Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Keef · Joined: 20 Dec 2007 Posts: 918 Location: Staffordshire

I'd forgotten all about MicroXwin. A long time ago I wanted to make a CLI only pup (just for the hell of it) and wanted to use the framebuffer. They did a Puppy demo version (if I remember correctly), so I borrowed the kernel - this was in Puppy 3 days. Then I learned how simple it was to compile a kernel with framebuffer enabled.

EDIT: Ahh, it is mentioned earlier in this thread Embarassed

scsijon · Posted: Thu 14 Dec 2017, 01:43 Post subject:

Had a reply from volkspc,

amigo · Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 2641

Ask the developers where one can get the source code -they should be willing to provide it in some form or state.

Keef · Joined: 20 Dec 2007 Posts: 918 Location: Staffordshire

I did manage to find the source code through the Wayback Machine. I think the demo may just have been the kernel perhaps, can't remember exactly, but I doubt if I still have it. I'll check through my old back-up CDs/DVDs in case.

scsijon · Posted: Fri 15 Dec 2017, 03:44 Post subject:

thanks Keef,

i've downloaded what you sent, in case you need to delete them, and yes, I was looking for the puppy demo 3.0.1 iso as that's what he could not supply.

However, with a bit of further reading on his site i'm considering going away from microxwin anway as it's code seems to have become proprietory and I don't want to deal with that problem at any stage.

On the other hand i've been sent early 2016 links that work for nano-x and it has a x11 version in it's build system to allow building to play with so I think i'll go back to that as nano-x is a happy framebuffer x and that's the best I can have for my brief as it means that other than one package requiring complete rebuild (other than the kernel of course) I can use most others that exist in the puppy 5 repositories.

So, thanks for your files, I shall look at them anyway as they may give me some ideas to add in.

amigo · Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 2641

I found a github repo for microwindows with commits up to 2016. While cloning that here, I found that I already had a microwindows folder with some other goodies, like NanoGTK. Before being abandoned, it was using gtk-1.2.7 and microwindows-0.99. It would be an interesting project to update it to gtk-1.2.10 and microwindows-1.0. Now that would be really useful -especially since nanox/microwindows now has also SDL support to go along with FLTK -which I don't really like.

scsijon · Posted: Sat 16 Dec 2017, 02:23 Post subject:

amigo · Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 2641

No, I found commits still in 2016 here:
https://github.com/ghaerr/microwindows
And there's a fork/mirror for buildroot here:
https://github.com/moovel/microwindows

I already started last night picking out the changes made to gtk-1.2.7 by/for NanoGTK and creating clean patches. Then, I'll get those patches working against stock gdk/gtk+-1.2.10 sources. Then, possibly, get them working against my rather extensively patched version of gtk-1.2.10.

The 2016 microwindows compiles just fine, here. It has build configs/methods for android in there too.

Getting the entire NanoGTK build working smoothly will take a bit of work. Their build seems to be somewhat aimed at builds on windows, hence all the sources in one 'project' -with funny build system included. Probably more feasible to build the gdk/gtk stuff normally, although perhaps with an isolated install location, like /opt/NanoGTK. The gtk sources have lots of changes which might make the libs unusable on normal desktop systems, if installed to the normal locations. NanoGTK includes a few example apps which are interesting -and can be compiled against normal gtk libs, even.

So, back to re-factoring patches -I've done about 2,000 hours of it in the past, so this is not kill me....

georgp24 · Joined: 05 May 2018 Posts: 1

I would not start with NanoGTK as a template. It is a lot of work to convert the Xlib calls in GTK to Nano-X calls.

There is an NXlib compatibility library included with Microwindows. This provides an Xlib interface and uses calls to Nano-X to implement this interface. NXlib is binary compatible with Xlib to the extend it implements the Xlib functions. NXlib provides a subset of the X11 functions sufficient to run most of the GTK 1.2.10 examples. The Readme file reports that you can compile the GTK examples with Xlib and then run them linking to NXlib, compiled as a shared library, instead .