Quirky Xerus 8.6 (Aug. 16), Beaver 8.7.1 (Sept. 21), 2018

[Sage]

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 021#924021
Yes, Chromebooks are interesting because they can be cheap! Doubtless you are aware of the above thread. I reckon there's a good future for hardware & SW conversions of that sort of kit. Only catch is avoiding the add-on costs if one needs to plug-in HW from previous incarnations or proprietary stuff. [Was caught out recently by a unit with a USB -C 3.1. Wasn't advertised as Apple. Genuine converter to regular USB was listed, by Apple, at ~fifty quid! ] Stories of folks spending fortunes on eg interseries connectors/ADC boards/&co for RPi s.

[prehistoric]

@Sage,

Hey! I'm the one claiming to be prehistoric. Even I use flash drives.

As for problems with SSDs, I built a system with a 64 GB SSD some years ago. I wasn't sure how long it would last, but I set it up as a cache for the hard drive, so it is read-mostly. User files constantly being modified generally go to the hard drive. I recently replaced that hard drive, but that SSD keeps on ticking.

The owner was wondering about getting a replacement for something this old, but I have 120 GB and 240 GB SSDs standing by. No need to pay more for obsolete components.

I have yet to hear a complaint from anyone whose laptop drive I've replaced with an SSD.

You need to compare new problems with older alternatives.

[dangerfirebob]

Ah, sorry prehistoric I was not clear enough about the process I used to get to Xerus 8.1.5

I've confirmed your analysis by trying to reproduce the success reported above by dangerfirebob. I was able to use the universal installer in Quirky Werewolf 7.4 to install from the Xerus 8.1.5 ISO. My problem was that this approach got as far as the Quirky boot screen, but failed to find the vmlinuz kernel file.

I went from Quirky Werewolf 7.4 to Xerus 8.0. and then used puppy package manger to upgrade to Xerus 8.1.5 a quirky experience.

Limited success truly because now the touchpad on my HP mini does not work and I have to use a usb mouse due to a missing synaptic driver dependency that seems impossible to install: xorg-input-abi-22

I will keep using this distro for a while, it seems really good all round and the HP mini touchpad is not anything special anyway + I was getting a lot of usb power failings with Xerus 8.0 probably a hardware fault, time will tell.

[prehistoric]

@dangerfirebob,

Thanks to a misunderstanding we now have a third way to install Quirky Xerus 8.1.5.

I interpreted your post to mean you used Quirky Werewolf to install to a flash drive using the ISO image for Xerus 8.1.5, even though that was defective.

I then looked at the result, and decided the main problem was a missing vmlinuz file, which I added. Do not add the initrd.q file. This is not necessary if it is directly mounting the partition with the filesystem, and contains an error.

I've just tested the resulting flash drive installation on another machine which just happens to be an HP Elitebook 6930p.

The mini-touchpad works fine on this, and is reported as a Synaptics Touchpad by hwinfo.

[dangerfirebob]

@prehistoric

I'm glad you got it working, I just reinstalled Quirky Xerus 8.0 after discovering that the Vlc player was not working and Xine wouldn't install codecs properly. As far as I can see my Xerus 8.1.5 was fatally corrupted.

With the Xerus 8.0 installation I had to manually add the vmlinuz file too, I also added the q.sfs file for luck, not sure whats in there! programs maybe.

The service pack upgrade to Xerus 8.1.5 is strange, there is a long wait time for it to complete, maybe I didn't wait long enough, I ended up with a lot of missing stuff. I'm not going to use that recommended upgrade again after my experience. Sounds like a fresh installation from the iso is better.

Quirky Xerus 8.0 with the Xine media player working fine again on this little HP mini.

[amj]

I'm in the process of installing Quirky Xerus 8.1.5 on an Intel Compute Stick.

I bought the bottom of the range model that ships with Ubuntu because I could not bear the idea of paying a license fee to that bunch in Seattle for their detestable OS.

Wrote the QX815 image onto a microSD card, inserted the card into the stick, changed the boot order and booted into Quirky rather than Ubuntu. It's my first 'adventure' with anything UEFI.

But using Gparted to look at the Quirky partitions on the card and the Ubuntu partitions on the stick I see a small issue which, fortunately, should not be difficult to resolve.

The two Quirky partitions at 512Mb and 6.64Gb add up to 7.14Gb and that is slightly larger than the 7.12Gb internal memory of the stick with it's four Ubuntu partitions.

So it appears that I will have to shrink the QX815 image slightly in order to transfer Quirky to the internal memory of the stick.

[don570]

Barry K newest distro xerus-8.1.5 has the wacom tablet driver built-in.
This is great! No more worries about installation.

_____________________________________________

[don570]

I used option 2 in Barry's install instructions
to make a bootable USB stick. It would boot up when I made some changes
to my BIOS to boot from a USB hard drive.

An unusual thing I noticed is that PLOP boot manager won't work with
USB stick. I think it's the result of the unusual formating of the stick
as explained in in Barry's blog.

Unique Linux install method Posted on 24 Dec 2016, 9:44 by admin
After looking around, I can't find this method of installing Linux to a UEFI-computer described anywhere else.

The idea came to me from thinking what the UEFI-firmware does at bootup. It scans looking for ESP fat partitions. It will find the main one, for booting Windows, and it will find one on, say, a plugged-in USB drive.

The UEFI-setup then offers what it finds as candidates to boot from. So, I thought, if I create another ESP fat partition on the internal hard drive, won't the UEFI-firmware discover that also, and offer it as a candidate?

Yes, it does. It is interesting that it is named "Android-IA", which indicates that the firmware is probably designed to handle dual-boot Windows-Android. So, finding another ESP-fat partition on the same internal drive, it assumes hey that must be Android.

__________________________

[FeodorF]

Just found a little issue about 'aumix' / 'PNMixer 0.5.1' .
I'm using HDA Intel with a Realtek ALC 1200 chip.

My problems are:
a) Moving the VOL slider to 100% doesn't boost the sound all the way up.
b) At each reboot VOL gets reseted to 0% - no sound.

Looking at 'urxvt alsamixer' gives some enlightenment.
slider VOL changes the 'Master' level from 0 to 100%, which is o.k.
slider Spkr changes the 'Beep' level from 0 to 100%, so this one equals the motherboard speaker, which is o.k.
slider Line changes the 'Line' level from 0 to 100%, which is o.k.
slider Pcm2 changes the 'Headphone' level from 0 to 100%, which is odd
slider IGain doesn't change anything
slider Digital1 turns 'S/PDIF' on or off

Problem a) is easy to solve - change 'urxvt alsamixer' slider 'Front' from 56% to 100%. -Solved-
Problem b) the 'aumix' data file gets written to /file/.aumixrc and to /root/.aumixrc. They are setup to the right levels but 'VOL' is still 0% after reboot.
If you open 'urxvt aumix -> file -> Load From /file/aumixrc' after reboot the VOL becomes 100%. This means that PNMixer works fine.
Ah! If you disable PNMixer in the 'Startup' the alsamixer value for 'Master' will still be set to 0% after reboot.

Has somebody the same problem?

[don570]

When i tried running the latest Blender app I got the following error

# ./blender
AL lib: (EE) UpdateDeviceParams: Failed to set 44100hz, got 48000hz instead
Error! Blender requires OpenGL 2.1 to run. Try updating your drivers.
#

Fatdog 64 will run Blender app nicely

_________________________________________________

I will do a test with an old version of blender which doesn't require opengl 2.1

__________________________________________________

[BarryK]

I used option 2 in Barry's install instructions
to make a bootable USB stick. It would boot up when I made some changes
to my BIOS to boot from a USB hard drive.

An unusual thing I noticed is that PLOP boot manager won't work with
USB stick. I think it's the result of the unusual formating of the stick
as explained in in Barry's blog.

Unique Linux install method Posted on 24 Dec 2016, 9:44 by admin
After looking around, I can't find this method of installing Linux to a UEFI-computer described anywhere else.

The idea came to me from thinking what the UEFI-firmware does at bootup. It scans looking for ESP fat partitions. It will find the main one, for booting Windows, and it will find one on, say, a plugged-in USB drive.

The UEFI-setup then offers what it finds as candidates to boot from. So, I thought, if I create another ESP fat partition on the internal hard drive, won't the UEFI-firmware discover that also, and offer it as a candidate?

Yes, it does. It is interesting that it is named "Android-IA", which indicates that the firmware is probably designed to handle dual-boot Windows-Android. So, finding another ESP-fat partition on the same internal drive, it assumes hey that must be Android.

__________________________

Hi, a correction about that quote from me.

That is in relation to a full install into partitions of the internal hard drive of the computer.
My blog post is here:
http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00475

I haven't tried plop, so can't comment as to why it doesn't work. I guess that I will have to add that to my to-do list!

[don570]

Plop boot manager hasn't been improved since 2013 and I am using an old version 5.0.12

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html

______________________________________________________

The nice thing about using quirky xerus 8.1.5 --->

If I am not using hard drives or another USB stick my noisy fan will shut off, so it's like using a raspberry pi computer.

_____________________________________________

Dropbear package can be installed easily
http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/quirky ... x86_64.pet

______________________________________________

[linuxcbon]

Hi Barry,
can you please make a barebone version too, with only PPM ? So we install only what we need.
Cheers.
Happy new year

[belham2]

Hi Barry,
can you please make a barebone version too, with only PPM ? So we install only what we need.
Cheers.
Happy new year

++++++++1 !!

That would be extremely ripper!


I know we can (or are supposed to) do the re-master thing and all if we want to remove stuff and/or get a Quirky like we like it, but sometimes when you re-master, you sit there as a frustrated user (realizing your limits) and truly wonder if you got everything (docs, libs, /usr files, /bin files, and/or hidden files) of some program and/or programs removed.

Having a barebones Quirky install, with only the PPM, would allow us all to build only the Quirky we want. Come to think of it, has any puppy developer ever attempted to do this? Why not? So many puppies nowadays come chockers!

Why can't we in the puppy-verse have the beauty & freedom of a barebones PPM-only (especially the beauty of one of Barry's works) without the re-mastering headaches???

Sensing that this would go over completely gangbusters if Barry would do this

[don570]

I was able to compile gimp 2.8.18 by disabling fu-script and python
I had to disable python because of the following warning during compile

checking for headers required to compile python extensions... not found
configure: error:
*** Could not find Python 2 headers.
*** Please install them, or skip building the python scripting extension by
*** passing --disable-python to configure (but then you will not be able
*** to use scripts for GIMP that are written in Python).

_________________________________________________________

[don570]

I was able to run an old version of blender that didn't require opengl 2

http://download.blender.org/release/Ble ... 64.tar.bz2

I extracted in /opt and then ran executable 'blender'.
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[eowens2]

I have installed Quirky Xerus 8.1.5 to a USB stick using alternate method option#1, ‘4install-quirky-to-drive-gpt’ and ‘xerus64-8.1.5.usfs.xz’.

The system boots to desktop without problem, but on initial setup the wifi fails to activate. I have tried Simple Network Setup and Frisbee without success.

The loopback network interface is present, but wifi and ethernet interfaces are both absent. The iwlwifi kernel module is loaded.

A few months ago Barry K posted a wifi- firmware update .pet. I installed the update but it did not solve the problem.

I am running another linux distro on the same hardware (Asus Zenbook UX305FA), and the wifi works fine.

Any suggestions as to how to get these network interfaces up and going?

[belham2]

I have installed Quirky Xerus 8.1.5 to a USB stick using alternate method option#1, ‘4install-quirky-to-drive-gpt’ and ‘xerus64-8.1.5.usfs.xz’.

The system boots to desktop without problem, but on initial setup the wifi fails to activate. I have tried Simple Network Setup and Frisbee without success.

The loopback network interface is present, but wifi and ethernet interfaces are both absent. The iwlwifi kernel module is loaded.

A few months ago Barry K posted a wifi- firmware update .pet. I installed the update but it did not solve the problem.

I am running another linux distro on the same hardware (Asus Zenbook UX305FA), and the wifi works fine.

Any suggestions as to how to get these network interfaces up and going?

Hi eowens2,

You don't say what your wireless is on your ASUS? Is it Broadcom? In my HP atom-based laptop, it uses Broadcom/B43-related wireless firmware. Barry K posted this on his blog about firmware that was left out of Quirky 8.0. The problem still exists for me in later Quirky versions, even 8.1.5. To get around the problem at that time (if this Broadcom-B43 thing applies to you), see this thread here:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... bd21923ceb

It is easily solved using a Quirky Werewolf 7.2 ISO that you can download from Ibiblio, or you can try Bill's pet he wrote (see above thread). Plus, Slavvo's Quirky edition also has all the correct Broadcom firmware and you can copy from his Quirky version.

I honestly thought this Broadcom/B43 problem was going to be solved by the time Quirky 8.1.5 came out, but I'll be danged if I still don't have to get the firmware from a Quirky Werewolf-edition just so that my HP netbook can have wireless when I'm using the latest Quirky 8.0 & up to & Including 8.1.5 builds.

Hope this helps & applies to your situation.



[Edit: I just did a search of the Asus Zenbook UX305FA, it says it is Intel wireless. Boy, there are a ton of complaints that Google brings back just on the wireless alone with this laptop. From wireless not functioning to just plain very slow perfromance to very short range reach of it to many different routers. Also, it says Intel has released new wireless firmware, a few times for this ASUS model. Have you installed the last & latest Intel firmware for your model? That might be something to check. Sorry I can't help any further. Only other thing I can suggest, is to download the latest Fatdog64 and see if it immediately sets up on your laptop and if the wireless works. If Fatdog64 works (or maybe even try Tahr64), you'll know the problem is inside Quirky. I don't know why, but I have never had any Fatdog64 version fail to setup the wireless on any machine I've ever tried it on, from mine, to my familys, to friends and others...and this includes very old machines with ancient wireless up to brand new ones with the latest wireless wizardry.]

[BarryK]

Hi Barry,
can you please make a barebone version too, with only PPM ? So we install only what we need.
Cheers.
Happy new year

Yes, this Quirky has got a bit fat.
A surprise is on the way. It won't be barebones, but will be much slimmer.

Note, it would be possible to modify the PPM to uninstall builtin packages, that is, not just those you have installed.

Libreoffice, for example, could be uninstalled.

The PPM checks dependencies when you choose to uninstall a package, so in theory you could uninstall packages without breaking the system.

Just thinking how someone could try it... one way would be to write a script that converts everything in /root/.packages/builtin_files into the .files format that gets created when you install a package.

Then... rename 'woof-installed-packages' to 'user-installed-packages' and create an empty 'woof-installed-packages'

Then run PPM and start uninstalling.

Finally, rename user-installed-packages back to woof-installed-packages.

Something like that, not sure if I have left out some vital detail.

Afterward, take a snapshot, using the Snapshot Manager, and in /audit/snapshots you will have an SFS of your new small filesystem. Which could be used to create a new usb stick. Take an unused Quirky usb stick, mount the second partition, delete almost everything in it (where the contents of your new sfs will be written to) and write /dev/zero to a file to zeroise the entire partition. Then copy the contents of your new SFS.
Again, can't guarantee I haven't left out some vital detail.

[eowens2]

Hi Belham2,

Thank you for your rapid response to my problem.

Yes, my wireless hardware is from Intel. I mentioned the kernel module but not the manufacturer, sorry!

I mentioned ‘another linux distro’ on my laptop; it is indeed Fatdog64_710-final, and with it the wifi works flawlessly.

I felt like experimenting, so in Quirky Xerus 8.1.5 I renamed the firmware directory to ‘oldfirmware’, and in its place I dropped the firmware directory from Fatdog64. And after reboot, the wifi in Quirky Xerus 8.1.5 works great! (I hope hiding the original firmware doesn’t break something else.)

After updating the Quirky Package Manager, I downloaded Chromium, but unfortunately it would not activate from the menu or desktop icon. Invoking it from the command line with ’#chromium’ yielded about 40 lines of error messages. Now I am not too smart about this kind of stuff, but I think the gist of the error messages was that Chromium does not want to be run as root. I think I read a solution to this somewhere, I’ll try to dig it out.