Puppy's big problem with woof and woof CE

[dancytron]

years ago, the creators of tiny linux distributions did only take care don't to install an avoidable mixture of heavy box packages like QT for only one use (we are GNOME Office users excepted for Gnome web, and have no realistic other choice in small iso's), divers versions of webkits for divers app's (a lot of app's, not only browsers, require today a specific webkit version, often all different, as graphic base) at the same time, or, now, qtwebengine, or KDE or other runtimes heavy stuff and dependencies over that! the increase of size is really dramatic if you don't care of that! if you renounce, the user stay free to add more as heavy he wants through ppm if he really needs that and remaster his heavy special version (*1 ! a lot of puppy stuff is not really used by all, don't forget that... and the trend is to develop not really necessary enthusiasm for new heavy stuff so special that common user have only small profit of it! each window manager different from JWM brings sacrifices of size (better would be SFS to bind, or not, over JWM) !

(*1 next profit is that you generally have no real overview which dependencies you can remove. if all app's would be use the same graphic base, if you remove ONE app, you can admit that the other continue to need all dependencies and can friendly forget to uninstall the dependencies of that app...

Other than the browser, abiword and gnumeric, the graphics card drivers, wireless card drivers, and llvm, what would you propose to remove from Puppy?

Taking that list of things you propose to remove, would they even total more than 10 megabytes?

[s243a]

years ago, the creators of tiny linux distributions did only take care don't to install an avoidable mixture of heavy box packages like QT for only one use (we are GNOME Office users excepted for Gnome web, and have no realistic other choice in small iso's), divers versions of webkits for divers app's (a lot of app's, not only browsers, require today a specific webkit version, often all different, as graphic base) at the same time, or, now, qtwebengine, or KDE or other runtimes heavy stuff and dependencies over that! the increase of size is really dramatic if you don't care of that! if you renounce, the user stay free to add more as heavy he wants through ppm if he really needs that and remaster his heavy special version (*1 ! a lot of puppy stuff is not really used by all, don't forget that... and the trend is to develop not really necessary enthusiasm for new heavy stuff so special that common user have only small profit of it! each window manager different from JWM brings sacrifices of size (better would be SFS to bind, or not, over JWM) !

(*1 next profit is that you generally have no real overview which dependencies you can remove. if all app's would be use the same graphic base, if you remove ONE app, you can admit that the other continue to need all dependencies and can friendly forget to uninstall the dependencies of that app...

Other than the browser, abiword and gnumeric, the graphics card drivers, wireless card drivers, and llvm, what would you propose to remove from Puppy?

Taking that list of things you propose to remove, would they even total more than 10 megabytes?

I don't know. Maybe some of the stuff that oui listed could be moved to the adrive.

[oui]

Other than the browser, abiword and gnumeric, the graphics card drivers, wireless card drivers, and llvm, what would you propose to remove from Puppy?

Taking that list of things you propose to remove, would they even total more than 10 megabytes?

that is not really the question! 666philb and jamesbond did explain how the size can grow if you compare with very old versions

but there is a difference between very old and relatively recent versions!

BK did try and did have success (in making) and die show us how he can shrink the usual stuff of Puppy under 100 Mb. but he didn't have success in showing us

excepted with Slacko 5.3 perhaps (also about 100 Mb, a little more, but it was a real Puppy, not an experimental Racy / Wary).

if you take ONE app on board with only one webkit as dependency on board, you have automatic 50..60 Mb more ballast . have you 3, and all a different webkit or somewhat equivalent then you have 3 x 50 .. 60 Mb ballast. one real big space-eater seems be for ex. VLC...

the problem is also not if

- you spare an application and publish without this kind of application

but if

- you select a sufficient application better with small number of supplementary dependencies...

it would be nonsens for ex. to sacrifice didiwiki, an old companion of puppyist, and win only a few bites...

but the difference between Slacko 5.3 and new versions is certainly not only a matter of growing all the sources...

[musher0]

@s243a
Euh... isn't the adrv a part of Puppy !?

@oui
One thing I think we can do is use ffplay / avplay to the fullest, with various scripts
for audio and video. That way we do not need to have any big media app on board,
such as mpv, mplayer or vlc. Those are typically 20 to 40 Mg in size. We could still
offer them as sfs options instead of having them on board.

Also, please note, about the webkit: it requires the llvm library. If you flush the llvm
library, forget the webkit and any browser based on it.

IIRC, 01micko was able to achieve a 100 Mb Puppy with his slacko-5.3.3 because
just about that time the author of squashfs incorporated the xz compression in it,
and 01micko seized the occasion. So that 100 Mb is somewhat artificial.

@all
I think trying for a 100Mg Puppy has become unrealistic. Although offering a skin-
and-bones Puppy may demonstrate a dev's competence, I believe that users want
some "flesh and muscle" in their Pup. They want to be able to do a number of
things daily with it, and that requires a Puppy that has been intelligently populated.

Is Puppy in a diet contest with any other distro? IMO, the "Hey, look, my distro is
more anorexic than yours" line of thought is childish. It is also dangerous in that
users may stop being interested in us if they perceive that PuppyLinux devs are
obsessed with small size, and it is our only concern.

I say, let's try our best to come up with a concise distro, but if users require this or
that app, let's give it to them. We devs are also users, aren't we?

Feeling constricted is no fun for anyone. If users do not find an app they need in
Puppy OOTB, they'll go elsewhere and adopt a distro that offers it.

I hope the above contributes to the discussion. BFN.

[tallboy]

I have great troubles finding a replacement for my Lucid 5.2.8.7 (no, please, I am NOT asking for alternatives here!). My feeling is that one of the things that all recent Puppys have in common, is that the original idea from BK was lost somewhere along the way. Puppy was designed to run from a CD or DVD, later from a memory stick, and not installed to a HDD. Just stuff the CD into a Windoze PC and boot it! The choice when running from a CD, was either as a live multisession or as a frugal install. The late Pupys are still not recommended to be installed to a HDD, but many of them are designed to run in frugal mode only. The option to save to a multisession CD is gone, lost somewhere in woofland, because the same woofCE solution is used for all of them. I have a lot of old PCs that still work flawlessly, exept for the OS. I dislike the idea of scrapping them. Puppy made it possible to run them, but that option is slowly disappearing. Remastering late Puppys to keep the size down - for use on old and low memory PCs - is made difficult by the steadily increasing size of the necessary programs and their deps and updates. If I need some "flesh and muscle" from my PC, I boot my 4 Gb Debian. I takes some time to boot, and I cannot use many programs at the same time, but they are bristling with muscles. That is not what a Puppy is made for.
And regarding size: My ancient Macs used the office pack Claris Works, which was 690Kb installed...

[ITSMERSH]

@Tallboy

There's still Plop Bootmanager to boot old Computers from CD and then to choose another boot option from the Plop Menu. That way e.g. one can boot from USB flash drive on very old computers.

And for the RAM one can boot pfix=nocopy. The .sfs is not copied to ram that way.

[musher0]

Hello TallBoy.

Twelve-year old i686's have room for up to 2 Gb's of RAM. MSI even advertised that
one of their motherboards could harbor 3 Gb's of RAM provided the three RAM sticks
were of the same make.

Can you not combine 2-3 RAM sticks on your main computer? That way, you could
perhaps adopt a more recent Puppy? (Just an idea.)

@all:
I understand wanting to have a Puppy that is concise, that tries not to include two apps
that do generally the same thing. But I do not understand oui's and some other
people's obsession with anorexic Puppies.

This discussion up to now has not suggested anything that a serious Puppy dev is
not doing already. E.g., the new DPupBuster does NOT have: abiword, gnumeric,
claws-mail, hex-chat. What else could be chopped off? mpv?

In another thread, oui is suggesting CLI apps to bring down still more the size of the Pups.
I like using urxvt, Midnight Commander, less. But only CLI apps? Hmm. There are
reasons why OpenOffice is a GUI app: ease and speed of use come to mind.

For the rest, I can't see what emotion people are venting by insisting that their Puppies be
anorexic. Something along the lines of "I'm fat, so my Linux has to be slim?" Who
knows?

A very pretty, 5'7" tall, fashion model looks in the mirror and is completely convinced that
she is fat at 110 lbs. Similarly some Puppy users look at their nice-looking, high-
performance, Linux distro and think: "OMG, it's iso is 290 Mb", forgetting that this Puppy
offers the same facilities as a distro that is 2.5 times its size.

Anorexia is a mental illness, you know! You think that PuppyLinux is big? It's all in
your head!

BFN.

[oui]

Hi

Anorexic and technique, hum, what a relation...

An OS is not an artwork, it's my opinion, each app in a good designed system has a function and if the function is fully available and works the system is ok.

Puppy is special case:

The name "Puppy" is a well defined program and announces what will be awaiting, A baby of one lovely pet. And I am about certain, that working with a distro builder let grow the risk of fatidic fatness. Woof / WoofCE can help ...

... or become a shadow which you will never more jump over!

musher designs the most newer iso, the new DPupBuster. and explains that it «does NOT have: abiword, gnumeric,
claws-mail, hex-chat.»

ok, it also has Midori, also he speaks from SliTaz under an other name as SliTaz also has mTpaint, MHwaveEdit and some goodies in it?

oh yes ...

but ... huh ... stop stop stop

oh no, the size is completely different, like day and night

[rufwoof]

What is in a puppy main sfs is what the developers decided to include/exclude. That main sfs can be remastered so users can revise what's in or out of the main sfs. The developers choice could be very lean - so users might have to install many things, very fat - so the user might not have to install anything else, or somewhere between.

Typically vmlinuz boots and init inside the initrd runs, which typically switch-roots to the main sfs. If however you replace switch-root with a chroot (and not umount things inside the inird) then from the desktop you can break out of the 'main system' back to a initrd's cli. From there you could umount the entire main system from memory and perhaps boot another entirely different main sfs. The only thing that matters is that the choice of main sfs's loaded match the choice of kernel (vmlinuz) booted.

Puppy's, without the kernel/modules and added programs (Libre etc.), tend to be very small. The core puppy utilities are lean, and mostly scripts. You can't really count libre office or whatever as being puppy, as they're just additional installed, or not, default choices that the developers made, that the user could add to or remove if they so chose (via remastering). Similarly the kernel/modules side is a choice, lean and less hardware supported, or fat and more all encompassing, or somewhere between.

[dancytron]

What is in a puppy main sfs is what the developers decided to include/exclude. That main sfs can be remastered so users can revise what's in or out of the main sfs. The developers choice could be very lean - so users might have to install many things, very fat - so the user might not have to install anything else, or somewhere between.

Typically vmlinuz boots and init inside the initrd runs, which typically switch-roots to the main sfs. If however you replace switch-root with a chroot (and not umount things inside the inird) then from the desktop you can break out of the 'main system' back to a initrd's cli. From there you could umount the entire main system from memory and perhaps boot another entirely different main sfs. The only thing that matters is that the choice of main sfs's loaded match the choice of kernel (vmlinuz) booted.

Puppy's, without the kernel/modules and added programs (Libre etc.), tend to be very small. The core puppy utilities are lean, and mostly scripts. You can't really count libre office or whatever as being puppy, as they're just additional installed, or not, default choices that the developers made, that the user could add to or remove if they so chose (via remastering). Similarly the kernel/modules side is a choice, lean and less hardware supported, or fat and more all encompassing, or somewhere between.

But there isn't much to remove if you want to follow Barry's model of a very small distro that does pretty much anything with a gui app [without relying on applications in the cloud] and runs on almost all hardware.

While there is some duplication, like you said, with the exception of the browsers and office apps and maybe the video players, it is all very tiny apps and scripts.

There just isn't anything of substantial size to remove that doesn't produce a crippled version of puppy.

Just as a data point, if you take the 32 bit debian stretch 7.5 Puppy, uninstall Palemoon, Abiword, Gnumeric, and Deadbeef, install links2 and remaster with a zdrv you get a main sfs file that is 243 megabytes and a zdrv that is 31 megabytes.

If you then delete all the graphics drivers from /usr/lib/dri except the intel i915 driver and resquash with xz, you get a main sfs file that is 215 megabytes.

Take that and look at it with gdmap, what else could you get rid of and still have a useful distro? Cups and sane? The wireless drivers? All the video players?

It doesn't take woof. I suggest oui use the remaster process and produce a prototype of what he is talking about. It is supposed to be a doacracy after all.

[musher0]

"Oui",

You're a hopeless stubborn old mule. I told you before: josejp2424 is the author
of DPupBuster-7.9.0.2, not me.

I tried to build a DPupBuster-7.9.0.1 and never got the sound drivers going. So I'm
not going to publish it, obviously. Whether the recipe I was handed out is tainted or
not is another question entirely.

So... "josejp2424 is the author of DPupBuster-7.9.0.2, not musher0."
Repeat that sentence as necessary until it is imprinted in your brain.

~~~~~~~~~

Now, how about you start building your very own anorexic Puppy and present it to
the world when it's done?

Instead of making fun of very dedicated Puppy developers and annoying the general
Puppy public with your sterile "old soldier-type" comments.

Who's paying you to do this, by the way? M$? RedHat? Google?

Here's how it works: you attack our reputation, we attack yours. Got it? Tit for tat,
donnant-donnant. Until truth and peace and restored. IOW: enough is enough, oui.

Tah-dah.

[musher0]

What is in a puppy main sfs is what the developers decided to include/exclude. That main sfs can be remastered so users can revise what's in or out of the main sfs. The developers choice could be very lean - so users might have to install many things, very fat - so the user might not have to install anything else, or somewhere between.

Typically vmlinuz boots and init inside the initrd runs, which typically switch-roots to the main sfs. If however you replace switch-root with a chroot (and not umount things inside the inird) then from the desktop you can break out of the 'main system' back to a initrd's cli. From there you could umount the entire main system from memory and perhaps boot another entirely different main sfs. The only thing that matters is that the choice of main sfs's loaded match the choice of kernel (vmlinuz) booted.

Puppy's, without the kernel/modules and added programs (Libre etc.), tend to be very small. The core puppy utilities are lean, and mostly scripts. You can't really count libre office or whatever as being puppy, as they're just additional installed, or not, default choices that the developers made, that the user could add to or remove if they so chose (via remastering). Similarly the kernel/modules side is a choice, lean and less hardware supported, or fat and more all encompassing, or somewhere between.

But there isn't much to remove if you want to follow Barry's model of a very small distro that does pretty much anything with a gui app [without relying on applications in the cloud] and runs on almost all hardware.

While there is some duplication, like you said, with the exception of the browsers and office apps and maybe the video players, it is all very tiny apps and scripts.

There just isn't anything of substantial size to remove that doesn't produce a crippled version of puppy.

Just as a data point, if you take the 32 bit debian stretch 7.5 Puppy, uninstall Palemoon, Abiword, Gnumeric, and Deadbeef, install links2 and remaster with a zdrv you get a main sfs file that is 243 megabytes and a zdrv that is 31 megabytes.

If you then delete all the graphics drivers from /usr/lib/dri except the intel i915 driver and resquash with xz, you get a main sfs file that is 215 megabytes.

Take that and look at it with gdmap, what else could you get rid of and still have a useful distro? Cups and sane? The wireless drivers? All the video players?

It doesn't take woof. I suggest oui use the remaster process and produce a prototype of what he is talking about. It is supposed to be a doacracy after all.

+1.

[oui]

Who's paying you to do this, by the way? M$? RedHat? Google?

Those Mssrs are American as you , you understand why actually tensions happens between us?

It is a scandal that you come with those calumny!

I did only ask you why SliTaz with about the same browser in it, the same goodies, as far I know the actual LinuxFromScratch else if it supply not the most newer kernel making perhapts difficulies, is so tiny and new you did explain strong stripped version from Puppy so big!

no need to insult each other:

you can look an say

that
that
that
that

if you see more an technical grounds are transparently,

that ground
that ground
that ground
that ground

really easy

witjhout some calumny or insults!

poor man!

[s243a]

Who's paying you to do this, by the way? M$? RedHat? Google?

Those Mssrs are American as you , you understand why actually tensions happens between us?

It is a scandal that you come with those calumny!

I did only ask you why SliTaz with about the same browser in it, the same goodies, as far I know the actual LinuxFromScratch else if it supply not the most newer kernel making perhapts difficulies, is so tiny and new you did explain strong stripped version from Puppy so big!

n

The libraries in SliTaz are older then those of the newest puppy. I think that using older libraries is a good why to try to keep the iso size down. However, if one does so then they might have problems running newer software like internet browsers.

[oui]

The libraries in SliTaz are older then those of the newest puppy. I think that using older libraries is a good why to try to keep the iso size down. However, if one does so then they might have problems running newer software like internet browsers.

I am not SliTaz defensor but sometime user (as a full Linux installation as SliTaz has all proprieties of a normal Linux plus hints those like Puppy uses, and a lot more.

Aleksej, the (relatively) new developer of SliTaz (it is the one-man-developer staff of the distribution ) works a lot of time at the SlTaz NEW based on actual LinuxFromScratch. You can relatively often new ISO's at mirror.slitaz.org org

using the falculty of SliTaz to be installed directly from internet with each old SliTaz CD (or perhaps FD ; but right remember, the protocol did change from the very early FD and ISO's). If you know that you can always start the most newer SliTaz

and if you want to install fast and easily (for example in each dir of an other distro, for ex. in /var/SliTaz in Slackware / Debian / Ubuntu / probably also easyOS, you will never have problem with it and it happens in a few minutes following that page!

if you find package surprising you look at the both "SlitazFromScratch" books, the initial one from Christoph (the Swiss creator of that diistro with, since the first time, users friendlich management of languages and keyboards, and, the second since release 4.0, from Aleksej at the wiki...no need to unscramble the, hum, logic of some distro builder!

you want search more? go to slitaz.org/en and hit on the search icone.the searching page opens with 2 fields. the second field search in ALL SliTaz sites!

[musher0]

Who's paying you to do this, by the way? M$? RedHat? Google?

Those Mssrs are American as you , you understand why actually tensions happens between us?

It is a scandal that you come with those calumny!

I did only ask you why SliTaz with about the same browser in it, the same goodies, as far I know the actual LinuxFromScratch else if it supply not the most newer kernel making perhapts difficulies, is so tiny and new you did explain strong stripped version from Puppy so big!

no need to insult each other:

you can look an say

that
that
that
that

if you see more an technical grounds are transparently,

that ground
that ground
that ground
that ground

really easy

witjhout some calumny or insults!

poor man!

Hey.

You mistake me for an American, when I am Canadian. Similarly, you think that I am the
developer behind DPupBuster-7.9.0.2, when I am only a facilitator.

You suppose that our Puppy devs fatten the Pups on purpose, when they do not.

Dancytron, jamesbond and others have provided you with all the data you'll ever need
to understand this situation. But you do not want to, you doubt our sincerity. You
absolutely want your anorexic Puppy. Who's the poor guy now?

So here's the deal: you attack our reputation, and we attack yours. You attack us and
we pay you back in kind. Fair is fair. Do we have a deal?

Or you just shut up and humbly kneel before superior facts. Puppy is not SliTaz and
never was. Enough of your nonsense. You'll kill Puppy with it, if we let you loose.

So what's the name again? "Aleksje" from SliTaz is paying you to belittle Puppy? I see...
Finally the truth is coming out.

[wiak]

Moved my comment, since more about Midori in DPupBuster, to here:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 76#1019576

wiak

[oui]

So here's the deal: you attack our reputation, and we attack yours. You attack us and
we pay you back in kind. Fair is fair. Do we have a deal?

poor man really! he is not American. he is Canadian! and where is Canada? In China, in Australia, in China?

YOU ...

attack the reputation of Puppy, because

YOU

find that you have the qualification of an developer because you feel yourself able to play with a distro builder with dramatic results:

in the last few hours where I did start this critic on Woof, WoofCE and to be fat, really the few hours

Puppy did loose a other rang at the ranging at distrowatch.com and is now not rang

33

any more

but

rang 34

and it is your fault because you are not able to discern that continue this way is a great error: the world user repulse violently the new products having only an unique advantage:

to make the creators shine

regardless of users' reactions and the negative effects for Puppy.

A good Puppy will never be an elephant because the user is awaiting with the name Puppy a smart distribution

(note: I did answer wiak behind his message here )

[linuxcbon]

Oui, please create a "lighter" puppy and show us how to do, instead of useless blablabla for pages.

[oui]

not needing!

look at this versjon of SliTaz:

http://mirror.slitaz.org/iso/rolling/sl ... -loram.iso

in that iso, aleksej did offer the Puppy guy's being not able to recognize what a distro needs

with gtkonly, justx, base and
non-live (needs the CD-ROM) alternatives (5x). Spare up to 30% of the RAM
size in live mode.

Russian dolls the initrd from SliTaz is splitted,inito 5 steps (it is somewhat like Slitaz from Scratch! but working in automatic!) ; we don't hat equivalent in Puppy, only WoofCE and it builds monsters!