Which kernel to use for compiling? (for Barry)

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figueroa
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Which kernel to use for compiling? (for Barry)

#1 Post by figueroa »

I read today's "News" about using the new Mandriva for compiling puppy programs. I had been a mandrake user from way back around version 5 and was a RedHat user before that and a Slackware user before that.

What I've experienced is that everything Mandrake after 9.2 was pretty badly hosed one way or another. It's caused me to try nearly every distribution in the last year, and finally ended up with Gentoo. For a solid kernel, I recommend it, but also recommend Slackware, and Debian. Debian, because of the excellent package management would be my recommendation.

On a tangent, I'm not convinced that moving to the 2.6 kernel is a real step forward. The newer hardware really benefits from it, but 2.6 has its own issues, especially with older hardware, plus bloat.

I still like Puppy!! Thank you for all your efforts. Puppy is a wonderful distribution.
Andy Figueroa
figueroa@philippians-1-20.us

nduanetesh
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Re: Kernel for compiling (for Barry)

#2 Post by nduanetesh »

figueroa wrote: On a tangent, I'm not convinced that moving to the 2.6 kernel is a real step forward. The newer hardware really benefits from it, but 2.6 has its own issues, especially with older hardware, plus bloat.
One of the things that I think everyone assumes, but never really talks about is that one of the goals of puppy is to bring puppy to the masses...to get as many people as possible using this little OS. (Whether or not an enormous userbase is truly desireable is a subject for another thread.) To this end, puppy will need to support as much hardware as posslbe right out of the box. As one of those with hardware that is now working because of the newer kernel, I have to say that I do consider the move to 2.6 a step forward. Of course, I think that kernel discussions at this point are pretty moot, as I get the impression that Barry is one to very carefully consider his decisions, and isn't one to second guess himself.

If he were, wouldn't IceWM be the default window manager by now?

ND

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JohnMurga
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#3 Post by JohnMurga »

Hey
On a tangent, I'm not convinced that moving to the 2.6 kernel is a real step forward. The newer hardware really benefits from it, but 2.6 has its own issues, especially with older hardware, plus bloat.
Currently I'd have to agree with figueroa ... I have been testing the 1.0.2 core on several machines and it is a step back from 1.0.1 in terms of stability and (ironically enough) hardware support.

HOWEVER, Puppy did have to move to 2.6 some time and these problems where always going to occur... So it is just aswell it's happened now instead of later, and at least it is even faster now ;-)

Anyway, all the issues are being raised in forum and Barry is fixing them, so I'm sure 1.03 will blow eveything that came before it away.
I get the impression that Barry is one to very carefully consider his decisions, and isn't one to second guess himself.

If he were, wouldn't IceWM be the default window manager by now?
Err ... Barry is one BUSY man :-) I suspect he hasn't had time ...

Cheers
JohnM

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Lobster
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#4 Post by Lobster »

JohnMurga wrote:Hey

HOWEVER, Puppy did have to move to 2.6 some time and these problems where always going to occur...
. . . things are getting better . . . for example Abiword loads so fast AND with an open text window - so I use it as a text editor. By the time Open Office has opened a document, I could have delivered the letter . . .

(Sorry OO - the truth is Java is s l o w . . .)

HOWEVER and it is a big however, we are experiencing no printing and if you check the news on the Puppy web site - you will see this is being fixed.

John I know pondered over whether to use 2.4 or 2.6 kernel in the soon to be released 50meg Opera Pup - and if he was doing a fat pup or offering a dotpup net install then maybe this was to be a menu option. Eventually we move into the new future and keep an eye on the possibility of a temp return to other kernels.

So . . . anyways . . . [swooning] I have suddenly grown very fond of Abiword - it is and was a GOOD long term choice. Same with the long term potential of the new kernel and some new configuaration and updating that was also introduced.

Puppy is more reliable, more fun, friendly to us Window refugees and above all cuter.

Cute is important. That is why I have campaigned for the removal of the cross eyed vampire beaver icon (the program is fine) Others pups are a little worried by the red eye pup (aka "hell pup" - still cute) and some Pups have been getting TV flashbacks from the Seal Puppy + test card of 1.0.2

Thankfully GuestToo created a new Beaver icon and I urge people to respect the original Pup and get out their crayons to help create a new Pup identifier logo type thingee (what is the correct term - mascot? - logo?) and also work towards that famed creature and future theme . . .

"IcePuppy" aka PuppyKewl theme
Puppy Raspup 8.2Final 8)
Puppy Links Page http://www.smokey01.com/bruceb/puppy.html :D

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#5 Post by figueroa »

JohnMurga wrote:Hey
On a tangent, I'm not convinced that moving to the 2.6 kernel is a real step forward. The newer hardware really benefits from it, but 2.6 has its own issues, especially with older hardware, plus bloat.
Currently I'd have to agree with figueroa ... I have been testing the 1.0.2 core on several machines and it is a step back from 1.0.1 in terms of stability and (ironically enough) hardware support.

HOWEVER, Puppy did have to move to 2.6 some time and these problems where always going to occur... So it is just aswell it's happened now instead of later, and at least it is even faster now ;-)
Let me know if this subject is "expired" i.e. no longer worth commenting upon. I believe it depends on what Puppy's goals are. Puppy is "advertised" as being for older computers. Kernel 2.6 has serious older computer problems by trying to be too many things for too many people. At the same time, support for some older hardware has been removed.

Example: I have a not too old KDS laptop - PIII/1,000 MHZ etc. None of the newer Linux distributions supported all the hardware and some were really hosed - till Puppy .9x. But, with Puppy 1.0.2 it's the same issue. In order to keep up, I installed Minislack 1.0.1, a bit fattened up with some Slackware 10.1 software, and also downgraded the Minislack kernel to the slackware 2.4.29 acpi kernel. And now everything works. Part of the problem is also "hotplug." I disable hotplug untill the end of booting so the right modules can be manually loaded, mostly via rc.local.

That's been my experience. Also, Kernel 2.6 has really big problems with my Toshiba Libretto - a Pentium 75 palmtop resurreced by Puppy .98 and now running Puppy 1.0.1.

Blessings.
Andy Figueroa
figueroa@philippians-1-20.us

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BarryK
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#6 Post by BarryK »

Your problem may not be the 2.6 kernel as-such, but that acpi is enabled.

A good experiment would be to try John Murga's version, which can turn off acpi in the boot menu, see if that works.
Note though, John's version needs a PC with at least 128M RAM.

Note, I'm planning to also offer a boot menu in 1.0.3.

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#7 Post by BarryK »

On second thought, acpi would not be the problem on the Libretto, as I compiled the kernel so that acpi only is enabled on PCs manufactured in 2001 or later. On earlier PCs the kernel does not enable acpi.

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Kernel for compiling (for Barry)

#8 Post by figueroa »

BarryK wrote:On second thought, acpi would not be the problem on the Libretto, as I compiled the kernel so that acpi only is enabled on PCs manufactured in 2001 or later. On earlier PCs the kernel does not enable acpi.
Right. My KDS laptop "needs" and "loves" ACPI. The major problem seems to stem from the part of hardware recognition that is built into the kernel and that I can't disable (and would like to, because it loads modules for the wrong hardware, and/or non-working modules for the KDS hardware - which isn't all that exotic).

There is actually less of a problem with the Libretto because it is straight ISA non-PNP. So with that kind of hardware, all 2.6 offeres is bloat.

On the KDS laptop, the 2.4.29 Slackware Kernel is working well. On the Libretto, the zipslack 10.1 bare kernel seems to do the well, as does the Puppy 1.0.1 kernel.

Please don't think I'm anti-progress. I'm running the latest kernel with Gentoo on my main desktop computer and it's great. But, I have 20 gigs dedicated to it and that's 55% full.

Bottom line, I believe, if Puppy is going to continue to support older hardware well, it needs to have both 2.4 and 2.6 kernel forks, selectable at bootup the way Mepis used to do (Grub options) (I think the way this worked was isolinux booted you into Grub).
Andy Figueroa
figueroa@philippians-1-20.us

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#9 Post by JohnMurga »

Hey
Let me know if this subject is "expired" i.e. no longer worth commenting upon. I believe it depends on what Puppy's goals are. Puppy is "advertised" as being for older computers. Kernel 2.6 has serious older computer problems by trying to be too many things for too many people. At the same time, support for some older hardware has been removed.
I don't use Puppy as my main system, but as a system that I can take with me anywhere and use with any machine, given this I am in the awkward position of (obviously) liking my 1.0.2 build but carrying 1.0.1 around as it works better on all the different hardware right now.

Now the problem with 2.6 is that it'll always be about what is current or coming, and although it does provide better compatibility with new hardware all the worthwhile stuff still gets backported to 2.4.

I think that distros like Knoppix have a 2.4 boot option, would that be worth doing ? And will Unleashed ever support the 2.4 kernel again ?

What is our target demographic ? ;-)

Cheers
JohnM

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#10 Post by BarryK »

John, you could try a 1.0.2 build in Unleashed, but using the old 2.4 vmlinuz and modules.

In puppy-unleashed/, you just replace vmlinuz
In puppy-unleashed/kernelmodules/ you just replace with the stuff from the old puppy-unleashed/kernelmodules/

No change to the createpuppy script ... well, I don't think so.

Find out if I have indeed kept the scripts in Puppy all backwards compatible, as I tried to.

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#11 Post by JohnMurga »

Hey
John, you could try a 1.0.2 build in Unleashed, but using the old 2.4 vmlinuz and modules.
OK, I should have time from tomorrow night, so I'll give that a go (although I do remember making tweaks to the modutils stuff).

I also have the "Unleashed" forum on my to-do list, I just want to prepare some stuff before I open it.

Cheers
JohnM

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Gateway Solo 1200 Laptop

#12 Post by wscarl »

Gateway Solo 1200 Laptop can't boot with Puppy 1.2 Kernel 2.6.11.7
but can boot with Xandors 3.0 with Kernel 2.6.9
So it not 2.6 but the 2.6.11.7 that the problem can you try the newer 2.6.11.10 to see if that fix's it?

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#13 Post by BarryK »

I expect the next Pup will have 2.6.12 ...well, I hope so ...I go to kernel.org almost every day, waiting expectantly ...it's currently 2.6.12rc5.
...the thing is, how many "rc" numbers will they have before the final release!!?

robertltux
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Puppy Breeds and Jigsaw Download

#14 Post by robertltux »

One thing that could help the whole "What do you want on your Puppy copy"question is a program used by the debian project called Jigdo (aka Jigsaw download).
The way it would work is you could have a few locations with some of the Puppies and other sites with the files to change the Puppies into the other versions, the jigdo files and templates

barry email me @ google mail if you would like me to do some sample code

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#15 Post by GuestToo »

i've use Jigdo to download Debian
it seemed to work ok

there would be a folder with all the files that would be on the CD ... it would download whatever files (mostly debs) that were needed to build an iso, then it would build an iso

Debian CDs are mostly debs

a Puppy CD is mostly 3 files, vmlinuz, image.gz, and usr_cram.fs

downloading 1 or 2 debs in the Jigdo folder to build the latest Debian iso would be efficient

to do the same thing with Puppy, you would download at least the latest usr_cram.fs, which is almost as big as the entire iso

Jigdo might work well for keeping Unleashed packages updated

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