Puppy Professional just for business

Using applications, configuring, problems
Post Reply
Message
Author
hendrikus
Posts: 62
Joined: Mon 08 May 2006, 11:43
Location: Indonesia

#16 Post by hendrikus »

Liz,
gliezl wrote:hendrikus,
do you mean like this? see screenshot
I am still working on it. I dont have time to remaster. :-(
What do you think about the Vista screen, when combined with your icons it could become a nice with an professional look.

Do you think it's posible to create it, it seems to need IceWM, do you have experiance with it.

Regard's Hendrikus

User avatar
Rhino
Posts: 263
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 13:28
Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA
Contact:

#17 Post by Rhino »

I really like the idea of the Puppy Professional version. I remastered a version of Puppy Office 2.02ce to include some extra goodies and a professional look, however it would be quite weighty for a Puppy. I am somewhat reluctant to release it into the wild since it is eerily similar to the Rudy version.

Here's what I added:

--Icons changed to SnowIsh KDE even on the menu and toolbars (that was a lot of resizing)
--Added XFCE4 with XDG and menu entry to convert between JWM and XFCE4 without using the CLI :-)
--Gimpshop
--Opera
-- Gxine extra codecs added
--LTris
--Puppy PDF
--gRip
--Several professional looking wallpapers
--added Open Office button on JWM Tray and changed the network monitor to blue rather than red.
--changed tray icons in XFCE4 and added open office tray menu.
--changed some MIME-type icons (I think)
--added some professional looking Impress templates

All-in-all it seems very nice.

BIG CONCERNS:
I have not converted the CD to an iso to check the size, but you can imagine it would be big. Another concern is that the time to copy pup202.sfs from the CD on initial boot is lengthy, even for a fast machine. The last problem is that I think it would run much too slowly, if it all, on older hardware.

If anyone is interested, I would be glad to make an iso available, but I'm not sure if we are ready for such a bandwidth committment.
:oops:
Last edited by Rhino on Wed 13 Sep 2006, 00:44, edited 2 times in total.
Visit the Puppy Linux Video Tutorials @ http://rhinoweb.us

User avatar
Rhino
Posts: 263
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 13:28
Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA
Contact:

#18 Post by Rhino »

Here are some screenies:

XFCE4 Desktop with Opera and a wide variety of "quiet" wallpapers.
Image

-----------------------------------------------------------

XFCE4 Desktop showing XDG menus and toolbar icons.
Image


-----------------------------------------------------------
JWM with tray modifications, new icons, and a different wallpaper (default is the blue)
Image
Visit the Puppy Linux Video Tutorials @ http://rhinoweb.us

User avatar
MU
Posts: 13649
Joined: Wed 24 Aug 2005, 16:52
Location: Karlsruhe, Germany
Contact:

#19 Post by MU »

looks great, a iso certainly would be good.
Can you upload it somewhere?

We can mirror it then.
If not, I can send you the data to upload on dotpups.de , from there I can move it to htb65.de and puptrix.org

Going asleep now, I'll send you a pm.
Mark

hendrikus
Posts: 62
Joined: Mon 08 May 2006, 11:43
Location: Indonesia

#20 Post by hendrikus »

Hi Rhino,

I'm happy to see that other people supporting my idear to create a distro for pure business use. I current tly use Puppy203CE on a flashdisk and did some demo's, owners of companies are enthousistic because this looks realy plug and play. I din't change so much till now because my IT guy's are currently building a 'plug and play' file- print- mail- web- server based on puppy too.
But this doesn't seems to be that easy.

For a Professional Puppy it's the trick to limit the amount of programs, not to install programs they don't need to use. Rox, OpenOffice with Opera, the best PDF viewer and Xine or other complete audio/video player. Please remove all technical linux apps.

Additionals like Gimp, Qcad dll they can install them selves using getpup, if they like to use this programs they know they need to expend their memory.

I saw the vista2 screens, looks professional, but the best is to create a similar screen as people normaly use.... WindowsXP

I would like to see some printscreens of your ProfessionalPuppy

Regard's
Hendrikus

hendrikus
Posts: 62
Joined: Mon 08 May 2006, 11:43
Location: Indonesia

#21 Post by hendrikus »

hendrikus wrote:
I would like to see some printscreens of your ProfessionalPuppy
While I was typing you allready post them.... very nice screens.... A XP like theme would be even nicer.... Why not just using the original OpenOffice logo's, they have a professional look, the OpenOffice suite is allready become popular as a reliable replacement for msoffice.

GuestToo
Puppy Master
Posts: 4083
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 18:11

#22 Post by GuestToo »

A XP like theme would be even nicer
this screenshot is a typical XP theme for Icewm

the screenshot is on this page:
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PedigreePuppy

i think it was a package i made, but it could have been AlienX, he made a lot of theme packages for Icewm

this package was hosted on the goosee.com server, and those packages were lost when Puppy moved to new servers

someone could easily make a new package ... though you really just have to download a theme from Freshmeat or KDE Look etc etc, unzip it and copy it to the right place, like /root/.icewm/themes

http://themes.freshmeat.net/browse/925/
http://www.kde-look.org/?xcontentmode=18

User avatar
Rhino
Posts: 263
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 13:28
Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA
Contact:

#23 Post by Rhino »

Hendrikus,

I'm uploading the iso to MU, but before I do too much, I would like to get his "stamp of approval". I just tinker with Puppy, and am not a programmer at all. MU may have some suggestions for this as well.

I can certainly add in an XP-like wallpaper or maybe even an OO.org wallpaper, but I just have to be sure about the licensing.

I included GimpShop since it is a very capable alternative to Photoshop and many businesses need powerful graphics manipulation.

To remove all of the programming tools that are included in puppy would require me to build a custom puppy from source (or so I think). Even with that, I don't think removing most of those tools would provide any significant savings in space. I'm also not sure what removing things would do to the operation of Puppy. It might be best for me to comment them out in the .jwmrc file so they don't show up in the menu. That would provide a very simplified menu.

If MU finds it suitable for sharing with no major glitches, we might consider this iso an alpha version to build upon. Please check out the iso and provide suggestions for the next release.

Thanks for your input Hendrikus :-)
Visit the Puppy Linux Video Tutorials @ http://rhinoweb.us

User avatar
Pizzasgood
Posts: 6183
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 20:28
Location: Knoxville, TN, USA

#24 Post by Pizzasgood »

i think it was a package i made, but it could have been AlienX, he made a lot of theme packages for Icewm

this package was hosted on the goosee.com server, and those packages were lost when Puppy moved to new servers

someone could easily make a new package ... though you really just have to download a theme from Freshmeat or KDE Look etc etc, unzip it and copy it to the right place, like /root/.icewm/themes

http://themes.freshmeat.net/browse/925/
http://www.kde-look.org/?xcontentmode=18
I have these themes, if any of them are missing from the mirrors:

Abby.pup
Blue4ever.pup
deedlit-Aqua.theme.for.IceWM.pup
Dragonfly.theme.for.IceWm.and.Gtk.pup
Elberg.and.SilverXP.Themes.pup
G2-Aqua.theme.for.IceWM.pup
ice.keramik.pup
icewm_silvervista.pup
icewm_theme_icevista2.pup
Liquad.Theme.for.IceWM.pup
RevolutionX.pup
Simple-tri.theme.pup
Sticks.Theme.pup
TrueCurve.theme.for.IceWM.pup
win31.pup
XPDE.pup
yet.another.MacOS.theme.pup


You shouldn't need to recompile anything to remove packages. Just don't include them when you use Unleashed, or use PupBeGone to get rid of them before remastering. Some of them are needed by other things, so those would be trickier. The best way is to only remove so-many at a time, and keep track of which ones they were. Then test it to see if it still runs before proceeding.

All those little techie items in Puppy are indeed very small. Disabling them in the menu would preserve them in case they're ever needed (Boy Scout Motto: Be Prepared), and still clean up the appearance. Removing them would save a small amount of space, but unless you are going for a mini-linux, you probably would hardly notice it. A megabyte or two is very appearant in a 30 MB iso, but not so much in a 70+ MB iso. If it has OO and Gimpshop, we're probably talking 100+MB iso.
[size=75]Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib[/size]
[img]http://www.browserloadofcoolness.com/sig.png[/img]

User avatar
Lobster
Official Crustacean
Posts: 15522
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 06:06
Location: Paradox Realm
Contact:

#25 Post by Lobster »

Also consider

1. CUPS - printing
2. IceVista theme from GuesTtoo - IceWM
3. XP professional theme being developed by Gliezel
4. PSI - Puppy Software Installer from MU
Puppy Raspup 8.2Final 8)
Puppy Links Page http://www.smokey01.com/bruceb/puppy.html :D

raffy
Posts: 4798
Joined: Wed 25 May 2005, 12:20
Location: Manila

Thanks

#26 Post by raffy »

Very nice, Rhino. I will certainly try it.

BTW, does that include Java? It seems that when using random transitions (or animations, in general?) in Impress, OpenOffice asks for Java.
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

User avatar
edoc
Posts: 4729
Joined: Sun 07 Aug 2005, 20:16
Location: Southeast Georgia, USA
Contact:

#27 Post by edoc »

Lobster wrote:Also consider

1. CUPS - printing
2. IceVista theme from GuesTtoo - IceWM
3. XP professional theme being developed by Gliezel
4. PSI - Puppy Software Installer from MU
Please also consider

A. An improved pdf viewer
B. A reliable djvu viewer
C. OO is critical for business and non-profit acceptance
D. A database to interface with MS Access is important
E. Complete and reliable Internet multimedia support
F. Reliable interface to PDA's, cellphones, & digital cameras
G. Reliable networking with MS systems
H. Support for more printers (CUPS is great!), include Samsung lasers

The absence of these features have caused Linux to be rejected by several
businesses and non-profits with whom I am familiar.
[b]Thanks! David[/b]
[i]Home page: [/i][url]http://nevils-station.com[/url]
[i]Don't google[/i] [b]Search![/b] [url]http://duckduckgo.com[/url]
TahrPup64 & Lighthouse64-b602 & JL64-603

User avatar
Rhino
Posts: 263
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 13:28
Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA
Contact:

#28 Post by Rhino »

General summary of wants/needs:

-Simplify menu, but leave programming applications intact. If you will be programming you can edit and set up your own customized puppy anyway, so no need to include some of those in the menyu system for Puppy Professional.

- Make the menu system a little more like XP as far as its organization.

- IceWM with several professional and especially XP themes. Would this be preferred over XFCE4 or in addition to XFCE4? I don't see much reason in removing JWM since this distro will be really large anyway.

- CUPS:(I have not tested it. Is it working well enough for inclusion?)

- JAVA:I have played with Impress a little bit and have not noticed a problem with the slide transitions. But it could be included as well, just so everything works out of the box.

PDF Viewer: The viewer in Puppy seems to work fairly well, what other one could we include?

RutilT also needs to be included since WAG appears to not work well in 2.02. After using RutilT in MeanPuppy, I'm hooked :-)

The iso I made and gave to MU was already at 228MB :shock: If we include JAVA (+80MB), I think CUPS is large as well, we will be pushing 300Mb. I think we should try to keep Puppy professional small enough that it can fit on a 256MB USB key. Is there a way to use compression on this such as John Murga did with MeanPuppy.
Visit the Puppy Linux Video Tutorials @ http://rhinoweb.us

User avatar
edoc
Posts: 4729
Joined: Sun 07 Aug 2005, 20:16
Location: Southeast Georgia, USA
Contact:

#29 Post by edoc »

Rhino wrote:- CUPS:(I have not tested it. Is it working well enough for inclusion?)
CUPS has come a long ways and had made it possible to communicate with hundreds
of printers. I can hardly imagine trying to promote Puppy to a business only to say
that they cannot use their printers.

CUPS or some associated app needs to be expanded to manage printing to pdf and to
recognize the very popular and inexpensive Samsung laser printers.
Rhino wrote: - JAVA:I have played with Impress a little bit and have not noticed a problem with the slide transitions. But it could be included as well, just so everything works out of the box.
Puppy-Java has come a long ways as well. Many apps and web pages use Java and
again many businesses would reject Puppy without a sound implementation.
Rhino wrote: PDF Viewer: The viewer in Puppy seems to work fairly well, what other one could we include?
As others have noted, and I have also experienced, the pdf implementation in Puppy
needs a lot of work. It often fails to communicate with the printer, has trouble with
documents created using newer versions of pdf, one cannot cut and paste from pdf
into non-pdf documents, etc.

There is a thread here:
http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.p ... sc&start=0
discussing the needs and options.
Rhino wrote: RutilT also needs to be included since WAG appears to not work well in 2.02. After using RutilT in MeanPuppy, I'm hooked :-)
I was also delighted by RutiT! Made wireless possible with my laptop's internal nic.

I have downloaded and tested Puppy 2.10Beta on a desktop as an Upgrade to 2.01
(had to back out of 2.02 due to multiple unresolvable bugs). So far it plays nicely. Will
Puppy Professional will be optimized for the imminent release of 2.10?

doc
[b]Thanks! David[/b]
[i]Home page: [/i][url]http://nevils-station.com[/url]
[i]Don't google[/i] [b]Search![/b] [url]http://duckduckgo.com[/url]
TahrPup64 & Lighthouse64-b602 & JL64-603

marksouth2000
Posts: 622
Joined: Wed 05 Apr 2006, 20:43

#30 Post by marksouth2000 »

edoc wrote: A. An improved pdf viewer
B. A reliable djvu viewer
C. OO is critical for business and non-profit acceptance
D. A database to interface with MS Access is important
E. Complete and reliable Internet multimedia support
F. Reliable interface to PDA's, cellphones, & digital cameras
G. Reliable networking with MS systems
H. Support for more printers (CUPS is great!), include Samsung lasers

The absence of these features have caused Linux to be rejected by several
businesses and non-profits with whom I am familiar.
This is somewhat bizarre: "Absence of these features".

While Puppy may not give you all of those yet in its humongous 70Mb (and a lot of it already is there), there are several distros that already give you all of those and much more. D is provided by OO so is redundant. G is overconstrained. You can have networking with MS systems, and you can have reliable networking, both is asking too much.

I can't think of many businesses where multimedia support matters a rat's rear to anyone, except at TV or sound companies, but maybe my limited experience (I've mostly worked with education, government, and finance) blinds me to that one.

hendrikus
Posts: 62
Joined: Mon 08 May 2006, 11:43
Location: Indonesia

#31 Post by hendrikus »

edoc wrote:
CUPS has come a long ways and had made it possible to communicate with hundreds
of printers. I can hardly imagine trying to promote Puppy to a business only to say
that they cannot use their printers.

CUPS or some associated app needs to be expanded to manage printing to pdf and to
recognize the very popular and inexpensive Samsung laser printers.
In my business point of view opinion it's no problem to buy a printer from the 'supported printer list', I just bought a new printer for the same price as my IT guy cost per hour. Lets be realistic, even I'm living in Indonesia I'm able to buy me a nice pentium4 systems with enough memory, I buy a flashdisk 512Mb for the same price as a good lunch.

Important is that the Puppy Professional is still plug&play, system independent. History becomes future again, company critical applications are more and more weboriented like the old reliable Digital and IBM mini systems. The web is accepted by the audience, so I need a workstation with a webbrowser and some supporting office applications. OO is perfect.... Don't put too much in it, it's not difficult to install additional packages....

Hendrikus

hendrikus
Posts: 62
Joined: Mon 08 May 2006, 11:43
Location: Indonesia

#32 Post by hendrikus »

marksouth2000 wrote:
edoc wrote: A. An improved pdf viewer
B. A reliable djvu viewer
C. OO is critical for business and non-profit acceptance
D. A database to interface with MS Access is important
E. Complete and reliable Internet multimedia support
F. Reliable interface to PDA's, cellphones, & digital cameras
G. Reliable networking with MS systems
H. Support for more printers (CUPS is great!), include Samsung lasers

The absence of these features have caused Linux to be rejected byseveral
businesses and non-profits with whom I am familiar.
This is somewhat bizarre: "Absence of these features".

While Puppy may not give you all of those yet in its humongous 70Mb (and a lot of it already is there), there are several distros that already give you all of those and much more. D is provided by OO so is redundant. G is overconstrained. You can have networking with MS systems, and you can have reliable networking, both is asking too much.

I can't think of many businesses where multimedia support matters a rat's rear to anyone, except at TV or sound companies, but maybe my limited experience (I've mostly worked with education, government, and finance) blinds me to that one.
I'm working on a Puppy based server concept and put two IT guys on it to develop this..... I like the idea to have it plug & play.... indeed, it's hard to get people on Linux.... I follow the confusing struggling of Linux, too many distro's, nearly all the same, but not one is really fitting to company needs, so they only find their way in dedicated solutions like webserver, some fileservers. The problem is

User avatar
VariEze
Posts: 114
Joined: Thu 09 Feb 2006, 17:49
Location: Oregon
Contact:

#33 Post by VariEze »

I'm really impressed that anybody would even try to replace XP in a business enviroment with Puppy. I help out with the computers at a local office, and would never dream of trying to get those users to change over. Unless Puppy could be made EXACTLY like XP, there would be riots at the office, and no bill gates to blame, only me. I use linux for the unseen things, like the backup box and the router. I'm watching this thread, I'd sure like to see how close to XP Puppy can be made to look, and how the users take to it.

--Karl

marksouth2000
Posts: 622
Joined: Wed 05 Apr 2006, 20:43

#34 Post by marksouth2000 »

The it's going to be hilarious when the users discover that the Vista interface has been heavily mangled, and is quite different from the XP one, which was different from Win2k which was different from Win98 which was.....

GeoffS
Posts: 427
Joined: Fri 24 Feb 2006, 08:39
Location: Australia

#35 Post by GeoffS »

I don't think it has been mentioned:- Puppy has to be made CrossOver Office friendly. Yes you can run Wine but CrossOver takes all the hassle out and does things I can not make work using bare Wine.
For US$30 CrossOver is a bargain. I think it will require a little co-operation between Codeweavers and the Puppy community to make it work.
It solves a number of the issues mentioned.
PDF - just use Acrobat if the Puppy solutions are inadequate.
QuickBooks runs perfectly.
Many little Windows programs can be just installed and they run.
Word and Excel work perfectly, if you must use them.
I'm not sure about MSAccess, I still have to do some testing. I have a couple of quite large MSAccess applications which should test it. There are many business applications developed in MSAccess. The real test for all MSOffice applications is the use of the inbuilt Basic.
With all this, don't let Puppy slow down. The beauty of Puppy is to be able to turn on your computer and have it working before you have managed to arrange the pens on your desk :D
Geoff

Post Reply