Pussy: potentially a Puppy with a perfect package manager

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sickgut
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Re: PCLinuxOS

#1561 Post by sickgut »

veronicathecow wrote:Hi sickgut , ever thought of PCLinuxOS as a base?
Of all OS's I find that works best out of the box.
Cheers. Tony

its kind of like what they used to say about redhat vs slackware "learn redhat and you are learning about redhat, learn slackware and you are learning linux"....

in the same way of thinking i dont want to get very far away from the "source". Manipulating the OS that PCLinuxOS is based on (debian) gives us more control over the low level technical aspects. Learning debian lets us learn about all debian based OSes, but leaning PCLinuxOS just means you are learning a 2nd hand OS and its more restricting.

Having said the above, i do have great respect for PClinuxOS as an OS to use normally, but as far as creating an OS from it... i would prefer to make the OS from something closer to the "source" ie debian or ubuntu.

I used PCLinuxOS in 2008 and was completely impressed by it as a desktop OS, that had a large software selection in its repo and also an active community. PCLinuxOS in my experience was a much more complete desktop OS when compared to ubuntu or debian at the time. So please dont think i dont like PCLinuxOS.

i know that ubuntu started out as an OS based on debian, but now its so far detached that it has become a 1st tier OS just like debian is. But ubuntu really does suck when compared to debians reliability and testing and its much more inefficient and its been the linux OS ive hated the most because i dont agree with what it stands for (a half assed attempt to make linux be like windows), but its hard not to be seduced by the way it handles its live system, its much better than debian live, and at the bare base level... all of the "linux made to be a windows or mac ripoff" is missing.

Debian is made by alot of overly technical people and their default iso's offer a broken and very bad desktop experience, but the technical stuff is so well documented and reliable that its the obvious choice for my Pussy technically orientated OS.

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veronicathecow
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PCLinuxOS

#1562 Post by veronicathecow »

Hi Sickgut, thanks for reply, I take your points but I am just greedy. The just works and large repos of PClinuxOS, the speed and the frugal instals of Puppy running from ram, oh and world peace 8-)
Keep up the great work and keep well.

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Re: PCLinuxOS

#1563 Post by greengeek »

sickgut wrote:But ubuntu really does suck when compared to debians reliability and testing and its much more inefficient...[but]... its much better than debian live,
...Debian is made by alot of overly technical people and their default iso's offer a broken and very bad desktop experience, but the technical stuff is so well documented and reliable that its the obvious choice for my Pussy technically orientated OS.
Interesting summation. (its useful info for a non-dev like me..). At first I didn't like Pussy because it was so different to my puppy experience - but I keep coming back to try and make progress with it. (I realy like saintless' most recent version). I do like the idea of a "techie" based linux for certain uses (ie: not eye candy for the family, yet still useable enough for my limited commandline skills).
In particular I am looking forward to your server version of the raspberry. I have a few potential uses for it, where a full laptop or PC sitting on the bench would just be an annoying millstone I think a small raspberry running on your version of Debian might fill the ticket nicely.

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#1564 Post by sickgut »

re: 64 and 32 bit compatibility

Apparently its not as hard to have 32 bit compatibility in a 64 bit OS as I once thought. Its only a matter of installing extra 32 bit libs. Depending on the size and any overhead the installation of these libs causes, i may or may not included 32 bit backwards compatibility in the 64 bit up and coming pussy OS.

There are plenty of 32 bit executables that i have that i would like to have the freedom to run on the 64 bit OS. Infact, i have been using 32 bit OSes on my 64 bit hardware for years because i have some favorite 32 bit programs that i would rather not live without. Yes there is probably some way to hunt down the source code and recompile them but this is not something i have learned to do correctly and the source code for some of these doesnt seem to be able to be found on the internet anymore. A 64 bit OS that has 32 bit backwards compatibility is the best of both worlds. I have been slow to adopt 64 bit development and even use 64 bit OSes because of the lack of 32 bit compatibility.

Windows 64 bit has had the ability to run 32 bit apps on the fly with no issues since its release. I understand that this may be a little harder to setup in linux but i will work towards having this as standard in all 64 bit pussies.

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#1565 Post by cthisbear »

sickgut :

Did you see this post from Iguleder .

Last post.

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... &start=225

"For those of you who have trouble running some 32-bit stuff
(especially Skype), here's a neat trick I discovered today. "

Chris.

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#1566 Post by sickgut »

mwuahahahahaha!!!

rasp pi arrived today, will need to buy or rig a power supply and also a hdmi monitor as i only have dsub vga connector monitors here.. :(

i may use a usb 2.0 video capture device connected to my laptop and plug the rasp's tv out connector into the video capture device, so i would be using the laptops screen as the display for the rasp.

i wonder if i can break the universe by connecting the usb 2.0 video capture device to the usb port of the rasp, and configuring it and then plug the tv out of the rasp into the video capture device?

but in a few days or a week max ill have monitor and power supply and there will be no excuses left, ill have to start working on pussy pie :)

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#1567 Post by sickgut »

Starting work on the new breed of pussy today. First of all will be the Rasp version and i am using the TV out function (hdmi to vga convertor hasnt arrived yet) and a usb hub that supplies 700ma to power it. I have ordered another powered usb hub, i plan to run all the external connected stuff like mouse/ keyboard off the second powered hub when it arrives. I should have ordered the power adapter at the same time i ordered the rasp so i didnt have to frig around with the power stuff so much.

time to get off my ass and actually do something, its been a 7 months since i last did anything like this.

[Edit:] its actually a 1000ma or 1 Amp 5 volt usb hub, also the keyboard/ mouse etc will be running from another 1 Amp 5 volt hub as i have 2 identical ones here, and i ordered another from ebay just now because i thought i only had 700ma usb hubs... dunno why i remember them being 700ma, i rummaged though so many power adaptors that i must have confused myself.]

[Edit 2:] um.... does the rasp boot with no sd card in it, like show a display of any kind? the tv im using wont pick it up on the AV channel.... in the mean time im zeroing out a 8gb class 4 SD card and then ill image the default rasp pi debian and start from there... over the last 7 months of not messing with usb/ sd cards ive gone and lost all my class 6 sd cards... i think i left them all next door and im not welcome there anymore since i helped their abused daughter find another home :(

[Edit 3:] yeah rasp doesnt display anything with no sd card in there, atleast i know i didnt break it yet... the thought occurs that this is becoming a dev blog.

[Edit 4:] rasp is up and running, initially in black and white... had a little wtf moment then after a few mins i realized that it needed an NTSC display mode and not a PAL (PAL is default in AUS) then after changing to NTSC it was in colour. I tried using my favourite old ps/2 keyboard and mouse connected to a 2x ps/2 to usb adaptor and it doesnt work :(
ill have to use that silly roll up usb keyboard i have around here somewhere. Using a small CRT TV reminds me of using a C64.... well.. it would if the Rasp wasnt a zillion times slower :(

[Edit 5:] i dont know why they are advertising the rasp as $25 or $35 PC, mine cost me $56 AUD... and the AUD is worth more than the USD at the moment. And thats not including the price for the power supply etc.

[Edit 6:] i think the power supply stats of my usb hubs are lying, i think they are closer to 500ma than 1 Amp, as i couldnt get any keyboard at all to work, then i plugged in the second hub and then plugged my ps/2 to usb convertor and my ps/2 keyboard and mouse into it and it worked fine. I did notice some strange behaviour tho, the rasp will try to boot from the power recieved from its actual usb ports and will fail (i dont mean its normal micro usb socket power port). So people using powered hubs may get a little confused as to what is happening. This behaviour seems to suggest that the pi will grab power from its usb ports if power is supplied to them, as well as from its micro usb socket power port. This leads me to conclude that the power socket and the usb ports are all connected on the same rails internally, and this kind of explains why the power port is actually a micro usb port instead of the usual kind of round dc jacks that are usually used.... i may be wrong here... maybe ill try running a solid power source to its actual usb ports then plug a device into its supposed power port and see if it works. But anyway... no probs now im running my mouse and keyboard from a powered hub instead of directly from the rasp.

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#1568 Post by nooby »

I felt for waring you about this USB thing
but knowing how bad I am at explaining
and me almost know nothing but AFAIK
one need to be careful to not connect
two power supply together and that can
happen of one have two power supplies.

Two hubs with power supply or one computer
and one hub and both have power supply.

Then the rails get power from two sources
and that create an endless loop of regulation
and they can destroy each other?????????

Hopefully I am wrong but do google it. :)
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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#1569 Post by jbv »

nooby wrote:Two hubs with power supply or one computer
and one hub and both have power supply.

Then the rails get power from two sources
and that create an endless loop of regulation
and they can destroy each other?????????

Hopefully I am wrong but do google it. :)
You are wrong. It won't be a problem.

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#1570 Post by linuxbear »

jbv wrote:
nooby wrote:Two hubs with power supply or one computer
and one hub and both have power supply.

Then the rails get power from two sources
and that create an endless loop of regulation
and they can destroy each other?????????

Hopefully I am wrong but do google it. :)
You are wrong. It won't be a problem.
I suppose this would depend on the amount of regulation, but if they are both full wave power supplies, I can see no possible issues

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#1571 Post by nooby »

Why do they warn then and why have them built it so
it should never happen by accident?
And there ahve been reports of accidents?

But I am too lazy to find them now.

I would be happy to be wrong though.

This post by Raffy refrring to Barry
show that I did misunderstand but
remembered correctly that one should
be cautious. I only did not get the gist of it
but they are right to warn.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 102#644102
Barry's only precaution about it was
Quote:
Do not ever have the hub powered-on and the mains adaptor turned off! You will trip the polyfuse.
See http://bkhome.org/arm/rp-hardware-setup.htm

Although I've done that already, and what you experienced was the same as mine - the Raspi tried to power up but it fails.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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#1572 Post by jbv »

Meh. No offense guys, but there's so many things wrong with the words used here and in the pages linked to, it is obvious to me that even with my 35 years experience as a professional Electronics Engineer, I know nothing.

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Rasp Pi FTW a little bit

#1573 Post by sickgut »

Hi People

more than 24 hours with the rasp being up ad running, no real surprizes except for the terrible performance, and i mean TERRIBLE, this can never be a desktop system, this is only a toy or to be used in an embedded system or server where low power usage is required, i havent installed open arena (a quake 3 rip off that should perform the same as the quake demo shown on youtube running on the rasp). Depending on how Open Arena (apt-get install openarena) runs, there is potential to be a cheap games machine, i really hope it works well because i have a very low opinion of the rasp right now.

bang for your buck? This thing cost me .$56 for the board, $28 for the 2 powered hubs and the lack of normal VGA socket required me to spend $26 on a HDMI convertor (in the mean time im using a TV at 640x 480 resolution or less).. thats $100 all up. Considering you can buy a second hand Eee PC 701 for that money and run windows XP on it or Ubuntu or Debian or Puppeee and has a 900mhz Intel CPU and 512mb ram, there is no bang for the buck here at all.

The default debian image is laughable but removing basicly everything from it and installing jwm and using xinit to bring uip the bare xorg then typing jwm to get windw resizing etc and using dillo, the system is quite fast. This is a relative term however, i am comparing the speed to an Amgia 500 running workbench or a 386 running Win 95. Even using dillo as the web browser that i am posting this message from, if you want to delete a line of text and you hold down backspace, you can literally count to 10 before the cursor moves.

If this was actually a $25 or $35 PC as it is advertised as then all well and good, but its not a $25 PC at all, there are 2 retailers for this thing and they both charge more than that price.

The debian arm repo is impressive tho and it even contains Open Arena and every other application like mplayer etc as well.

A usefull tip is to disable the swap space with: swapoff -a
For some reaon the default debian image wants to use swap even when there is only 64mb ram being used, and swapping on a SD card is slow. Turn off swap and force the 256mb ram to work for its money, thats how i roll. No one is swapping on my shift, no way. If we cant make the Rasp OS work within 256mb RAM without swapping then we should not bother at all. When this thing swaps, it pretty much dies right in front of you.

I see the pussy pie OS that i have promised to make as being a server orientated highly technical old school friendly throwback to the sort of operating systems that the Vikings had in their ships when they discovered america.

i am still deciding if it will be a console only OS or have a basic xorg system that you can use to assist you with all your terminal sessions or run the odd graphical program here and there. The xinit bare bones xorg then typing jwm to get a window manager way of doing things seems 100 times faster than the default LXDE, however its still 100 time slower than a tortise running backwards.

Cant help thinking that the designers of the default debian image only installed the apps that the rasp pi can run well, which is basicly nothing,

Xinit and using alt + ctrl + f1 through to f7 seems to actually work very well as a form of console multi tasking. For instance, have "top" running on f2, "alsamixer" on f3, a console irc client on f4, telnet to a text game on f5, and you get the picture, note however that Xinit/ Xorg is always on f7 and you can only run 1 xorg session, also f1 will only show the text output of the running of Xorg.

For those of you that want to see something spiffy on your rasp, then apt-get install bb this is a ascii art demo with sound etc. If that doesnt inspire you to do away with a desktop environment and just use the console then nothing will....

Still in the slimming stages of pussy pie. Its gone from 1.7gb to 820mb, i want to get it down to 400mb max. Puppy is a 400mb OS when you do a full HDD install, so that is comparing like for like. However, if i find a way of running a squashfs (sfs) filesystem then this would be compressed down to the same size as a puppy iso. But since the most common SD car is like 4gb in size now, a larger than Puppy filesize wont really mean anything at all.

this pussy pie will never be desktop friendly OS like Puppy but im decding if i should go the whole hog and make it a hacker type of advanced user only OS or try to present console/ terminal usage in a nifty package.

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Re: Rasp Pi FTW a little bit

#1574 Post by greengeek »

sickgut wrote:I see the pussy pie OS that i have promised to make as being a server orientated highly technical old school friendly throwback to the sort of operating systems that the Vikings had in their ships when they discovered america.
Actually I read that it was the Welsh who discovered America long before the Vikings (controversial though...). I am still looking forward to using a Pi as a solar/battery powered NAS if you think you could give it a Viking style gui (I not hung up on fancy graphics, but I'm also not up to too much CLi yet).
i am still deciding if it will be a console only OS or have a basic xorg system that you can use to assist you with all your terminal sessions or run the odd graphical program here and there...
this pussy pie will never be desktop friendly OS like Puppy but im decding if i should go the whole hog and make it a hacker type of advanced user only OS or try to present console/ terminal usage in a nifty package.
P_L_E_E_E_A_S_E give it a gui. Pleeeease!

(Actually the honest truth is I would probably benefit from a non-Gui rasp as that would force me to get my Linux-For-Dummies off the bookshelf and learn the things I've been trying to avoid. I guess that is what the rasp was intended for...). But I REALLY DO want a gui rasp because truth-be-told, that is the only way I will finish the job of building my solar NAS.

Maybe you could release two phases of rasp:
RaspServ1 = nonGUI
RaspServ2 has a gui frontend to allow quick network config/attachment etc etc.
(you can probably tell I'm a lowend user, not a dev techo...)
.

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#1575 Post by greengeek »

oh, and if I could just make one other comment...I think there is something problematic about the version of dhcpcd used in Pussy so if poss I think PussyPie needs a different version to ensure it will be easily connected to a wide range of routers. (just askin'...)

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#1576 Post by sickgut »

greengeek wrote:oh, and if I could just make one other comment...I think there is something problematic about the version of dhcpcd used in Pussy so if poss I think PussyPie needs a different version to ensure it will be easily connected to a wide range of routers. (just askin'...)

the rasp debian OS that is already there seems to work real well with auto guessing the correct network config, and because this thing doesnt have a wireless network card/ adaptor .. etc... its fairly simple, if your router has dhcp, then the rasp will find it and configure itself. I dont know particularly how this differs from the versions of stuff i had in pussy for x68 but its already working well and i promise that i wont change that, i promise!

also because its so good at doing the dhcp stuff, you will probably find that you dont need to use a GUI network config utility... and funny enough the rasp debian OS doesnt even have a network GUI network utility, i spose its because the network already kind of works.... however... if you dont have dhcp enabled network and you use static addresses then you will need to live in commandline hell for a good half hour to get it all to work.

i think when people start to use wireless network adaptors with the rasp then there will be alot of bitching etc

im kind of leaning towards having a gui, but it doesnt auto load (so that it doesnt use up all your resources when you just want it to be a server...) you will need to type startx or whatever to get it to work. The rasp default debian already has it setup like that. When it boots i will have the welcoming text tell you what you need to type to do whatever etc and what apps are available from the commandline.

because the dhcp works very well and i will have the ssh/ telnet/ web/ ftp servers auto running, you dont need to connect a monitor to it if you want to use it as a server, not even on the first boot, it will just work.... kind of how your router just works and you can access it and its settings over the network.

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#1577 Post by sickgut »

I found the config.txt file in the /boot section that lets you force vga output from the hdmi video connector, so i could have purchased a cheaper straight through hdmi to vga convertor rather than a more expensive one that has a chip to make it work.

also there is the PAL and overclock lines of code in there. Apparently you just type a number and that is what the Pi will clock to. I dont know yet if ill include a slight overclock in the pussy pie tho, maybe ill setup a menu or something that points the user into the right spot to show them where to enter the overclock thingy. By default its already setup to overclock simply by uncommenting a line and i dont think the config file would tell you to do this if it wasnt safe it, it clocks it from 700mhz to 800mhz. In the mean time im running my pi at 800mhz and ill see how much hotter it gets

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#1578 Post by sickgut »

aaaaargh

i think im about half way through the pussy trimming (mwuahahaa... i know, i know.. sue me...) of pussy pie, you could say there is only a small center strip left (mwuahahahaaaa....) i should keep my lips sealed and stop my mouth from flapping before i get in trouble.

the arrrgh bit is because ive lost the ability to root login as root directly when sitting at the pussy pie itself, but i can login as root via ssh etc.....

there was always the chance of the pussy getting a few scrapes and bruises when i yank half its guts out, its prob just a config file i need to edit.

Im impressed with the dhcp and the ifup and ifdown commands (ie: ifup eth0), because it spams you with all the details of what is right or wrong kind of thing, rather than typing ifup etho and nothing happening and you dont know if its working or not like in normal debians. Ill have to find out exactly what packages are installed and how they are configured because i would like that kind of thing in all pussies.

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#1579 Post by sickgut »

Hmmmm.... there are 15mb worth of locales that could be removed, by apt-get purge locales

then again, i could just manually delete the locale files of less likely used ones, i doubt we need the galic language.

there is something called: omxplayer
already there, its 9.something mb in size and is apparently a media player. Ill leave it there for the time being as it may just be adequate. If it fails to impress me when i get to testing it then ill just remove it and put in mplayer in place of it, but mplayer will take about 20mb more space.

A "device" like the rasp will probably be used more for media playing than for web browsing and also mplayer is very fancy and has all the fancy things able to be used with no X session.

not entirely sure if we need manpages, i dont think many people use them anyway. Ive also deleted the content from /usr/share/docs also.

however i may be alone in the assumption that people will look for information online rather than use local docs, also the --help still works without manpages, like ftp --help for example this shows all the info you need for the individual commands.

So there are 3 forms of local documentation, the --help, /usr/share/docs and the manpages. There are probably more. I believe we only need one form of local help.

I was getting help from the #debian channel on freenode irc today they didnt seem to mind. There will also be a rough outline of what Pussy Pie can be used for and how to use it with my own documentation.

The method for package removing i am using is looking through the "status" file and if a package is "required" or "important" then i dont remove it. If a package is only a few KB in size and looks even remotely useful i dont delete it. If a package is labeled as "optional" and is over say 150kb in size then i analyze it to see if its something i might want to include in Pussy Pie. If it isnt then i remove it. If a package is labled as "optional" and is a few MB in size then its auto removed by me.

Note: the programming language stuff (python mostly) is being completely removed and so are as many *-dev packages as i can track down. The compiling stuff like gcc make and bison etc is being removed.
The rasp has 256mb ram, and i want to be able to squashfs the file system and have it being able to be run from ram and having 1GB of compiling tools and Python stuff included doesnt make sense when your aiming to make a 100 and something mb OS.

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#1580 Post by sickgut »

root@raspberrypi:/# apt-get purge libsqlite3-0
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
aptitude* libsqlite3-0*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 6 not upgraded.
After this operation, 4,618 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.


hmmm.... no mention of apt-get .....
will anyone miss libsqlite3-0?

I am keeping the default repo sources.list file pointing as the raspian repos rather than the normal debian ones because there are quite a few raspian only packages that contain things like bootloaders and video drivers etc and the raspbian archives seem to be the normal debian ones + a few extras so i think its good form to keep it how it is.

[Edit:] i am removing those two packages, i can always add them again
[Edit 2:] down to 38% usage on the main partition, this was above 90% before i started slimming

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