wish list for next puppy release

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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panzerpuppy
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#31 Post by panzerpuppy »

Here's my list of suggestions:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 87&#235587



panzerpuppy

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37fleetwood
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#32 Post by 37fleetwood »

ok, I have something. I asked in another post about problems with my mouse. here's the reference:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 944#238944
is there any way this fix can be incorporated in the new puppies from here on out? here's the code which allows the back and foreward buttons to work. obviously a mouse configuration wizard would be better but this is pretty good in the mean time.

Code: Select all

Section "InputDevice" 
Identifier "Mouse0" 
Driver "mouse" 
Option "CorePointer" 
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice" 
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2" 
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" 
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true" 
Option "Buttons" "7" 
Option "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 6 7" 
EndSection
Scott 8)

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#33 Post by KF6SNJ »

Could I suggest an Apple Bootstrap Loader? That way Puppy will work non-intel macintosh hardware.
The only windows I have are those on my home.

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37fleetwood
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#34 Post by 37fleetwood »

is it also possible at boot to have an option to boot to the hard drive? it would be convenient not to have to take the cd out all the time :)
Scott 8)

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Béèm
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#35 Post by Béèm »

37fleetwood wrote:is it also possible at boot to have an option to boot to the hard drive? it would be convenient not to have to take the cd out all the time :)
Scott 8)
If you install unto a HDD you can do this.
Time savers:
Find packages in a snap and install using Puppy Package Manager (Menu).
[url=http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HomePage]Consult Wikka[/url]
Use peppyy's [url=http://wellminded.com/puppy/pupsearch.html]puppysearch[/url]

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Pizzasgood
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#36 Post by Pizzasgood »

Yep, both Frugal (works similar to livecd, but from a harddrive instead of cd) and Full (like a normal distro).

Menu -> Setup -> Puppy universal installer

EDIT: Oh, I get it. To boot the underlying OS even though the disk is in the drive. Yes, that's possible. We used to have that option in the older Puppy 1.x.x versions. Hold on and I'll dig up the options that go into isolinux.cfg to enable that.
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Pizzasgood
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#37 Post by Pizzasgood »

Okay. Basically, I think that during the pause where you could add "puppy pfix=ram", if you instead give it this, it will boot from the HD:

Code: Select all

localboot 0x80
I'm not certain that will work, but I think so.

This can be made simpler. In the iso there is a file called isolinux.cfg. It contains something about like this:

Code: Select all

default puppy
display boot.msg
prompt 1
label puppy
kernel vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.gz pmedia=cd
timeout 50
Basically, it has one "section" labeled "puppy", which is the default. When you type in the option "puppy pfix=ram" what you're really doing is telling it to use the "puppy" section and to pass the option "pfix=ram" to the kernel. That is the only significance of the "puppy" in that command.

Now, what you need to do to make it simple is this: add another section with a simple name that just uses that localboot command. The modified file would look like this:

Code: Select all

default puppy
display boot.msg
prompt 1
label hd
localboot 0x80
label puppy
kernel vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.gz pmedia=cd
timeout 50
Then just replace the isolinux.cfg in the iso with the modified one (use IsoMaster) and burn the new CD. Now when the CD splash screen comes up, you can simply type hd and it should boot from the HD.
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37fleetwood
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#38 Post by 37fleetwood »

Wow too much information! :lol:
what I'm asking for I guess would be a splash screen that I could down arrow through to get the puppy pfix=???? I want which has something like boot to hdd as it's default option? I'm not saying that it is something I want to type in to get there or it would be easier to simply push the eject button on the cd drive. case in point, I'm running nop 4.1 as my main os on a full install, but would like to have Church pup (or some other pup) in the drive to do some other specialized function. I want the cd to boot to the hard drive by default unless I press the down arrow to the pfix I want for running off of the cd, one of which needs to be boot cd normally. most other distributions of Linux do just what I am suggesting. I think it is time to decide what Puppy is going to be. I recently have gone through and tried most of the most common flavors of Linux in my bid to be completely Microsoft free. funny but Puppy seems to beat all the large distributions hands down! the down side is Puppy is still trying to be stripped down which is good but I don't think it means it needs to be difficult if the solution is easy and doesn't cut into the ability of the older slower machines. maybe there could be two releases, first one that keeps up with technology but is still Puppy and the other with a mind toward Legacy systems. the overall charm and value of Puppy is it's lack of needless complication. Suse is like riding the Queen Mary, big smooth slow and completely not in your control. puppy is small fast and totally customizable. keep the small philosophy but maybe small doesn't mean 100mb any more maybe 250mb is the new 100mb. also it needs to be considered that the older machines still have Puppy 1, 2, and 3 to use which can still be developed without gaining too much weight. it hasn't been that long since I stumbled across Puppy and Puppy 2.15 ce was the top of the line! my bid is let Puppy 5 gain some weight and continue to develop Puppy 3 as a screamin system for older smaller machines. just a thought from someone who is not as concerned with size as much as with usefullness, of course I don't want Puppy to be like Suse which now comes on a Dvd and installs everything, just make it work really well and easily and I will pick the programs I want.
Scott 8)

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Pizzasgood
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#39 Post by Pizzasgood »

Not sure how to do that type of menu. I'd have to read through the isolinux docs. I do know how to set up a menu where you just type the number of the option you want and press enter, though, like in Puppy 1.x.x. And it could still have the 'puppy' option too, in case you wanted to be more specific. I attached an example screenshot from Pizzapup 1.0.5. (Option 5 was to use pfix=ram (actually, pfile=cd as it was called back then), but I didn't list it for come reason. It was definitely implemented - I'm looking at the code now.)

Scrollable menus would be nicer. I just haven't gotten around to finding out how.
Attachments
pizzapup105boot.gif
Boot screen from Pizzapup 1.0.5
(12.3 KiB) Downloaded 1343 times
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cb88
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#40 Post by cb88 »

pizzasgood you might wanna check out the grub cd bootloader..

it has the menus and supports a nice splash (nimblex uses it)
Taking Puppy Linux to the limit of perfection. meanwhile try "puppy pfix=duct_tape" kernel parem eater.
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Pizzasgood
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#41 Post by Pizzasgood »

Noted. Next time I get motivated to mess with the boot menus I'll check it out. :)
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shiuming
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wish list..

#42 Post by shiuming »

It'd be nice to have a little bit more multilingual support which means:
- dropping JWM in favour of something else.. the openbox pet supports multibyte hints.. to a degree
- if licensing is ok include the wqy fonts would be nice so i can read those crazy japanese/chinese websites.

It would be nice to include a pidgin release that is compiled against the seamonkey nss/nspr libraries and dropping ayttm.

Probably to keep the release from getting bigger you can drop the additional background images , games, and the 101 calculator / editor apps and reduce them down to 1 and make the others addons.

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drongo
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Longer term wish list

#43 Post by drongo »

Rather than just bolting on features from a wish list, perhaps we should be thinking about the direction of future Puppies?

I currently use it as a live-CD loading into RAM without a save file, in the past I have used the save file. I have never used multisession, although it looks intriguing. I have never done a frugal or full install. I have once loaded a Puppy onto a USB stick. One of Puppy's strengths is this variety. I don't think we should be optimising the boot process for a particular use.

If Barry is going to rewrite the init script it would be great if it supported Mark's ideas for easy internationalisation. Now we have the posibility of more than three SFS files could these be used for localisation, i.e. could we have a CJKV SFS?

The 100MB limit was not an arbitrary anti-bloat goal. The intention of Puppy was that it could be loadaed into RAM for speed. Every time you increase the size you make that goal impossible for old, RAM-challenged PCs. The way Puppy works has been changed a few times to try and reduce the amount of stuff loaded into RAM, all this effort was for nothing if it ends up as a DVD-sized monster which loads applications slowly off an optical disk.

What makes Puppy unique? Do we want or need to keep all of these features? Does the project need to fork into low-RAM and large-RAM variants? Yes, I like all of the attractive screens and windows being proposed and I like the huge range of apps. But what I really like is that I can put a CD in to a machine and have a usable operating system shortly afterwards that is awesomely fast.

I've got nothing to say against Ubuntu, SuSE or any other Linux distro but Puppy was different. I'd like it to remain different. It still seems to have some of the best hardware detection around which is a very impressive feature for a small distro.

I'd like to see a minimal Puppy which allows you to load up multiple SFSs to personalise your own system. Personalisation would include language packages, browsers, wallpapers, office tools, graphics tools, multimedia apps, developer tools, networking apps and so on.

People occasionally moan about the calculators. These are very small, so what is the problem exactly, do I have to use "bc"?

Sorry if this is slightly off-topic but I feel it is relevant. We should probably be thinking about a maintainable structure for Puppy. A smallish core with multiple bolt-ons each maintained by a separate developer would be more stable/maintainable surely? Bolting lots of extra features onto existing Puppy will just make things more complicated.

drongo

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"Puppiño"

#44 Post by lilleguard-liste »

I would also like Puppy linux to develop to a minimalistic distro with a "living" repository for personalizing it.

minthaka
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My list

#45 Post by minthaka »

Hi, to everybody!
There are few wishes for the next release:
0). MC installed by default
1). Inkscape instead of InkLite
2). Opera instead of Seamonkey+Pctorrent: we would have a 3 in 1 solution, a browser, a mail client and a Bittorrent.
3). GQview for image viewing.
4).Gimp instead of anything else for image processing.
5).Mplayer or VLC instead of gxine (which works not with subtitles)
6). More flexible remastering possibilities, to remaster the .sfs file itself, to be able to remove some preinstalled apps we consider useless.

I love Puppy, it's great as it is, my suggestions are more likely for some bigger version

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37fleetwood
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#46 Post by 37fleetwood »

ok, I would like to revise/clarify my views as i think it may be that what I am saying is not sounding like what i was meaning it to be.
first I really like that Puppy is fast and light and small. that being said I think Puppy sits on a precipice of change. I am of the opinion that there is plenty of room for development for Puppy 3 and 4 for memory challenged machines while Puppy 5 could be more capable. I would never propose that giant programs galore should be added in the base distro but if it takes more size, I think it is worth it to improve hardware support. and other items which make for a more capable base. video drivers, wireless drivers, support for all manner of hardware. one glaring thing in Linux in general is support for mice! why does my mouse do such cool things in windows and nothing in Linux? and 3d video support for video cards. even if these things are not included they need to be easily available
second thing about programs. I don't really care to much which programs are included as long as what I'm looking for is available easily as a .pet. one of the more popular Puppies is NOP which comes fairly stripped of all the programs the base puppy comes with. this is a wake up call, give me a good and solid base and let me pick the packages I want. I absolutely hate the zip program Puppy comes with and always install peazip right away. so this other zip program is running in ram whether I'll ever use it or not and so is peazip which isn't available as a .pet even so I have to install the .pup handler, all running in ram etc., etc.

so in short, my vote is get rid of some of the programs that everyone is impressed that puppy comes with and add support for as much hardware as possible. keep developing puppy 3 and 4 for slower machines and move Puppy 5 up a bit in capability. every day there are less old machines and every day more new machines.
like it or not, hardware is getting more advanced and Linux is right now in the position with compositing of being very seriously a cool alternative to windows and I think that Puppy needs to fill the niche of being a small streamlined distro which people can stick a live disk in their computer and taste compiz, and gimp, and open office, and the list is endless I would have never moved over to linux from windows without the ease of use of Puppy. everyone I show it to is really impressed.
sorry this went so long but I really don't want Puppy to turn into the next Ubuntu which is great but not what Puppy should aim for.
Scott 8)
P.S. my comment about suse being like riding the Queen Mary was not meant to be derogatory I love the smooth seamlesness of Suse, it's just not for Puppy :lol:

cthisbear
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#47 Post by cthisbear »

I really think this would be a great tongue wagging release.
Multipup concept as Wolf Pup has previously produced.

Barebones.
Regular.
Cream of the crop release.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=35588

Retro Pup 1.03
Puppy Fancy 1.2.11

" Wolf Pup has done a great job here.
Brilliant idea of combining Puppies.

A community Puppy with this concept would be great.
Multi developers release their concepts on one CD.
5 or 6 different concepts...
like an omnibus of authors with a central theme ...
but each with their own twist on Puppy.

Combined with a Wolf Pup boot script, maybe he'd do another Puplet
of his own....aka White Fang etc. "

Chris.

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vtpup
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Faster and multiple drive mounts

#48 Post by vtpup »

Faster drive mounting. On my 1.8 ghz Thinkpad T30, w/ 4.11 it seems like everything is wonderfully fast and responsive, except drive mounting.

There is a very long probe interval whenever you click on an unmounted drive icon. If you need to mount more than one drive, you have to wait for each probe to finish before starting another drive mount.

You can't click on several drives in the PMount window. Clicking on one immediately starts the mount process. Then you have to wait for the probe to finish before clicking on another.

If you plug in a USB drive with several partitons you have your work cut out for you.

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vtpup
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#49 Post by vtpup »

Edited:

I was dead wrong on this one, not actually a problem, sorry, deleted.

Roy
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wish list for next puppy release

#50 Post by Roy »

It seems the newest direction is the inexpensive Netbook, due to their economy or transportability. Ripple looks like it will support ASUS Netbooks -- becoming very popular, I should think. Personally, I have the Dell Inspiron Mini-9. Puppy 3.xx through Puppy 4.12 Retro will load and run (the new kernel in 4.12 non-Retro will not load), sans support for bluetooth, the 1.3M-pixel camera, and possibly the wireless (I haven't tried the wireless yet -- there aren't THAT kind of "hot spots" in the middle of this war zone).

I've tried (on different computers) everything from Sit Heel Speak's 2.xx Alpha revision to Mark's latest Muppy, with various versions of DamnSmallLinux, Vector Linux, Slax, etc. thrown in the middle -- and I'm hooked on Puppy! You cannot imagine the simple joy that your hard work has brought me during this past year!

With the economy and things being what they are, I truly expect that we will all see more new Netbooks in the near future than anything else, and I would love to see the Dell Mini-9 fully supported. Of course, that's just my 2-cents....

Roy

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