Review: Semplice 4 "Atom Heart Mother"

A couple of people have asked in comments (especially of my review of #! 11 "Waldorf") that I review Semplice. I took a look at its website and was pretty intrigued, so here is the review.

Main Screen + Openbox Menu

What is Semplice? Much like #! (which I may end up referencing frequently whether I want to or not), it is based on Debian and uses Openbox as its default WM. Unlike #!, which is based on Debian Stable (and issues preview releases based on the future Debian Stable release), Semplice is based on Debian Unstable "Sid", which allows it to be maintained as a rolling-release distribution.

I reviewed Semplice 4 "Atom Heart Mother" (I found out the code name from the release notes) using a live USB made with UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

Read more »

Read More

Featured Comments: Week of 2011 February 20

There was only one post this past week that garnered a handful of comments, so I'll post all of them.

LXAppearance Issues

Reader T_Beermonster said, "ObConf?", later adding, "Oh, and now I notice you are using gnome with openbox rather than lxde or straight openbox it could be that an update has broken your .obt mime-associations. Try: update-mime-database /usr/share/mime update-desktop-database /usr/share/applications" After my explanation that this is just straight-up Openbox, this reader replied, "Ah I misread, the perils of post midnight web surfing. Anyway ObConf should be able to manage your themes."
Commenter BP had this advice: "You need to append "gtk-icon-theme-name = "[name-of-icon-theme]" to your ~/.gtkrc.mine (not gtkrc-2.0) file and then ensure that ~/.gtkrc-2.0 is configured to parse ~/.gtkrc.mine: # ~/.gtkrc-2.0 include "/usr/share/themes/Rezlooks-Gilouche/gtk-2.0/gtkrc" # or whatever theme you want
include "/home/username/.gtkrc.mine" You may also want to consider using lxappearance2-git, which is the most recent developmental build."

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. I don't have anything particularly planned for the coming week, considering that I have exams and other stuff going on; I'll write what I can, when I can. Remember, if you like what I write here, please continue subscribing and commenting!

Read More

LXAppearance Issues

A couple days ago, I had a bit more time on my hands, so I decided to redo UberBang and start from a minimal Ubuntu installation again; this is also because it seems like my respins created with Remastersys don't seem to be installable, so I want to redo it using the Ubuntu Customization Kit. I installed the OS in a virtual machine, installed packages like X, Openbox, Nitrogen, et cetera, and started configuring stuff.
Except that now I can't properly set an icon theme of my choosing. Previously, I used LXAppearance to do this, but now, LXAppearance sees all GTK+ themes as the default Clearlooks theme and all icon themes as the default GNOME Hi-Color theme. I installed GTK-ChTheme to be able to change the GTK+ theme, but there's no other similar program for changing just the icon theme (aside from the whole package of GNOME configuration tools, but I don't want to add all that extra bloat). Plus, editing the ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file doesn't work at all; the icon theme remains at the default (and creating a ~/.gtkrc-2.0.mine file and including that in the ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file doesn't work either).
Why is LXAppearance giving me so much trouble all of a sudden? Is there a more reliable way that I can change the icon theme? I would certainly love to know!

Read More