2.15CE - My Gripes

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Lobster
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#31 Post by Lobster »

Where is Puppy find (pfind)?

That game selection is - how can I put this politely . . . unworthy of a dustbin.

The existing selection was OK, xglaga (not perfect) and another sideways shoot them up were OK. The one I am thinking of may need extra drivers so might not be feasible. One card game is OK but . . .

Originally in the Alpha we had a 14MB game (ahem) That is gone (good thing too). Now it seems you have found the tiniest games possible. Can we compromise here. Two or three games or no games but . . . [Lobster gripes off into the distance . . .]

Game on
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TonshA
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#32 Post by TonshA »

I just want to chip in on the "right-click on the desktop" discussion.

I'm for right-click bringing up the main (icewm) menu. Not the Rox menu.

...chipping out...

DaveA

amish
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#33 Post by amish »

Maybe we could initiate a bitch of the day gripe on the Puppy forum.
i would have one every 3 months, it purges the blood, but a lot of devs take it personally. mu comes to mind, which is a pity because he's done so much wonderful stuff and it's not easy not looking up to him.

i'd try to have a little variety in my griping, since it's too easy to talk about how cdrecord isn't ever going to be a reliable solution for burning .iso files ever again, and since i've been trying to get linux on the internet since 1999 :D

maybe puppy just isn't for you... no, that i don't believe, OVERALL, it's the best os i've ever used, but then, the latest versions (2.12 .13 .14) i cannot use, 2.14 scripts still aren't lgpl (afaik), (maybe 2.15, i mean .16?) and then there are gripes for people that DO NOT, as you pointed out, like fiddling around in dos or the cli just to get something "on the screen."

still, i find i difficult NOT to sympathise with frustrated users, and i don't agree totally that there is a correlation between bitching and ingratitude. you do not have to be grateful for bugs, they happen, we're human, but it's okay to be annoyed when things DO NOT work, and as long as no one is being demonized a little bitching... well... like i implied, it's not good to hold it in :)

i started the "complaints and concerns dept." for this reason. by all means, you can always pm me and complain, and what's more, since other people are either possibly a. too shy b. too undiplomatic to succeed in being taken serious (sometimes i am too!) c. too pissed off to be diplomatic or d. too Polite to say anything, i am collecting complaints, "bugs" and anything like that, and the ones that are common (and yet go unnoticed) do not go unnoticed by me.

then it's my task to point them out at the right time, sometimes at the wrong time, but ultimately, i care about it too. the "puppy team" as barry affectionately calls them is responsible (in some versions anyway, and others in the future) for making the best damned os ever made. that doesn't mean you have to be happy when it pees the rug. (sorry for the analogy.)

we all love puppy, we'd all like it to be better, and ultimately if someone (like a complaints and concerns dept.) can turn gripes into useful suggestions (WELL SOMETIMES!) :) useful suggestions are not a bad thing. but then you do have to tell someone willing to listen. there is also the "if you don't like ____ just learn to hack the kernel and init scripts" argument, although i must say, your mac friend will never go for that. i code for fun, but i think the "learn to fix linux code" argument makes less sense when i can't even get the damned thing online after years of trying. would i have more luck coding in a sadistic language like c? no, i think not.

at the time that you're still migrating from windows, coding shouldbe the least of your concerns. as for the greatest of your concerns, by all means, let's hear them. on the forum, or pm me.

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WhoDo
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#34 Post by WhoDo »

Lobster wrote:Where is Puppy find (pfind)?
Menu>Utilities>Pfind - and before you complain about the choice of location, I didn't choose that, the author did. It can/may be changed, but we'll see.
Lobster wrote: That game selection is - how can I put this politely . . . unworthy of a dustbin. [snip]...One card game is OK but . . .
I consider it a bargain! They are all games for which I have had community requests, and which didn't eat too much space. Anyone who wants more/different games should try out Puppy Software Installer as it now has ALL of the old dotpups and dotpets available in one application.

How about we part on a Latin note? "et tu Brute?" :P
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#35 Post by WhoDo »

cthisbear wrote:Have a simple script to turn off or on..happy little vegemites all round.
Tronkel is working on adding that option to his new Icewinconfig utility. Have you seen that yet?
cthisbear wrote: The desktop backgrounds or icons for those of us with poor eyesight are a pain...personally I would like the blue lightened up.
We can't please everyone. If you don't like it, then you change it to something you DO like. Puppy 2.15CE must use what the majority want - that's democratic. Personally I prefer coloured icons, but this isn't MY distribution, it's the community's distribution.
cthisbear wrote:No internet connected by default...
Hello can't anyone ask Hacao how he did it? Although as I have stated before I don't know if he enabled the firewall by default at boot.
Did you see the charter for Puppy 2.15CE? Specifically it is to be a CONSOLIDATION edition. That means no really new or cutting edge features, just updating, firming up and making reliable what is already there. The cutting edge stuff will be in Barry's next release ... Puppy 2.16
cthisbear wrote:One glitch and I don't mean to be vague...was I tried choosing location?? by mistake, as I was just giving Viz a quick onceover look. I chose Au-English?
and then cancelled and went to the Black Scream Of Gloom...ha! ..ha! waited for a goodly amount of time but had to reboot. Velly interesting.
Hey, at least you got as far as choosing a location. Before Puppy 2.15CE you had to create a complete directory structure under /root before it would even offer you a choice! Not every problem will be resolved in a single release cycle. On Puppy's past record, miracles usually take at least two! :P
cthisbear wrote:Once again I ask why just about the majority of releases of Puppy not originating from Barry himself.... do not run Xvesa when it is selected...and then annoyingly goes back to the prompt.
Beats me. The Xvesa that goes into a new release like 2.15CE comes straight out of Unleashed, where Barry put it! I have changed NOTHING about Xvesa from Barry's 2.14 release.

UPDATE: Your complaint piqued my curiosity, so I went back to see if Xvesa would run, and if not why not. I have resolved the issue. The file /etc/TZ needs to be made world writeable, and the file /etc/videomode doesn't exist so it needs to be created and also made world writeable. That fixes the problem. I have implemented that solution for Puppy 2.15CE Office Edition - due for release this weekend.
cthisbear wrote:If you want Windows refugees to use Puppy.....they don't want a problem at bootup...forget it...all that work...all the pretty pics...all the hard yakka...all the whingeing and or requests by myself or others went down the gurgler.

Irritating pissant things at boot will not cut it.
Personally I know quite a bit about computers...but only a tad about Linux.
Ahem! That's precisely WHY this was a consolidation edition. We want to iron out those annoying "irritating pissant things at boot", and we are certainly trying. And yet you still want us to add AutoDHCP by default and risk all of the bootup glitches doing that might subsequently present? Consistency, Chris ol' stick, is the hallmark of quality.

You are not the only kennel occupant to have griped all over Puppy 2.15CE. That might be MY fault, as I did set the bar rather high for expectations. All the same, I'm not in the least bit unhappy with what has been produced so far, or with the mammoth effort behind the scenes from the likes of Pizzasgood, NathanF, PkaG, Tronkel, rarsa et al, and as the only puppy with access to Puppy 2.15CE Final at this stage, I am more than satisfied that we will soon have achieved most, if not all, of what we set forth to do with our first Community Edition for some time.
Last edited by WhoDo on Fri 23 Mar 2007, 12:34, edited 1 time in total.
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Lobster
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#36 Post by Lobster »

Where is Puppy find (pfind)?

Menu>Utilities>Pfind - and before you complain about the choice of location, I didn't choose that, the author did. It can/may be changed, but we'll see
It needs to change, there are three find utilitiies under 'Filesystem' and one under utilities. Possible easy solution would be to get rid of the existing 3 (does anyone uses or prefers them?)

Also be aware that solutions are arising. I could not use the Beta of Viz. This RC1 I can use and am using. The IceWM selection is excellent, maybe we could lose one more?
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#37 Post by mbutts »

as far as for theme for seamonkey i guess im torn whodo
this one is easy to see, (reminds me of netscape 10 years ago) the other one we are used to in most releases is much more colorful but smaller buttons......


one comment for lightening up the background.....i actually darkened mine with mtpaint program. i used the little button that looks like the sun.... i went back to my standard icons so i can see them better on the blue back ground and changed the usb icon for drives from blue to a nice bright yellow and for some of the others i changed their colour as well.

hey for the home icon why not go from an igloo or house to a DOG house? anyone got an icon of a doghouse maybe with a puppy standing outside???

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q ... ages&gbv=2
i liked the one here on the us search page of the firedog putting out the flames....
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#38 Post by WhoDo »

mbutts wrote:as far as for theme for seamonkey i guess im torn whodo - this one is easy to see, (reminds me of netscape 10 years ago) the other one we are used to in most releases is much more colorful but smaller buttons......
The third one, Skypilot, won an award for best theme or some such. Personally I think it's too "busy", which is why I went for the current one - plan but fits the color scheme.
mbutts wrote:hey for the home icon why not go from an igloo or house to a DOG house? anyone got an icon of a doghouse maybe with a puppy standing outside???
Now there's an idea! I only went with the igloo because of the ice icon theme ... it seemed to fit. I was in two minds as to whether to go back and follow the M$ conventions and use a Computer icon and a Documents folder icon. The current set is a compromise for the community's sake.[/quote]
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iscraigh
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#39 Post by iscraigh »

Quick note

When I try to add an MSN account to gaim it just closes. Try to delete the existing irc account; closes!. I had added a couple of dotpups @ that point, Java, codecs, rdesktop, and the updated network wizard. Could someone try to duplicate this.

Thanks

Craig

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#40 Post by mbutts »

whodo i looked at this page
http://skypilot.projectit.com/
here is what it looks like.... its a coool theme! thanks for the recommendation. :D
Image

for those who want to add it to a previous puppy version do this
go to the page above
make sure java is enabled by hitting edit button on upper left corner of seamonkey
(edit - preferences-advanced)
then i went to the bottom of the page and clicked on XPI-install this theme
waited for it to download
then to select it click on view button on left top of seamonkey
apply theme.......
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#41 Post by iscraigh »

Oops one more.

I have had no success with wireless drivers for my Dell laptop (after installing bcm43firmware.pet). I have always had to use ndiswrapper which continues to work fine....but....It does not save the setting so I have to reload or modprobe ndiswrapper after every bootup. This was not the case in 2.14; it just worked after initial install.


Craig

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Springer
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#42 Post by Springer »

Three things:

1) Another one of those "irritating pissant things at boot"...

My current Puppy test box has 2.15 Office Beta 1 installed on the HD, and I'm testing 2.15 Std RC1 by booting from CD. When I do that, I always get the following message when booting from CD:
Unable to find swap space signature.
Pausing for 60 seconds...
Obviously, this pretty much kills quick booting. The message does not appear when I boot Beta 1 from the HDD. The disk contains an ordinary type 82 Linux swap partition, which is all I've ever needed for any Linux in the past, so I'm not sure what "signature" it's griping about...

2) Seamonkey themes:

SkyPilot Classic is cheesy and looks like a home hacker built it - definitely not up to Puppy's new professionalism.
The "regular" Modern theme is better than "Venerable Modern", since the latter botches drawing the tabs.
I'm not sure it's worth the trouble to cut the butt-ugly "Classic" theme, but I can't see anyone missing it, and it might save a little bit of space.

Of the SM themes available today for Linux, SeaFox (http://themes.freshmeat.net/projects/seafox) or MostlyCrystal (http://tom-cat.com/mozilla/seamonkey.html) may be the best options. SeaFox doesn't define a tab theme, so sbaguz' otherwise-great "modified H2O-saphire" (sic?) gtk2 theme winds up rendering the tabs as Aqua-like buttons - that's just WRONG!

With H2O-saphire fixed to actually draw real tabs (which probably needs doing anyway), SeaFox could get us by through 2.15, but MostlyCrystal is ready to go out-of-the box today, so it gets my vote. (Whatever we do, it's only for one release, since Barry chose Opera for 2.16 - a good move, until Mozilla Suiterunner ships.)

If we *were* to do our own theme, I love the recently-defunct (no FF2.x) "Crystal Dream" Firefox theme (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1597) - it's clean, clear, small, modern, and professional - just like Puppy!

3) In the just-wondering-about-another-nit dept:

There are two small square artifacts at the lower right of the screen after the WM starts - one of them vanishes when the taskbar is drawn, so it may represent that - the other stays there, but vanishes when clicked on. What are these, and is there a way to "invisify" them in the first place?

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#43 Post by Springer »

FWIW, http://www.tom-cat.com/mozilla/seamonke ... hrome.html has a LOT of good info on modifying the look and feel of Seamonkey.

Perhaps a pawprint throbber and the stylized location bar?

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Springer
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#44 Post by Springer »

FWIW, here is the Mostly Crystal theme with the three changes in the userChrome.css file highlighted in the editor window on top in the screenshot (note: tabs are still wrong, but look just a little less like buttons now - at least the aqua button-tabs are gone...):

Not too bad, really.
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#45 Post by WhoDo »

Springer wrote:3) In the just-wondering-about-another-nit dept:

There are two small square artifacts at the lower right of the screen after the WM starts - one of them vanishes when the taskbar is drawn, so it may represent that - the other stays there, but vanishes when clicked on. What are these, and is there a way to "invisify" them in the first place?
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=16646
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#46 Post by WhoDo »

Springer wrote:1) Another one of those "irritating pissant things at boot"...

...[snip]...I always get the following message when booting from CD:

Code: Select all

Unable to find swap space signature.
Pausing for 60 seconds...
This is most likely caused by a dirty swap partition or swap file. Boot from the CD, use MUT to make sure the swap partition isn't locked, and then use gparted or cfdisk to reformat the swap partition.
Springer wrote:2) Seamonkey themes:

SkyPilot Classic is cheesy and looks like a home hacker built it - definitely not up to Puppy's new professionalism.
The "regular" Modern theme is better than "Venerable Modern", since the latter botches drawing the tabs.
I'm not sure it's worth the trouble to cut the butt-ugly "Classic" theme, but I can't see anyone missing it, and it might save a little bit of space.
I'm not that worried about the poorly drawn tabs. The consistency of look and feel is more important to me for first impressions of Puppy 2.15CE. That said, I will look at other theme choices suggested before releasing Final.
Springer wrote:Of the SM themes available today for Linux, SeaFox (http://themes.freshmeat.net/projects/seafox) or MostlyCrystal (http://tom-cat.com/mozilla/seamonkey.html) may be the best options. SeaFox doesn't define a tab theme, so sbaguz' otherwise-great "modified H2O-saphire" (sic?) gtk2 theme winds up rendering the tabs as Aqua-like buttons - that's just WRONG!

With H2O-saphire fixed to actually draw real tabs (which probably needs doing anyway), SeaFox could get us by through 2.15, but MostlyCrystal is ready to go out-of-the box today, so it gets my vote. (Whatever we do, it's only for one release, since Barry chose Opera for 2.16 - a good move, until Mozilla Suiterunner ships.)
Yes, it's only for one release, but where did you get the news that Barry was going with Opera for 2.16? We deliberately went back to Seamonkey because he advised he would be using that in 2.16 and we wanted to maintain compatability.
Springer wrote:If we *were* to do our own theme, I love the recently-defunct (no FF2.x) "Crystal Dream" Firefox theme (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1597) - it's clean, clear, small, modern, and professional - just like Puppy!
I would be happy to consider any theme for inclusion, if it was well put together. Maybe that's a contribution you might consider making, given your obvious familiarity with the underlying css?
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#47 Post by Pizzasgood »

The pre-alpha expirimental iso Barry uploaded to show off the new cpio archive initrd.gz uses Opera. My guess is that it's just for fun though.

As for the other box on the screen, the one that disappears, it has to do with screen widgets. I can't think of the name of the package, but it's the one that lets you have stuff like wmpower or the fishes on the bottom right. I have no idea of it can be made to go away automatically (without disabling it, that is).
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#48 Post by iscraigh »

Another oddity

dougals enhanced remaster closes after the initial box and does not run. I downloaded the one off the forums that supports ntfs and it worked like a charm.


Craig

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#49 Post by Springer »

Here's a small, but high-impact issue in RC2: When using the Puppy Universal Installer to install to hard disk, it's very difficult to know what to do, unless you've used it before in another Puppy version.

The Puppy Icon that used to be the actuator button for the installer is MIA, so all you see is a small grayed-out oval that's the degenerate border for the missing icon. (See screenshot with problem area highlighted.) I'm pretty sure the icon was there in RC1.

Personally, I think this installer dialog box is confusing enough anyway with all its (in most cases) superfluous superfloppy info, but this bug would certainly flummox anyone running the installer for the first time...[/img]
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#50 Post by WhoDo »

Springer wrote:The Puppy Icon that used to be the actuator button for the installer is MIA, so all you see is a small grayed-out oval that's the degenerate border for the missing icon. (See screenshot with problem area highlighted.) I'm pretty sure the icon was there in RC1.
Yep, mini-dog.xpm went missing in RC2 ... probably taking a turn around the territory or something ... but he's definitely back in RC3.

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