Distrowatch review 30 August

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Lobster
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Distrowatch review 30 August

#1 Post by Lobster »

The good: There is a strong collection of documentation, lots of help on the website, and Puppy runs with very low resource requirements. It's a good rescue CD and useful for people traveling with a live disc.
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20100830
Puppy Raspup 8.2Final 8)
Puppy Links Page http://www.smokey01.com/bruceb/puppy.html :D

aarf

#2 Post by aarf »

The usual whine about root but no concrete evidence for the concern

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#3 Post by jpeps »

Now he knows how to set a boot flag; congratulations are in order.

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BarryK
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#4 Post by BarryK »

Some of his/her comments are quite amusing. Many reviews tend to be shallow, as the reviewer doesn't spend much time really getting to know a distro. They often comment on relatively superficial things -- like the use of verbs under the icons.

Her comment about Puppy not being mainstream... didn't she notice that Puppy is consistently in the top-ten at Distrowatch and even peaked at number 2?

One thing that I have noticed is the mind-set of nearly all reviewers -- that they have to install Puppy to hard drive. They don't realise that they have the full functionality and speed just running from CD.
Interesting comment that she missed setting the boot flag first time round -- I'll have to check that. She must have done a full hd install, again, that is the mind-set.

This comment:
At the top of the screen is a box which covers some icons and moving the mouse over this area causes a web browser to open an introduction page on the project's website and the system to emit a barking noise. This was cute the first time, but gets old in a hurry if you keep using Puppy on a regular basis and, by accident, move your mouse over the box before it vanishes on its own.
...highlights how superficial the review is, as we all know that as soon as a session is saved, the message at top of screen does not show. In fact, it shows that she didn't even reboot after the first session save.

The must-run-as-root mind-set is there of course. It is more a religious statement than anything else.
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#5 Post by 01micko »

Finally... we got an updated screeny (albeit a tiny res) on Distrowatch. :roll:

When 5.1 was released they ('they' ..as possibly in Ladislav) kept the old 5.0 screenshot there... funny how ubuntu released their '10.04.1' only days later :lol: .. never heard of that , probably something to do with their 'LTS' thing.. not puppy threatening them or anything like that.. we're hardly 'main stream'.. :lol:

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aarf

#6 Post by aarf »

BarryK wrote: The must-run-as-root mind-set is there of course. It is more a religious statement than anything else.
tomorrows headlines: "BK rocks the Linux world at it's core"

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#7 Post by jemimah »

BarryK wrote:
This comment:
At the top of the screen is a box which covers some icons and moving the mouse over this area causes a web browser to open an introduction page on the project's website and the system to emit a barking noise. This was cute the first time, but gets old in a hurry if you keep using Puppy on a regular basis and, by accident, move your mouse over the box before it vanishes on its own.
...highlights how superficial the review is, as we all know that as soon as a session is saved, the message at top of screen does not show. In fact, it shows that she didn't even reboot after the first session save.
I do think gtkdialog-splash fails to be as unobtrusive as yaf-splash was. The mouseover thing makes it very difficult to avoid activating. I experimented with writing a wrapper around Xcowsay which works and gets dismissed properly when clicked - but it's still too big and "in your face."

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#8 Post by Mark_C »

I have been playing around with this OS for a couple of weeks now.
I have several older computers at work and everyone of them has had no issues with something not working running Puppy, something I cant say about the other distros I have tried.
I hope to be able to incorporate Puppy into the system here, if I can get all the software I need to work on it.

I think I am becoming a fan of smaller is better.
I have even installed an extra hard drive on my home computer and installed it on there, 1.8 dual core, I forgot what real speed was, this OS flys on that computer.
This very well could be the OS that becomes my everyday use OS and Windows becomes my secondary occasional use OS.

Mark

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#9 Post by 01micko »

jemimah wrote:
BarryK wrote:
This comment:
At the top of the screen is a box which covers some icons and moving the mouse over this area causes a web browser to open an introduction page on the project's website and the system to emit a barking noise. This was cute the first time, but gets old in a hurry if you keep using Puppy on a regular basis and, by accident, move your mouse over the box before it vanishes on its own.
...highlights how superficial the review is, as we all know that as soon as a session is saved, the message at top of screen does not show. In fact, it shows that she didn't even reboot after the first session save.
I do think gtkdialog-splash fails to be as unobtrusive as yaf-splash was. The mouseover thing makes it very difficult to avoid activating. I experimented with writing a wrapper around Xcowsay which works and gets dismissed properly when clicked - but it's still too big and "in your face."
I agree..

I sort of inspired gtkdialog-splash.. it was a work-around for utf-8 chars in Quickpet. Forum member mave ran with it.. a talented scripter, and Barry picked it up. I have a fondness for yaf-splash! :lol: . I actually have a couple of apps that totally depend on it.. (it has a timer function :wink: ) and zigbert actually created an app named after me called 'Micks-Clock' ( a part of DuDE). It was inspired by davids45 (of Chatswood fame :wink: .. only people who know Sydney will get that one).. becuase he needed a big clock on an old laptop for a night time orienteering competition.

Bring back yaf-splash!

(It can be called with /usr/X11R7/bin/yaf-splash)

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#10 Post by Crash »

I never operate the computer with speakers turned on, and for about a year I used Puppy, unaware of the start-up Woof-Woof. One day at work, I had a laptop computer that I tried booting to a thumb drive version of Puppy. With that particular computer, the speakers were on LOUD by default. I started things up, and just about jumped out of my seat in surprise. The secretary down the hall poked her head in to see where was the puppy? It was kind of embarrassing.

It's the little things in life that count.

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#11 Post by enhu »

i think this distro however will be in the mainstream in the next few years.
although i myself don't want this to be a "single root user" for of course security reasons.

but why worry anyway, i'm the only who would care to use this aged computer.

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#12 Post by Sage »

Jesse' reviews are generally reliable, but this one and, indeed, some of the comments above are weird.
I am an inveterate FULL installer - check out my previous pronouncements.
Barks on first boot up is essential for HW freaks and distro-hoppers. I rely on this prompt - get anything at all wrong, disc faults, sizing, partitioning, memory ditto and the ensuing silence tells all, - well, some.
As for the boot flag - very odd indeed. I use GPartEd or cfdisk for HD conditioning; sometimes I think I could do it blindfolded! Never been asked to set the boot flag. Puppy boots with or without it being set. Only fly in the Puppy ointment so far was the beastly foray into GRUB2land. Especially for a compact distro, but generally for any distro, this remains a solution only for the tiny number whose pockets overfloweth and their brains underfloweth. Guessing, Webster probably also defines 'compact' correctly? GRUB2 does nothing at all for this mutt.

pawnote: Quirky 1.3 - nice. Just needs a decent browser...

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#13 Post by Crash »

"Weirdness is in the eye of the beholder"

I prefer the frugal installs - I have three or four of them residing at any given time on the main NTFS partition of a Windows Vista computer. I initially boot to a USB thumb drive, and have the vmlinuz and initrd.gz files on the USB drive. The main pup.sfs and pupsave.2fs files are on the NTFS partition.

With this arrangement I can try out a new version of Puppy by downloading the .iso, clicking the .iso file to open it, copying the boot files to the USB drive and copying the .sfs file to the NTFS partition. Each version gets a separate directory both on the USB drive and the NTFS partition. Then I make maybe two changes to the boot script to point to the appropriate boot directory. Once I download an .iso file, I can have a new Puppy version installed and ready to boot in under 60 seconds.

This is a totally different approach compared to a full install. One of the powerful aspects of Puppy Linux is that it allows these and other installation methods to be used, all with equal effectiveness. I know there are others who swear by just booting from the Live CD, and think any install is weird. They are right, too.

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#14 Post by tubeguy »

Mark_C wrote:This very well could be the OS that becomes my everyday use OS and Windows becomes my secondary occasional use OS.

Mark
Welcome to the kennels, this happened to me at home. Stuck with Windows at work, but at home I'm 90% Puppy. Dumped Windows a year ago on the lappie, only boot to Windows for Photoshop on the desktop now. Although I am slowly but steadily learning more Gimp, I'm just too lazy to spend the time I should with it.
[b]Tahr Pup 6 on desktop, Lucid 3HD on lappie[/b]

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#15 Post by Sage »

"Weirdness is in the eye of the beholder"
Yup, anyone relying on NTFS has to fall into that category...

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#16 Post by ICPUG »

Crash,

Interesting. I guess you are using the USB boot to avoid the messing around with Vista's BCD. What/how is the boot setup on the USB?

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#17 Post by pistoi0 »

@ crash
Then I make maybe two changes to the boot script to point to the appropriate boot directory.
Could you post a sample boot script and where you place it in this arrangement.

As an aside, I have been using your version of Wakepup2 to run a 1999 Ascentia M (no HD) lappy as a dedicated radio streamer for the past three years or so.

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#18 Post by Crash »

ICPUG and pistoi0,

Thanks for the good words. I'm in the process of writing a description of this setup, but at the rate I'm going I won't be done for a couple of days (I'm not known for being particularly fast). This is all great stuff, and everyone has the opportunity to make a Puppy their own way.

/// Edited October 6:

I put the description here:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=60595

///

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#19 Post by PaulBx1 »

The usual whine about root but no concrete evidence for the concern
You know, sometimes you just have to go with the flow. Since every reviewer ALWAYS complains about this, it might be a good selling point to put in the option of running conventionally, some easy setup switcher (Pizzasgood already did all the work) so they have nothing more to complain about - EVEN IF there is nothing wrong with running a desktop distro as root.

BTW, I played some with PC-BSD and openSuse, with a user "paul" as well as root. I hated all the su and sudo crap. Sure is nice to do it the Puppy way...
One thing that I have noticed is the mind-set of nearly all reviewers -- that they have to install Puppy to hard drive. They don't realise that they have the full functionality and speed just running from CD.
Most people think of liveCDs as a painfully slow way to check out your hardware first and a general quick look-over of the distro. And that's all it's for (they think). They don't realize running with a live CD (or frugal) in Puppy is a viable long-term strategy. Maybe we are not selling that feature of Puppy hard enough.

It's a pretty damn shallow review that doesn't feature a reboot. Par for the course though. A few reviewers seem a little more thorough...

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#20 Post by Sage »

Most people think of liveCDs as a painfully slow way to check out your hardware first and a general quick look-over of the distro. And that's all it's for (they think). They don't realize running with a live CD (or frugal) in Puppy is a viable long-term strategy. Maybe we are not selling that feature of Puppy hard enough.
All very interesting. I don't think any of the above. I just prefer to run FULL installs for all the reasons I've rehearsed here many times, using my bank of ~50 older, smaller HDs in caddies. As far as I'm concerned, Frugal installs are the worst case scenario as will be abundantly evident from the historical confusion caused by multiple .sfs files, upgrading, etc. and as alluded to by BK on his blog today.
Otherwise, I agree - root is absolutely no problem; I just don't let anyone else near my systems. Notwithstanding, running 'live' has the advantage of no audit trail when you switch off, provided you start up as pfix=ram and decline to save a file.

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