Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[WhoDo]

When you guys and gals have had sufficient time to play with Puppy 2.15CE Standard Edition, please take the time to suggests ways it can be reduced in size.

The Alpha is currently 135Mb. It needs to be down below 99Mb by the Beta release in under 2 weeks from now. Eventually I'd like to see it cut back to 86Mb, the equivalent of 2.14Final. Your advice and help would be welcomed.

Cheers

[rarsa]

Well, There is good and bad fat.

The Good fat:
The zdrv file will be very difficult to trim without loosing what has been gained by including all those drivers. Although when packaging the drivers all the extra "stuff" should be left out.

Think of it as your Omega-3. Reduce it at your own peril.

The Bad fat
Whatever goes into the sfs file.

Here it is tricky part. I'd recommend people to have a look at what may have the bigest impact. Removing 20 dupplicate applications that take 1 MB in total may take a lot of time, make some people happy but won't trim fat.

Most fat in the sfs is concentrated in very few files. So I think that the challenge is: [How can those files be trimmed even more?

Here are some ideas:
- Is there something there that can be moved to the zdrv file? (e.g. Xorg)
- Is there a smaller application with similar functionality but smaller? (let the browser wars begin). Remember the "big" application can always be a PET file.
- Are there heavy documentation, examples, themes, libraries or other extras in those packages that can be separated into an optional package?

Remember it does not have to be all or nothing. Think out of the box.

Think of it as a very large and juicy steak with potatos. You may start with a half portion, but you can always go for seconds if need be.

[Billcnz]

I think it's mainly a matter of making a final choice on themes and browser / email client. If we include flash-9 I think around 90 Mb would be a realistic target. An extra themes package could be made available for those who want to change it.

I installed the latest Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 with an outlook 2003 Blue theme as the menu bar was a bit dark to read the black text. Note: for Thunderbird to cooperate nicely with the defaultbrowser this needs to be added to the prefs.js in the sub directory under ~.thunderbird:

[Nathan F]

A similar setup must also be done to Firefox to allow it to pass links using the mailto: protocal to "defaultemail". Don't forget these little touches.

Nathan

[WhoDo]

[Nathan F]

Well what would be nice is if MOzilla developers would include in the preferences dialog a setting for what programs are to be used for these network protocols, but the fact is they don't. Instead they assume you are running a desktop environment like KDE, Gnome, MacOSX, or Windows that can sort it all out. So people who are using a lightwieght X11 desktop are left having to change the program's behavior to get full functionality.

Nathan

[WhoDo]

[designengineer]

I would like to see a version handled like version 2.11 was done. That version had two different iso files: one was a smaller version and the other was a larger version with more drivers. My Toshiba laptop booted right up with 2.11. I managed to get 2.14 running, but I spent an entire weekend doing it. I have plenty of hard drive space, so a larger variety of drivers would not hurt a thing. Just my two cents worth.

[designengineer]

Sorry, duplicate post. Delete please

[Pizzasgood]

I haven't tried it yet, so I'll just give you general ideas:

One way to find big things is with Gdmap. Look in the rootfs-complete directory of Unleashed, or in /initrd/ro_2 when running (non full-install). You can see which files and directories are big, and how they compare to others. It's visual, which is much nicer than numbers. You can click in directories to enter them, and there's an "up" button, just like in a file manager.

Also, it helps if all binary files have been stripped. Many packages have already been stripped by their creators, but if you make something yourself, it may not be. Say the binary "the_large_one" has not been stripped. You'd run this command to do it:
strip the_large_one
That chops out a bunch of debugging stuff we don't need. Sometimes it makes kilobytes of difference, sometimes megabytes of difference.

Extra images, audio files, or documents can also go, such as any "example" images that come with a graphics program. If they must stay, their quality could be lessened unless they are very important. Also, themes sometimes have many images that are unused. Sometimes IceWM themes come with "building block" images, like blank buttons. Mplayer themes have a splash screen for the video window, which is often quite large and can be replaced (not removed) with a smaller one (yes I know 2.15 doesn't include it, this is an example).

Some apps let you have compressed themes, like XMMS, but I don't know if that would have any benefit inside the already compressed pup_xxx.sfs file.

[drongo]

Would it be possible to drop Firefox/Opera/Seamonkey completely and just have HV3 as the default browser? (I know it is not fully featured but it is good to start with and may be enough for some.)

Then put a big button on the desktop called something like "Download favourite bloated browser/e-mail client". This produces a menu from which the selected browser/e-mail combo is automagically downloaded? (Plus plugins, natch.)

Or is that a step too far?

You can't please everyone and Firefox and Opera are both big so why not give us a goodish browser which is simple to upgrade?

And if you kill the "What's the best browser?" debate stone dead we can all start disagreeing about something else.

[mysticmarks]

Hi,
First post here. I really like puppy, thanks Barry and others. Thoughts after experience. As a office user every day.
I need to be able to do:
powerpoints, words, and excel files.
browsing is great now,
flash is a must,
unfortunately java is there too.
icons in 2.XX(really, how much prettier do they need to get?)
drop the wall paper with the sky eagle, and the digital pup head; extra space; just keep the new puppy style in 2.14 and the real dog with beige tone. (I'll do some mock ups of high quality/low size if it will help)
i KNOW how hard it is to get a all in one program in linux, but it would be great to get down to one or two options for most programs(i.e.-calcs,etc)
MUST have a wifi program that works better, i have 2 laptops, 2 desktops, all with wireless, none of which any pupy prog will setup(although 2.14 did see one on a desktop machine, but wouldnt do anything else with it.) the default wireless program used in ubuntu is very good. Im not sure how large it is, but it does very well.
CODECS, are they all in here? or at least a pup pack away?
more to come.
Puppy rocks!

ps- powerpoints are a must! students anyway...

[WhoDo]

[Pizzasgood]

*disclaimer: I'm not arguing to keep extra calculators, just using them as an example

[Lobster]

The argument for removing not used or duplicate programs is to do with clarity on the menu rather than saving space. A small program that takes up menu and "mind space" is much bigger then just its tiny size. Clutter is just that.

2.15 Alpha has already removed the calculator excesses . . . I do seem to remember there is a dotpup for a whole calculator collection . . .

Is Puppy an Operating System
or an operating system with integrated software?

Most desktop Linux distros (from the end users perspective) are little more than a different arrangement and collection of software.

The question is then which is faster, more reliable and easier to use. It is good to keep that in mind.