Linux Explorer (now called X-Plorer), an X file manager, is a look-alike of the Windows 95 Explorer, written for the Linux/X11 interface.
The homepage of X-Plorer is at http://www.x-plorer.org/. Please visit that page if you're looking for official information. The homepage of Qt is at http://www.troll.no/qtinfo.html. The same applies as with the previous URL.
Please also note that I have not written a single line of code for the X-Plorer project. Too many people think that I actually wrote X-Plorer for some reason. Maybe I didn't make it clear.
The reason I wrote this page is because Qt is required to run X-Plorer, as well as some optional extras. The setup of Qt went smoothly for me, but it did require a little reading and some thinking. I would suggest that you download from the following sites and subdirectories for the latest version of the software:
You should copy or move the qt-1.40.tar.gz file to /usr/local/ and extract it as root. It should create a directory in /usr/local/, which you should then move to the directory qt. For example, if it extracted to /usr/local/qt-1.40, then you should move it to /usr/local/qt by typing mv qt-1.40 qt when you're in /usr/local. Then change your working directory to `qt' by typing cd qt.
Now, you have to tell your system where to find the Qt library. To set environment variables, put the following into /etc/profile (preferably at the bottom):
QTDIR=/usr/local/qt MANPATH=$QTDIR/man:$MANPATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$QTDIR/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH=$QTDIR/include:$CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH PATH="$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin:$QTDIR/bin" export QTDIR MANPATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH LIBRARY_PATH CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH
You should log out and log in again for these changes to take place.
For more information on these environment variables, please read the INSTALL file that came with the Qt archive. The line starting with export really only needs to be there so that it will work when you're using a shell other than your default shell, bash. For example, if you want to use the tcsh shell and bash is your default shell, you'll have to add that. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it; it's just a good thing to have in there. Thanks to Justin for pointing this out to me.
Once you're in the `qt' directory, type make linux-g++-shared to have the script start configuring; to have it start building all the stuff you need, just type make.
If something goes wrong with the environment variables finding the correct path to the Qt libraries so I just copied all the files in /usr/local/qt/lib/ to /lib. That seemed to solve the problem for me, although the environment variable thing should work for most people... just log out and log back in again after making the changes to /etc/profile or restart bash.
I believe a better solution would be to add /usr/local/qt/lib (or wherever your Qt is) to your /etc/ld.so.conf file and then run ldconfig. That will put your Qt library directory in the path that programs search by default when they're either starting up or when they ask the system for libraries. (I'm no programmer so I wouldn't know...)
Here, you can either run ./configure, make, and then make install as root after you extract the archive. It's that simple. If you don't want to wait, just type configure ; make ; make install so that once each process is done, the next one starts.
From what I can remember, after make install the explorer binary file was placed into the correct directory. That means you can key in explorer from an xterm window or make it part of the menu of your window manager (editing the .*rc or some other menu file, whose filename will depend on what window manager you use).
The extra icons that I listed as an archive at the beginning of this section of the guide gives the Linux Explorer an even more Windows 95-ish look. I would suggest that you back up the old icons that came with Linux Explorer by typing tar -czvf /usr/local/share/icons-old.tar.gz /usr/local/share/icons/* as root. If you choose to use the default icons, that's okay too.
You can extract ms_icons.tar.gz anywhere you want. Just copy the contents of the directory that it extracts by typing this as root after extraction:
cp -f ./ms-icons/* /usr/local/share/icons
Now start (or restart) X-Plorer... if everything went well, great. If not, keep reading... there might be something to help you.
Some people have reported not having autoconf while installing. If you're using Red Hat, see if you have autoconf installed by typing rpm -q -a | grep "autoconf". If it shows a readout similar to autoconf-2.12-1 then the problem lies somewhere else, one that I don't know at the time of writing how to fix. That command reads out a list of RPMs and then searches for a text string. If it just takes you back to the prompt afterwards, then you don't have autoconf installed. Download the .rpm file from your local Red Hat mirror.
According to Paul J. Thompson (someone who wrote to me regarding this page and also built a package of Linux Explorer for Debian systems), Debian users can check to see if they have autoconf installed by typing dpkg -l autoconf. The command simply lists the package status of autoconf. Output from this command should show "ii" in the status column if autoconf is installed. Otherwise, it will show "pn" (or some other combination of ?n) in the status column. Similarly, they can check to see if the Qt libraries are installed on their system by typing dpkg -l qt1. Same story: "ii" if it is installed or "pn" ("?n") if it isn't. These packages can be found at your nearest Debian mirror. Autoconf will be in the section "devel" while the Qt libraries package (qt1) will be in the section "non-free".
If you're using Slackware, you'll have to download the tarred and gzipped archive through FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/. At the time I last looked over this, the latest version is called autoconf-2.12.tar.gz in that directory. The brave soul who gave me this information also said he had to download a file called m4-1.4.tar.gz, which is in that same directory. It should come with installation instructions, according to that person, who wishes to remain anonymous. The autoconf archive can be installed with the standard ./configure ; make ; make install procedure. You must install m4 first, then autoconf, and after that, go back to where you left off in building Linux Explorer on your system.
Another problem... this one is not just limited to X-Plorer. Sometimes the compiler makes errors because of your hardware and spits out an error concerning some .o file (usually Sig11 errors). The simplest way to solve this is to remove that .o file and redo the command that you typed in before that error came out (usually make).
When right-clicking on a file and choosing "Properties", it may not work when the window manager you're using is WindowMaker. I don't know what's wrong but I had to kill the X-Plorer process. The properties dialog box doesn't seem to want to show up properly.
Questions, comments, suggestions, corrections? Send 'em to jtg@computers.iwz.com. If you want to, you can also make use of the help form.
Copyright © 1997-1999 Joshua Go (jtg@computers.iwz.com). All rights reserved. Permission to use, distribute, and copy this document is hereby granted. You may modify this document as long as credit to me is given.