First impression was good (I had been using 2.14 and IceWM) and immediately liked the improved icons. When using IceWM in 2.14 a Rox icon used to flash on the task bar after boot up and go away when I clicked on it. This stopped happening with 2.15CE. Another indication that Puppy 2.15 is on the right track is that I booted back to 2.14 for some reason or other and immediately felt like I wanted to return to the new version.
There has been quite a bit of discussion about the WOW factor and I would like to add that this is extremely important, Microsoft knows this that's why they spend so much on it. In another thread linux_chick said that in TV if you don't grab the viewer in the first minute you've lost them. I would like to suggest the with computer systems you don't get that long. You need to grab them instantly. If Puppy can grab people with the WOW factor and then follow up with good performance without the bloat there should be no stopping it.
Things that went wrong (or not quite right) after the 2.15 upgrade:
* I have an icon for xfe on the desktop. The xfe icon was replaced with a default one.
* I had the 'browse' icon configured to run Firefox. After upgrade it ran Opera. Incidentally I don't know what happened but Opera won't run at all now. It gets this error:
Code: Select all
ERROR: ld.so: object 'libjvm.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object 'libawt.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.
/usr/local/opera-9.10-20061214.6-shared-qt.i386-en-521/opera: line 325: 29544 Segmentation fault "${OPERA_BINARYDIR}opera" "$@".
* Firefox was working fine with Flash under 2.14 after I installed the dotpups to fix it. With 2.15 it started crashing again and I had to re-install the the fix.
[Edit] I just thought of something else. The 'edit' icon runs leafpad and not Geany. Is this intentional?
The following are general issues not related to 2.15 in particular:
* I had a bit of trouble configuring my wireless network. I ran the network wizard and it detected the card and I was able to put in all the appropriate settings but I just couldn't get a connection with WPA encryption. After browsing around the forums I kept seeing RutilT mentioned so I went hunting around and found it. It found my network and detected the settings. I was able to create a profile, enter my passkey and it connected immediately! The only problem is that I have to select my profile every time I boot to make it connect.
* The Internet Connection Wizard keeps returning to the top left of screen every time I click on a button even if I've dragged it somewhere else. This is most annoying.
* This might be a case of me just not looking in the right place but it took me ages to find a way to change the appearance of the application windows apart from using the standard GTK themes which are too old fashioned for my liking. I found various window manager themes but they just change the appearance of the window borders. I finally found MU's GTK theme chooser and at last I was able to find and install a theme that looked like it belonged in this century. Someone else mentioned that they would like to see a GUI to customize all the various display components -- buttons, menus, icons, etc. -- and I think this would be a good thing.
And finally a note to all developers out there. In a dialog box the buttons must answer the question asked! I have been confused a couple of times by button text that does not relate to the question. A case in point: - When you exit Xfe it asks, "Do you really want to quit Xfe?" The choices are labeled 'Cancel' and 'Quit'. What the..?? Neither of those answers the question. There are only two possible answers to that question, 'Yes' or 'No' and that's what the buttons should say.
Overall Puppy seems to be heading in the right direction. Keep up the good work!