Pussy: potentially a Puppy with a perfect package manager

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saintless
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#1741 Post by saintless »

sickgut wrote:... god knows why the hell anyone would add this confusing stupid new persistence.conf setup thing rather than using the old method.
Hi, Sickgut,
I guess this is because you can choose to save only some of the changes by choosing which folders to put in persistence.conf
I wonder if there is a way to tell debian live to use partition instead of RAM for /tmp and /live/cow
It could turn to be universal persistent option for any live distro.
Cheers

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sickgut
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#1742 Post by sickgut »

re: Pussy Developer kit

Ok so i built old Pussy on debian live squeeze that was generated by the web image builder at http://live.deban.net

the minimal selection of this spat out a 90mb to 120mb (i forget exact size, it was quite small) or so ISO and i manually removed all unneeded files and to slim it down. Then started adding things to make this Pussy.

The problem im having at the moment is that i cant do this with the Wheezy version as "minimal" or "net install" isnt an option on this web builder, the smallest is the "standard" iso that is about 400mb or so.

This isnt ideal but its hardly the end of the world as i does actually include quite alot of useful things like nano, cfdisk (command line partitioning app that works like puppies Gparted) and a alot of other things are already there.

However i am in the process of slimming the iso and when i have done this and cleaned it all up, i will upload it to my website as a developers kit. This "kit" could be used as ground zero for people wanting to make their own Debian Live based OS or i can be used as a base for anyone wanting to fork Pussy or make a Pussy related OS etc.

This dev kit would be useful for anyone wanting to learn about Pussies base skeleton and some minimal documentation will be included by me to explain how to use the dev kit ISO and will include examples of save files and swap files etc etc. Everything you need to know to start hacking together your own project will be covered in the documentation.

ill post here again when i have finished mangling the ISO and include a link to download it.

this base will be completely unbranded apart from the normal mentions of debian here and there and thats fair enough as it is just a debian, not a pussy yet. So if you want to make an OS from this base, you dont have to scour the ISO and remove all mentions of Pussy in conf files and welcome messages etc.

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sickgut
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#1743 Post by sickgut »

Today i was looking at this in a Virtual Box:

http://live.debian.net/cdimage/release/ ... onfree.iso

While it is bloated with RAM and Disk usage, i couldnt help but notice how the Debian desktop OSes have seemed to have gotten alot better. They used to be horribly broken and basicly unusable. This had ATI and Nvidia setup utilities and everything you need like web browser and java and gimp and an audio editor and VLC etc etc.

couldnt help but notice its almost a ripoff of Solaris. Solaris is fine if you have a system that can run its silly hardware requirements but this new Debian seemed to offer a sane building environment and all the basics. Its like Ubuntu when it didnt absolutely suck.

The difference between squeeze and the new wheezy is quite alot.

I am needing to take a step back and reconsider the direction Pussy needs to go. One main reason Pussy exists is because Debian desktops are rubbish, but that isnt the case now.

I think there are a few very well setup applications and things like USB stick auto mounting and detection that is better than the current Pussy. The ATI and Nvidia tools etc would be very much welcomed into a new Pussy. I think i can learn some good things about how these things are setup and introduce them into Pussy.

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sickgut
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#1744 Post by sickgut »

This month so far as of the 27th of January 2013, the pussy website http://www.thepussycatforest.info served 78GB of Pussy downloads

pussy hasnt been updated in more than a year and the downloads of it are still very strong

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sickgut
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HDD installs that arent live

#1745 Post by sickgut »

Hi catfarmers

i am pleased to confirm that the next version of Pussy will have a HDD install option, however this isnt simply copying the CD/DVD/ISO/USB sticks information to the HDD and rigging GRUB to boot it and requiring the use of live-rw or persistence.conf save files or partitions, this is a regular install with the live stuff ripped out of it. And note that the installation installs GRUB automatically and will setup dual booting between Windows or other Linuxes etc.

this is perhaps easier for newbies who find the whole save file/ live thing a bit fiddly or technical. Saving happens in real time to the Linux filesystem with no further configuration. The installer guides you through the install process and lets you setup whatever partitions you like and if that is a bit out of your grasp to comprehend then the automatic guided install option will set it all up for you including a swap partition and will leave your Windows or whatever OSes are on your HDD intact.

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#1746 Post by sickgut »

I am in the process of deciding what Debian Live ISO will be the next base system. The standard.iso is the obvious choice, however i am also in the process of slimming the lxde desktop.iso as well.

These are two sides of the same coin that are complete opposites.

Using the standard.iso will result in a Pussy similar to the old Pussy but with newer stuff and will prioritize technical abilities over glitter and bloated desktop wizbang. This will result in a technically excellent OS with minimal desktop features.

Using the lxde desktop.iso as a base will result in a ready to go desktop system that is the usual dumbed down crap that we find in Ubuntu and Android etc, and will need to have to technical stuff attached to it, This is fine but i do not know if the technical stuff will actually work if its rigged up ontop of this. If we use this ISO, then the desktop stuff will be awesome and on par with every other OS. However it will cost us a mighty slab of RAM, probably at least 300mb or so more than current Pussy. Old Pussy only needed 42mb ram to work, an LXDE based Pussy will require more than 256mb and that is unimpressive to say the least.

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HDD install tested and working

#1747 Post by sickgut »

Hi peeps

After slimming the standard.iso and testing the HDD install feature i am proudly reporting that it works flawlessly, any newbie would be right at home doing this, the GRUB autodetection of other OSes etc works perfectly. I now know there was no reason that the old Pussy couldnt have the same HDD install features, but at the time i removed it thinking that my modifications to the filesystem.squash would cause it to not work, i was wrong. We could have had this feature from day one but i didnt understand how it worked at the time.

There is a benefit of having a full HDD install and that is there is no live system overhead, booting the new Pussy and running the "free" command tells us that it is only using 43mb of RAM, and that is perfect ball park awesomeness of over meowing bliss with a cherry on top and below it. Cherries all round, they are everywhere.

However the installer on the .iso takes up an extra 170 to 180mb of space on the iso. However, there is a hell of a lot of firmware included in that as well. Also the installer is fairly leet as it has all the tools you could possibly want. I am going to remove the graphical install method and just stick with the text install, as the text install method is easier to follow. I dont know how much space we will save by removing the graphical install option. The text method is more reliable as it doesnt have to access GPU video features etc and will work on a wider range of computers. Text install also doesnt require a mouse which is a bonus for those of you who want to run a server with no desktop environment loaded.

i am quite pleased how efficient the HDD install is, especially the RAM usage as this is using only 1MB more of RAM compared to the old pussy even tho it has a series 3.x.x.x kernel and every package has been upgraded to a newer version.

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veronicathecow
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#1748 Post by veronicathecow »

Hi sickgut, look forward to testing this.
Cheers

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Pete22
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New slimmed down version

#1749 Post by Pete22 »

Hello sickgut:

I am so glad you finally made it. Hind site is always clearer.

I am fine with the big size.
Can it install to an EXT 4 partition.?

:?I must confess, I find the first entry confusing.
I am downloading the pussy xtra beta. Is that the right one? I am not sure.

:idea: I suggest a streamlined first entry with the most likely used version for a newby at top.Then put the more techy stuff and historical stuff below for the geeks to read.

:? I don't see anything on the entry that says the info was updated recently, even though you said here, that it is.

:idea: Maybe edit first entry, even if you don't need to, to show the info and links are actually current.


Pete

nooby
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#1750 Post by nooby »

when you say HD install you mean Full install and not Frugal install on HD.
Huge difference just me too confused to know what you really talk about.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

cinclus_cinclus
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Persistent Frugal install of Debian-Live Wheezy.

#1751 Post by cinclus_cinclus »

nooby wrote:when you say HD install you mean Full install and not Frugal install on HD.
Huge difference just me too confused to know what you really talk about.
I am Dual-booting Windows and a Crunchbang-(Full-HD-)Installation from a Grub2-Bootmanager in MBR.

I have added a persistent frugal-installation from an Debian-Live(-Wheezy)-ISO-image created on this site ->
http://live-build.debian.net/cgi-bin/live-build.

2 different NTFS-partitions are used for the frugal installation.

Steps:
1. Copy the content of the folder "/live" of the Iso-image to a newly created folder "/live" on one NTFS-Partition

2. create a file named "persistence" on a different NTFS-partition, please see above sickgut's instructions. The "persistence"-file must be put on a different partition because otherwise it will be ignored.

3. a new boot-menu-entry for frugal-booting appears automatically by creating /boot/grub/custom.cfg (On Crunchbang ext3-root-filesystem).

4. kernel boot-parameters of /boot/grub/custom.cfg are taken from /isolinux/live.cfg of the "binary.hybrid.iso"-image.

@nooby
I cannot give you a direct solution for dual-booting with grub4dos because I don't use it. But translating /boot/grub/custom.cfg to a (grub4dso-)menu.lst-addition should be a trivial task.
Perhaps someone else can help.

Code: Select all

# /isolinux/live.cfg from my "binary.hybrid.iso"-image
label live-686-pae
	menu label ^Live (686-pae)
	menu default
	linux /live/vmlinuz
	initrd /live/initrd.img
	append boot=live config locales=de_DE.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=de utc=no persistence

Code: Select all

 # /boot/grub/custom.cfg of my root-filesystem on sda7
#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
menuentry 'live-686-pae' --class debian --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
    insmod part_msdos
    insmod ntfs
    set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
    linux /live/vmlinuz boot=live config locales=de_DE.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=de utc=no persistence
    initrd    /live/initrd.img
}

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#1752 Post by sickgut »

nooby wrote:when you say HD install you mean Full install and not Frugal install on HD.
Huge difference just me too confused to know what you really talk about.
hi nooby

the new pussy that i am workng on based on wheezy that isnt ready to be uploaded to the website yet is capable of a traditional install to the HDD the same way that Windows or DOS used is or a full version of a non live based Linux.

So, no, this is not frugal, this is not compressed and has the full complete filesystem on the HDD.

when you insert the CDROM/DVD or USB stick into your computer you will see the familiar syslinux or GRUB screen that will let you boot the Live OS in various ways, persistent, non persistent etc. But it will also offer you the option to install the OS to the HDD. This is a full non frugal install.

However, the the ISO itself is bootable and it lets you boot it from GRUB or syslinux and this would be a frugal install, or the old way of dd'ing an .img version of Pussy to your HDD will still work as frugal and also simply copying the files from the ISO to the HDD and then rigging it to boot with GRUB/ syslinux is also frugal

basicly the old Pussy couldnt install as a full install and the ISO wasnt bootable.

However the new Pussy will be able to be fully installed to the HDD and you can boot the ISO directly from GRUB/ syslinux AND it can be installed frugally or just run from the CDROM or USB stick or DVD.....

basicly the new Pussy can do absolutely everything you could possibly want. So many options infact that it may be a little confusing.

Newbie level full HDD install will be officially supported.
Newbie level persistent live with a save file or partition will be officially supported
Newbie level running live from CDROM/ USB with no persistence will be officialy supported
Newbie level dd'ing of .img image file of Pussy to HDD or USB will be officially supported with and without persistence

however there will be 2 frugal methods that are for advanced users only. Advanced user may be a bit of an over statement, pretty much anyone could do it, but its not what i would call absolute newbie level:

Frugal #1: copy the ISO to your HDD and boot it with GRUB/ syslinux

Frugal #2: copy the files from the ISO to your HDD and boot it with GRUB/ syslinux

I would suspect that Frugal #2 is a little silly considering its way easier to boot the ISO itself rather than copy the files from the ISO to the HDD and then boot them. Both methods will work with persistence or without persistence.

The new Pussy will be so flexible that the its potential can be confusing. You can literally do so many things with it, that the question is: "What is the best way?"

Hope fully ill be able to answer that question with a little testing.

I think the old "no writing to the boot partition if that partition is NTFS" bug has been fixed in this edition, altho i have not tested it myself, i will test and confirm this.

Note: we are talkiing about a Pussy that has not actually been released yet, but i am working on it and it will be released soon.

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Re: Persistent Frugal install of Debian-Live Wheezy.

#1753 Post by sickgut »

cinclus_cinclus wrote:
nooby wrote:when you say HD install you mean Full install and not Frugal install on HD.
Huge difference just me too confused to know what you really talk about.
I am Dual-booting Windows and a Crunchbang-(Full-HD-)Installation from a Grub2-Bootmanager in MBR.

I have added a persistent frugal-installation from an Debian-Live(-Wheezy)-ISO-image created on this site ->
http://live-build.debian.net/cgi-bin/live-build.

2 different NTFS-partitions are used for the frugal installation.

Steps:
1. Copy the content of the folder "/live" of the Iso-image to a newly created folder "/live" on one NTFS-Partition

2. create a file named "persistence" on a different NTFS-partition, please see above sickgut's instructions. The "persistence"-file must be put on a different partition because otherwise it will be ignored.

3. a new boot-menu-entry for frugal-booting appears automatically by creating /boot/grub/custom.cfg (On Crunchbang ext3-root-filesystem).

4. kernel boot-parameters of /boot/grub/custom.cfg are taken from /isolinux/live.cfg of the "binary.hybrid.iso"-image.

@nooby
I cannot give you a direct solution for dual-booting with grub4dos because I don't use it. But translating /boot/grub/custom.cfg to a (grub4dso-)menu.lst-addition should be a trivial task.
Perhaps someone else can help.

Code: Select all

# /isolinux/live.cfg from my "binary.hybrid.iso"-image
label live-686-pae
	menu label ^Live (686-pae)
	menu default
	linux /live/vmlinuz
	initrd /live/initrd.img
	append boot=live config locales=de_DE.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=de utc=no persistence

Code: Select all

 # /boot/grub/custom.cfg of my root-filesystem on sda7
#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
menuentry 'live-686-pae' --class debian --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
    insmod part_msdos
    insmod ntfs
    set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
    linux /live/vmlinuz boot=live config locales=de_DE.UTF-8 keyboard-layouts=de utc=no persistence
    initrd    /live/initrd.img
}
thankyou very much for testing this. I have not tested this myself and you have just saved me alot of time. Thankyou once again. Its damn smooth that that Pussy will be able to do the same thing. Im glad the debian-live people finally have the bootable ISO thing sorted.

edit:

oooops i misread the text, i thought you where booting the actual iso not the files from it. The new wheezy is supposed to be compatible with booting the iso straight from grub ill test this
Last edited by sickgut on Sun 03 Feb 2013, 05:55, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: New slimmed down version

#1754 Post by sickgut »

Pete22 wrote:Hello sickgut:

I am so glad you finally made it. Hind site is always clearer.

I am fine with the big size.
Can it install to an EXT 4 partition.?

:?I must confess, I find the first entry confusing.
I am downloading the pussy xtra beta. Is that the right one? I am not sure.

:idea: I suggest a streamlined first entry with the most likely used version for a newby at top.Then put the more techy stuff and historical stuff below for the geeks to read.

:? I don't see anything on the entry that says the info was updated recently, even though you said here, that it is.

:idea: Maybe edit first entry, even if you don't need to, to show the info and links are actually current.


Pete
The currently available Pussy Xtra beta is the current version, however very soon, possibly a few weeks or so a new version will be released. Most the conversation on this thread has been mostly musings about the new version. The new version isnt available yet but it will be based on Debian Live Wheezy. Some of us are testing Debian Live Wheezy so that we know what to expect from the new Pussy when it is finally released.

The new version will have much better install features and will be a little more polished with newer applications.

The current downloadable Pussy is a little more than a year old but still, it seems to work very well and still suits alot of users. There are a couple of quirky things in it still, the rox filer focus bug is probably the only bug that is noticeable to normal users however. This will be fixed in the next version.

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#1755 Post by sickgut »

I have been preparing 2 bases for the next Pussy and i have almost finished bleaching and slimming them.

One will be a console only base, this is similar to what the first Pussy was built on.

And the other is a lxde desktop base, this is something new. Its much larger in disk size (dont really care about that) and RAM size (i care about that more) but everything works flawlessly, attaching USB sticks, HDDs etc and CDROM/ DVD's etc is very smooth. The file management and desktop stuff is basicly perfect. I dont know how practical it will be to use this as a base for Pussy.

I will upload both of these bare bases to the website soon if any one wants to take a look. The lxde one could be used as an OS, the console only one is only a tool that you can start with to make your own OS or gleen the underworkings of Pussy.

ultimately one of these bases will be chosen to be the base for Pussy. One offers the most efficient disk and RAM usage, the other offers a polished desktop experience that is better for newbies.

Should we go down the path of technical excellence that many newbies might not understand, or shall we make a Linux desktop system that can replace Windows, but with less technical features and efficient use of disk space and RAM?

Bob_the_plumber
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#1756 Post by Bob_the_plumber »

Ewww !! not like windows please, windows user stop working on this os because he find it boring of using it, so what is the utility to make the same boring thing...

Do it the linux way, not the windows stupid way

and add a lot of cool thing on it yeah i like appz (but not 4 music player, 5 video player, 6 different text editor etc..) but for wireless it's a little more tricky, sometime it work with Wicd and for other, it's frisbee..

don't forget to add gtk and qt, this will save you time for n00b question on why the add_your_app_name he want doesn't work

technical excellence all the way

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#1757 Post by bark_bark_bark »

^ /facepalm
....

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#1758 Post by sickgut »

Ok ive finished slimming the LXDE debian wheezy iso in hope of having a nice small base with a polished desktop......

except that its not slim in any way and therefore completely pointless. I could only rip out 100MB from its 1GB iso size and all in all there seems to be no real reason to use a Pussy version of this than the existing Debian version after spending 5 mins installing some of the missing technical features.

It was a waste of time to consider using a prefab LXDE iso, its RAM usage was not in the ball park and considering its already immense size, it would have to grow 100% more to accomodate awesome Pussy technical fun. There seems no way to even get this iso to fit on a CDROM no matter what method of slimming i used.

Looks like we will go back to our roots with the JWM + RoxFiler desktop and make efficiency and technical ability more awesome than ever.

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#1759 Post by sickgut »

Bob_the_plumber wrote:Ewww !! not like windows please, windows user stop working on this os because he find it boring of using it, so what is the utility to make the same boring thing...

Do it the linux way, not the windows stupid way

and add a lot of cool thing on it yeah i like appz (but not 4 music player, 5 video player, 6 different text editor etc..) but for wireless it's a little more tricky, sometime it work with Wicd and for other, it's frisbee..

don't forget to add gtk and qt, this will save you time for n00b question on why the add_your_app_name he want doesn't work

technical excellence all the way
Yeah the whole LXDE desktop thing kinda fizzled out there was no way i could make it efficient in any sense of the word.

We will focus on creating the most efficient and technically excellent OS possible.

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#1760 Post by sickgut »

found out someting cool, a smaller debian live iso instead of the standard iso i used a netboot one and renamingthe netboot squash fs to filesystem squasfs worked fine and savd like 200mb of size of of the iso, finally got te perfect disk size for the new pussy while retaining full install to the hdd and everyhing else

sorry fir bad spelling,sleep meds kicking in

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