MintPPC

I have been extensively playing around with various email clients. I even tried to build thunderbird but it failed. My conclusion is that evolution, which is installed by default in MintPPC64, is not a good alternative as it segfaults. In other words, this program is unusable. I tried claws-mail but I don’t like the way the mails are presented: there is too little space in between the various mails, it looks very clogged. I then turned to sylpheed. It is basically the same as claws-mail but it looks a lot better. The program works well and I can now recommend this program as default email client. It has been built successfully by bulldd for a while now, so I can safely add it to the preseed file for automatic installation. I will therefore replace evolution by sylpheed in MintPPC64.

I am happy to announce that MintPPC64 for G5 can be installed again after a long break. Please read the installation instructions carefully.

The browsers SeaLion and ArcticFox have been upgraded to the latest version thanks to wicknix, rmottola snd xeno74. To obtain these browsers simply apt update & apt upgrade as they were added to the wicknix repo.

Now that the installation of MintPPC for G3 and G4 works, it is time to focus my attention to MintPPC64. I have now successfully set up a cross compilation environment on my Asus laptop. The idea is to compile the missing ppc64 packages on this machine and to then upload them into the MintPPC64 repo. I will then also have to amend the preseed file for this architecture. If all is well, people willing to test it on their G5 may contact me. I don’t have a G5 here just yet.

Yesterday I tried an installation again myself to see whether it is still possible. At the moment it is not working successfully as some packages are in a broken state. To spare you the frustration I tell you here right now, that you better wait installing MintPPC using the net, i.e. with debian installer images.

I have a new idea to know in a better way whether there is a chance of successful installation.
I will try to make a test system on my spare PowerBook G4 with all the packages, required during installation with the preseed file. If that is done I will update and upgrade the packages which are in that system and monitor the status. If there are held back packages, I know that the installation will not work. If the system is clean, the chance is high that it will work. I am willing to announce a clean status in this blog when it arrives. It will be easier then for you to go for a netinstallation.

Today I slightly changed the instructions to install MintPPC. Check it out, you might want to change your default display manager into LXDM.

I am also working on an update of debian-system-adjustments. The way the package now works is that splash is forced upon the configuration file for grub, therefore forcing splash in grub. Not all Macs can handle splash during boot. There were some people who reported that their boot with splash did not lead to a working desktop as splash prevents the system to go into the display manager.
Default settings will be changed into standard Debian settings as opposed to the settings as used by the Linux Mint team. This means that if people do want to have splash they can have it by manually changing /etc/default/grub and adding “splash” in the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT query and issuing sudo update-grub.

The more I use SeaLion instead of ArcticFox, the more I start to like it. I think that the browser is actually faster than ArcticFox. I have now found a way to make SeaLion use the gtk theme of the system, in our case the Mint theme.

To make this happen one has to download the addition pack, which can be found at the homepage of SeaLion on github, as maintained by wicknix. Click “Git Repository” in the browser in the top. Then choose Repositories and then SeaLion. Then go to SeaLion-32.4.1 and you will find SeaLion-Extras.zip. Download this file and under Themes you will find gnomerunner-linux.xpi. Drag this file into SeaLion and it will install this theme. Enable the theme and restart SeaLion. You will now be greeted with a much nicer look.

I made a mistake in the numbering of SeaLion. If you installed SeaLion before it is version SeaLion 32.4.0 although I called it 32.4.1. I now added the actual 32.4.1 version to the repository but apt will not recognise an update. To install the latest version of SeaLion do the following:

sudo apt remove sealion
sudo apt update
sudo apt install sealion

Considering that the default Mint-X-Openbox theme as it came with Linux Mint LXDE 12 is becoming somehow old, I thought it was a good idea to start looking for some new minty themes.

On box-look.org I came across some variations to the default Mint-X-Openbox theme. What I personally don’t like very much about it is the grey fonts in the title bar of the windows. I switched to MintZ, which can be found as follows.

Open from the Menu under Preferences: Customize Look and Feel (LXAppearance).

Select the tab Window Border and go through the list. I selected MintZ. I like the dark font better as it is much more readable.

With the next update of mint-lxde-artwork, you will be able to do these minor changes.

After upgrading your packages you will be able to select the latest mint-cursor-themes. You can do this by opening LXappearance from the menu (Customize Look and Feel) and change the cursor to Bibata Modern Classic. You will have to log out from the Mint-LXDE session and log back in to have it working across all applications. Your desktop will now look like the latest Linux Mint.