Blue Pup V6 Released 11th Oct 2014 32-bit

[Volhout]

Yesterday tried to install Blue V5 on 8 Gbyte USB stick using the linux (in my case LxPup 13.11) method.
- Emptied the USB stick, ensured it was FAT.
- downloaded the image, and stored on HD
- decompressed directly to USB stick (in my case sdb1) in terminal.

It took a long time.....
I started to read this thread backward, to see what I could encounter, but after 30 minutes, still no prompt.
Went to bed ...
This morning ... a prompt. And no error messages. The decompression had finished.
sync(-ed) (but after soo many hours this should not have been needed).

And rebooted.
Just a flashing cursor on a black screen for more than 10 minutes (laptop = HP DV2000, Intel T2400). Decided this was not working.
Different laptop: Dell E6430 (intel i5). Same behaviour.

Somewhere in the proces something must have gone wrong.
During decompression, the USB stick was mounted (how else could I know it was sdb1) but not actively used (i.e. PCmanFM).

[ETP]

Hi Volhout,

The process should take no longer than 10-20 minutes. Given that the stick is now in an unknown state it would be best to return it to its virgin state before trying again.
In Linux use Gparted to do that:

1. Start by clicking on “device

[Volhout]

Hi ETP,

Used a W7 PC to format the stick, and 7zip to unzip. With windows image writer it worked (took zome 20 mins). I have a working USB stick now. Blue boots into JWM (not metro as in post #1) and I can toggle to metro using the menu.

On a netbook (1024x600) I scaled to 67% and have a nice metro desktop.
It boots quite quick, when I have (my own) internet tonight I will give it A GO.

Thanks for the quick reply

Volhout

ps: is there a hotkey to toggle between metro and jwm ? I noticed that there is no "browser" shortcut in the taskbar to ease life. And when I quit Chromium and restart it through the menu, to does default to the metro screen, but NOT full screen. Always in a tab. Any thoughts ?
pps: I understand the "hot sides" function now, but why bring up menu with the "quit" function every time I go to JWM ? On my netbook it is extremely large and covers most desktop icons. Every time I have to manually close it. Wasn't it better to add the 10 functions in this popup to the JWM desktop as icons ?

[ETP]

Hi Volhout,

ps: is there a hotkey to toggle between metro and jwm ? I noticed that there is no "browser" shortcut in the taskbar to ease life. And when I quit Chromium and restart it through the menu, to does default to the metro screen, but NOT full screen. Always in a tab. Any thoughts ?

The left hand windows key is used to launch it full screen. Please see README.txt tile on Metro interface.

pps: I understand the "hot sides" function now, but why bring up menu with the "quit" function every time I go to JWM ? On my netbook it is extremely large and covers most desktop icons. Every time I have to manually close it. Wasn't it better to add the 10 functions in this popup to the JWM desktop as icons ?

One of the aims of Blue Pup is to provide as many alternate easy means of navigation as possible. Please see the two digit toggle described in the hot screen sides dotpet post which it provides. The panel items can be launched with the mouse or by using the arrow keys followed by the enter key.

On a small netbook in order to fit the 10 icons around the panel visit the JWM Desktop sub-menu and reduce the global font size to 84 then restart X.

[ETP]

Blue Pup V6 – Released 11th Oct 2014

A revised 1080p slideshow covering V4, V5 & V6 can be found here:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/ ... slide=id.p

Changes since V5:

1. Image size reduced to 293 MB.

2. Latest versions of Flash, Thunderbird and Chrome extensions.

3. New default wallpaper & custom Conky display.

4. New toggle switch on JWM Desktop menu to turn Conky display on and off.

5. Expanded README notes with original launcher on Metro tile and additional bookmark in browser.

6. For V6 there now remains only one optional dotpet - BlueScreenSaver.pet. All other service packs and previously optional pets having been incorporated.

7. On the new desktop the “Moon

[charbaby66]

Well, the most important things I learned so far are:

- Blue6 (re)installs fine under linux (yay - no Win needed) using gparted to erase both partitions and recreate lone fat32 partition (remember do not
set boot or any flag)

- Code: xz --decompress --stdout blue_pup_v6.img.xz > /dev/sdX
(remember /dev/sdX does NOT mean /dev/sdb1 just /dev/sdb [for my usb])

- if watching htop is not thrilling then as soon as you see another "#" in
your terminal type - Code: sync

- learned that you must overtype in the boxes when changing tile settings
like weather locations, as it is not clearly defined to do that

however, without checking PPM I installed peasywifi-3.1.1.pet http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 60&t=94501
(now that I know how to use it, I prefer it to solve ongoing disconnect issues, with much thanks to rcrsn51) but maybe I ought not fix if not broken, eh?

now I have no sound and cannot get it to turn up even after mucking in the retrovol settings.. possible bug in 6 as 5 was fine OR I broke something with peasywifi I can't remember if I had sound b4 it was installed... then tried alsawizard and it restarted x, and lost the purty wallpaper and corrupted
the file... and lost conky, (can we resize him (fonts) a bit?)

I have attached my dmesg hoping it will show what's amiss, but this is an
old Dell D610, and it seems these Pentium M's have a few issues that a snip of code added or removed fix besides the wifi as above

(on precise 5.x non PAEs anyway but not all my bugs on slacko 5.x non PAEs) eg: to avoid shutdown hang/no savefile on 1st reboot I need to comment out "modprobe -rv `echo $line | cut -d ' ' -f 1' " in /etc/init.d/10alsa but I still lose my pinboard on reboot in slacko and wifi drivers not detected
not sure if any hacks needed in Blue

so I will reinstall Blue6 (and time it this time cuz it seemed faster than 20 mins Sorry Google broke for you, what about the beta? 38 was supposed to be pretty stable, and the only browser so I hear, that will play with Netflix
natively using HTML5. Be back soon, will let you know if it was peasy that broke my sound

▶—— Video ——◀

Display:
OpenGL vendor string: Intel Open Source Technology Center
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 915GM x86/MMX/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 1.4 Mesa 10.0.1
Screen Resolution: 1024x768 pixels (270x203 millimeters)
Screen Depth: 24 bits (planes)
X.Org version: 1.15.0

Video Chip:
2.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03)
oem: Intel(r)915GM/910ML/915MS Graphics Chip Accelerated VGA BIOS
vendor: Intel Corporation
product: Intel(r)915GM/910ML/915MS Graphics Controller Hardware Version 0.0

▶—— Audio Devices ——◀

Multimedia audio controller : Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller [8086:266e] (rev 03)

▶—— Network Devices ——◀

Ethernet controller : Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5751 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express [14e4:1677] (rev 01)
--
Network controller : Broadcom Corporation BCM4309 802.11abg Wireless Network Controller [14e4:4324] (rev 03)

▶—— COMPUTER MEMORY ——◀

Memory Allocation:
Total RAM: 2017 MB
Used RAM: 474 MB
Free RAM: 1543 MB
Buffers: 1 MB
Total Swap: 2047 MB
Free Swap: 2047 MB

[ETP]

Hi charbaby66,

Thanks for testing V6 and your detailed report. With regard to the wireless I suspect that it would have worked with SNS and that installing peasywifi was premature.
Then again the Broadcom chip is a bit of a swine. I will await your feedback on that.

Sound/Alsa:
Don’t run alsawizard. In my experience you stand no chance once you have done so.
If you have no sound icon on the taskbar, launch Skype (ALT+S) then click on the X to close the window. On the taskbar you will have the white Skype icon as you did not quit it. More importantly to the right of it, you may have a gap before the next icon.
That gap is your invisible retrovol icon! It becomes invisible when either the master volume or pcm have defaulted to off or zero.
Right click the invisible icon then set pcm to 100% and set the master, if one appears to 75%.
If the above does not apply it is possible that your audio chip/card has not been detected. A quick test for that is to open a terminal and type “alsamixer

[gcmartin]

Hello @Charbaby66.

I still have an use a PentiumM, but, my version does not have the same problems as other have. My system has the PAE flag enabled. But, on a test earlier with a friend's laptop, I tried @Shinobar's FIX for PentiumM and indeed, his solution enable his PentiumM to the point where there seem to be a similar performance increase associated (although this was NOT mesured, only using user's response).

You "may" want to consider this. My experience is as follows:

1. Boot the distro, Pristine
2. Add @Shinobar's fix for exposing Intel hidden flags
3. Boot
4. Monitor your LAN/WLAN behavior
5. Sound presence
6. After confirmation, add any/everything you would want and need.

Enjoy...Cheers!

[charbaby66]

Thank you to both ETP and gcmartin for your input

Will be back to testing Blue after testing shinobar's modified tahr for Pentium M patch (now an iso) ..so far SNS seems ok, will try frisbee as i can see the disconnects easier.. no shutdown hang, 1st boot create save folder ok (and so cool!) EDIT: some issues ..I best go to that forum for fixes....

not sure how to tell if PAE is forced successfully or showing a difference other than my mentioned bugs seem possibly better (more detail later)

EDT I can test if you want to try the same kernel mod/patch in Blue for
other Pentium M users, but I was not needing to use the fixes I had
to for Precise 5.7.1 and Slacko 5.7/5.9.x. In Blue, The issues here are due to my clumsiness more than anything I think!!

For what it is worth, the only newer derivative other than Blue (and tahr) not to give such grief is the tried and true Lucid 5.2.8 series & permasu's precise-3.8.3.1.SCSI dpup (my thanks to him too!) I have been trial &
erroring what runs or not on here, Thanks for all the help

[Volhout]

Hi ETP,

I installed Blue V6, and a quick checkup, it seems okay.

How can I prevent that the right windows key (menu key) brings up that popup on the JWM desktop ? "Blue Pup Version 6 ... click an icon... The big Blue button shuts down your PC". Almost always I hae to close it without using it.

I used Barry's snapshot utility to make a snapshot before I tried following.
I installed LxPup_per_SFS version for Quirky Tahr, from PeeBee, since I prefer LxDE over JWM. But there where many things that didn't work correctly. So I decided to revert back.

Used the snapshot utility to revert back, and choose for "after reboot".

After reboot the machine crunched for a few minutes, and brought up a mix between LxDE and JWM (it still had the LxDE menu entries, but the JWM desktop.

It was only after another reboot that things where back in order, and I had a pristine BlueV6.

So far my observation.

[ETP]

Hi Volhout,

In Blue JWM is heavily customised. Changing to another windows manager will cripple it.

To close the Browser/Metro interface and just return to the desktop without the panel being launched or raised use ALT+F4.

EDIT: ALT+F6 if you just want to minimise it.
Press the left hand Windows key to raise it again.


BarryK’s snapshot facility has worked fine in all my tests.

[Volhout]

Hi ETP,

Running the Blue V6 non-PAE version on my old DV2000 laptop. Works fine, posting from it now. The only anomaly I see is the volume control via the icon in the tray. It is set to 62568% (full bar) and I cannot change it. Rightclick, full config shows the retrovol sliders for headphone, speaker, PCM etc. And I can change all of them, also the MASTER volume slider, and they all function. Closing the window however does not adapt the main slider that is visible. It remains at 62568%.

Any idea how to fix this ?

I will continue testing, and will add to this post while I progress,
The problem with the volume slider does not appear running Blue V6 (same USB stick) on my EeePC 1001HA netbook. There the volume slider is the same as the "master slider" in the full window. So this is laptop related.

But now we are at it .....
I started posting from the DV2000 laptop, and all was okay...I typed text. On the EeePC1001HA however the keyboard is not correctly working. When I type VOLHOUT, I get V63H45 or something. Some character keys are replaced by numeric keys. Tried to look into the keyboard setup, but there the UK keyboard was selected. When I choose another keyboard (US) the same still applied.

Just to make sure, I rebooted the 1001HA into LxPup, and now the keyboard works Okay.

There is something strange happening in Blue V6.

So up to now:
DV2000: volume slider is not copy of master slider in full window
1001HA: keyboard does not work.

[ETP]

Hi Volhout,

The keyboard issue (“When I type VOLHOUT, I get V63H45

[ETP]

Optional Service Pack for Blue Pup V5 & V6

Skype 4.3 was first introduced in V5 but currently the splash screen and notification icons are in glorious monochrome. This dotpet restores the colour.

To install:

1. Quit Skype completely.

2. Install the pet.

3. Select “Chtheme GTK/Qt theme changer

[Kris55555]

Blue v.6 (not PAE) installed on the pen 8GB and C2D E8400 and a rocket, fast and hassle free. Thank you.
Will Blue version PAE?

[ETP]

Hi Kris55555,

Blue is based on the non PAE Quirky Tahr version 6.0.5 k3-12-6 which was superseded by Quirky Unicorn 6.2 released by BarryK on 25th October. That also is non PAE.
If you definitely require a PAE Pup I suggest that you take a look at tahrpup 6.0 CE released on 26th October which comes in both flavours.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=96178

[ETP]

Optional Dotpet for Blue PupV6

Attached is a dotpet to provide a permanent Conky display of the eth0/wlan0 IP in the top right hand corner of the screen. It is independent of the main Conky display which can still be toggled on or off.
Restart X having installed the dotpet.

N/B – Pet alert has been turned on & will remain so for 48 hours.

[ETP]

Service Pack

On Friday 13th March Google changed their security mechanisms on Google Drive.
As a result, false alerts of new pets/service packs have since been generated at boot time and upon restarting X.

Please install the attached service pack pet to rectify this issue.

[8-bit]

I recently acquired a Asus 900A EEEpc and restored the original software on it after getting a number of errors.
But it still had problems as the Check for Updates software did not work.
A update of that was available. But would error out in trying to download with the site not being found.

Anyway, I got tired of that quickly and figured I would try some OSes I had installed to USB flash drives.
And I found one that really supported the notebook..
So I can now report that Blue Pup works fine!
It supports all the hardware and the Chrome screen looks right at home on the Asus 900A eeepc!

As I play more, I will check back.
Also, I want to try a later version of BluePup installed on a 8 gig secure digital stick. I will have to create it on another pc though.

[ETP]

Update 31st July

Flash:

Adobe have changed things and the utility "GetFlash" needs to be updated.
To do that:

1. Use PPM to uninstall the existing version. (1.5.1)

2. Install the attached version (1.5.6) by forum member ASRI éducation.

3. Use the new version to obtain the latest flash player:

Code: Select all

getflash-1.5-6|GetFlash: install Flashplayer
flashplayer11-11.2.202.491|Adobe Flash Player 11 browser plugin and Preferences.

Metro Tiles:

Two of the Metro tiles (500 & GrooveShark) are now defunct and should be removed.
To do that:

1. Right click each in turn and select delete on the pop up menu bar at the bottom of the screen.

2. In order to compensate for the loss of the two (large) tiles, increase the size of a few others.
In the example below the clock tile has been made large to display both time zones.
The Sky News & BBC News live RSS feed have also been increased in size.

Pet alert has been turned on & will remain so for 72 hours.