Hmmm .....
I happen to have a bit of free time today and I gave puppy 4.2a3 a few test runs ...
My observations (if anyone cares to read):
1. Pwidgets stuffs are nice but it made everything feels sluggish on older hardware (and even in QEMU) when I have many simple stuffs running (like several xterm plus several rox-filer). I did get annoyed whenever I want to click on xterm but the top tray gets in the way ... I suggest adding a switch in Pwidgets control panel to turn them on or off ...
Update: After I made this post, I noticed that puppy was running on max cpu load on the test machine. Top shows an app taking up all the cpu time making everything sluggish. A reboot cured it. I tried to reproduce but couldn't get the same result. I'll keep my eyes open should it occur again and find whats happening ...
And speaking of QEMU, please see if my QEMU xorgwizard patch is acceptable for inclusion :
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 523#269523
2. absvolume is broken. It shows volume slider on entry then barks off. absvolume from 4.1.x and 4.2a(1) still works as a reference.
3. Cups web interface is broken due to cups doc folder renaming. ttuuxx may have thought that I excluded important doc portions of the original, which is incorrect. The only portion that have been excluded is the es po locale (which is just taking more space and can be made into a pet instead). Others remain intact and follows the default cups ./configure script. Everything of importance is installed.
(Installation process is tweaked to achieve the desired effect targeted specifically for Puppy 4.1.x ... I see that puppy 4.2a backbone structure is very much similar to 4.1 and both suffers the same predicament with cups)
A quick cups fix for puppy-4.2a3 would be to rename /usr/share/doc/cups-1.1.23 to /usr/share/doc/cups or make a symlink to it .. This will "cure" that 404 error ... which actually does not happen with my cups_std ... Many of these settings are hard-coded defaults into cups during compile time ... To make changes to any folder name or location then it should either be specified during ./configure or add the necessary config entries to /etc/cups/cupsd.conf (once compiled) ...
4. Please make some tests with the usblpp backend addon. It's for usb printer detection and printing ... I may be incorrect but cups usb backend seems to be incomplete for linux in its current form ... The addon should address this and is to be deemed as experimental ...
Seasoned puppy users will notice that printers will now be assigned either /dev/lp# for LPTs or /dev/usb/lp# for USBs ... cups uri for these will be :
parallel:/dev/lp# for LPTs
-and-
parallel:/dev/usb/lp# for USBs
If using the usblpp backend addon then USBs will be:
usblpp:/dev/usb/lp#
The parallel or usblpp refers to the backend modules used by cups for detection and printing ...
Please view cups-for-puppy functionality as work-in-progress ... The last 2 weeks of cups troubleshooting and whacking is not sufficient to solve all cups related woes ... Cups has impose security checks in many of its modules ... If I understand correctly, cups is now reflected with hardened security but puppy is root owned. That makes cups running on puppy with very limited permissions and we now see all sorts of cups printing issues ...
Why did cups 1.1.23 works without problems ? IMHO, it is because the older cups runs as root and thus have access to almost everything ... All newer cups will not (actually we can but that mean running out-of-specs and it'll bork many stuffs) ... That said, running cups 1.1.23 is justifiable if you do not need newer functionality ...
The main reason why I am looking into latest cups is because I require samba server + cups functionality as the older cups does not work reliably ... Puppy 4.1.x is deemed to be a stable release that I have installed in multiple locations and that's where I based my fixes upon ...
Cups versions between 1.1.23 and 1.4 have made numerous changes (will take me like forever to track which is which since I've only recently begun looking at it) and to make it work properly for puppy, needs lotsa patience ... Frankly, I'm like treating symptoms rather than finding the root cause and to find the root cause needs someone who can afford to sit down for a whole month and get properly acquainted with cups, inside-out ... (btw, I'm lame with C ... worse with C++ or C# ...)
I'll do what I can but don't get your hopes too high ... cups alone can cause sleepless nights .... imagine what cups + gutenprint + hplip can do to you ...
5. I suggest that the acpid package (or at least the config + scripts) be updated as the one currently used does not perform a power-button shutdown if one exits to prompt. I will look into possible notebook lid/button support if I can get my hands on one ...
Ok, enough ranting ...
Rgds