Impressions after installing 0.5

[darkoverlordofdata]

I’ve installed the new 0.5 release, and since I no longer need windows since I got a chromebook, I installed it on my ASUS ZenBook. It works well, but there are a few minor issues:

1) The global menu is not consistent. With no applications open, it sometimes displays a full filer menu, but sometimes it doesn’t. I prefer the full filer menu be available by default.

2) Unable to reset the timezone. This appears to be the same as https://github.com/helloSystem/hello/issues/165. The installer tells me that it correctly finds my timezone: America/Los_Angeles. But after install, I am stuck on America/Eastern, and tzsetup doesn’t change it. The underlying utc is correct, but it displays that its’s 3 hours later.

3) Install of PyCharm fails, wrong version of Java – it wants version 11 now. I actually use VSCode, so I am ok, but I tried to install so I can compare them.

4) Unable to use USB guitar port. I had this same issue with 0.4 on my Dell Inspiron. When I plug in the usb cable, it switches both microphone and speaker to the guitar, so I am unable to hear the guitar. When I switch the speakers back, the microphone follows the speaker and no longer gets inupt from the guitar. In no case do my headphones work when the USB is engaged. This may be an education issue with FreeBSD - there is plenty of documentation around for Linux and Windows, but all I see in FreeBSD forums is the usual, unhelpful ‘rtfm’. Also, the Sound applet in Preferences is not very usable, that also may affect this.

[probonopd]

Hello and thanks for sharing your impressions @darkoverlordofdata.

The global menu is not consistent. With no applications open, it sometimes displays a full filer menu, but sometimes it doesn’t. I prefer the full filer menu be available by default.

Indeed. Can you please describe a way how to exactly reproduce this?

Install of PyCharm fails, wrong version of Java – it wants version 11 now

We basically just run pkg install pycharm-ce; possibly this is a FreeBSD bug then?

Unable to use USB guitar port

I guess what you are looking for is to set a different output. I don't know whether this is possible in FreeBSD with just plain Open Sound System.

[darkoverlordofdata]

@probonopd, thank you. Overall, I really love helloSystem.

I’m not able to intentionally reproduce the global menu issue. When I first log in it is working, but over time it starts to fail. I log out and back in to fix it- it's happened like 3 times so far. I had a weird thing this morning - I have a png set as background, and all of a sudden it disappeared and reverted to the mono color background, and when I right clicked on the desktop to reset it, I got an openbox menu instead of your standard menu. Again, logging out and in fixes this

PyCharm – yes probably a FreeBSD issue. Fresh ports can be very stale at times...

Guitar interface – Yea, you may be right, I couldn’t get this to work on GhostBSD either, and the Linux Musician's forum has a lot of postings about issues with using music interfaces on FreeBSD, but no solutions. I was hoping that since helloSystem was targeting creatives that this would work. I’ll continue to use Linux for music recording. On windows and linux, I get this to work by tweaking the audio applet to separate the input and output channels. The helloSystem sound applet – I can’t seem to figure out how it works, the preferences are a bit arcane. I'll keep trying.

On Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 12:50 PM probonopd @.***> wrote:

Hello and thanks for sharing your impressions @darkoverlordofdata https://github.com/darkoverlordofdata.

The global menu is not consistent. With no applications open, it sometimes displays a full filer menu, but sometimes it doesn’t. I prefer the full filer menu be available by default.

Indeed. Can you please describe a way how to exactly reproduce this?

Install of PyCharm fails, wrong version of Java – it wants version 11 now

We basically just run pkg install pycharm-ce; possibly this is a FreeBSD bug then?

Unable to use USB guitar port

I guess what you are looking for is to set a different output. I don't know whether this is possible in FreeBSD with just plain Open Sound System.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/helloSystem/hello/issues/172#issuecomment-862544178, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAJUE4WRHTP53ZSXNPCH6PLTTDI47ANCNFSM46ZXYIEA .

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Bruce Davidson

[probonopd]

I have a png set as background, and all of a sudden it disappeared

This means that Filer has crashed. You can restart it by pressing Alt-F2 and entering launch Filer --desktop.

The interesting point would be to find out why it crashed.

[probonopd]

The helloSystem sound applet – I can’t seem to figure out how it works, the preferences are a bit arcane.

Agree. It's not made by us. We are working on a much simpler replacement. It's under /System/Volume.app... but it can't select different devices for playback and recording (yet?) either.

[darkoverlordofdata]

I checked freshports, and pycharm-ce lists openjdk11 as a dependency. So I installed octopkg to see what is in the freebsd repo, and it shows openjdk8 as a dependency. That's the first time I've seen them out of sync... So I uninstalled pycharm. I stopped using IntelliJ products several years ago due to sluggish behavior. In any case, it's not a helloSystem issue :)

On Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 2:00 PM probonopd @.***> wrote:

The helloSystem sound applet – I can’t seem to figure out how it works, the preferences are a bit arcane.

Agree. It's not made by us. We are working on a much simpler replacement. It's under /System/Volume.app

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/helloSystem/hello/issues/172#issuecomment-862591887, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAJUE4UQPNMXL42KGGDIFIDTTDRCLANCNFSM46ZXYIEA .

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Bruce Davidson

[darkoverlordofdata]

I repro'd the shell crash. When I select Bookmarks->Add to Bookmarks, Filer crashes and the screen background blanks, and the right click menu reverts to openbox.

On Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 3:52 PM bruce @.***> wrote:

I checked freshports, and pycharm-ce lists openjdk11 as a dependency. So I installed octopkg to see what is in the freebsd repo, and it shows openjdk8 as a dependency. That's the first time I've seen them out of sync... So I uninstalled pycharm. I stopped using IntelliJ products several years ago due to sluggish behavior. In any case, it's not a helloSystem issue :)

On Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 2:00 PM probonopd @.***> wrote:

The helloSystem sound applet – I can’t seem to figure out how it works, the preferences are a bit arcane.

Agree. It's not made by us. We are working on a much simpler replacement. It's under /System/Volume.app

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/helloSystem/hello/issues/172#issuecomment-862591887, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAJUE4UQPNMXL42KGGDIFIDTTDRCLANCNFSM46ZXYIEA .

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Bruce Davidson

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Bruce Davidson

[probonopd]

Sorry I cannot reproduce this. Can you give a bit more details please? Can you reproduce this on the Live ISO?

[darkoverlordofdata]

I can’t get the bookmarks to fail on the live-usb.

On my installed version, it does not happen every time I add a bookmark. But when it does, I open any folder, click on Bookmarks -> Add to Bookmarks, and it fails.

It will also fail when I remove all the bookmarks – click on Bookmarks -> Edit Bookmarks. I select the ones I added and remove them. When I am done, I click on Ok, and that’s when it fails, every time.

The last couple times it happened, I left it that way, and it seems I still have most functionality. It is just the background image, the right click menu, and the desktop icons that are not working. Here is a screenshot:

[kettle-7]

The right-click menu you're seeing is the OpenBox menu on the OpenBox desktop, which helloSystem uses for the window manager.

I don't know why the crash is happenning, but in the mean time you can open a new Terminal tab and run launch Filer --desktop.

[kettle-7]

Also, you are missing some folders... And their icons for that matter.

[kettle-7]

Lastly, the bookmarks issue might be solved by going Edit > Preferences, and disabling Spatial mode.

[probonopd]

Also, you are missing some folders...

We don't create all of those by default, I don't know where you have them from.

[kettle-7]

Possibly part of me creating a new user, I don't remember.

[darkoverlordofdata]

Ok, ‘launch Filer –desktop' makes it whole again. It’s a minor error, just startling, and I actually don’t set new bookmarks often, mostly just when setting up a new desktop.

I found another one, also Filer. When I set the background ‘launch Filer --set-wallpaper ’ the desktop icons move from the right side to the left, and move up so the 1st one is covered by the global menu bar. I can fix this ny right-click->Desktop Preferences and reselect the background image. This does happen every day – I have automated this, so every morning when I 1st use the computer, I have to manually reset that.

Do you want me to create a couple of issues in the helloSystem/Filer repo so that these are easier to track?

[probonopd]

Please do create one GitHub issue per problem. Thanks!