Shift 0.3 Update

[Barney T. Administrators]

Hey Everyone,

We are working feverishly on improvements to Shift 0.3 Flux as well as Shift 0.3 Gnome. For those who have not been brought up to date, we released Shift 0.2 with a Fluxbox theme, and had several issues with internet connections as well as other things. We have worked to fix these things, as well as improving the Flux theming.

We are very close to releasing an updated version, and this we will call Shift Linux 0.3 Flux. It is mostly a "bug -fixed" release with some minor improvements. This should be out and ready for download in a day or so. We will post it for direct download and testing.

We have also been working on Shift Linux 0.3 Gnome. We currently have a working copy, and are improving it daily. We will release it and follow the same testing program as Flux.

Our plan is to release a version of Shift after that that allows the user to choose between Fluxbox and Gnome in the start up menu. This will be Shift Linux 0.5. This version will have full Shift branding and will be our installable edition. Our back-up / restore script will be in this version also. As a result, there will be some time between Shift versions 0.3 and 0.5.

In the mean time, we will need the official website to be up and running, so that we can put up our .iso files for download. Our graphics folks will need to be ready, as we have lots of work for them as we get closer to the start of Shift Linux 0.5.

Thanks and we will post more as we get closer.....

Barney

[Digitalx]

finally gnome in it. i just tried flux in 0.3 for first time, no offense i dont like flux - at all. i like minimalistic look but not that much lol ;\

[trix]

i'm willing to mirror the .iso :)

[Hanief]

Hi Guys!

Just wonder, whether we can use the installshield to write a program for this Distro

[Digitalx]

probably not thats a windows app this is linux.

[Hanief]

Click here http://www.macrovision.com/products/flexne...PM_Support.html

[Barney T. Administrators]

Here is a screen shot of Shift 0.3 Flux on the net:

No Photoshop or Gimp. I swear! :laugh:

Remember, that this is still a beta screen.

Barney

[mig]

Not attacking the distribution and I did read about asking if you are building it from scratch... But I am curious what Shift is based on? I have nothing against building distros on top of other proven distros, because for instance I use Gentoo and while some of it is built from scratch most of its cornerstones are based off Debian (the same with Ubuntu).

So bottom line: What are you basing shift off of?

[Barney T. Administrators]

Not attacking the distribution and I did read about asking if you are building it from scratch... But I am curious what Shift is based on? I have nothing against building distros on top of other proven distros, because for instance I use Gentoo and while some of it is built from scratch most of its cornerstones are based off Debian (the same with Ubuntu).

So bottom line: What are you basing shift off of?

It is a Morphix based distro (Debian).

Barney

[theyarecomingforyou]

Well, it doesn't look very good but I appreciate that it's an early stage and I wish you luck. I hope you include (with permission) wallpapers, visual themes, cursors, etc, from the community, as that will really inspire the community to help with the project and make it a lot more appealing.

[Barney T. Administrators]

Well, it doesn't look very good but I appreciate that it's an early stage and I wish you luck. I hope you include (with permission) wallpapers, visual themes, cursors, etc, from the community, as that will really inspire the community to help with the project and make it a lot more appealing.

That is the plan. What you are seeing is Fluxbox which is intentionally low on eye-candy... to be run on lower end machines that have less resources.

Just go over to our websites and blog to get all of the design looks and updates.

Barney

[Orien]

I could also mirror the .iso if needed.

[PL_ Veteran]

Here is a screen shot of Shift 0.3 Flux on the net:

No Photoshop or Gimp. I swear! :laugh:

Remember, that this is still a beta screen.

Barney

No offence, but those 3 buttons on the app aren't nice. Too bog and out of proportion.

Hows 'bout making it more Shift-y looking?

[kinetix63 Veteran]

No offence, but those 3 buttons on the app aren't nice. Too bog and out of proportion.

Hows 'bout making it more Shift-y looking?

That is because it is a screenshot from a DEVELOPMENT version. The Fluxbox theme that our own markjensen has designed for us is only half implemented in that screenshot. The reason it was posted is because a lot of people have been having problems connecting to the internet - we just wanted to prove that we've fixed that problem :) It will look a lot better once I've got the Flux theme working properly, I assure you.

[NienorGT]

The theme needs SERIOUS work :|

But I guess that this isn't your priority :p

[kinetix63 Veteran]

The theme needs SERIOUS work

As I said above, the theme is only HALF implemented. Hence why it looks kind of crap.

[AJerman]

I'll just wait for the Gnome version. Keep up the good work though.

[Alladaskill17]

Version 0.5 sounds like a massive upgrade! Cool, probably wait until then.

[gnuman]

Why use Fluxbox if you want "newbies" to get into Linux and you want Shift to remain "small" as a liveCD I would strongly suggest XFCE. Do people even use fluxbox?

KDE or Gnome is good if you have an installable version. If it is truly LiveCD, what you will be doing is filling up ram with useless GUI enhancements. XFCE is quite mature and friendly compared to flux.

That being said, you do not want to do the mistake of SAM Linux which I reviewed and include tons of Gnome apps. I would feel if you want to remain fairly light to either use Mozilla Firefox + Thunderbird as the main browser and email client or even better Opera 9.01, which has an irc client built in, mail, torrent and other things I cannot think of at the moment.

If you need some hosting space, I'll see if I can host the files for ya ;)

[MindTooth]

I would recommend using E17 as the desktop enviroment.

Birger :)

[Alex Shenoy]

Why use Fluxbox if you want "newbies" to get into Linux and you want Shift to remain "small" as a liveCD I would strongly suggest XFCE. Do people even use fluxbox?

I use Openbox now, But I used to love fluxbox. Still don't mind it. And Mark uses fluxbox as well as some others of our users.

[cropcircles]

Looks exciting. I'll give it a go when Live is released.

[gadean]

Great work! It seems to be coming along quite nice.

[markwolfe Veteran]

That is because it is a screenshot from a DEVELOPMENT version. The Fluxbox theme that our own markjensen has designed for us is only half implemented in that screenshot. The reason it was posted is because a lot of people have been having problems connecting to the internet - we just wanted to prove that we've fixed that problem :) It will look a lot better once I've got the Flux theme working properly, I assure you.

Correct. The flux theme looks like this:

Green

or Blue

[kinetix63 Veteran]

Why use Fluxbox if you want "newbies" to get into Linux and you want Shift to remain "small" as a liveCD I would strongly suggest XFCE. Do people even use fluxbox?

Fluxbox was decided on by the group very early on in the development process. I can't really see it being that much of a problem for newbies. My flatmate has never used Linux before in his life, but he managed to pick up Fluxbox quite easily when he tried out a test version of Shift for me. I don't think it's user unfriendly at all.

That being said, you do not want to do the mistake of SAM Linux which I reviewed and include tons of Gnome apps. I would feel if you want to remain fairly light to either use Mozilla Firefox + Thunderbird as the main browser and email client or even better Opera 9.01, which has an irc client built in, mail, torrent and other things I cannot think of at the moment.

The main idea is to keep the LiveCD fairly light in terms of applications on there. Once a user decides they wish to install, we will then provide meta-packages for various things such as Office suites, Multimedia utilities, etc. We cannot provide Opera on the LiveCD due to GPL restrictions, so we will be sticking with Firefox/Thunderbird