Where is 666philb?

[bigpup]

Puppy development moves slow.

If it is not broken do not try to fix it.

The newest Puppies in development are more about support for newer/newest hardware and less about new features and programs.

The programs that come in Tahrpup are a good example of well developed and tested Puppy programs.

Again, if it is not broken do not try to fix it.

At this point, in a lot of them, all you can do is add features, just for the right to say it has a new feature, not that it is a feature that is needed.

What is posted on puppylinux.com are the official versions of Puppy.
What the next official Puppy will be, is up to the person(S) that have the duty to determine this.
A lot of different Puppy versions, in development, could be the next official version.

In this forum you will see a lot of different Puppy projects.
Some just started.
Some almost completed.
Some completed, but still needing bug testing and final tweaking.
Etc..........

Always need more people testing a Puppy version, and helping to find bugs and stuff that may not be working
correctly.

[nic007]

Unless you are using the absolute newest hardware, you can easily get by using a Puppy which is 4 years old or even older. For most users only the browser needs to be updated imho. Not quite sure how linux works but it seems they strive to include the newest hardware drivers, etc. in every new kernel that comes out. Not sure if you can download a specific linux driver as a standalone and if it would be easy to install it on an older version of puppy. I don't think it will be as easy as adding a new driver to a Windows machine.

[musher0]

(...)
Not sure if you can download a specific linux driver as a standalone and if it would be easy to install it on an older version of puppy. I don't think it will be as easy as adding a new driver to a Windows machine.

Hi nic007.

Yes you can download and install "a specific linux driver as a standalone".

As to being easy, that depends. One could ask a dev to archive it as a pet,
and then it would be easy.

Finding it may be the actual problem; there are all sorts of Linux drivers
on the Web, but they are not or badly advertised.

BFN.

[nic007]

(...)
Not sure if you can download a specific linux driver as a standalone and if it would be easy to install it on an older version of puppy. I don't think it will be as easy as adding a new driver to a Windows machine.

Hi nic007.

Yes you can download and install "a specific linux driver as a standalone".

As to being easy, that depends. One could ask a dev to archive it as a pet,
and then it would be easy.

Finding it may be the actual problem; there are all sorts of Linux drivers
on the Web, but they are not or badly advertised.

BFN.

Thanks musher0, yes a bit of a needle in a haystack. Would these drivers already be compiled or do you need to do it yourself (or ask someone to do it for you) for a specific puppy? All seems a bit cumbersome and not user friendly.

[musher0]

I don't know.

[n00bPup]

wow, the puppy community is more active than i originally thought. ya'll are cool.

[LateAdopter]

Would these drivers already be compiled or do you need to do it yourself (or ask someone to do it for you) for a specific puppy? All seems a bit cumbersome and not user friendly.

Hello nic007
Drivers in linux are normally in the form of a kernel module and maybe firmware.

Supported open source drivers are part of the kernel source code, so to get a new driver you need to update the kernel to one which includes it.

Puppies need a kernel which includes some specific configuration items. The easiest way to get one is to compile it using the kernel kit part of woof-CE. That's not as hard as it sounds, because kernel compiling is such a well trodden path.
Once you have done your first one the rest are trivially easy. It's the only compiling that I do.

Changing kernels in Xenialpup is also easy. The 7.0.7 versions of Xenialpup64 use the traditional Puppy boot parameters whereas the 7.0.8 versions use the updated Woof-CE parameters.

Unsupported/closed source drivers have to be compiled separately for one specific kernel so you can't download them. An example is the nVidia proprietary driver. But I have no experience of that.

PS: Thanks 666philb and also Playdayz, BarryK and Pemasu for your work on the various UPUPs

[nic007]

Would these drivers already be compiled or do you need to do it yourself (or ask someone to do it for you) for a specific puppy? All seems a bit cumbersome and not user friendly.

Hello nic007
Drivers in linux are normally in the form of a kernel module and maybe firmware.

Supported open source drivers are part of the kernel source code, so to get a new driver you need to update the kernel to one which includes it.

Puppies need a kernel which includes some specific configuration items. The easiest way to get one is to compile it using the kernel kit part of woof-CE. That's not as hard as it sounds, because kernel compiling is such a well trodden path.
Once you have done your first one the rest are trivially easy. It's the only compiling that I do.

Changing kernels in Xenialpup is also easy. The 7.0.7 versions of Xenialpup64 use the traditional Puppy boot parameters whereas the 7.0.8 versions use the updated Woof-CE parameters.

Unsupported/closed source drivers have to be compiled separately for one specific kernel so you can't download them. An example is the nVidia proprietary driver. But I have no experience of that.

PS: Thanks 666philb and also Playdayz, BarryK and Pemasu for your work on the various UPUPs

Are you saying that I need to re-compile the whole kernel if I want to add a specific driver to a certain version of puppy?

[musher0]

wow, the puppy community is more active than i originally thought. ya'll are cool.

Yeah, we're always simmering, we're all "hot" dogs.

[LateAdopter]

Are you saying that I need to re-compile the whole kernel if I want to add a specific driver to a certain version of puppy?

For kernel modules, the answer depends on whether the driver is part of the kernel source (in-tree) or third party (out-of-tree)

With standard Puppy kernels you can get the as-compiled kernel sources SFS which includes the symbol version table. With that SFS you can compile an individual kernel module from the source or a third party kernel module that the kernel will load, without recompiling the kernel.

But, if the kernel module is needed to boot Puppy, it has to be built into the kernel. In that case you need to recompile the vmlinuz. "make bzimage" takes about 10 minutes with cleaned kernel source or about 2 minutes if I have run it previously. Thats on an AMD Athlon II 240 low end system.

If you have compiled your own Puppy kernel, the same applies.

If you get an in-tree kernel module from someone else, your kernel will only load it if it matches the expected symbol version. With a standard Puppy kernel everybody has identical source code and symbol version table so this will be OK.

Some examples of why you need to learn to compile a kernel (only half an hour learning time):

Computer component designs are commonly updated, by the manufacturer, about annually. It takes about a year for updated kernel modules to find their way into a released linux kernel and then a year or two to get into a Puppy. If you buy new hardware, you can't wait that long.

I bought a motherboard with an Intel Braswell N3150 processor SoC. The existing Puppy kernels did not have support for the CherryView graphics on the SoC. So I compiled an up-to-date kernel for Tahrpup64. That was the first time that I compiled a kernel.

I bought a DVD-T2 tuner. The driver was fixed and moved from staging to mainline with kernel 4.6. So I compiled that for Xenialpup64.

The point of Puppy with a savefile is that you can have multiple copies in one partition and it only takes two minutes to make a new copy to try an experiment like this, without the risk of breaking your working system.

You need about 2GB of space in a UNIX filesystem to compile a kernel but it can be a 2GB savefile on a FAT32 partition, which is what I have.

Even if you have to re-compile the whole kernel, it takes less time than any other option.

[nic007]

Are you saying that I need to re-compile the whole kernel if I want to add a specific driver to a certain version of puppy?

For kernel modules, the answer depends on whether the driver is part of the kernel source (in-tree) or third party (out-of-tree)

With standard Puppy kernels you can get the as-compiled kernel sources SFS which includes the symbol version table. With that SFS you can compile an individual kernel module from the source or a third party kernel module that the kernel will load, without recompiling the kernel.

But, if the kernel module is needed to boot Puppy, it has to be built into the kernel. In that case you need to recompile the vmlinuz. "make bzimage" takes about 10 minutes with cleaned kernel source or about 2 minutes if I have run it previously. Thats on an AMD Athlon II 240 low end system.

If you have compiled your own Puppy kernel, the same applies.

If you get an in-tree kernel module from someone else, your kernel will only load it if it matches the expected symbol version. With a standard Puppy kernel everybody has identical source code and symbol version table so this will be OK.

Some examples of why you need to learn to compile a kernel (only half an hour learning time):

Computer component designs are commonly updated, by the manufacturer, about annually. It takes about a year for updated kernel modules to find their way into a released linux kernel and then a year or two to get into a Puppy. If you buy new hardware, you can't wait that long.

I bought a motherboard with an Intel Braswell N3150 processor SoC. The existing Puppy kernels did not have support for the CherryView graphics on the SoC. So I compiled an up-to-date kernel for Tahrpup64. That was the first time that I compiled a kernel.

I bought a DVD-T2 tuner. The driver was fixed and moved from staging to mainline with kernel 4.6. So I compiled that for Xenialpup64.

The point of Puppy with a savefile is that you can have multiple copies in one partition and it only takes two minutes to make a new copy to try an experiment like this, without the risk of breaking your working system.

You need about 2GB of space in a UNIX filesystem to compile a kernel but it can be a 2GB savefile on a FAT32 partition, which is what I have.

Even if you have to re-compile the whole kernel, it takes less time than any other option.

Thanks for the info. Just a note - I used to use a "fake" savefile to do my linux system editings on a FAT partition. Name it something like tester.2fs. I kept this as a "permanent" file and mounted it with filemnt whenever needed.

[Mike Walsh]

is it true the tahr 6.0.6 iso is no longer available??
That would be a setback since tahr 6.0.5 and then 6.0.6 are very excellent distros. real heavy lifters running very well systems like zoneminder on a surprisingly large range of machines...old,older and the newest.

does this mean an end to Puppy Linux in this direction? is Xenialpup 32/64bit going to be the end of this line?

See for yourself.

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pu ... 20-6.0-CE/

Still listed.....and I've just downloaded it, to make sure. All present and correct; md5 sum matches.

I don't think we should worry too much. Many creative geniuses find, at some point, that extended 'sabbaticals' are required to allow things to percolate through the old grey matter.....and to permit the creative juices to be refreshed. And, just sometimes, they do indeed say, 'Enough's enough'.

As long as he's okay, that's the main thing. He's already established his legacy; the original Tahr 6.0 CE was the Pup that really got me on my feet in Puppyland. Ran like a trooper. right from the very first boot.....

Unless you are using the absolute newest hardware, you can easily get by using a Puppy which is 4 years old or even older. For most users only the browser needs to be updated imho. Not quite sure how linux works but it seems they strive to include the newest hardware drivers, etc. in every new kernel that comes out.

^^^ This I agree with. On a 15-yr old laptop, why would I need support for the latest hardware? The newest items on this are the SSD (PATA/IDE interface!), and the webcam. The webcam's UVC-compliant, and that's been supported for years. Ditto the IDE interface...


Mike.