Linux Lite 7.0 RC1 Released

[sqwuade]

Try this for a lite-tweaks fix:

Copy the /usr/bin/lite-tweaks file from a 6.6 install and move it to your 7RC1 machine.  B00M!  It's fixed!

Almost... but the "Whisker Menu Recent Apps" tweak won't work.  I have a working copy of the lite-tweaks script with all references to "Whisker Menu Cleaner" removed here:

https://digitalhemi.com/files/apps/Linux/LL7-RC1/lite-tweaks

I'd recommend this version be used in the 7 release, unless we can can get the "Whisker Menu Cleaner" tweak fixed before then.

The version of the lite-tweaks script included in 7-RC1 had all references to the Whisker Menu tweak commented out - but somehow, that's what causes the whole thing to fail.  Once I just deleted all of  the Whisker Menu lines, instead of commenting them out, it worked fine.  You can also uncomment all of the Whisker Menu lines and it will work - and Whisker Menu Cleaner will show up again but won't work.  More info on the reason here:

https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=17478

[sqwuade]

That file not longer exists in Whisker Menu 2.8 Trinidad.  The old version was 2.7.1 (In LL6.6).  I've been talking to someone named ToZ of the Xfce board about it and they confirmed that the "Recently Used" apps data is not stored in the whiskermenu-10.rc file any longer.  I don't know why that whiskermenu-10.rc.backup file still exists in there but I know the one you're talking about - I saw it in there too.

I was able to get the Recently Used apps to clear via lite-tweaks after modifying the script using Toz's method.  The new xfconf method doesn't require you to logout and then back in for the changes to manifest either, so that's a plus.  I agree: "The whiskermenu recent items tweak is something we could live without since recent only populates ten anyway." The same thing can be done by just right mouse-clicking a Recently Used App icon and selecting "Clear Recently Used"

Here's the info I got from ToZ on the Xfce message board:

The Whiskermenu migrated to using xfconf for its settings in 2.8. You can view them through the xfce4-settings-editor - look in the xfce4-panel channel, /plugins tree.

    Specifically I'm trying to figure out what replaced the functionality that used to happen on line 2 of that file

Its now stored in the "/plugins/plugin-XX/recent" property.

    And is there a way to clear the Recently Used apps via a terminal command or can it now only be done via the GUI?

You can use xfconf-query. Here are some examples (my whiskermenu has an ID of 13):

Display the current list of recent applications:

xfconf-query -c xfce4-panel -p /plugins/plugin-13/recent

Edit an array:
Unfortunately there is no easy way to delete and insert entries via the command line (you can do it much easier through xfce4-settings-editor). To do so via the command line, you need to re-create the array with all entries:

xfconf-query -c xfce4-panel -p /plugins/plugin-13/recent -t string -s "gimp" -t string -s "inkscape"

##############

Source:
https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=17478

because the path/file "$HOME/.config/xfce4/panel/whiskermenu-10.rc" no longer exists in LL7

The backup is in ~/.config/xfce4/  The current whiskermenu-10.rc file is not anywhere, appears to have never been created even though a backup was created in the wrong folder. May just be a menu libre or XFCE change issue but of course tweaks won't work without a file path. The whiskermenu recent items tweak is something we could live without since recent only populates ten anyway. Anyway I've noticed too many PATH changes comparing files between 6.6 to 7.x. Before I come to any conclusions why this would occur I'm going to install a new 7.x system and sort them out from scratch. Once that is done because Lite-Tweaks is essentially a c2 server I'm going to add a policy-kit.service specifically for it and a regular /var/rotating log. Right now I'm hating on Ubuntu and Debian. PKLA was always more secure and usr merge has been a pain.

TC
[/quote]

[Jerry]

Screen shot of the odd Timeshift behaviour.



Timeshift window with odd name and snaphot saved as 'Jammy'
Text file showing the start of the Timeshift log getting the distribution name (line 2)
Terminal window showing the system is running 7.0 rc1

This is from a fresh (Erase disk) installation.

It's probably getting the naming from the /etc/lsb-release file.

[Jerry]

@sqwuade Following your discussion on XFCE forum.

https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=17478
Will the plugin number be the same on all LL 7 installed systems or is it randomized (hit or miss) during installation given it's a plugin? And what happens if new plugins are added after the fact? Why did LL 7 installation still generate the .rc.backup, but in the wrong location? Caused by an unexpected shell change?

I think lite-tweaks is a signature application of Linux Lite and it is important that it not be abandoned in this release.
TC 

We're keeping it in.

[Şerban S.]

[...]
I think lite-tweaks is a signature application of Linux Lite and it is important that it not be abandoned in this release.
TC

I strongly agree with that!
I use it, my wife uses it.
As far as I could see, on the mentioned thread, is given a sample code on how to deal with the "random ID":
Passing the contents of the variable, might solve more than one problem.
Anyway, some of the scripts are working fine: Lite Software, Lite Widget. I tested those today.
I also thought maybe another solution would be useful.
Since all "Lite *" tools reside in /usr/bin/*, maybe creating a directory /usr/bin/litebins/* and place all those there and a liteapps.conf would prevent such events from happening in the future.
The liteapps.conf file, can then hold whatever data is required for all apps to work. Further more, it can be used for future developments.
One might be some snippets to test the existence of a certain file in a certain directory and if the test fails, perform a search and retrieve the new value, or, if this is the case, create it and eventually the needed file(s).
When I was still programming, this was my approach to avoid path/missing file errors.
Maybe that is due to my backup and personal data philosophy (I hate using system directories for my data, I use dedicated partitions).

Best regards!

[trinidad]

@sqwuade Following your discussion on XFCE forum.

https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=17478
Will the plugin number be the same on all LL 7 installed systems or is it randomized (hit or miss) during installation given it's a plugin? And what happens if new plugins are added after the fact? Why did LL 7 installation still generate the .rc.backup, but in the wrong location? Caused by an unexpected shell change?

I think lite-tweaks is a signature application of Linux Lite and it is important that it not be abandoned in this release.
TC 

[stevef]

Screen shot of the odd Timeshift behaviour.



Timeshift window with odd name and snaphot saved as 'Jammy'
Text file showing the start of the Timeshift log getting the distribution name (line 2)
Terminal window showing the system is running 7.0 rc1

This is from a fresh (Erase disk) installation.

[stevef]

Several unexpected things so far in my experience.
Installed into unallocated space on a test system alongside existing LL5.8 and LL6.6 systems. Not a VM.

During the installation, the body of the 'Install' window is blank/white where the usual graphics which promote the features and enhancements during the copy files, install system and set up phases would be expected.  The progress bar and the descriptive text appear in the window below the white space as expected.

Shut down, remove media, start up to desktop ok.
Needed to change the keyboard layout via 'Control Panel' - this is normal.

Tried Lite Tweaks which failed as reported.

Ran Timeshift to create a snapshot.
Unusually, the window title was 'Timeshift-gtk' rather than 'Timeshift'.
Secondly it didn't step through the set up wizard as I'd normally expect on first time use.
It just presented the Rsync/BTRFS choice page.
After manually doing the set up, clicked 'Create'.
On completion, the snapshot just created was reported as being Ubuntu 22.04 (jammy) instead of the expected Ubuntu 24.04 (noble).
Not sure how Timeshift gets the system information, but inxi and the llver file both report for LL7.0

Then tried running Lite Updates (from the panel icon).
The system asked for authorisation and the first stage of update check appeared to work ok.
However at the point where the system should report the proposed upgrade list and ask for confirmation to proceed, the 'Linux Lite Updates' window remained blank/white and the system became unresponsive.
No mouse movement, no keyboard indicators toggle, on screen clock stopped.

Powered off/on.  Ran update/upgrade from the terminal ok.

[trinidad]

he progress bar looks like it's freezing

I've noticed this with certain updates even on 6.6. The updates complete but the progress bar doesn't move.

because the path/file "$HOME/.config/xfce4/panel/whiskermenu-10.rc" no longer exists in LL7

The backup is in ~/.config/xfce4/  The current whiskermenu-10.rc file is not anywhere, appears to have never been created even though a backup was created in the wrong folder. May just be a menu libre or XFCE change issue but of course tweaks won't work without a file path. The whiskermenu recent items tweak is something we could live without since recent only populates ten anyway. Anyway I've noticed too many PATH changes comparing files between 6.6 to 7.x. Before I come to any conclusions why this would occur I'm going to install a new 7.x system and sort them out from scratch. Once that is done because Lite-Tweaks is essentially a c2 server I'm going to add a policy-kit.service specifically for it and a regular /var/rotating log. Right now I'm hating on Ubuntu and Debian. PKLA was always more secure and usr merge has been a pain.

TC   

 

[sqwuade]

No errors when updating after booting from the installed version on the SSD.

There seems to be an issue with the Balena Etcher program when trying to install it via Lite Software.

[Jerry]

Not the live version.

Sent from my Mobile phone using Tapatalk

[sqwuade]

Yes, I get an error when in Live mode and trying to update.  Here's the log info from it:

===========================
Install Updates Error log
===========================
Install Updates could not fetch the package cache information lists.
Go to https://www.linuxliteos.com/forums/ and paste the log below into the Software - Support - Updates section for assistance.

============ Log ===========

Ign:1 cdrom://Linux Lite 7.0 - Release amd64 dists/ InRelease
Ign:2 cdrom://Linux 22.04 - Release amd64 dists/ InRelease
Err:3 cdrom://Linux Lite 7.0 - Release amd64 dists/ Release
  Please use apt-cdrom to make this CD-ROM recognized by APT. apt-get update cannot be used to add new CD-ROMs
Err:4 cdrom://Linux 22.04 - Release amd64 dists/ Release
  Please use apt-cdrom to make this CD-ROM recognized by APT. apt-get update cannot be used to add new CD-ROMs
Hit:5 http://repo.linuxliteos.com/linuxlite galena InRelease
Hit:6 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble InRelease
Hit:7 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-backports InRelease
Ign:8 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu noble InRelease
Hit:9 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-security InRelease
Hit:10 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-updates InRelease
Err:11 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu noble Release
  404  Not Found [IP: 185.125.188.12 80]
Reading package lists...
E: The repository 'cdrom://Linux Lite 7.0 - Release amd64 dists/ Release' does not have a Release file.
E: The repository 'cdrom://Linux 22.04 - Release amd64 dists/ Release' does not have a Release file.
E: The repository 'http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu noble Release' does not have a Release file.

[Jerry]

Thanks @sqwuade

Is anyone having issues with Lite Updates in 7x? ie. the progress bar looks like it's freezing?

[sqwuade]

Did you get the 127 error code too Trinidad?  I saw it every time the script crashed when I was initially testing it.



The " '[' 127 -ne 0 ']' " part was being generated from line 786 where "127" was the output of PIPESTATUS(0)

Code: [Select]

if [ "${PIPESTATUS[0]}" -ne "0" ]; then _clean_up; exit 0 ; fi # If Quit is clicked then exit

anyway the PIPESTATUS(0) array was being populated with the error code 127

Generally means command not found so usually something is out of wack with the PATH system variable. Only a few things could have caused this, given that the previous 6.6 code worked fine. Policy kit is iterated differently between 6.6 and 7. The polkit.service file path in systemd is slightly different with the full service configuration being written directly in the .service file in 7 but daemonized in 6.6.

Code: [Select]

systemctl status polkitCompare between the two.
Given that it's a c2 (command) server perhaps Lite Tweaks user has to be added to polkit.service and/or path to User must be iterated differently in Lite Tweaks.

TC
   

[sqwuade]

The new Welcome screen app graphics look great Jerry!  Nice work!

I made some more progress on the lite-tweaks issue.  I was trying to figure out why the zRAM tweak no longer worked in LL7 and was thinking there was something with the script that couldn't be interpreted with the newer version of bash - WRONG!

The crux of the problem with lite-tweaks on LL7 is that the Whisker Menu tweak was commented out and somehow that threw a bug in the script that caused trouble with the zRAM portion of the script to exit with a 127 code.  https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-fix-bash-127-error-return-code

I.e. the lite-tweaks script (/usr/bin/lite-tweaks) from LL6.6 works fine in LL7! - except for the fact that the Whisker Menu tweak no longer functions properly.  The reason the Whisker Tweak no longer works is because the path/file "$HOME/.config/xfce4/panel/whiskermenu-10.rc" no longer exists in LL7, and the Whisker Menu tweak script tries to replace the data on line 2 of that file with "recent=" (thereby deleting the "Recently Used" apps from the list.)  The new version of Whisker menu apparently stores that data elsewhere or in a different way.

I went through the lite-tweaks script and deleted all of the references to the Whisker Menu tweak and now the zRAM tweak works fine in LL7.

Here's the revised lite-tweaks script with the references to the Whisker Menu statements removed.  It works fine in LL7 and the zRAM tweak is back in it:

https://digitalhemi.com/files/apps/Linux/LL7-RC1/lite-tweaks

Scott