Puppy linux as a project

[Chandra]

Have recently been googling around with variants of puppy, tried many of them and got this idea. How about developing a puppy as a project? That would be great except that it would probably take a huge amount of time more specifically to people like me, who is not a regular linux user for a long time. But trust me, I'm a OS developer and know how things work at the hardware level. So I'm hoping that it wouldn't be taking me too long to figure out how Linux framework works. The only thing I am looking forward to my project is having a light variant of puppy which would be necessarily eye-candy and featuring most basic yet useful programs. I'm targeting it for a normal user.

I see two options here, take an existing distro, modify it to fit my target and release it but I'm guessing that wouldn't be a legal option, even though I'll be making a GPL release. If it were, that would be a short path to go.
The second option would be developing everything from the ground level which would relatively take much time. But that could truly be called a project.

Anyways, I don't have too much spare time to do development jobs but I know few people in my neighborhood who are willing to help. With their help may be we could just lift this project off. But that wouldn't anytime soon, for sure. Any thoughts?

[nooby]

I am a total noob so read me with caution ....

Would not what the Developer Iguleder do be interesting to you?
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=75753
roar-ng and Subito GNU/Linux 0.9.5 Beta


He is setting up an interesting project that use ideas from Puppy
but as I get it can create other kind of Linux too. Anyway a good read!

[Chandra]

That was indeed interesting. Good to read. But as I mentioned earlier, I am no Linux developer and hoping to setup things from ground level. His concept needs more comprension of the field, which I am no good with. I will be keeping things simple for the time being.

[jemimah]

Why not help me with Saluki? It's a decent compromise between light and eye-candy.

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=73687

It would probably take at least 5 or 10 years of of intense Linux experience before you know enough to start from total scratch. There's a lot to know.

PS: it's not illegal to modify and redistribute a Linux distro so long as you make the source code available.

[gcmartin]

Have recently been googling around ... looking forward to my project is having a light variant of puppy which would be necessarily eye-candy and featuring most basic yet useful programs. I'm targeting it for a normal user.

I see ...

Having OS development experience as you say, I understand what you share in this OP.

I want to ask you to take a moment to look at 2 PUPPY distros as tehy are the most complete efforts thus far for a "normal user"; namely

• 32bit -FATSlacko from Puppy distro developer 01Micko
• 64bit - LightHouse64 Mariner from Puppy distro developer TaZoC

Each of these developers have set forth a "complete PUP" which is an OOTB solution where any new/normal user would need little to no experience to use and little to no need to add subsystems for doing most everything you and I do on a LAN with other LAN devices interacting, together.

There are other efforts underway that have appealed for help with their distros; namely

• SickGut
• Jemimah

Hope this helps

[gcmartin]

@Chandra, et. al.

As an OS developer, you are probably "integrally" aware of the LInux architecture and its I/O subsystem. And, should you have an awareness, I'll "toss a bone."

Puppy, when everyone of us starts its use, it begins with an ISO to a Live media DVD/CD. When this first-time boot (and in many cases, subsequent boots) the system is running totally in RAM. The term totally means that the complete system has setup operations such that all of RAM supports the Puppy filesystem.


Should you or anyone have a moment, look at this operation and look at the Linux I/O subsystem's architecture. Then, understanding that this is a prime benefit, envision a Linux (Puppy) running using an "Inter-subsystems Coupler" versus driving I/O as if it were a device.

There may be a significant boost such that when Puppy does arrive at a maturity level on par with its use as a SMART device (smart-Phone, smart-PAD, Touch-PAD, Tablet, etc.) it will rival those already in the marketplace.

I am not a developer, anymore. Thus, my comment in this post should be taken with that as an understanding.

[Chandra]

It would probably take at least 5 or 10 years of of intense Linux experience before you know enough to start from total scratch. There's a lot to know.

I'm well aware of that. I'm a regular windows user and am professional in this field but it's not that I've never tried my hands on Linux. The first Linux I ever used was MEPIS back in 2003. Since then, I've been playing around with different versions but I've never tried any development work, except modifying source and compiling packages for a personal taste. But it's worth a shot.

PS: it's not illegal to modify and redistribute a Linux distro so long as you make the source code available.

Now that's a treat. One more question, can the modified version be released under a different name?

[Lobster]

You should make the source clear.
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/License

For example Ubuntu is a user orientated front end to Debian
but is now more independent.

[Chandra]

Have been pissed off with the power cut lately..... it's quite tedious to make a reply via a cellphone especially making quotes. Anyway, I'm back.

Why not help me with Saluki? It's a decent compromise between light and eye-candy.

Saluki is indeed an inspiring project, more or less like what I'm looking forward to. But there are couple of fields I'm disappointed at. I'm not sure if this is the proper thread to reckon but here goes..
The following benchmark is carried against 3 different variants of puppy at 5 variants of hardware.
1.1000Mhz AMD Duron Processor, 378Mb ram EVO N115 Laptop
The other hardwares are transitional.
5. 3.06Ghz, 2 cores Intel Pentium D processor, 1 GB of ram

The boot time of Saluki is relatively slow with an exception that it loads the main file at relatively less time. However, the whole time consumed between startup to the desktop part is slowest among the 3 puppies tested. Note that this test has been carried out with a LIVE CD.

Not readily responsive. This happens with the frugal insallation, pfix=nocopy. It is sluggy when loading windows, closing it and even when running applications. Macpup remastered with XFCE outperforms it even with lots of applications loaded. Moreover, it even doesn't allow full installation, at least the version I tested. The dialog where you get to choose the Frugal or Full Installation is simply skipped even-though the hard-drive is formatted with the Ext4 Filesystem.

The default titlebar font and the 'Loading... Please wait' splash screen is not compelling, at all. Of course, this could be changed once logged on, but note that the first time users just give up the product with merely having a glance on it. Maybe the matter of personal taste.

However, I must admit that the overall design of Saluki is great. The brilliant part of it is having XFCE as a default window manager with JWM removed, which I always wished. Besides, it is loaded with typical applications that are handy and desirable.

Finally to the point- I'd love to help you in the project despite being a little pedantic here, but as I mentioned I'm no good at development stuffs so I might ruin your things.

[Chandra]

Have recently been googling around ... looking forward to my project is having a light variant of puppy which would be necessarily eye-candy and featuring most basic yet useful programs. I'm targeting it for a normal user.

I see ...

Having OS development experience as you say, I understand what you share in this OP.

I want to ask you to take a moment to look at 2 PUPPY distros as tehy are the most complete efforts thus far for a "normal user"; namely

• 32bit -FATSlacko from Puppy distro developer 01Micko
• 64bit - LightHouse64 Mariner from Puppy distro developer TaZoC

Each of these developers have set forth a "complete PUP" which is an OOTB solution where any new/normal user would need little to no experience to use and little to no need to add subsystems for doing most everything you and I do on a LAN with other LAN devices interacting, together.

There are other efforts underway that have appealed for help with their distros; namely

• SickGut
• Jemimah

Hope this helps

Those are great projects, impressive. Thanks for sharing. But how about something small, trimmed-down and eye-candy? I'm hoping to have a very small sets of applications loaded something like a browser, a media player, a word processor, a image viewer and editor and very few other daily used applications for an average computer user. Believe me, there are people who love this. Being different is not the same thing as doing things a different way.

As an OS developer, you are probably "integrally" aware of the LInux architecture and its I/O subsystem. And, should you have an awareness, I'll "toss a bone."

There are 3 important things to development: Concept, Design and Implementation. Writing your own OS is a different thing, there you get to choose your framework of the underlying interaction but it's a different case with the Linux Kernel. Sometimes, you got to stick with the traditional procedure to keep the kernel compatibility. You have a monolithic kernel to play with something modular which is entirely different from a hybrid kernel. But that's it.

[jemimah]

Yes, with GPL is just fine to take someone's work, modify it, and re-release it with a different name. You just need to include the GPL when you distribute it and don't delete the original developer's name, notes, etc - just add your own comments as a courtesy so the next guy knows what you changed.

XFCE is pretty fast (and starts a good deal faster) without the session manager - once you add it, that's where the weird delay comes from. I'm not sure what's going on - I think there's a lot of chatter on the DBUS every time you do something maybe. However, several important xfce utilities do not work without the session manager.

My thought is, first make it work - then speed it up. The priority with Saluki is usability.

The "loading" screen is there because on a slow machine you could be stuck on a black screen for 30 seconds or more - I don't want the user to assume it's broken. The new release of XFCE seems able to bring up the splash screen much sooner - probably obviating the need for a "loading" message - we shall see.

There's a number of things that can be done to speed up boot and kernel loading - but not so much if you want to maintain as much hardware compatibility as possible. Puppeee (the version I developed) could boot an EEEpc in less than 20 seconds if correctly configured. But if I monkey with things too much with a general purpose distro - it's almost impossible to predict what will break for who, and even harder to figure out why without access to the hardware.

I could actually really use help from someone who knows their way around a C compiler and debugger. It really doesn't matter if you break stuff as there are a fair number of testers that quickly let us know. Speeding up the session manager must be possible - it just needs someone to investigate it.

It should have offered you a full install for ext4. No one else has reported this bug. Probably worth looking in to if you have the time.

[Chandra]

XFCE is pretty fast (and starts a good deal faster) without the session manager - once you add it, that's where the weird delay comes rom.

I think it's thunar volume manager which is causing weird delays. I tried XFCE on Macpup as I said before, and it's working perfectly fine even on a 1000Mhz processor.

My thought is, first make it work - then speed it up. The priority with Saluki is usability

That is exactly how it works. I was just pointing out few sectors to work on not that I'm complaining for an unusable product, mind you.

The "loading" screen is there because on a slow machine you could be stuck on a black screen for 30 seconds or more - I don't want the user to assume it's broken. The new release of XFCE seems able to bring up the splash screen much sooner - probably obviating the need for a "loading" message - we shall see.

How about something small and attractive. Even if you have to display a Loading message, I'd personally go for a nice-looking font, maybe anti-aliased.

There's a number of things that can be done to speed up boot and kernel loading - but not so much if you want to maintain as much hardware compatibility as possible. Puppeee (the version I developed) could boot an EEEpc in less than 20 seconds if correctly configured. But if I monkey with things too much with a general purpose distro - it's almost impossible to predict what will break for who, and even harder to figure out why without access to the hardware.

You could always benchmark as is done by other major linux distros out there. This way you could generalize the possibility of gaining a faster boot time maybe with fewer tweaks. I'd rather prefer breaking compatibility with few machines if I'm guaranteed to make it boot noticably faster on the rest 90% machines out there. But, that's just me.

It should have offered you a full install for ext4. No one else has reported this bug. Probably worth looking in to if you have the time.

Checked again and same results but I'd like to correct myself this time that it was a flash drive formatted with and ext4 file system not a hard drive as I mentioned earlier.

I could actually really use help from someone who knows their way around a C compiler and debugger. It really doesn't matter if you break stuff as there are a fair number of testers that quickly let us know. Speeding up the session manager must be possible - it just needs someone to investigate it

I'm a really good tester and coder, I can admit that. So if you think you need me, I'm in. Just call for my name.

[jemimah]

Saluki doesn't have the thunar volume manger. The difference between saluki and other xfce packages for puppy is the session manager. It's pretty easy to verify that it's faster without.

I'm slammed at work this week, but next week is open. I'll send you a PM soon.

I will check the full install to flash thing - it's probably designed not to do a full install to usbflash.

[rjbrewer]

Saluki doesn't have the thunar volume manger. The difference between saluki and other xfce packages for puppy is the session manager. It's pretty easy to verify that it's faster without.

I'm slammed at work this week, but next week is open. I'll send you a PM soon.

I will check the full install to flash thing - it's probably designed not to do a full install to usbflash.

Unfortunately; the puppy installer wasn't built to handle
full installs to usb flash or external drive.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=34263