Downloading applications drirect from the Internet

Basil · 2016-02-24 05:31

Dai and team, the process worked very smoothly except I floundered a bit trying to copy the archives directory with Krusader, not finding any way to perform a "sudo" operation in that context (eyesight, or impossible?) so dredged the depths of my command-line memory to do a sudo cp . After that all went beautifully (to install CUPS used 1,6MB of download) but install libreoffice sucked hundredrs of megabytes down from the internet, almost entirely from the Debian Jessie repos (this is the 4.3.3 very stable version that profiler would normally call in), so I am thinking I should just have preloaded /v/c/a/a with all the .deb s from an LO5.0.5 tar.gz download and avoided the fuss and cost - or does one not mess with /v/c/a/a in such naively underhanded ways?

Because... if one can so mess, then maybe this is the answer to the problem Melita raised earlier, and that has been bugging me for years. And has become seriously important with the prospect growing of doing rather many Q4OS similar-profile installs onsite for various people. I will certainly experiment with this on a spare PC or two here at home. But right now I have a couple of days of already-delayed production work to push out the door, so will have to allocate all my time to being productive rather than having fun. So some expert opinion/comment would be very welcome, particularly around the question of whether I could use a /v/c/a/a copy from 1.4.7 to facilitate the installation of 2.0.2 or later?.

BTW, what is critical to producing a TDE version of an otherwise standard Debian package?

Further note: I'm writing this on Qupzilla on the new installation of Q4DOS 1.4.7, which I could not access from the old installation of same. So maybe it has cured the issues raised by what increasingly looks like having been a borked old installation of 1.4.7. Will report later, also submit a wish/hate list about what hitherto were trivial issues. (PS My only use of profiler has been to initially require a barebones basic OS installation.)

Meanwhile, from one grandparent to another, thanks for preserving my few remaining gray hairs! I now plan to relax/work with 1.4.7 until the final release of 2.x.x...=D

Dai_trying · 2016-02-24 10:29

I'm glad things went relatively smooth for you, and my guess would be that you originally installed LO5.0.5 from the mentioned tar.gz downloaded file, so that could be the reason the deb files were not available for install.
Copying all available deb files from one system to another is perfectly fine to do (IMO) as the package manager will only use it if it matches exactly what it is looking for, although this will not do much (if any) good when installing onto different architectures (i686/amd64/arm) as they will almost definitely be using different packages. And 1.4.7 uses different repositories to 2.0.2 so the same would apply there (debian stable Vs debian testing).
I think that many (certainly not all) of the problems that get raised with q4os are actually down to user error, not that the user has necessarily done something wrong, but like in the case of your swap issue (which may have led to the other issues) it was because the user installed another distro (nothing wrong with that ) but as you didn't know or realize that the installation would mess with the swap partition, a problem then arose. User errors are often because we don't realise what effect something will have until we try it.
I have had many of these types of problems myself and it is only by doing 100's if not 1000's in installations I have become aware of what some of these things are. So far to date I have done approximately 30 separate installations of q4os, not that I have installed for a lot of people, but I try to test things to see if it will work and if something breaks re-install and try again, some of my installs are in virtualbox, which, if your machine has reasonable specs, would definitely be the easiest way to test (complete separation of os's).
Enough of my ramblings now, and good luck with your having fun after the work is done.

Dai

Dai_trying · 2016-02-24 21:50

I have taken to doing my installs a certain way now due to my issues in the first few attempts, and after following your advice in one of my early posts I now follow these set procedures.

1 install from live-cd (to prevent formatting swap and installing grub)
2 install language
3 install Full Desktop profile (always full now and just remove what I don't want afterwards)
4 install proprietary codecs (if required)
5 install other software

I have found that I can do all this in half the time it used to take to install half a dozen updates on my windows setup!
And I don't know how much difference it makes but a full desktop install usually ends up without issues, most of my minimum or Basic setups have suffered in some way or another. Then again it could just be that dreaded "user error"

Dai

Dai_trying · 2016-02-24 22:23

There is one option I have never tried though and that's the "no questions asked" way, have you tried that? I could just fire up another vbox, but have too many busy screens at the moment I will probably give it a go at some stage, but I can't say I would use it really as I'm not a big fan of giving up on decision making. having said that it could be popular with windows users as they don't usually get choices.

Dai

Basil · 2016-02-25 09:17

OK, guys, I pulled an all-nighter and now have a small fun time-budget. A few other apps installed nicely and economically simply using sudo apt-get install appname after I read the man pages yet again and realised that the install option is supposed to update an existing app automatically, hence bypassing update then upgrade. Me, risk-averse? Never (but open to correction...)!

Now a couple of unresolved issues:

1 After installing VLC as above, I did the Install Proprietary Codecs from the welcome Screen - which specifically mentions VLC - but cannot get a squeak out of the audio system although the VLC progress bar moves along reassuringly (spelled irritatingly). Fiddled with just about everything I can find on the mixer and on VLC. Help?

2. Since the successful installation of 1.4.7 on NewPart, the old problematic one on OldPart has fallen off the GRUB list of available (bootable) distros. The only change visible under GParted was that I made NewPart root while doing the clean install, so that's where GPed now shows the / sign. But old faithful LXLE on sda5 also has no / sign, yet still boots happily enough. I still need the OldPart installation around for a bit while I'm transitioning step by step.

3. To curb the wandering tendencies of the cursor I dl'd and installed Synaptiks. It has a configuration setting "Automatically switch off touchpad on keyboard activity" which suits my speed-typing concept, and by default allows 2 seconds of peace and quiet. However, soon after enabling this setting and enjoying the obedience of the cursor, it seems as though Synaptiks simply loses this configuration setting and reverts to default, i.e. OFF. Why would it do that? Any offers? I want it to hold its settings at least through the session, preferably across reboots too. Maybe xconfig or something similar pulling rank?

4. In possibly unrelated news, I find that all or part of the numeric keyboard becomes inoperative at some stage, including functionality such as DEL and EOL. (It's working fine now as I type this.) While I will explore this bug's ecology, I wonder whether it's a known bug with known solution...

Dai et al, I envy you your facile use of the Michelangelo approach (take a large block of granite, carve away the bits you don't want, gaze with pride upon your impeccable David) but that's a privilege of your big-pipe environment. Me, I have to be a plebeian constructivist. Use the shopping-basket, element-gathering approach, which I understand to be the basic ideology of Linux anyway. Or was, has it changed? After trying a Basic Q4OS Desktop from the profiler and watching my GPRS bandwidth disappear with alarming haste, I won't touch the Full Monte. Unfortunately. Not for 1, let alone 100 or 1000, installs. To misquote James Bond, DVD's are for ever. One download onto DVD, one thousand installs. Not to mention the backups...

More feedback after some more fun.=D

Basil · 2016-02-25 15:32

That point 4 in #42 - I found it happening in LibreOffice, Kate and Kwrite. Systemwide? Any guesses?

Dai_trying · 2016-02-25 20:35

@Basil
#2 could be that you don't have os-prober installed, it's happened to me before. check with

apt-cache policy os-prober | grep Installed

if it says none you could install it with

sudo apt-get install os-prober

then just

sudo update-grub

and they should be back, and if you already have os-prober installed I would try running the grub update and see if it works.

Dai

Basil · 2016-02-28 02:51

Melita, I have a follow-up to your assertion in #5 and my rather tenuous reply #8. First, the sudo dpkg -i *.deb technique which had disappointed me in Q4OS i can now support firmly - I installed LibreOffice 5.1.0.3 without a glitch following the technique I described there, from a directory on a totally different partition I call Datavault where I store all my downloads irrespective of which distro I may be using. Thus I can update, for example, LO in any (Debian-based) distro that I may be playing with / testing in a semi-production way, from exactly the same originally downloaded tar.gz 200MB file that I extracted once and created a folder for. Same folder (dozens of .deb files), same technique, one-shot. Not quite as direct as clicking on a .exe installer in Windows, but awfully close.

Two other things that I learned: 1. I couldn't find an extractor for the .tar.gz in Q4OS Install Applications (EoA? - Eyesight or Alzheimers?) so had to resort to old faithful LXLE for that operation 2. Gdebi doesn't cut it with multiple files - it's fine for installing a single .deb , but you won't get far with the multiple ones in the LO download or similar - it takes the single dpkg operation to identify, note, hold, juggle and eventually resolve all the dependencies hiding in those multiple files. It's quite awesome to watch it in operation.

What about the original LO 4.3.3.2 installed by the Q4 installer? It succumbed without protest to a fine swoopy sudo apt-get remove libreoffice (followed by a sudo autoremove) which freed up almost half a Gig on the HDU, quite important. No traces left.

Any negatives at this stage? A few, some more serious than others. Working up from trivial (?):

1. I reported on successfully installing CUPS from the previous installation's /var/cache/apt/archives but when I (quickly) wanted to use the printer (HP LSC1600) which ostensibly the same UPS had found, indentified by model number, installed immediately, and run absolutely as expected - this time failed to recognise the model and gave me one of those irritating long lists of HP models that aren't quite what you're looking for, but we hope you'll guess one that sort of works for you. Not. So I installed a very recent version of HPLIP, 3.16.2, and that came up to scratch BUT I could not raise the little printer job status window that I had had before. It hadn't been much use because it usually just reported that the job had been queued, no reason given, no resumption in sight and no option but to cancel it. Can't understand the thinking of whoever draws up the user requirements specs for HP printer control software. Ah well, at least you can usually manage to kill a mad print job after all these years. 'Twasn't always so.

2. The numeric keyboard dropout reported as 4 of #42 and #43 continues, now also in this blog editor and Konsole, also LO5.1 It does not appear to be a purely hardware issue because back in old faithful LXLE it never happens. Never.

3. The wandering cursor is slowly becomong corralled, no or little thanks to synaptiks, which does not autostart but resets itself to defaults not long after being restarted and reset as desired. No, what I am doing is severely circumscribing the effective area of the touchpad to roughly its apparent space on the surface of the keyboard panel. Like, no longer way out to the leftmost edge of the laptop. Not deep into the rows of keys. Not receiving false and unintended messages from a left thumb that happens to brush against the front edge of the machine a centimetre before the edge of the two button-pads. Obliging the pad to receive a much stronger contact/pressure before registering it. I'm using synclient to edit the touchpad settings file. Quite a lot of experimentation required, will report again later, 40-
plus settings to try, but am making some progress, and a setting once changed stays that way. If synaptiks is just a GUI to edit the settings file, what a disaster - why doesn't it get fixed? There appear to be a lot of smaller machines using the Elantech touchpad.

4. Cannot get Wine to install, had it perfect previously without any difficulty.

@Dai #46, yea, it brought back the missing distros, thank you, but did nothing to improve the blue grub screen with the lumpy font which hearkens back to a primeval Commodore...

Getting grumpy - must be time for my beauty sleep.

Dai_trying · 2016-02-28 10:40

Easy fix for that, install grub-customizer and that will give you control over pretty much everything "grub"

https://launchpad.net/grub-customizer

I don't like q4os grub either but I usually have it as a second os so use debian's grub (better looking)

Dai

Basil · 2016-02-28 18:23

Thanks Dai! Grumpy's gone, beauty's up by 20%, now to get my hands grubby (ouch)!

Dai_trying · 2016-02-28 18:57

Your welcome Basil and thank you CC
@Basil : You wanna be careful with that it sound like an arrest-able offense here in uk!

Basil · 2016-03-05 20:48

Arrestable offense? But it's not from Walt Disney, AFAIK (although the spelling is...)

Basil · 2016-03-05 22:02

Haven't had much funtime this week, but have had my production hampered by failure to install Wine; also by loss of Numkeys functionality (do have workarounds). The touchpad thing is also constantly irritating, but that's not particularly Q4OS's fault. May have to junk this laptop, get one with a better-supported touchpad.

The Wine failure is my big issue right now, I have a research package which requires Wine and which was working impeccably on my OldPart installion of 1.4.7, where I see .wine/drive_c/Program Files is well-populated in my app's folder. But NewPart only has folders for Common Files, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and Windows NT, none of which appears on the Apps, tasks and DTsessions menu system (nor does Wine itself). However I can click on the iexplore.exe entry and it will run, to a point, so Wine is definitely installed on NewPart as well as OldPart, just not adequately. Big issue right now:

Can I perform a sneaky copy of the .wine folder from OldPart to NewPart and do an apt-get upgrade myappname ?

(Despite efforts to install grub-customizer - something missing from the list of expected packages - I still can't boot from OldPart so cannot use myapp under that installation of Q4OS (identical base to the one on NewPart).)

Note: I tried to update the NewPart Wine installation, which had been done initially via Welcome Screen => Install Package, via Synaptics; all went smoothly, just doesn't show its face. So should I try to uninstall Wine before being sneaky, and what procedure should I use - Synaptics, dpkg, what?

Dai_trying · 2016-03-05 22:15

I can't offer advice on wine as i have no windows dependency any more, I know Bobby managed to get a good wine setup going maybe he could offer some assistance with that one.
With grub customizer, did you install the required packages (from the readme file) I found in my case I needed libgtkmm-3.0-dev as 2.4 just wouldn't work.

Dai

bobby · 2016-03-06 06:28

@Basil,

If you can live with XPQ4 Theme, you can install FreeXP Q4OS Installer that includes Wine Installation and configuration on Q4OS and Wine works perfectly.

FreeXP Home & Download Page. http://freexp.sourceforge.net/

Dai_trying · 2016-03-06 18:23

Virtualbox is what I use if I really need a windows app, I can't wait to upgrade my phone I'm definitely not getting another iPhone!!

bobby · 2016-03-06 19:08

Dai_trying wrote:

Virtualbox is what I use if I really need a windows app, I can't wait to upgrade my phone I'm definitely not getting another iPhone!!

I have NEVER bought or used an Apple Made Device in my Life. Its not that I hate Apple products, well, Yes I Do Hate Apple Products

bobby · 2016-03-06 19:12

I try and follow the directions for installing Virtual Box 5 as suggested by Q4OS Team and I can't get it to work. I have same problem with a lot of things I try to do (Its just me - dah). However, there are still a bunch of steps in VB to get it up and executing apps.

So when I discovered FreeXP already had Wine and it worked correctly "Right-out-of-the-Box" my mind now has room for running my WinCrap Apps and the Ring in My Head goes away. I hear: Failed, Failed, Failed.

Last edited by bobby (2016-03-06 19:14)

Dai_trying · 2016-03-06 19:22

I don't know why you didn't just instal virtualbox from the repository, It has got to be the easiest and most robust way to do it. I run both versions and they work fine, although 5 has to have it's own repository included in the sources.list, and always remember to add your user to the vboxusers group, that has caused so many issues in the past for me with usb connections mainly. And that is for all versions.

bobby · 2016-03-06 19:43

@Dai,

I just install Virtualbox from the respository as you suggested and it runs. Will create a user just for VB use and add it to the VB users group.

Will try to figure this out more tonight.

Thanks,

Bobby

Dai_trying · 2016-03-06 19:53

no need to create new user, just add youself to that group is best

 sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers bobby

Basil · 2016-03-07 01:33

@Dai #56 et al (who is this al who keeps cropping up?) I can't use VBox because I have no Windows installation left available to me at this stage. Not intentional, I'm a belt-and-braces person, but at some stage I lost my Win7 partition.

On the other hand, perhaps I can use VBox to host XPPro?

Re grub customizer: have deprioritised this for now, will hopefully pick it up again in near future.

Dai_trying · 2016-03-07 01:44

I have a registered version of Xp with all updates that were available at EOL, which I use in a VBox just for iTunes (yes I have a damned iPhone). I also use a program called rufus to clear usb sticks but I don't give the VBox any network access, it has a shared folder so I can easily pass files to and from so that if I need to test anything or should I ever require a windows app I can do it.
One handy tip if you do set up a windows VBox, once you have it setup and updated export it as an appliance, then when you need to "re-install" you just import the appliance and it is ready in less than 5 minutes with all updates (up to when you created appliance).

Q4OS Forum

#26 2016-02-24 05:31

Re: Downloading applications drirect from the Internet

#27 2016-02-24 10:29

Re: Downloading applications drirect from the Internet

#28 2016-02-24 21:50

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#29 2016-02-24 22:23

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#30 2016-02-25 09:17

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#31 2016-02-25 15:32

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#32 2016-02-25 20:35

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#33 2016-02-28 02:51

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#34 2016-02-28 10:40

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#35 2016-02-28 18:23

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#36 2016-02-28 18:57

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#37 2016-03-05 20:48

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#38 2016-03-05 22:02

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#39 2016-03-05 22:15

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#40 2016-03-06 06:28

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#41 2016-03-06 18:23

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#42 2016-03-06 19:08

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#43 2016-03-06 19:12

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#44 2016-03-06 19:22

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#46 2016-03-06 19:53

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#47 2016-03-07 01:33

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