corepup

[wanderer]

hi nosystemdthanks and musher0


i know musher0
i get a lot of complaints
its just easier for me to read and write this way
sorry


nosystemdthanks

i feel what you are doing with your script is very important

not just for corepup

but for puppy tinycore and the linux community

these are very useful ideas
and can improve things for everyone

i will just follow along as best i can
you are way above me
like i said a woof-ce for corepup

and i feel your script
and the ideas of corepup
will be of benefit to everyone

i will watch in awe

wanderer

[nosystemdthanks]

and i feel your script
and the ideas of corepup
will be of benefit to everyone

i will watch in awe

oh, it would be fun if you were right. the truth is, i think the entire concept of a distro is beginning to limit the number of people interested in gnu/linux.

distros create boundaries that make some people comfortable. others feel like "if it could just do this..." but they dont know how.

giving people tools to help people learn how to get power over their computing is great, because computing is more and more ubiquitous. first it was a living room thing, now its in your pocket. (probably a bad place to keep it, by the way.)

the best thing i think we can do is give people more places to start. then try not to keep them from going in whatever direction they want to.

linux itself (the kernel) started with the words:

I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I’d like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).

originally he wanted to call it "freax"; he thought the name "linux" was too egotistical. obviously, people convinced him to go with it.

you said your efforts would be something for (better) developers to laugh at. to me, thats the right attitude. not because of the modesty, just because as long as you can convince yourself of that, it will keep you from making decisions that complicate things where they dont need to be complicated.

the truth is, this goes beyond software. what we do is really about software, about personal freedom (ours and everyones) and about education-- making tools that are easier to teach and easier to learn.

not that people shouldnt make other tools with greater sophistication. if i spent more time with woof, id probably prefer configuring and compiling a kernel with woof than doing it without.

i do however, think pure bash is a language that makes it very tedious to maintain things of that size. python too, has disadvantages.

i have a post where i talk about creating a special, simple language just for remastering distros. is fig that language?

no, mcorepup didnt even start as a tool for remastering. it started as a tool to compare hundreds of different puppy linux versions, and produce a large automated report (so that you could learn about all puppies at the same time.)

give people more places to start. be more open to people trying different things-- and when you can, inspire someone or recognise them.

mkfigos would exist if you had not made corepup. mcorepup would not! so when youre feeling awe, remember its your work that inspired it-- your ideas about making tc friendlier that got us here.

of course you do this all the time, as people have noted in this thread. and you say i am the guru-- ha!

ok, id be happy to stay at your feet a while but if i stay too long, people will mistake the thread for a love letter. so cordially and formally then: "all the best." cheers. im going to work on that shorter manual now.

[wanderer]

i hear you man

but do not underestimate the importance
of a script that builds things
it makes complex things accessible to everyone

thats why woof-ce is so fascinating to people
push a button and out pops your creation

i (and im sure a lot of people who are reading this but not posting)
appreciate what you are doing

now let us all work together for the common good

wanderer

[wanderer]

hi all

i have uploaded the corepup-7.iso
to the smokey01 site

i am posting this using it now

this is a minimal corepup iso
cut down as much as it can be
without removing essential stuff

only 15 m

it has
xvesa
the corepup core.gz
corepup-jwm and corepup.jwmrc
the corepup logo
wbar
and some settings

it does have aterm and an editor

it can be unmounted
and removed
so the cd drive is available
to erase and burn cds

no wireless
no alternative desktops
no emelfm leafpad or dillo

however if you have wired internet
you can download what you want
and have a full system
by adding tcz to the cde or tce directories

if you need wireless already set up
use the corepup-6.iso

have fun

wanderer

[nosystemdthanks]

this is a minimal corepup iso
cut down as much as it can be
without removing essential stuff

only 15 m

and a script to create it: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... &id=117594

will i create a version of mcorepup for every version of corepup? unlikely. if youre going to do a corepup every week, im probably going to let versions of corepup go by.

keep up the good work.

[greengeek]

distros create boundaries that make some people comfortable. others feel like "if it could just do this..." but they dont know how.

giving people tools to help people learn how to get power over their computing is great

Very true. This is the exact reason why Puppy became the one Linux I was able to stay with.

Basically - Puppy was successful at booting my hardware, then I discovered it contained all those "wizards" that let me make progress on setting it up the way I wanted.

This is what i found was missing each time i went to try the original Tinycore - no wizards to help the uninitiated to go further than a boot - you had to reach a critical mass of technical understanding before you could work out how to add a new function.

I still feel that Puppy should make further progress in the area of "wizards". Modularity should not stop at the concept of plugging in sfs files. Every aspect of puppy should be driveable and configurable through a wizard. You want persistence? - then run the persistence wizard. You want to format a usb drive? - then run the disk format wizard. You want to discard all of the firmware files that are not in use in your current system? - then run the firmware wizard.

Sure - many functions are built into utilities rather than "wizards" - but they only become helpful later once you know what to look for.

IMHO Corepup will benefit from any method that makes it easy for a user to find the plugin function they want. Doesn't matter too much if a function is written in python, basic, bash, C++ or whatever - as long as it is wrapped in something that flags it's function to the user (ie a wizard label or wizard gui)

Each building block - or "wizard" - should be well labelled, easy to find, and preferably as non-technical as possible.

Just my 2c.

cheers!

[wanderer]

hi greengeek

thanks for your interest and input

wizards are great

but

I don not have the expertise to write scripts of that caliber

only the puppymaster barry k and his disciples the puppy gurus
possess this great power

another reason is that if you run a script
you don't know what is going on

and one part of this project is to try to learn how things work
so that you can come up with your own modifications

so my solution is to try to write howtos for each topic
and to have this thread and the tinycore forum as backup

I have learned a few things as I have gone along
and if I can learn the basics I think anyone can
I think if people give it a try they will find it is easier than they think

keep the faith

wanderer

[wanderer]

hi nosystemdthanks

there wont be many corepup isos overall

most mods will be through the corepup-mods files

thanks for all your help

wanderer

[nosystemdthanks]

I still feel that Puppy should make further progress in the area of "wizards". Modularity should not stop at the concept of plugging in sfs files. Every aspect of puppy should be driveable and configurable through a wizard. You want persistence? - then run the persistence wizard. You want to format a usb drive? - then run the disk format wizard. You want to discard all of the firmware files that are not in use in your current system? - then run the firmware wizard.

i dont think this is unreasonable. its part of what makes puppy puppy.

i could make you a disk format wizard and a discard firmware wizard tonight. however when it comes to such tools, this forum can be fiercely competitive. id feel like an idiot if i spent time making those tools, because someone would just come write a better one.

id probably just make a text version (blah, half the point of the wizard is a gui right?) and then slap yad on it to make it a "gui." sure, i could use gtkdialog.

i guarantee if wanderer got some really good tools for this, someone would just remaster it with other ones. which is great, i wonder how much that frees up wanderer to make tools that are simple and minimal, knowing that if corepup gets lots of users that theyll just add their own favourites to it.

i know there are people who have made similar tools for puppy over the years. i bet if people recommended them, wanderer could choose them and possibly adapt them to corepup.

so could i. but this is a matter of taste, and rather than "become fashion" id prefer to let someone who appreciates the finer things to run that show. does wanderer adapt puppy tools?

i highly recommend going with tools that the community made-- just because its probably more modular then-- as someone who found out what it takes to run petget somewhere else. and thats just basic functionality-- installing pet packages and giving you the gtkdialog that says "ok" or "cancel"

i imported petget to refracta, but it pulls in a lot of other stuff just to get to the point where it works at all.



the part about distros creating boundaries that make people comfortable is to acknowledge that such people exist and want to be catered to. i dont have anything against those people, or anything against catering to them. that is certainly one of puppys goals.

however, its years since those people are the driving force behind puppy design. im not saying thats a good thing or a bad thing.

whats driving puppy along is mostly the urge for people to redesign things for themselves.

whether wanderer makes a puppy thats easier to customise, or a tinycore thats friendlier or both-- i dont know if he has noticed the change but heres something to consider:

in 2006, ubuntu was new and it was easier to find a pc that it ran really slow on. i design my distro specifically to avoid more e-waste, but very few distros are nice on a pentium ii. im running corepup right now on an above-average p4.

puppy was so much faster than ubuntu, though ultimately i had an easier time with dsl. why? design choices.



for all the wizards, dsl (smaller than puppy, even then) supported the network card i tried to buy out of the box, while fiddling and frustrating trying to make puppy work with it for hours on end. it just wasnt in the kernel, and i didnt know what to do about that. i was very new to this stuff.

for me, dsl just worked-- not that it was as much fun as puppy. there was no wizard to run, all i had to do was attach the hardware and now i had an network card (this was for a laptop that didnt have ethernet.)

im sure it would be interesting (and piss people off) if i started to point out the real direction puppy design (community wise) is going in. i dont think its bad, its interesting.

above all, its different. the niche that puppy took care of in 2006 isnt the same i dont think. people have faster computers, more ram, i was helping people a 4 or 5 years ago refurbish "old junk" with debian. i only stopped doing that because of disgust with the new debian. the new puppy is alright-- puppy is the same, the community is simply higher tech now.



i suppose the best person to make those wizards would be the person who made them and hoped they would be incorporated in woof, but they werent. if someone had wizards they wanted included in corepup, they should recommend them and i hope wanderer will consider them.

[wanderer]

hi all

corepup is not puppy
and i think the only person who can say what puppy is
is its creator barry k

corepup is not meant to compete with or replace puppy
i started this thread (on the puppy forum)
simply to introduce some of the ideas of tinycore
(which are similiar to what i was working on called rampup)
to the puppy community

notably
true minimalism and modularity
adding and removing components at will
and
using symlinks instead of unionfs

i am using (and hopefully developing) corepup for my own reasons
but i hope it will be of interest and use
to others in the puppy community

i however do appreciate any help that is given
and that includes a big thank you to nosystemdthanks
and others who have helped me

if anyone wishes to contribute in any way
in the future
that would be appreciated as well

wanderer

[wanderer]

i do have one question though

why is anyone interested in corepup at all ?
why not just use one of the puppies presently being developed
and not even read this thread ?

if anyone has the inclination
please post your answer
i really am interested

wanderer

[wanderer]

hi all

i have uploaded the corepup-8.iso
to the smokey01 site

this is the totally minimal corepup
just the core
console only no x

only 10 m

this completes the corepup triad
which are modifications of

core
tinycore and
coreplus

the only other iso that needs to be included is the dcore iso
which is used for downloading and packaging debs

keep the faith

wanderer

[nosystemdthanks]

i do have one question though



why is anyone interested in corepup at all ?
why not just use one of the puppies presently being developed
and not even read this thread ?

thats a great question, which i hope people will try to answer. i have some thoughts about it too.

ive watched puppy change from a three year old pup (when i started using it) to the present. since i started using puppy ive learned python, moved across the country, gotten married, nearly had children and also divorced.

ive watched this forum change, mostly for the better and mostly from afar.

one thing that hasnt changed here is that practically everyone is an armchair developer. me too- when i was originally a puppy fan the main thing i wanted to do was make it more modular! i wanted to rearrange everything into 3 sfs files, so you could have a small/medium/large puppy. all youd need to change size is open isomaster and delete one or two sfs files.

this way, puppy could become fully cd-sized without ever affecting people who preferred the size of puppy as it was then, and didnt want it to change.

today, mcorepup (whether used on corepup, or applied to puppy) is capable of creating that iso. i can actually do that with a variety of distros-- i still prefer cd-sized isos to dvd-sized ones.

and corepup is very much like what i wanted from puppy a decade ago, except more modular. when i said that was my hope for puppy back then, they told me it was being worked on. i got the dsl book and told roberts about it, he told me to look forward to the new dsl-like distro he was working on, youre using it now.

so, here we are. im still an armchair developer, only now i have my own programming language and distro remastering tool-- which thanks to corepup, now supports not only genisoimage but two other iso tools (because tinycore uses mkisofs.)

i think many of us are young at heart (im still not 40 yet) but if people want to compare us all to a bunch of crotchety old folks (apologies to non-crochety old folks who have a more active lifestyle than i do, i know barry can hike a lot farther) sitting around and statler and waldorfing every distro on earth from the balcony-- perhaps the shoe fits.

id like people to be more honest and thoughtful about things like that, but some things (like systemd) dont deserve an easy time.

communities change, distros and people change-- even users change, though youd never believe it. (theyre very sneaky.) but what doesnt change is that people like having opinions.

sometimes the opinions are ridiculous, but often they have a point. two things i absolutely look up to you about is that a. you dont let anything stop you from doing what matters to you, and b. that youre very very very open to opinions. we ultimately all want that, even if we think we dont.

its better to be nice when we can. that said, no one cares what i think of debian but im going to say it anyway-- i used it for most of the years i wasnt here with puppy, and i have spent too much time using debian already. no more debian! (curiously, i will gladly use debian packages though.)

whats that got to do with it? simple-- people ultimately want to share their opinions. and thats why theyre here. (now, why do they want to do that? thats what youre really asking, i think...)

not to mention that im not the first person to bring up debian in this thread. personally? as someone who worked on a debian-based puppy in 2016, im glad that someones doing a non-debian one.

i have uploaded the corepup-8.iso
to the smokey01 site

this is the totally minimal corepup
just the core
console only no x

only 10 m

this completes the corepup triad
which are modifications of

core
tinycore and
coreplus

and thanks very much for what youre doing. you posted this while i was posting so i thought id add it.

[rockedge]

I have been following the thread with interest. At the moment I am having trouble getting corepup to boot cleanly... I get stuck at a prompt for a "box login" looking for a password.

perhaps a set of install tips will help the cause...I am using GRUB4DOS and a HDD at the moment to see if I can get the corepup 6.4.1 to go.

any tips here will be appreciated....most OS's I can get going.....

[nosystemdthanks]

hi, ive had similar trouble. technically, you are booting properly i think.

a few things to consider:

1. i first used puppy with grub4dos-- it should probably work fine with corepup, theres even a post about it in this thread but you might be the first person to try corepup with grub4dos.

2. if its booting to an ascii penguin logo at the top (are you sure its a login? it should be an active prompt) then its recommended you create a /tce folder and copy the tce files from the cd. im nearly certain theres a way around this.

3. you might look for instructions about boot codes. im not sure the boot cd is the best place to put them...

4. right now, wanderer is mostly using it from cd or usb. im the hard drive user, ive used it with grub (not grub4dos) and syslinux on different occasions. my menuentry is at the bottom of this page: https://softwarefreedom.jcink.net/index ... owtopic=47 i dont know if it will help you, its for booting the iso from grub.

5. corepup-6 is small, 7 is minimal and 8 is the core-- 8 has no gui. if you downloaded the latest, this would be a good reason for the isos to follow this convention:
corepup-6full.iso
corepup-7minimal.iso
corepup-8textmode.iso

i hope you get it working.

[wanderer]

hi all

this is my opinion on booting corepup
which is actually the hardest part to figure out

i know a lot of you guys like grub
and there is info on using it on the tinycore site

but please make a live usb or cd
and use the included syslinux or isolinux

then just turn it on and let it load
it should load fine

if you want to use boot codes
for making a home or tce directory on the hard drive
then at the menu
press tab
and in corepup-6 and corepup-7 (the gui versions)
enter home=sda1 tce=sda1
or whatever the hard drive partition is

in corepup-8 (the console version)
for boot codes you will have to
press tab at the intro message
and enter mc "bootcode"
for example mc home=sda1 tce=sda1

if you use this method at first
you can get up and running
and i can help a little

then at your leisure
you can go to the tinycore site
and find out how to use your preferred booting method

hope this helps

post if you have any questions

wanderer

[wanderer]

hi nosystemdthanks

i know you prefer python
but have you looked at any of the scripts in corepup
they are written in busybox ash

one of particular interest to me is the script that loads the tcz
since this is really the heart of the system
i have been studying it
and slowly working it out

i just would like your opinion

also am i right when i read in your posts that
you actually knew roberts of dsl

anyway once again thanks for all your help

wanderer

[nosystemdthanks]

i just would like your opinion

some people write really excellent c code and really excellent bash code.

also am i right when i read in your posts that
you actually knew roberts of dsl

its not like we were mates, i just had a question about something and asked him, and i told him dsl was cool and he told me his misgivings about it, and he told me to look forward to his new distro and i did.

i probably used tc exclusively for a while, a long time ago, and its a fantastic idea. i think your efforts with it are very positive.

[wanderer]

hi all

just an update on corepup

i have decided to move the overview list to the corepup-mods file
it is too long for the first post

in addition

all scripts howtos etc will be in the latest corepup-mods file
so you will only have to download it
and you will have an up to date overview of the corepup project

the corepups-mods file probably will keep being reorganized
so the best place to start in it is the readme.txt

i will post a new corepup-mods file today if i can


further

as of now the corepup isos do not need any modifications

so the next step is to work on the process of making new tcz for corepup

they can come from essentially 3 sources

1. a person can make their own from scratch

2. a person can convert a deb into a tcz

3. a person can convert an sfs to a tcz

the first choice just requires the info on how to make a tcz

the second is the function of dcore
(renaming and possibly tweaking an sce)

the third should be just the process of unsquashing and resquashing
(and possibly tweaking) the sfs file into a tcz

this is what i am working on now

in addition i am studying the scripts to see how the tcz are loaded
as far as i have been able to figure out so far
it looks like they are simply loaded as a squashfile

well my journey continues

post if you have questions or comments

wanderer

[nosystemdthanks]

i would note that i was just running coreplus and closed the laptop lid, and-- yeah, i couldnt get it to respond or do anything after that.

probably a lack of power management tcz, which i can add and can recommend a package / installation command when i get it working.

i would recommend laptop users install something like that-- save your work (i was just loading a picture, not doing work) before closing your laptop until this is worked out.