Puppy 2.15CE "Viz" - Look and Feel

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Springer
Posts: 52
Joined: Tue 22 Aug 2006, 16:25
Location: Austin, TX

#91 Post by Springer »

WhoDo:

VERY, VERY nice job. That's the kind of professional look I've been hoping to see in Puppy since I first loaded it and was blown away by the elegant leanness of the system's architecture. Amazing what a little grooming can do for a pup! (As I know well, since I actually do have springers, and they're due for their spring clip tomorrow.)

2.15CE is shaping up to be a fantastic release - much more than just a consolidation release, really, if you consider the huge change of using the SFS add-ons for customization, instead of different ISOs.

Which raises a question: Is there going to be an SFS installer/manager? (Well, not in 2.15, but maybe later?) I could see two parts - one, a desktop app that lets you choose what SFS modules you want to (down)load/install and another in the boot menu, giving you the chance to, say, decide you'd like to override your "normal" config and boot this time with the dev SFS installed and the graphics SFS temporarily disabled, for instance. This would be very different from most other distros, but powerfully easy.

BTW, I think things are reasonably well optimized w.r.t. boot process now, but I found a decent IBM article on boot streamlining that was published last week: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/l ... tLinuxBoot

With the automatic desktop icon and menu updates that are in the works to adapt to the SFS disks available, I think the Puppy SFS suite system is going to be a *really* slick setup.

Again, thanks to all for a great job. I've been busy and may not have time to try RC2 before you ship RC3, but I'm looking forward to playing with the new pup.

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WhoDo
Posts: 4428
Joined: Wed 12 Jul 2006, 01:58
Location: Lake Macquarie NSW Australia

#92 Post by WhoDo »

Springer wrote:VERY, VERY nice job. That's the kind of professional look I've been hoping to see in Puppy since I first loaded it and was blown away by the elegant leanness of the system's architecture. Amazing what a little grooming can do for a pup! (As I know well, since I actually do have springers, and they're due for their spring clip tomorrow.)
Thank you, Springer. Very nice of you to say so. There has been a lot of input behind the scenes from NathanF (Grafpup), Pizzasgood (Pizzapup), Previously known as Guest, Tronkel, and a whole host of others who have offered testing, advice, support, etc. It makes me proud to have been a part of what is truly a Community Edition.
Springer wrote: 2.15CE is shaping up to be a fantastic release - much more than just a consolidation release, really, if you consider the huge change of using the SFS add-ons for customization, instead of different ISOs.

Which raises a question: Is there going to be an SFS installer/manager? (Well, not in 2.15, but maybe later?) I could see two parts - one, a desktop app that lets you choose what SFS modules you want to (down)load/install and another in the boot menu, giving you the chance to, say, decide you'd like to override your "normal" config and boot this time with the dev SFS installed and the graphics SFS temporarily disabled, for instance. This would be very different from most other distros, but powerfully easy.
In fact Sunburnt is developing a GUI to do exactly what you propose - load sfs files either at boot or "on-the-fly", depending on the underlying file system. There has been talk about moving to aufs instead of unionfs, and BarryK is currently testing having sfs files compiled inside initrd.gz, so they won't limit the number of sfs files that can be unioned outside. It's all very exciting for Puppy's future right now.
Springer wrote:BTW, I think things are reasonably well optimized w.r.t. boot process now, but I found a decent IBM article on boot streamlining that was published last week: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/l ... tLinuxBoot
Thanks. I'll check it out.
Springer wrote:With the automatic desktop icon and menu updates that are in the works to adapt to the SFS disks available, I think the Puppy SFS suite system is going to be a *really* slick setup.
In fact with RC2/RC3 the XDG menu system is truly dynamic, adding in menu entries based on the presence of sfs add-on files. I think that in itself is a HUGE feature for Puppy over other OS, Linux or otherwise. Even some of the bigger Linux distros still have to resort to manual menu editing from time to time when one or another application doesn't quite do the job on install. Puppy now leads the pack, IMHO. :P

Thanks again for the compliments to the CE development team. I'm sure they are much appreciated by all!
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richard.a
Posts: 513
Joined: Tue 15 Aug 2006, 08:00
Location: Adelaide, South Australia

#93 Post by richard.a »

WhoDo wrote:I believe BarryK was going to try and rebuild MUT since Jesse hasn't been around for a while. I don't know where that's up to. In the meantime Pmount has been overhauled and has many of the GUI features you're enquiring about. There is very little to choose between the two at the moment, except that sometimes one will "see" a drive that the other doesn't.
Thanks for the info.

For those who don't "know" Pmount, here are caps of it and MUT to show the similarities and differences...

Image_Image

Re my working on the JWM side of the project, I've done some alterations to the JWM menu to bring its lower end closer to that on the IceWM one...
Left to right, the original JWM menu lower section, next the IceWM lower section, then the JWM "Shutdown" changed to "Logout" to maintain compatibility.

This won't please regular Puppy + JWM users but will probably suit migrants to the system who might need to switch across to JWM.

Image_Image_Image

Note I have added two extra menu calls ("Windows" and "Settings") as yet not working, and the "Window Managers" menu item, and below we can see the (now) similarity between the two WMs menus, Ice on the left, JWM on the right.

Settings comprises pointer focus (sloppy or MS style) and themes (I'm looking at a script that will allow copying and over-writing the config file's button image, and possibly calling the theme switcher that MU wrote) but that is on the back burner right now - and the Window List is the one above it.

Image_Image

These are only really done to show how the compatibility can be improved with a bit of ingenuity and fence-wire - the Ozzie farmer's way :) :D

Richard in Adelaide
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