Tiny Core Linux

Tiny Core Base => CorePlus => Topic started by: Montserrat on April 01, 2024, 06:46:16 AM

Title: [Solved] Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Montserrat on April 01, 2024, 06:46:16 AM
Hi all,

I am so pleased to see this new release, and HUGE thanks to the developers for all their hard work.

I am a noob, so apologies if I use the wrong terms etc. until I get a little more edjumacated. Anyway, the problem I am having is choosing a window manager from the initial boot menu of v15.

I've tried re-downloading the ISO, checking the sums etc. but still can't get all the window managers to load (mind you, I prefer Tom's Window Manager that I can install from the 'Apps' downloader but that's another story ...). The ones that I can get to work are FLWM Topside, Fluxbox, Hackedbox and FLWM Classic.

Sadly, I can't get Joe's Window Manager, ICE, or Openbox to load.

What I mean is, when TCL boots, I choose the WM I want, then those that don't load just give me the 'X' cursor I would expect from X with no window manager, and no window decorations etc.

Does anyone else have a similar issue, and what am I doing wrong?

I've tried dumping 'dmsg' to see whether there are any clues in there, but nothing jumps out at me. I've tried to capture the output of 'startx' to a text file also but to no avail. I've also searched the forums to see whether this has been previously reported but couldn't find anything.

All help, suggestions, flames for being so daft are appreciated.

Montserrat.

Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Rich on April 01, 2024, 08:55:38 AM
Hi Montserrat
Welcome to the forum.

Which CD are you using? x86 (32 bit) or x86_64 (64 bit)?
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Montserrat on April 01, 2024, 10:04:14 AM
Hi Rich,

Thank you for the welcome. I'm looking forward to being around a while...

Anyway, I am using the x86_64 of CorePlus burnt to a USB (sorry, should have stated that in my original post).
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Rich on April 01, 2024, 12:18:55 PM
Hi Montserrat
CorePlus is 32 bit, and that makes sense since that's the only one
that includes all of those window managers.

I burnt a CD was able to reproduce the problem. Likely some extension
is missing. I'll see what I can find.
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Rich on April 01, 2024, 01:30:58 PM
Hi Montserrat
Here's is what I found missing:
jwm, openbox, and gdk-pixbuf2 need libEGL.tcz and libGLESv2.tcz.

icewm needs libgdk_pixbuf_xlib-2.0.so which used to be provided by gdk-pixbuf2.tcz.

I'll wait for Juanito to weigh in on this.
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: vinceASPECT on April 01, 2024, 01:42:04 PM
Hello,

Yes, there are some great window managers.  The minimal (but well designed)  are nice.  i believe Open Box  is very functional and popular.

Thx
C.
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Montserrat on April 01, 2024, 01:47:39 PM
Thanks so far, Rich.

Waiting for Juanito, too, then.

Are those libraries available somewhere for me to source and, if so, where should I put them?

As an aside, it reminds me of years ago (read 35 or so ...) when we switched from static to dynamically linked libraries and all the fun that brought, until we all got used to it. Ahem.
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: patrikg on April 01, 2024, 02:03:05 PM
As the title says, choosing wm in boot menu, i think can be done with you supplying the extension list file in the grub/syslinux kernel command line arguments.

Code: [Select]
lst=openbox.lst
lst=jwm.lst
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Montserrat on April 01, 2024, 02:33:57 PM
Hi Patrik,

I am reading through Lauri's fabulous book in an attempt to find out how to do that but, in the meantime, will doing so obviate the problem of there being missing libraries or are the necessary libraries loaded correctly when the options you mention are supplied, or as is probable, am I confusing myself?
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Rich on April 01, 2024, 02:34:26 PM
Hi Montserrat
After a little more poking around I found something else.
It appears dependencies on libEGL.tcz and libGLESv2.tcz were
removed from cairo and added to gtk2. The CD appears to
have an old gtk2.tcz.dep without libEGL.tcz and libGLESv2.tcz.

Are those libraries available somewhere for me to source and, if so, where should I put them? ...
These extensions all exist here:
http://tinycorelinux.net/15.x/x86/tcz/

The simplest solution for now is:
Boot to the FLWM_topside entry.
Click the  tc-install  icon to start  tc-install-GUI.tcz.
Use the tc-install program to install Tinycore to a second USB stick.
This may be of some help:
http://tinycorelinux.net/install.html

Then run
Code: [Select]
tce-audit builddb
tce-audit updatedeps
tce-audit fetchmissing
tce-update
exitcheck.sh reboot

After it reboots, you will have a proper install. You can then change
to the window manager of your choice.
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Montserrat on April 01, 2024, 03:41:06 PM
Thanks, Rich.

I'm doing that all now, and am patiently waiting at the 'Formatting /dev/sdc1' message in the installer window.

I'll update on progress when that completes .... zzz...
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: GNUser on April 01, 2024, 03:44:23 PM
icewm needs libgdk_pixbuf_xlib-2.0.so which used to be provided by gdk-pixbuf2.tcz.
The Gnome folks split that library into a separate source package, breaking many applications. See here (https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/11.2-systemd/x/gdk-pixbuf-xlib.html).

I contributed gdk-pixbuf2-xlib for TCL15 x86_64, and gdk-pixbuf2 depends on it as to avoid breakage. It seems TCL15 x86 needs someone to contribute gdk-pixbuf2-xlib.tcz to the repo. I'd do it but I have a son in the hospital, so no time for extension submissions at the moment.
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Montserrat on April 01, 2024, 03:55:24 PM
Thank you for the information, GNUser, not that I could do much with it as yet but I just wanted to say my thoughts are with you and your family and thank you so much for taking the time to post that message at what is surely a difficult and worrying time. Eventually I might get to a point where I'm useful to the community, as opposed to a burden, but for now huge thanks and my very best wishes.
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: GNUser on April 01, 2024, 04:00:03 PM
Thanks, Montserrat. Finding and reporting problems is very useful to the community and not a burden to anyone :) I hope you're up and running soon. Welcome to TCL.
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Montserrat on April 01, 2024, 04:20:58 PM
Yes, there are some great window managers.  The minimal (but well designed)  are nice.  i believe Open Box  is very functional and popular.

Hi C,

Yes, I agree, the simple ones are what I like best. It, to me at least, seems to all tie in with the TCL ethos of small and lightning fast.

I love the idea of a small, fast OS that I can configure to my exact needs as opposed to having a machine with the latest 'bells and whistles' that I'll only use 1% of.

That's exactly why I'm here, and loving every minute of it.
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Rich on April 01, 2024, 11:25:38 PM
Hi Juanito
Here's is what I found missing:
jwm, openbox, and gdk-pixbuf2 need libEGL.tcz and libGLESv2.tcz. ...
I think the error that lead me to this may have been misleading.
It looked something like this:
Code: [Select]
gl_module error /usr/local/lib/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/2.10.0/loaders/libpixbufloader-svg.so: libEGL.so.1 No such file or directoryThat made it appear the loader flagging the error came from gdk-pixbuf-2.0.
Turns out it came from librsvg and gets linked into the gdk-pixbuf-2.0 directory:
Code: [Select]
tc@E310:~$ ls -l /usr/local/lib/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/2.10.0/loaders/libpixbufloader-svg.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 86 Feb 11 22:00 /usr/local/lib/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/2.10.0/loaders/libpixbufloader-svg.so -> /tmp/tcloop/librsvg/usr/local/lib/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/2.10.0/loaders/libpixbufloader-svg.so
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: curaga on April 02, 2024, 02:32:02 AM
One image format's gdk loader failing is probably not a fatal error, likely just would remove SVG support from it then.
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Juanito on April 02, 2024, 06:38:15 AM
librsvg deps adjusted - cairo previously depended on libEGL and libGLESv2, but no longer does, hence the problem.

I'll look at building libgdk_pixbuf_xlib for x86.
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Montserrat on April 02, 2024, 06:43:46 AM
Hi Montserrat
After a little more poking around I found something else.
It appears dependencies on libEGL.tcz and libGLESv2.tcz were
removed from cairo and added to gtk2. The CD appears to
have an old gtk2.tcz.dep without libEGL.tcz and libGLESv2.tcz.
The simplest solution for now is:
Boot to the FLWM_topside entry.
Click the  tc-install  icon to start  tc-install-GUI.tcz.
Use the tc-install program to install Tinycore to a second USB stick.
This may be of some help:
http://tinycorelinux.net/install.html

Then run
Code: [Select]
tce-audit builddb
tce-audit updatedeps
tce-audit fetchmissing
tce-update
exitcheck.sh reboot

After it reboots, you will have a proper install. You can then change
to the window manager of your choice.

Sorry to have taken so long to get back with an update; Yes, I have done all that and now have a fully functioning system so HUGE thanks for all your help and investigations, Rich, GNUser et al.

I'll mark this thread as [SOLVED] and thank everyone for their help, input, thoughts etc. Good stuff.
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Juanito on April 02, 2024, 08:22:23 AM
gdk-pixbuf2-xlib added to tc-15.x x86 repo and CorePlus iso regenerated.
Title: Re: [Solved] Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Rich on April 02, 2024, 08:51:33 AM
Hi Montserrat
... I'll mark this thread as [SOLVED] ...
Posts can't be edited after 30 minutes. You need an
administrator to do that for you.
Title: Re: Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Montserrat on April 02, 2024, 01:26:23 PM
gdk-pixbuf2-xlib added to tc-15.x x86 repo and CorePlus iso regenerated.

Thank you, Juanito. Much appreciated.
Title: Re: [Solved] Choosing Window Manager from Boot Menu
Post by: Montserrat on April 02, 2024, 01:28:31 PM
You need an administrator to do that for you.

... and thank you once again for that, then, too. I wondered why I couldn't find the option to edit the subject line. I'm learning with everyone's guidance.