Carolina: Vanguard Edition Release 2 December 2014

[yerc1]

Sound works ok on bootup, however if I do run Alsa Config it doesn't detect any sound cards at all.

Have you done the Sound Wizard (Control Panel, Alsa Sound Wizard)?
I did and only had to do options ONE to THREE to set sound correctly (THREE is for picking the correct card).
After picking the correct card, I was then able to select/set the controls in Audio Mixer.

I tried option FOUR (Alsa Wizard) and IIRC it said no legacy card detected

[Geoffrey]

Sound works ok on bootup, however if I do run Alsa Config it doesn't detect any sound cards at all.

I did and only had to do options ONE to THREE to set sound correctly (THREE is for picking the correct card).
After picking the correct card, I was then able to select/set the controls in Audio Mixer.

Alsa wizard is a pain, I think Slacko even has it disabled, but like you say use the option THREE " Kirk's Multiple Sound Card Wizard" that works for me,
If I plugin a USB headset I can select it, it say's that you need to reboot, I've alway's found that just restartX was sufficient.

[Moat]

Try changing themes.

Thanks, Marv. Trying different themes didn't appear to improve things any. But - changing both system-wide default and Firefox's override fonts to Ubuntu (which I've found are about as good rendering as any) has improved things a fair amount. Fonts are still a bit "coarse" overall, but it's now rather subtle.

Aack. These old eyes are becoming more/too sensitive to such things!

Bob

[Moat]

Also - Screener does not appear to be working for me. Trying various settings, saving and rebooting... no dice - never initiates a screensaver after the set time. The preview button opens a seperate preview window - selecting a preview from there only re-opens the preview window, with no actual preview having been displayed.

Anybody else?

Bob

[Geoffrey]

Also - Screener does not appear to be working for me.

The screen save uses Xlock that's why, it seems to be tied in with a font issue

[rufwoof]

Sound works ok on bootup, however if I do run Alsa Config it doesn't detect any sound cards at all.

I did and only had to do options ONE to THREE to set sound correctly (THREE is for picking the correct card).
After picking the correct card, I was then able to select/set the controls in Audio Mixer.

Alsa wizard is a pain, I think Slacko even has it disabled, but like you say use the option THREE " Kirk's Multiple Sound Card Wizard" that works for me,
If I plugin a USB headset I can select it, it say's that you need to reboot, I've alway's found that just restartX was sufficient.

Sound and the multiple sound card selector works fine after initial boot - its only if alsa is run that purges the sound cards - and then detects none to install/reinstate. On other pup's alsa works ok and scans...finds sound cards ok, so presumably a bug in Vanguard Carolina.

[Gobbi]

Hi @battleshooter
I did an install with an Nvidia GeForce GT 720 . It went straight to the desktop .
With my AMD card I noticed that after booting it was enough to get to prompt and type xwin to get to the desktop - without Xorgwizard .
About amd-driver : I applied the patch , the driver was installed - with errors - but no luck . As soon as I got out to prompt , after aticonfig --initial I lost control of the system. Without the patch the driver did not even install .
Having both cards in the system made vlina use the vesa driver instead of radeon even the card that was used was the AMD one .
Installed the QEMU_32bit-2.0.0.pet provided be @mikeb but there were some libraries missing so I was stucked at that point with my experiment for KVM-VGA passthrough of the Nvidia card . Before that I enabled ( modprobe ...) kvm_amd , pci-stub and vfio-pci modules successfully , I've seen them working ( the card was assigned )after I had put in the kernel bootline the pci-stub.ids ... line and booted with it . But Qemu did not start .

[battleshooter]

Oh boy, loads to catch up on.

From a quick glance, looks like the major issues are:

1. Fonts
2. Alsa
3. KVM
4. AMD propriety drivers
5. CB30 touchpad (At least the suspense is resolved...)

I'll see what I can do. Thanks for holding the fort Geoff and anyone else that tried to figure these issues out.

[rufwoof]

Hi battleshooter

Another change that would be nice as you're using a 3.18 kernel that supports LZ4 compressed initrd would be to include the LZ4 headers/code in the kernel source squashfs code. When mksquashfs (and unsquashfs) code is also changed with versions that support LZ4 that would mean being the first pup to fully support LZ4.

I use LZO on my pup at present and level 1 (low compression/fast) is great - typically decompressing around 3 times as fast as gzip level 1 (but with less compression so overall around twice as fast)... and lz4 can be 3 times quicker than lzo (so of the order 10 times faster than gzip).

I find that with Libre memory bound its as fast as Abiword - and that's full blown Libre compared to Puppy's cut down Abi-word. Were the puppy also to support LZ4 then so much the better (libre could be mksquashfs'd to a lz4 compressed format and if loaded into/from ram !!!).

Vanguard is one of the best pup's I've seen and has taken 2nd place in my grub boot (reserve). Great stuff - highly impressed.

[yerc1]

Oh boy, loads to catch up on.

From a quick glance, looks like the major issues are:

1. Fonts
2. Alsa
3. KVM
4. AMD propriety drivers
5. CB30 touchpad (At least the suspense is resolved...)

I'll see what I can do. Thanks for holding the fort Geoff and anyone else that tried to figure these issues out.

I'll deviate a bit. Just can't help it
Has anyone watched last night's match between Kygrios & Seppi?
That was epic. Go Aussie!

Update on fonts.
Font configuration files 30-metric-aliases.conf, 45-latin.conf, and 60-latin.conf are almost the same as those in Mint 17 XFCE - Vanguard has longer 30-metric-aliases.conf actually due to additional fonts in the alias list. Mint does have more conf files, among them a number of dejavu ones. I was tempted to transplant the dejavu confs to Vanguard but I held off on that thought for now.

I added the liberation fonts from the repo and installed msttcorefonts & ubuntu-font-family from Mint using Pfont. Firefox fonts changed after this, but all were bold. Checked the ms fonts and saw Verdana only had bold, bold italic, and italic. I grabbed Verdana regular from a very old laptop with Win, installed it and voila the result is what you can see in the attachment. Much improved. See the FF menu and the forum text.

Will continue to figure out fonts in other areas, the Notifications for example.

Happy Australia day!

[battleshooter]

Happy Australia Day to you to yerc

The Kygrios/Seppi match sounds intense from the reports. I'm glad Kygrios is doing ok, I was wondering if he would just fade out after his last big win (It was Nadal right?).

Concerning the notification font, I actually deliberately made it like that. Thought it might be easier on the eyes if the important part was larger. Try the Ninix notification theme to see what notifications look like without my meddling.

This fonts issue is a bit difficult for me to discern, it seems my eyes aren't as sensitive as I can barely notice a difference and the fonts look ok to me, but I don't doubt there is an issue due to the multiple reports .

[Moat]

This fonts issue is a bit difficult for me to discern, it seems my eyes aren't as sensitive as I can barely notice a difference and the fonts look ok to me...

Yes - would seem hard to squash a bug that ya' can't see - like no-see-ums and fleas.

I've got it pretty well sorted on my machine, after playing around with different fonts/settings/Firefox settings/etc - it's still there, noticeable, but barely. Who knows... maybe it's an issue specific to certain graphics driver/hardware combinations...?

BUT - know-little 'ol me has a sneaking suspicion that it may somehow be related to the underlying issue with Xlock/screensaver/xfontsel that Marv and Geoffrey were discussing a page or so back - http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 465#823465

Keeping watch to see where that may lead... (need a "popcorn" emoticon here)

Otherwise, looking and running marvelously. Thanks!

Bob

[Marv]

@battleshooter,

Of fonts and alsa.... Both issues are puppy-wide and I don't see either being resolved to everyones satisfaction. System fonts yes, browser fonts always a compromise at best I have 3 or 4 browsers installed and each and every one renders differently even on the same pup. Some like it hot, some cold The Terminal font is a personal thing having spent far too many hours squinting at tiny and bad orange on black or green on black monochrome monitors in my misspent past. I like black text on white and lots of difference between 1l I and oO0. The locale/Xlibrary issue that is blocking xlock and screener is another thing. I confess I haven't been back to it other than wandering around the symlink carousel some and finding nothing obvious to me anyway.

[mikeslr]

Hi battleshooter & All,

He's done it. By Jove, he's done it.

Well, almost.

My wife has a Toshiba Satellite L775D -- a laptop with a 17.5 inch screen acquired to replace a desktop. 6 Gb RAM, Windows 7 Home Edition. Not a bad mobo but, by Puppy standards, slow to bootup, run and shutdown. And most importantly, very unfriendly toward Linux. Until now, with two exceptions, Zorin and Pinguy, booting into a Linux distro --via USB-Key, of course-- meant one or two of the following were unrecognizable: Wifi, sound or a Keyboard. The absence of the latter can be really irritating.

I setup Vanguard Release 2 on my Dell E6400 Laptop and then plugged the USB-Key into the Toshiba. On bootup I had both wifi and a Keyboard, but no sound. Tested by setting up wifi and opening firefox to Youtube Music. Having a keyboard enabled me to change out of the default sound card. Multi-sound Card wizard showed that 3 were found. The third --I forget which-- had Shakira "singing" "La, La, La-la-la, La, La. La-la-la" rather than just quietly jumping around and looking cute.

Well, whispering might be more accurate. With both Youtube's volume and the Taskbar volume slider set to maximum, Shakira was being very secretive in her communications. As I was certain her message to me was important, I played around with Alsa-wizard trying to make it louder. Obtained the same results reported above: No sound card found.

And then my wife returned bringing an end to this exploration for at least some time. My wife was an only child and grew up never having to share her toys. So she finds it somewhat unsettling when I play with one..
unless, of course, something has gone wrong with the Toshiba even by her standards and she asks for me to do something I hate: getting her Window7 to work tolerably well.

mikesLr

[battleshooter]

The third --I forget which-- had Shakira "singing" "La, La, La-la-la, La, La. La-la-la" rather than just quietly jumping around and looking cute.

Shakira was being very secretive in her communications. As I was certain her message to me was important, I played around with Alsa-wizard trying to make it louder. Obtained the same results reported above: No sound card found.

Ah Mike, you know how to make me laugh.

I wonder if my Alsa upgrades have made things worse instead of better due to overriding some of Puppy's standard conf files.

If anyone with Alsa problems could try downgrading back to the Alsa from the repo (It's in the Wary section) and report back here if there's a difference that would be good.

My computer's been playing up so trying to get backups going and clean up my messy file system a bit, then to wipe and reinstall, y'know everything.

But it all works just fine on Carolina 1.3 with the 3.17 kernel... Something involving font rendering has most definitely changed between the two...

The most major font change I made was adding Open Sans and changing it to the default font in Appearances, I changed the DPI too, maybe have a look at that.

I'm slowly going back through all the posts haven't replied to so I'll pop up occasionally with comment like this one out of the blue.

[Geoffrey]

Packaged the latest Flashplayer, find it in the repo flashplayer-11.2.202.440.

I've been searching to find what the xfont warning might be, this isn't a new problem, from what I gather xorg is a possible problem.

[Moat]

... I changed the DPI too, maybe have a look at that.

Yup - DPI was one tweak that has appeared to make a significant difference. After tweaking for a bit more, I'd now consider my initial font issues to be resolved.

Thanks much for this r2, battleshooter - she's just gorgeous!

Bob

[battleshooter]

... I changed the DPI too, maybe have a look at that.

Yup - DPI was one tweak that has appeared to make a significant difference. After tweaking for a bit more, I'd now consider my initial font issues to be resolved.

Thanks much for this r2, battleshooter - she's just gorgeous!

Bob

Excellent, glad to hear that Moat. Now just to consider should I change the DPI in Vanguard by default?

Who hates the "Show Full Path" in the thunar right click menu, well I've made a better one, I got sick of using the existing way of getting a file/folder path.

Now it just works, right click on a file or folder and click Copy Path, now you can paste it in any application.

battleshooter you will like this, makes it so much easier as there is no dnd from thunar to gtk.

It requires xclip from the repo, it's a small 15kb binary and the copy script is 67 bytes, why did I wait so long.

So right Geoff, I do like this, that manual copy step was so redundant... thanks Definitely going in the next Vanguard.

I also had need to make a symlink.... oh man, that create symlink's a dream. No need to open two Thunar windows to drag and drop or hunt around for link-to-@#$%. These two fixes... brilliant Geoff. I never realized how much they bothered me till I didn't have to live with it anymore. It's the little things... the little things

A pet for xf86-input-synaptics-1.8.1 might address the touchpad problem. That package is present in Fatdog.

Hi @battleshooter/ @Geoffrey can i trouble you with compiling one?

xf86-input-synaptics-1.8.1 is actually included in Vanguard Release 2. I think the last thing I settled on was it was a config issue or something? I'm a little out of touch with your case, have I been having a 2 week holiday? Hmmm

Want to send me a sys-info snapshot so we can start up diagnostics again? I'm not sure how busy I'll be over the next few weeks, been called up for jury duty, but we may as well get the ball rolling again.

xlock run in terminal on pristine boot gives:.

Code: Select all

# xlock
  Key:
Again:
Could not create FontSet -*-helvetica-medium-r-*-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-*,-*-*-medium-r-normal--24-*
Could not create FontSet fixed,-*-14-*
xlock: can not create fonset -*-helvetica-medium-r-*-*-24-*-*-*-*-*-*,-*-*-medium-r-normal--24-*!!!
#

Weird, on my first read through I thought this was due to Luxi-Mono overtaking some basic fonts but, clearly with yours and Geoff's tests, it's not the case.

Luxi Mono is restful on the eyes because its pronounced serifs make identification of individual characters easy. Which is especially vital if you're using transparent windows. But it looks good that large only if you have a decent version of libfreetype to render it with.

I've actually kinda got used to it now. It's not bad. I have yet to try your tips, but thanks for posting them. The comparisons are handy as well.

[mikeslr]

Hi battleshooter & All,

A couple of posts back I reported experiencing a problem similar to or the same as others: That in attempting to increase sound volume I had opened Alsa mixer, after which no volume controls were recognized.

The wife has gone to do something called "Chair Yoga" so I can surreptitiously explore her Toshiba again.

I remembered Retrovol and a quick check of Carolina's repo while on my desktop revealed a pet, albeit, circa 2012. Don't you just love Pupmode 13 with configuration set not to Save unless desired? With nothing to loose except time I used PPM to install it.

See Attached Screenshot.

Somewhere along the way in my prior exploration, I had used the Multi-Sound Card Wizard to set hw to 0. HW1 actually works better under Vanguard. Now I couldn't find the Wizard. Where did it go? Misplacing it may have been a good thing as I had to think of another way to get back to HW1. I merely clicked the dialog box on the hardware configuration window, deleted the zero and typed in the 1. Click Apply and Done.

Discernible sound even for these old ears.

mikesLr

[rufwoof]

I wonder if my Alsa upgrades have made things worse instead of better due to overriding some of Puppy's standard conf files.

If anyone with Alsa problems could try downgrading back to the Alsa from the repo (It's in the Wary section) and report back here if there's a difference that would be good.

No difference for me. Alsa wizard/setup still doesn't find anything (when run after booting and sound working ok).