BK should do away with Wary & Racy

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yr1945
Posts: 212
Joined: Sat 17 Apr 2010, 18:38

BK should do away with Wary & Racy

#1 Post by yr1945 »

Comments below are just my opinion... I understand others have different opinions.

BK should just have one state-of-the-art Puppy with a real bare bones version (like Saluki without the Adrive).

Anyway, to the average user, most of the puppies are the same with apps being the only real noticeable difference.

Precise would be a good one to maintain. The focus should be keeping it small (this is where the bare bones version comes in), stable and lightning fast.

The many creative derivatives such as Xfce, etc, etc, etc, etc... are great puppies, too. I really like them all.

In summary, with BK's knowledge, creativity, energy level and focus on one main Puppy, just think how great it would be...

Thanks for letting me share my thoughts.

Pence
Posts: 200
Joined: Sat 30 Jul 2005, 13:27

#2 Post by Pence »

I agree also, but focus should be on family and free time with Precise as a fun hobby .

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Ray MK
Posts: 774
Joined: Tue 05 Feb 2008, 09:10
Location: UK

#3 Post by Ray MK »

Looks like BK is thinking along the lines of a standard Precise5.6 (more or less as is)
then a leaner one with a light browser, Opera, dillo, or similar but still containing all the modem drivers
and the other bits that existing Wary users might need.

That sounds like a good idea. Lite puppy for 128mb ram + swap, Standard puppy for 256mb ram + swap and above.

Whatever BK decides - is good - we will still have the best OS in the world.
[b]Asus[/b] 701SD. 2gig ram. 8gb SSD. [b]IBM A21m[/b] laptop. 192mb ram. PIII Coppermine proc. [b]X60[/b] T2400 1.8Ghz proc. 2gig ram. 80gb hdd. [b]T41[/b] Pentium M 1400Mhz. 512mb ram.

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Karl Godt
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Location: Kiel,Germany

#4 Post by Karl Godt »

Wary/Racy are compiled from source .

Such is much more work, than dl all the precompiled bins and libs from somewhere else .

When compiling runs well, it is much more fun to compile , than to squash woof bugs .

Dewbie

#5 Post by Dewbie »

BarryK is addressing that over here.

simargl

#6 Post by simargl »

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Last edited by simargl on Sun 01 Sep 2013, 15:12, edited 1 time in total.

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session
Posts: 89
Joined: Mon 07 Feb 2011, 23:11
Location: Valley of the Sun

Libraries matter

#7 Post by session »

Wary is one heck of a puppy distro: compiled from source, thoughtful combination of old and new libraries, advanced kernel...
Thanks to amazing work by rerwin, winmodem support is very good in precise-pup. But xorg-server 1.11 is slow;
until I get the option to use 1.13.3 (as used in raring) or downgrade to Xorg 7.3, I'll stick with Wary.
[color=green]Primary[/color] - Intel Pentium 4 2.40GHz, 571MB RAM, ATI Radeon 7000. Linux Mint 17 Qiana installed.
[color=blue]Secondary[/color] - Pentium 3 533MHz, 385MB RAM, ATI Rage 128 Pro ULTRA TF. Precise Puppy 5.7.1 Retro full install.

darry1966

Wary Debate

#8 Post by darry1966 »

I think a Puppy based on old 4 series updated I have seen updates to Glibc successfully performed on that series making it more up to date.

Its ram use at base level is far lower than precise which is ok for newer machines.

My other conviction is that the package manager was simpler and so much better at handling dependencies. Whether it is petget or ppm for 4.31. Personally prefer 4.12 and 4.21 series.

Thank goodness we have the forums for useful advice and tips for legacy users.

Dewbie

#9 Post by Dewbie »

darry1966 wrote:
I think a Puppy based on old 4 series updated...
...like this? :)

darry1966

Reply to Dewbie - Long Live Puppy 4 series!!!!!!!!!!!

#10 Post by darry1966 »

Yep - That is a fine example, the same can be done with other puppies like 4.12 Gpup using the Glibc update from mywolf and well that more than fills the Wary gap and is more ram efficent.

I would like to thank Barry for his great work on Puppy.

I do believe that Precise can replace Racy and be there for newer hardware 5 years old or less but the belief it will fit the bill for legacy hardware just doesn't cut it as someone with an elderly laptop can personally testify to.

The pre-woof pups especially.

Link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mywolfe ... t-files-G/

Note the useful Glibc updates for Puppy 4 series on this page.

So to sum up for steam computer users a modified puppy series 4 can offer a viable solution for these old machines using a modern browser version example downloading seamonkey from mozilla and unzipping it to opt directory and setting it up as default browser. Works well on old hardware. I even have a fairly recent version of Libreoffice running.

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nitehawk
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Location: West Central Florida

#11 Post by nitehawk »

...yeah,...I have Puppy 4.3.1 running fine on one of my older computers,...(circa 2001) PIII HP Vectra. Got a newer Opera running from opt. Works great.

partsman
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Joined: Wed 06 Jun 2012, 19:00
Location: OHIO,USA

#12 Post by partsman »

I too think there is alot that can be done with puppy 4 series
sc0ttman has proven that with Akita ! His work really needs a good look at by other developers ! His Akita will support old hardware as well as newer with some tweaking ! Alot of puppy users are running old boxes
and we need to keep that in mind ! personaly if it were up to me i would keep wary & racy ! These puppies are great to build upon ! I also think that keeping up with new hardware is just as important ! but old hardware
is just as valuable ! why not build puppies that can run on both ! :D
[color=red]Anyone can build a fast processor. The trick is to build a fast system. (Seymour Cray)[/color] :wink:

Dewbie

#13 Post by Dewbie »

partsman wrote:
His Akita will support old hardware

True, but Wary will run on a wider variety of older hardware than Akita.

LoboGrande
Posts: 62
Joined: Sat 08 Aug 2009, 01:44

Racy-yes, Wary-no

#14 Post by LoboGrande »

I tried Racy and Slacko on my newest machine(AMD quad-core with 8gb RAM). Neither were as fast as Precise 5.5. Many older .pet packages from LuPu 5.2.x work just fine in 5.5 without a hitch.

Wary and Akita are what I go to for older single core cpu's. They just work better than LuPu and Precise. My thoughts about the Browser issue is to work on a version of Iron or Chromium.

With all the dirt cheap ARM single core CPU's and lower frequency ARM dual core CPU's coming out these days, I can understand Barry's desire to move towards a true mobile Puppy for these devices.

darry1966

Akita Linux

#15 Post by darry1966 »

Akita Linux seems like a good Pup on my old hardware.

Lovely wallpaper and visually impressive. Ideal for old rigs.

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sc0ttman
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#16 Post by sc0ttman »

Dewbie wrote:partsman wrote:
His Akita will support old hardware

True, but Wary will run on a wider variety of older hardware than Akita.
You know any specific devices supported by Wary that are not supported by Akita?? I would like to know which, and I will add the drivers/firmware to the akita zdrv .. Akita already as ALL extra 2.6.25.16 drivers/firmware etc included from the forum (but I don't know if the module stuff in ./etc is set up right)...
[b][url=https://bit.ly/2KjtxoD]Pkg[/url], [url=https://bit.ly/2U6dzxV]mdsh[/url], [url=https://bit.ly/2G49OE8]Woofy[/url], [url=http://goo.gl/bzBU1]Akita[/url], [url=http://goo.gl/SO5ug]VLC-GTK[/url], [url=https://tiny.cc/c2hnfz]Search[/url][/b]

Dewbie

#17 Post by Dewbie »

sc0ttman wrote:
You know any specific devices supported by Wary that are not supported by Akita??
Yes, this one.
(Compaq Deskpro PII / 350 / 320MB RAM)

The last Puplite would boot to desktop and (supposedly) make a save file at shutdown.
But after rebooting there was none.
I also couldn't mount home drive with the drive icon; only Pmount would work.

Then with Akita, I couldn't get past Xorg or Xvesa to desktop.

It's not the kernel; 4.1.2 and 4.3.1 retro k2.6.25.16 run fine.
(as does Wary)

Apparently, it just wasn't meant to be. :|
Thanks, Scott. :)

npierce
Posts: 858
Joined: Tue 29 Dec 2009, 01:40

#18 Post by npierce »

Much of the discussion that I have seen in this thread and elsewhere looks at the Wary vs. Precise question in terms of support for old hardware. Hardware support is certainly a major difference between the two, and I appreciate the fact that Puppy has given a new vitality to many former Windows boxes that would otherwise be adding to the planet's ever-growing landfills. That in itself is a strong point that illustrates the continuing usefulness of Wary.

But I suggest that there is another difference between Wary and Precise that deserves equal or possibly even greater consideration.

My first Puppy was 4.3.1 which was, I think, one of the first in which petget supported installing .deb packages. Although I realised that there were no guarantees, I was often pleasantly surprised when I went to packages.debian.org and with just a few clicks was given a properly installed and functional application that hadn't been available in the official Puppy repositories.

The ability to install .deb packages greatly expanded the number of binary packages that could easily be installed on a Puppy, and was a big step forward. Barry built upon this by giving Woof the ability to build Puppies that were compatible with other specific distros. The repository of the compatible distro was now easily available right from the Puppy Package Manager, and the Puppy was built with binaries from the compatible distro, which increased the chances that a package installed from the compatible repository would work and require fewer dependencies than would otherwise be the case.

That was another big step forward.

Now none of this is news to anyone who has been using Puppy for a few years. I am merely reviewing this piece of Puppy's evolution to make it clear why I see the ability to easily access compatible repositories as a very positive change which gives us yet another option for installing packages in addition to the options we had in earlier Puppies.

Yet others, especially newcomers who are not as aware of Puppy's evolution and the limitations of the compatible repositories may not see it this way.

One user, when told that there was no guarantee that the PPM could successfully install a complicated Ubuntu app, expressed his surprise rather succinctly:
. . . I find it disingenuous that a distro would put a program in their package manager that wouldn't install successfully.
The answer, of course, is that no Puppy developers put programs in the Ubuntu repositories; Ubuntu does. But that only changes the question to "Why would a distro use repositories that contain programs that won't install successfully in the distro?"

A valid reason for that is that there are many programs in those repositories that will install successfully, and so we can use those repositories as an additional source of packages as long as we understand that some packages won't work for us.

But someone coming fresh from a world where distros use repositories full of packages which were specifically built for and tested with the distro may have a reasonable assumption that Puppy's PPM will use repositories that are also full of packages built for Puppy. For those users a Puppy like Wary or Racy is probably a better fit.


Even for those of us who do understand and accept the limitations of the compatible repositories, there are times when it is nice to have a distro with a traditional Puppy repository, like Wary or Racy.

As is the case with any new technology, when it first arrives it adds to the options available to people, but as people rely more and more on the new technology, the number of available options begins to decrease again, as the older options dwindle away. The horseless carriage was originally a new luxury for the rich which gave them another transportation option. Over the course of the twentieth century the automobile became more and more a necessity for many people, due to our increasing reliance on it. While many are still lucky enough to commute to work, buy groceries, and generally get around via foot, bicycle, horse, or train, many others would find life tough without a car. (Does your work place maintain a proper stable for parking your Palomino?)

Likewise, although the compatible repositories have expanded our world of packages, some built-for-Puppy packages that are easily available for old Puppies and current Wary & Racy Puppies, are not so easily available for Precise. That's because those applications are now available in the compatible repositories. Understandably, Barry is a man of many interests, and probably doesn't want to spend his retirement building a ton of packages over and over again for each new Puppy, especially when compatible packages already exist in the compatible repositories.

But the key word here is "compatible".

Consider this:

(First, let me be quick to point out that this story has a happy ending. I made mistakes along the way, but was able to eventually succeed at what I wanted. So I'm not looking for advice here, only illustrating a point with an example.)

Recently I wanted to answer a question from a user who was having some trouble getting his or her ssh server working properly. Having never installed an ssh server on Puppy before, I wanted to gain a little experience with it before attempting to answer the question. Being in Precise 5.6 at the time, I searched the PPM for openssh, and it found openssh-server_5.9p1 in the ubuntu-precise-main repository.

Good. The PPM indicated that I also needed four dependencies, and examining the dependencies indicated that one of those dependencies needed one more. "OK, six packages total, that's not bad," thought I.

All six packages installed fine. And the PPM indicated that there were no missing packages or libraries. But when I started the server directly (by running /usr/sbin/sshd), it was unable to find its configuration file. "OK," I thought, "I'm not starting it correctly; it's a service so I should start it with its init script," (by running /etc/init.d/ssh start).

Doing that resulted in a number of messages, including a couple related to Upstart:

Code: Select all

initctl: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused

Code: Select all

start: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused
Remembering the name "Upstart" (and its initially buggy introduction) from a few years ago when I was an Ubuntu user, I wasn't too surprised that Upstart was needed to start a service that was built for Ubuntu. My first thought was to try to figure-out a way to work around that need. But then I decided that, no, I'd rather try this as a "normal" user who doesn't want to fiddle with things to get them to work.

So I naively chose to attempt installing Upstart.

The PPM found upstart_1.5 for me, which had only four dependencies, but by the time dependencies for all dependencies were found, I saw that fifteen packages were needed, which would consume 6389 KB of space.

Although I thought that this seemed like overkill, just to get the ssh server running, I figured, "what the heck, in for a penny, in for a pound." So I proceeded.

The PPM reported that a couple of packages were not available and suggested that I update the local package database. I did happen to notice the names of the two packages and recognised them as being parts of Plymouth, Ubuntu's boot splash screen. "Hmmm . . . I'm installing a boot splash screen on my Puppy so that I can run an ssh server? What's wrong with this picture."

And yet I continued. Six minutes later the package database files were downloaded and processed. Then the fifteen packages were installed. The PPM discovered that a library was missing, and I installed that. Finally I was ready to start Upstart so that it could start the ssh server properly.

That's when I discovered just how naive I was. It soon became apparent to me that in order to get Upstart running I would need to install a new init executable. Since init is basically the mother of all processes, I assumed that overwriting Puppy's init would likely break lots of other things. And so I finally got smart and gave up.

A few minutes and 66 clicks later . . . the 22 packages were uninstalled.

So how did I finally get the ssh server installed and running?

I searched for sshd in the "Additional Software" forum, and immediately found this thread: openssh-5.1p1 client and server package

I installed the ssh server .pet, started it, and it just worked.

So let's see. In attempting to get the ssh server running with the Ubuntu package, I installed 22 packages with a total installed size of 11538 KB (according to the PPM), and still failed to get it going.

Using a single 207 KB package found in the forum, which had an installed size of only 584 KB (according to du), I had success.

Was the server I installed the latest and greatest? No. Could it have security holes in it that have been patched in a newer version. Possibly. Yet it served my needs for brief usage on a private network behind a firewall.

And yes, most of what I downloaded was a result of my own ignorance in thinking that I could successfully install Upstart. Yet, how many users are familiar enough with the design of an Ubuntu distro to know better than to make the attempt?

For comparison, I booted into the newest Racy that I have: 5.4.91 (which is wrapped in the Quirky 5.4.91 "one big file" image). Just as I did in Precise 5.6, I searched the PPM for openssh. This time I found openssh-5.8p2-w5c in the puppy-wary5-official repository. The description shown by the PPM was a bit of a surprise. (Here is what it said: "add widesceen resolutions to video bios, intel video chips only".) But I believed the name rather than the description, and so installed it. The PPM listed its installed size as 1176 KB, and it required no dependencies.

After installing, I did need to generate keys and configure /etc/hosts.allow for the ssh server. But nothing else needed to be installed. It just worked.

End of story.


Despite all I have just said, I really do like Precise, and like that its PPM can directly access the Ubuntu repositories. I could certainly have told the tales of various success stories instead of the failure described above. Anyone who has successfully installed an Ubuntu package knows that it can be done. I just wanted to illustrate the confusion and frustration which can result when an Ubuntu package is so woven into the fabric of Ubuntu, that an attempt to install it in Puppy fails.

Personally, I think that the positives out-weigh the negatives here. I expect an occasional failure when attempting to install an Ubuntu package. I don't mind. But I can understand why some users wouldn't feel the same, and believe that, for those users, the choice of a Puppy which uses a traditional Puppy-based repository is something worth keeping, even if that repository is small in comparison to Ubuntu's.

But although I think it is worth keeping, the question of whether or not it is worth the additional time that doing so would require is a question that only Barry can answer.

darry1966

Should BK do away with Wary and Racy

#19 Post by darry1966 »

I personally think after thinking about this for along period that Barry must do what he believes is right and go with it.

Having decided to start my own little project I now have a real appreciation of how hard it is to develop a distro especially from source.

Or though I still believe that basing a version of Puppy on Ubuntu causes Puppy to be more ram hungry, I support BK in what ever he decides to do with Puppy.

There is enough resources in the Puppy Commnunity to support older hardware with different derivatives, and it is good to encourage a Do it yourself approach not relying on one person for the answers.

Pelo

the software makes the distro

#20 Post by Pelo »

Why Precise ? its only a version of UBUNTU, which repositories are not compiled. Better choose Lucid, If you like UBUNTU.

The easier is using Ubuntu, which is not so big, for the moment. Bye, bye, Puppy and its lot of pleasure......

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