TinyFlux

Latest Release

TinyFlux 1.0 was released on 2 November 2007. This is the first stable release of the PCFluxboxOS series and a very proud moment.

Download details

There are three download locations:

Sourceforge.net - Project page | Direct download link
File: tinyflux1.0-i586-k2.6.18.8-legacy.iso

FileFront.com - click here
File: tinyflux1.0-i586-kl-2.6.18.8.iso

LinuxTracker Torrent - the torrent is back up! Click here
File: tinyflux1.0-i586-k2.6.18.8-legacy.iso

Once downloaded, verify your download by checking the MD5 Checksum matches this:
5a2f7b59ed9ff19c16e6bbf61c52e6c9

This can be done by opening a terminal in the location where your ISO has been downloaded and typing:
md5sum tinyflux1.0-i586-k2.6.18.8-legacy.iso or
md5sum tinyflux1.0-i586-kl-2.6.18.8.iso

Alternatively CD burning applications like K3B should be able to read the checksum.

New - order a CD with On-Disk and contribute to the development of PCFluxboxOS - click here
If you cannot download the ISO or if you want a guaranteed, professionally burned CD, then please consider order a CD from On-Disk.com. The CD costs $4.99 and $0.90 of the proceeds will be donated to the PCFluxboxOS project.

The login details for the live CD are as follows:
username: root
password: root
…gives you root access!
username: guest
password: guest
…gives you normal user access.

Features/Changes since final test release

For the final release quite a number of updates have been made to the base system, the overall theme has been tidied up and a few last minute application alterations have taken place. There are no KDE or QT3 applications in TinyFlux - all the applications are GTK (including GNOME and XFCE) based. This helps to keep the install size as small as possible whilst creating a consistent look and feel.

The aim for TinyFlux is to:

  • To be as small an ISO as possible
  • Whilst providing a near-complete desktop linux experience
  • Which just works, even on older hardware.

Here's the feature list in detail:

Window Manager

Fluxbox version is 1.0rc3. This version is a stable version, but just as soon as Fluxbox 1.0 is added to the main PCLOS repo, you will be able to update using Synaptic. Fluxbox 1.0 has better tabbed window support than 0.9.x - just middle click on a tab and place it on top of another open tab to get tabbed window browsing. Neat! The default user theme is a blue, semi-transparent theme based on the blue-bend wallpaper. This ties in with the PCLinuxOS KDE theme. To distinguish between root and user accounts, the default root theme has a red toolbar.

Numerous useful keyboard shortcuts have been enabled. See the documentation section for more details.

The default GTK theme is Glory-Simplex which is a clean silver and blue theme. Along with the Oxygen-Refit icon set, all the applications look modern and slick.

File Management/File Tools

The default file manager is Thunar. Thunar is the XFCE file manager and is like a simplified version of Nautilus. It is easy to use and configure but provides all the drag and drop functionality you'd want from a modern file manager and also includes integrated archive support, media automount and autoplay. Just plug in a USB stick or a CD and Thunar will mount, browse or open the appropriate application eg Audacious for music CDs, Brasero for blank CDs. Just about all the major MIME types are already associated with the correct application. A simple right-click allows you to choose which application to use to open the file. Thunar also comes with a handy bulk rename utility.

The Oxygen-Refit icon theme makes Thunar look as good as possible. Check out the screenshots section.

Emelfm is also included which a simple, but powerful split-screen file manager, very handy for shift loads of files from one location to another.

Super user modes are available in the Fluxbox menu for both file managers, allowing root access to files from within a user account.

Searchmonkey is included which is a powerful desktop search tool.

XArchiver provides archiving capabilities for just about every archive format around - zip, rar, tar.gz, tar.bz2 and even rpm.

Brasero is an appealing little CD/DVD burning application with a full GUI for copying CDs/DVDs, burning audio CDs, data CDs/DVDs or ISO images. It can also blank CD-RW and DVD+-RW. Projects can be saved for later use.

Internet

TinyFlux ships with the latest version of Netscape Navigator for web browsing. Navigator uses the same gecko engine as Firefox and so will look and feels very familiar, especially since I set a FireFox theme as the default theme. It should also be compatible with most FireFox 2.0 extensions. Navigator was chosen ahead of Firefox and Opera as it is smaller and leaner than Firefox, but also compatible with Flash 9 which ships with TinyFlux as standard. A large selection of alternative web browsers can be installed from Synaptic.

Dillo is also included which will provide very fast and resource-light web browsing, useful for older/slower hardware. It doesn't support frames or Javascript, but pages load lightning fast.

Email is taken care of by Sylpheed, which provides a similar experience to Outlook Express or Thunderbird. Many add-ons can be installed from Synaptic.

Office Applications

Abiword is the standard word processor. It comes with plugins providing full support for MS .doc and Open Office .odt files, many image file types including JPEG, PNG and TIFF and aspell English spell checker.

Evince is included which is a light but versatile PDF and postscript document viewer.

Galculator is a good looking calculator with basic and scientific modes.

Editors

No Linux distro would be complete without a decent selection of editors. To keep all users happy from novices up to experienced scripters, TinyFlux ships with medit - a tabbed editor in a similar style to gedit, Leafpad - a notepad clone, also known as Mousepad to XFCE users, nano, vim and xedit for those who do a lot of work in a terminal.

Graphics

The default picture viewer, Gthumb, is also a very handy utility for organizing digital photo collections and enhancing the odd photo.

More detailed imaging work can be done in the marvelous mtPaint, which although small in size, packs in many useful editing functions and will be all most users need from an image editor.

There is also a handy screenshot menu entry, or just press the print-screen key!

Audio

Audacious is the audio player of choice. Audacious is similar to XMMS (indeed it is compatible with XMMS skins), but it has a much better interface. Plugins for most audio formats (mp3, wma, aac, flac, ogg) are included as are plugins supporting LastFm and Audioscrobbler radiocasts.

Wmix provides a neat and easy to use volume control, It sits hidden in the slit (bottom-right corner of the screen) and pops up when you move your mouse over it. Aumix and Gnome ALSA mixer are also included.

Audio CDs can be created using the Brasero CD burning application.

System Tools

TinyFlux by virtue of being based on PCLinuxOS comes with what is widely regarded as the best system configuration tool available in Linux - the PCLinuxOS Control Center (PCC). PCC is based on the Mandriva Control Center with a number of additions. PCC gives a GUI for just about every system admin task imaginable. Think Windows Control Center, only more!

Software can be installed and uninstalled very easily using Synaptic - the GUI frontend to apt. TinyFlux shares the PCLinuxOS repositories so you know you have access to thousands of up to date applications and can be safe in the knowledge that they all come quality controlled by Tex and the PCLOS team. TinyFlux is an rpm-based distro.

Menu entries are available for GUI configuration tools for the GDM login manager setup and GTK theme chooser.

TinyFlux comes with a GUI for creating your very own Live-CD. Simple configure your install how you want it and then remaster. You will need a 2GB swap partition and at least 512MB RAM to create a remaster. The remaster GUI creates an ISO image that you can burn to CD or DVD using Brasero which can then be used on other PCs or as a very handy backup utility.

Installation is quick and easy using the Draklive guided installer.

Terminals

Terminals make the Linux world go round and in TinyFlux you are spoilt for choice. The default terminal is mrxvt - a tabbed terminal which comes with a beautiful transparent theme. Changing the theme is by way of editing a config file, so for those wanting something easier, Sakura is included - another tabbed terminal with an easy to use menu on right-click including copy and paste. Eterm is included as it provides transparency for Fluxbox by virtue of shipping with Esetroot, and for traditionalists amongst you, good old Xterm is also available.

Mrxvt - super user mode is also available.

Hardware Support

Being based on PCLinuxOS, TinyFlux can boast some of the best out-of-the-box hardware support around. Most things should be detected automatically and most other things can be installed using the control center.

Keyboard, date/time and network are setup when you run the live CD and can be altered in the control center.

Many wireless cards will be autodetected, but for those that aren't Ndiswrapper is included. Speedtouch USB modem drivers are also included making it one of the few distros that supports this popular modem out-of-the-box.

A kernel upgrade can often solve other hardware issues. If you can't access the Internet directly, you can download the rpms for the kernel direct from the (testing) repositories. Copy to the same directory, open a terminal and type rpm -Uvh *.rpm

More Information

Click on this link for a full applications listing: tinyflux1.0-fullappslist

Please post bug reports/comments at the PCFluxboxOS forum.

Since 90% of the packages in TinyFlux come from PCLinuxOS, you will also get great advice at the main PCLinuxOS forum

Change Log

Versions 0.1 and 0.2 where various attempts to start with PCLinuxOS 2007 base and reduce the size of the install by removing KDE components and applications. Both resulted in systems that would not boot or load X.


From v0.3 TinyFlux base system has been TinyMe Test Release 4.1


TinyFlux 3.1 alpha - initial repackaging of applications

Removed LXDE
Removed Quigly
Removed tightVNC viewer
Added Fluxbox and dependencies from PCLOS repo
Added GDM and dependencies from PCLOS repo
Added Flash Player Plugin v.9 from PCLOS repo
Added Sylpheed from PCLOS repo
Added qiv from PCLOS repo
Added XPDF from PCLOS repo
Added Ted 2.17-1 from Red Hat RPM


TinyFlux 0.32 alpha - configuration and theming, first public release posted at mypclinuxos forum on 19 July 2007

Configured theme: grub bootsplash, loading splash, gdm, wallpaper
Added applications to Fluxbox menu
Chose blue menu theme for user accounts and red theme for root account
Copied .fluxbox and .opera to /etc/skel
Removed user 'tiny' added user 'guest'

Bugs and issues

'Running as root' displayed on guest account - fixed in 0.33
GDM theme doesn't stick - fixed by changing theme in 0.33
Menu alpha set to 86 not 255 but transparency does not work with qiv - reset to 255 in 0.33, will need to install esetroot (part of Eterm) to get transparency
Logout doesn't work from live-CD if boot using VESA driver - not yet fixed
Live-CD does not eject on shutdown - not yet fixed
No options to cancel shutdown unless shutdown from GDM - not yet fixed
GDM displays drak3d in sessions menu but cannot boot into it as it doesn't exist - not yet fixed


TinyFlux 0.33 beta

Updated .fluxbox menu in /etc/skel, /etc/x11/fluxbox and /home/guest to remove 'Running as root'
Changed GDM theme and set background


TinyFlux 0.34 beta

Added reboot option to menu


TinyFlux 0.35 beta - second public release posted on main PCLOS forum on 23 July 2007

Added more opera bookmarks to root and guest accounts
Bugs and issues

PCManFM cannot mount removable media - fixed by changing to Thunar in 0.4
Ted crashes when click on File|Poperties - try an install from source


TinyFlux 0.35.1 beta
Added Searchmonkey to menu under system
Added bitmap to menu under x-utilities


TinyFlux 0.4 beta

Added XMMS from main PCLOS repo
Added Speedtouch firmware from main PCLOS repo
Added Thunar File Manager (with archive support) from main PCLOS repo
Added xfburn for CD burning support
Added Eterm for transparency support via esetroot
Removed PCManFM
Removed qiv

Added help information to fluxbox menu file
Activated TinyMe repo as well as PCLOS repo
Altered TinyMe repo location
Added SAM to PCLOS repo list
Added Kdulcimer's PCLOS fluxbox theme. Modified theme as 'TinyFlux' for guest/user accounts
Configured default menu transparency to 244, unfocused window to 200
Added File Manager - Super User Mode using gksu to guest/user accounts
Altered permissions of user fluxbox menu
Used new mklivecd script which deletes man pages, /usr/share/docs and rmps to create more room
Generated md5sum for iso


TinyFlux 0.5 beta

Changed XMMS for Audacious
Changed xfburn for Grafburn
Added Sakura as default terminal. Sakura is a tabbed terminal with copy/paste functions.
Added Leafpad, a notepad clone
Added Dillo, a light-weight web browser
Added EmelFM2, a dual pane file manager
Added gps, a task manager
Added flPhoto, a photo album and viewer
Added mtPaint, a bitmap picture editor and photo retouching application
Updated Fluxbox to 1.0rc2

Added wallpaper menu item to easilly change background wallpaper
Re-organised menu - applications now better grouped
Added super user mode for Sakura and EmelFM2
Added gdm setup and switch user to menu
Added warning dialog boxes on logout, switch user, restart and shutdown.

Set default file associations in Thunar:
Text files = medit
RTF files = Ted
HTML files = Opera
PDF files = xpdf
mp3 files = audacious
graphic files = gqview

Set Thunar removable media options

Created PCFluxboxOS wiki and set as Opera home page


TinyFlux 0.6 beta

Upgraded Fluxbox to 1.0rc3
Changed Opera for Netscape Navigator
- Installed Firefox-like theme for Navigator
- Added some new bookmarks
Removed Ted and installed Abiword
- Installed file extension support for MS Word .doc and Open Office .odt formats
- Installed image file support
Installed galculator
Removed flPhoto and GQView and replaced with Gthumb
Added menu entry for gtk-chtheme
- Installed GlorySimplex and set as default theme
Replaced default Gnome icon set with Oxygen Refit icon set 16-48x sizes
Set Thunar to run as deamon on log in
- Configured auto-run scripts for removable media
Added keyboard shortcuts


TinyFlux 1.0 final

Removed Grafburn and replaced with Brasero
Removed XPDF and replaced with Evince document viewer
Added WMix - dockable audio mixer that sits in the slit
Added Gnome ALSA mixer GUI
Made mrxvt default terminal
- created root and user transparent themes for mrxvt
Installed Audacious plugins for LastFM/Audioscrobbler support
Adjusted bootsplash and gfxboot theme for live CD
- bootsplash and gfxboot rpms created and uploaded to PCFluxboxOS repository
- drakx tools upgraded and uploaded to PCFluxboxOS repository
Upgraded mklivecd and added menu entry for mkremaster GUI
Created new Root fluxbox theme and tied wallpaper into TinyFlux theme
Added menu entries for Thunar bulk rename and Thunar preferred applications
Added menu entry for GPS Super User Mode
Created PCFluxboxOS GDM theme
Removed numerous redundant files and directories to save space
Upgraded all using Synaptic before remaster


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