As you might know IceWM has lots and lots of configuration files but no really good configuration tool.
We are developing some tools for making this configuration easier.
Two tools are more or less ready for rollout in Beta 5.
The first tool lets you easily configure the panel. You can set the panel position with one click and activate or deactivate ACPI Battery Monitor.
If you want to easily set a application for autostart we included a new autostart editor.
As you might know, Beta 4 ships with IceWM as the default window manager. The default theme looks a little bit greyish and old. So we updated the default theme to make it look very cool.
Take a look:
If you like it and want to download it, here is the download link: DOWNLOAD
Short Instruction for installation. Extract the package and move the directory yellow to ~/.icewm/themes(overwrite the old one, make a backup of the old one if you want to keep it) .
As you might already know we had to change the name of our project. It is now called zeVenOS.
With the name change we also adjust the goals of our Linux Distribution.
This goals will be explained on our new Website as soon as its ready.
For a happy easter egg we announce zeVenOS Beta 4 (alias Rebuild).
As you might already notice from codename, we completely rebuild this version and make it smaller and faster.
We started work on the OneClick Installer . This will provide an easy way to install whole application bundles like a completely Gaming Pack for example.
There are several other ideas around that to make it an easy and quick Installer.
OpenOffice Startuptime optimizing has made some significant progress as you can see here:
The warm startup of OpenOffice Writer takes about 0.019 seconds. Thats a significant time.
The cold startup of OpenOffice Writer takes about 6.376 seconds. Thats fast too I think.
The System is really really running smooth so that I decide to stop it at this stage and work on something else. The MAGI .
The MAGI is really nice little tool that helps you to manage your Computer and ressources. The new ‘Fix’ Tab introduced in Beta 3 is really handy if you have problems with nvidia driver and suspend. The current development Version of MAGI got a new feature that allows you to mount FAT 16 & 32 aswell as NTFS and B(e)FS and place a line in /etc/fstab to mount them on every start.
Bernd and the Zebuntu Team decided to go different ways. This has some consequences to Zebuntu.
The next Beta version will be shipped with a new icon and window theme.
The development of the BeOS Compatibility Layer and integration therefor is now freezed.
We will concentrate on debuging, bugfixing and creation of new application.
For Beta 4 i started optimizing the system and configuration files, for faster startup times.
First of all the slowest package of the system OpenOffice :
UPDATE:
Machine: Pentium 4 3.06 Ghz 256MB RAM
Comparison of startup time between Abiword and OpenOffice Writer
leszek@leszek-laptop:~$ time abiword
real 0m14.262s
user 0m1.368s
sys 0m0.224s
leszek@leszek-laptop:~$ time oowriter
real 0m11.674s
user 0m0.028s
sys 0m0.072s
leszek@leszek-laptop:~$
Here are some Benchmarks on the same machine running with 128 MB of Ram
leszek@leszek-laptop:~$ time abiword
real 0m20.340s
user 0m1.584s
sys 0m0.560s
leszek@leszek-laptop:~$ time oowriter
real 0m47.713s
user 0m0.120s
sys 0m0.164s
leszek@leszek-laptop:~$
Final thoughts : If you have memory below 256 MB consider the use of Abiword as wordprocessing application.
128 MB of RAM is the minimum required to run Zebuntu . It takes a relatively long time to boot up. When its booted up you can work normally.
Recommned is 256 MB of RAM or more.
If you want to install Zebuntu you need at least 192 MB of RAM. Installationapplication won’t work on Systems with 128 MB of RAM. But you are able to install it manually.
