any better? I have been meaning to trying some form of Unix on my desktop machine, I was all set to use Free-BSD but then I was reading about PC-BSD and how it is built off of Free-BSD but has some usability improvements, so now I'm trying to choose between the two. I was going to try getting Motif or CDE running on whichever I chose, have a "more Unix" experience than looking at the same Gnome or KDE desktops that Linux has, but if Maxx is on its way back then I might finally have a Linux that is visually acceptable and I won't have to worry about BSD so much (though I'll still try one along with probably CDE, just can't figure out which one).

I think it would be a great idea to create a repository/PPA for Maxx when it gets to the stable working stage, that would really streamline the installation process, especially if it's (at least initially) only going to be tested/confirmed for a few of the Linux distros. I apologize if I understood the release process incorrectly.

Actually my current desktop successfully dual-boots with Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04. But now I want to add a 3rd OS, PC-BSD (10.1.2), and that thing is giving me a lot of lip.

For background, Each OS is on a separate hard drive (I have 5 hard drives - 1TB with Ubuntu, 1TB with Windows 7, 2TB for Linux storage, 2TB for Windows storage, and now a 3TB drive split for PC-BSD and more Linux storage). The motherboard is running in legacy BIOS mode (I'm almost positive that is still the case).

My first attempts were stopped dead by the partitioning. I made 2 GPT partitions on the 3TB drive, the first around 750 gigs and the second 2TB (Ext4 and labelled). When I would try to install PC-BSD on that drive using the 1st partition it would always fail right at the end, complaining about swap.eli portion. At some point, just to try something different, I reformatted the hard drive so that the 2TB partition showed up first and then the 750 gig partition came after. Again, I chose that 750 gig partition to install PC-BSD. Success!

But, actually, not successful. When I restarted my PC I went into Ubuntu in order to update Grub. But first I decided to mount my new 2TB storage partition. I couldn't find it! What? It's even labelled! Ok, GParted showed me that PC-BSD had for whatever reason inhaled the whole 3TB drive. It installed in the second partition but it had also taken the first 2TB partition and put a tiny bit of something in it. I remembered reading that FreeBSD required a number of slices for an install, the first of which was a freebsd-boot slice of 512k. Ok, I reformatted again , but this time I made 3 partitions, the first was 1 meg, the second was about 750 gigs and the third was the rest (just over 2TB). I put the PC-BSD DVD back in the drive and installed yet again. Success (again)!

I restarted, back in Ubuntu, and GParted confirmed that PC-BSD grabbed the first 2 partitions (even though no documentation I could find says that would happen, everything I read said it would be happy with one partition) and left the third 2TB partition alone. I mounted the new storage partition with no problem. Ok, now for Grub. All the advice I found (including in the handbook) said that it would be simple matter of adding a few lines in the 40_custom file in /etc/grub.d/ and all would be fine, a typical example -

menuentry "PC-BSD 9.1" {
set root='(hd0,2)'
chainloader +1
}

I tried that, ran update-grub , Grub laughed at me, said it couldn't find that partition when I chose the new entry after a restart. I tried hd2,1 and hd2,2 (the 3TB drive is the 3rd drive out of 5) but no joy. More Googling, I find the handbook for PC-BSD 9.1, that one is way more informative. It stated that ZFS partitions are handled differently (PC-BSD automatically formats as ZFS) and so therefore the 40_custom entry should look more like this (from the handbook) -

If you installed ZFS, several modules need to be loaded. Here is a sample entry with the GPT box checked:

menuentry "PC-BSD® 9.1" {

insmod zfs
search -s -l tank0
kfreebsd /freebsd@/boot/kernel/kernel
kfreebsd_module_elf /freebsd@/boot/kernel/opensolaris.ko
kfreebsd_module_elf /freebsd@/boot/kernel/zfs.ko
kfreebsd_module /freebsd@/boot/zfs/zpool.cache type=/boot/zfs/zpool.cache
set kFreeBSD.vfs.root.mountfrom=zfs:tank0/freebsd
}

Ok, I do that, run update-grub again, restart, choose PC-BSD, fail. At least now it finds that partition but it complains about errors and doesn't know what tank0 is and can't load ELF, must load the kernel first.

More Googling, I find an Italian forum that has a guy with the same issue, he said he booted directly into PC-BSD, copied the info from BSD's grub file (in /boot/grub/grub.cfg ) and put that into his Linux 40_custom file and it worked. Ok, give that a try. I switch hard drive boot order in BIOS, restart, PC-BSD fires up. So at least I know that the install actually succeeded. I go through the first time stuff (set timezone, create passwords and user accounts, etc.) and log in. My PC-BSD version of that grub entry is gigantic but I copy and paste a couple menuentries (normal and single user) and email them to myself. Restart, change boot order back to the Ubuntu hard drive, log in, change 40_custom with the new version of the menuentry for the 2 choices. Looks good, run update-grub , I restart, pick the normal PC-BSD option.

Dick. It still has the same complaints (errors, doesn't know what tank is, can't load ELF, a bunch of must load kernel first lines). I'm not sure what to do now. PC-BSD exists and I can log into it so there's no error on that end. But no amount of begging will get Ubuntu's Grub to play nice and switch over to PC-BSD. Can somebody with more experience with this help me out? If there's a different way to partition and/or install PC-BSD that will make it work with Ubuntu's Grub, I'm all ears. I suspect that maybe the Grub in Ubuntu 12.04 might be too old and it doesn't recognize some aspect of what PC-BSD is doing but that doesn't seem right based on the errors, they tell me that it got far enough to try loading but failed. Yet booting directly into that 3TB hard drive will get me straight into PC-BSD so obviously that version of Grub is fine. Could it be that Ubuntu was installed on a hard drive that was partitioned as MBR (4 total primary partitions allowed, the old standard)? I can find nothing online that says that a Grub bootloader on an MBR partition can't deal with something on a GPT partition (I do plan to reformat the drive to GPT when I update to Ubuntu 14.04 or something else). Then again, the 10.1.2 PC-BSD handbook didn't even mention insmod and kfreebsd_module aspects of the 40_custom entry that seem to be required. Is there some active PC-BSD help desk or email that will give me a quick response answer? Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!

maxxi.desktop wrote:

ledzep wrote: Would PC-BSD be any better? I have been meaning to trying some form of Unix on my desktop machine, I was all set to use Free-BSD but then I was reading about PC-BSD and how it is built off of Free-BSD but has some usability improvements, so now I'm trying to choose between the two. I was going to try getting Motif or CDE running on whichever I chose, have a "more Unix" experience than looking at the same Gnome or KDE desktops that Linux has, but if Maxx is on its way back then I might finally have a Linux that is visually acceptable and I won't have to worry about BSD so much (though I'll still try one along with probably CDE, just can't figure out which one).

I think it would be a great idea to create a repository/PPA for Maxx when it gets to the stable working stage, that would really streamline the installation process, especially if it's (at least initially) only going to be tested/confirmed for a few of the Linux distros. I apologize if I understood the release process incorrectly.

That's the plan I am in the process of compiling a list of functionality for the next MaXX releases and I want people to vote and agree. My goal is to start include people in that process and ultimately get c/c++/java coders on board.

Well, I certainly vote for an Ubuntu repository, then. I can't get PC-BSD to cooperate with me/my set-up (I believe it is Grub/ZFS related) so my dream of a Unix desktop still lies with my favorite version, the old SGI desktop I remember from the Impact2s that I used to work with on Linux. I hope there's a good CDE/Motif example to use on Ubuntu as well, would be nice to compare the environments (never used CDE back in the day). But nothing beats 4DWM (or, now 5DWM, haahaha) in my eyes. It still upsets me that SGI never got around to selling/licensing/porting Irix (and its desktop) to Intel CPUs.

I just want an option for my Linux set-up, either a hodge-podge of Motif/CDE/KVWM/whatever or Maxx working. I like KDE but it's not the same. It's not the same. I want that old-school Magic Fucking Desktop. Fully-functioning or just the visuals, but something!

I tried going the BSD Unix route and trying to force-feed PC-BSD to my version of Grub (from Ubuntu 12.04) but got nowhere. I would have accepted Motif/CDE in that scheme. But I guess I just have an old version of Grub that hates ZFS. I will try again with Ubuntu 16.04 when it's available, maybe then BSD Unix will be in Grub's sight.

foetz wrote: how about solaris10? original cde, zfs, grub and real unix with a serious compiler. doesn't get any better on x86

I think the issue is Grub's inability to recognize ZFS (or UFS), at least the version I have. I tried every combo of insmod additions to 40_custom (bsd, elf, zfs, ufs, boots, etc.), all kinds of set root= and search commands, nothing worked. At time it would admit that something was actually there on the 5th hard drive, but wouldn't boot into it. Of course if I went into the BIOS and changed the boot order, made the Unix drive the boot drive, then everything worked fine. Now I know one option is to leave it that way and use that option's Grub to choose Linux or Windows 7 but on principle I don't want to do that because, goddammit, this should be doable from Ubuntu's Grub. But I couldn't make it cooperate. For the now I've given up. I'll give it another whirl once Ubuntu 16.04 shows up. If that one doesn't see reason then I'll swap boot drives to the one with whatever Unix I decide on and admit defeat.

Years ago when I was using SGIs at work (Impact 2s, Octanes) I remember using an old program called Diver. At least I'm almost positive that's what it was called. It was a program with a big GUI that would convert across many image formats. I think it would use wildcards or sequences of images, too. There were two sides shown in the GUI, the 'from' format and the 'to' format, with checkboxes for each. So you'd have a bunch of TIFs that you wanted to convert to JPGs, you would mark the 2 formats (maybe the program knew what the current 'from' box should be ticked, I can't remember) and then you'd choose the 'to' format checkbox, run the program, all the images would be converted.

Does that sound familiar? Is that something that still exists?

nongrato wrote: A demo version is available on Hotmix CDs:

image1.png

That's it, thanks! Wow, that image brings back memories. I didn't realize (or remember) that it did so much more than what I was using it for. Is there something wrong with me that just seeing that GUI puts a smile on my face? I mean, it's not like I'm in the mode for converting images to different formats or anything.

Not sure how out of step I am with what Maxx currently (or recently) offers, but I remember trying to install a version of it on an older Ubuntu build I had. From what I remember it went mostly smoothly but it didn't seem to offer multiple desktops (the stock Ubuntu set-up did). Maybe I just didn't notice where the settings were? Also, I think it would be cool (assuming Ubuntu) if installing software from the repositories would automatically add the launcher in the Toolchest somewhere (where it would be appropriate, I suppose), if it doesn't do that already. From what I remember the older version of Maxx I tried had xterm windows and a console window (which displayed error messages from programs launched from the Toolchest instead of the command line), that is something I wish Linux had by default.

Oooh, that second version is much better. I don't mind the transparency, would be cool for the terminal/console windows, too, but I'd leave that as an option like the way KDE allows something like that to be checked on or off. I'm more a fan of the classic SGI look, the further you get away from that the closer you end up with something else (like KDE), which we already have. I agree that the first version isn't so hot, the rounded look would either have to be everywhere, on every window and icon, or not at all (and the icons would work better with titles on them). But that would work better as a "modern" fork, I think most people (me included) would prefer the "classic" look of the '90s.