9WM: Old School (i686/486) Release News

[pidsley]

I am afraid I must announce the release of "LinuxBBQ Old School" a release based on the new Spring 2014 iso, featuring the window managers 9wm, w9wm, and extra bonus twm. READ THE MAN PAGES. 9wm is a bit strange, but interesting once you get used to it. Give it a chance and you might like it.

This release boots by default with the Debian 3.12-1-686-PAE kernel, but the Debian 3.12-1-486 kernel is also included.

As with the Spring iso, sysv is the init system, and all the bbq user scripts are included, along with a few new ones:

• * osd-status, a simple root-window status-bar, bound to mod4+s.
  * get-wm-docs, a window manager man page display, bound to mod4+d. READ THE MAN PAGE.
  * dmenu-mem, a dmenu that remembers what you launch; use the "tr:" prefix to start programs in a terminal. Bound to alt+F4.

9menu is used both for a bbq system menu (alt+F1) and a user-defined menu (alt+F2). Edit the files in ~/.config/9menu to change these.

Login and startx on tty1 starts 9wm, with the "newsprint" Xresource colors.


Login on tty2 and startx for w9wm with amber Xresource colors.


Login on tty3 and startx for twm with dkeg's "city-streets" Xresource colors.


You should know how to put the iso on a usb stick by now, and use the usual bbq login (password bbq). If you get far enough to want to install it, sudo bbqinstaller does work.

Please be aware -- I am not an experienced griller and cannot be held responsible for undercooked meat.

Download from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxbb ... Community/

ba526d075d04be8324375dba170f121e linuxbbq-oldschool.iso

[machinebacon]

Great great great :D

Will give it a rough ride tomorrow! Thank you in advance!

Maybe I should note that Pidsley is now responsible for the "Community" spins section. What this exactly means? We will tell you someday :)

Edit: pidsley, can you be so kind and put the dotfiles on github? They will come handy. Thank you!

[GekkoP]

Awesome. I'll try this one on my Aspire.

[ivanovnegro]

Fantastic work Pid. I congratulate you for your first roast.

[mrneilypops]

Great work pidsley!
Looking forward to giving this a spin.
Gosh we have a well stocked BBQ at the moment...

[wuxmedia]

nice, old school indeed! but with some great additions.

[DebianJoe]

Very cool to have Pidsley spinning up some meat. Looks great.

[rhowaldt]

very good to see you grill Pidsley! and then name it after one of the greatest movies of all time as well! :D

i seriously like the three different tty's with seperate themes. cool idea, never heard of that (or have i missed something - quite likely)

[missinglink]

Pids, isn't 9wm the old wm for Plan 9?
Where's Glenda.
Edit - just found Glendix through Reddit.
I was first made aware of Plan 9 (aside from the namesake movie) when a Raspberry Pi version was released.
Graybeard Richard Miller explains.

[machinebacon]

Old School has made it on the BBQ's February Recommendation! Congratulations :D

http://linuxbbq.org/monthly.html

[ChefIronBelly]

Looking forward to this one. Thanks

[novaburst]

I was attracted to the name right away!

[GekkoP]

I had a quick run on a live usb. Simply put: awesome. 9wm is strange, but not too hard to get used to.
Now let me grab a cd where I can burn the iso to (sadly my Aspire doesn't boot from usb).

[GekkoP]

Everything's fine and smooth on my Aspire.

Only minor issue is font rendering in emacs when I'm in tmux. But that's emacs's fault, not Old School.
Edit: adding

Code: Select all

set-option -g default-terminal "xterm"

to .tmux.conf fixed it.

[pidsley]

^ Thanks for installing and posting!

I have another slow roast on the grill, maybe ready later this week.

[GekkoP]

^ my pleasure :)
Have to try the other wms, but I'm really liking 9wm.

[pidsley]

I should have posted a little more about 9wm in the release notes. Here's the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9wm and the unauthorised home page: http://unauthorised.org/dhog/9wm.html

It was written by David Hogan in 1994, so it's 20 years old this year. Many other window managers trace their history back to this classic. Yes, missinglink, it is the default window manager for Plan9.

David Hogan (dhog) died in 2003.

9wm is not a virtual window manager. It is not customisable to any
great extent. It is not large and unwieldy, and doesn't use the X
toolkit. Requests to make it any of these things will be silently
ignored (or flamed if I have had a bad day :-) If you want tvtwm
or mwm, you know where to get them...

[ivanovnegro]

^ Great attitude this guy.

[GekkoP]

^^ love it.
And again, thanks for this spin. Never tried 9wm before, but its semplicity already got me. Kind of like cwm, so straight up to the top of my favorites.