Chihuahua Alpha6 plus Lassie_Office

[alienjeff]

And this thread goes silent as Puppy 4.00SC/RC and Final are released. The "finite masses" flock to the official release, thus putting a serious crimp on testing of this CE, variant or version du jour -- lending credence to the supposition that there are too many versions and too few testers.

Remember to register your Puppy v4.00 Final online to secure your Puppy Genuine Advantage benefits, including product news, security updates and SP1 auto-install.

Coming soon: Puppy v4.00.1 codename Whoops

[tronkel]

Alienjeff wrote:

The "finite masses" flock to the official release, thus putting a serious crimp on testing of this CE, variant or version du jour -- lending credence to the supposition that there are too many versions and too few testers.

lol ... yes.

I once read somewhere that Microsoft pay people to sit in usability workshops and try to spot where the faults are. I think they're wasting their money on this. Even paying out good money, they still can't get it right.

Testing is the most important activity of the user community. If you want that perfect OS tool, you should help to test it. OK, you don't get paid - but you get to use it for free. Money can't buy everything.

[prehistoric]

9.27 Opera A-ok.
Firefox3 Beta 5 doesn't seem to save passwords.

Just tested this on my installation. I don't have trouble. Could you have accidentally set preferrences to ignore passwords?

@AJ,

Since I haven't been involved with Dingo, it has not affected my testing. However, non-deterministic problems which show up while playing videos have required a lot of testing time. We still have occasional lock-ups and 3b5 and/or Flash 9 probably still has slow memory leaks. I've also lost confidence in what freemem tray applet tells me.

@tronkel,

I've removed another exec in /usr/X11/restartwm to stop screen lockups. Other than that code hasn't changed. I, on the other hand, am worn to a frazzle. It doesn't seem possible to spend hours watching a variety of video from the Internet without getting a seriously warped view of relationships between people. Yes, some things are funny, once. (Here's an example.) I am now planning to spend several days reading books, to cool my overheated imagination. Someone else can test video playback.

prehistoric

[ttuuxxx]

naaaaaa when it comes to dingo the new kernel is faulty, And the latest main version has a faulty clipboard, most of the time and just frustrating to play with. I spent maybe 3hrs with it and thats it, the cdrw is erased, and I'll be loyal to the 3.0 series since I like slackware so much. Why would I want an operating system that can only do 1/8 of what a previous version can. Thats just crazy
I'm not to worried about people flocking to 4.0 and not testing 3.2.
2.15ce was the biggest release I think of any puppy. People are still downloading it.
ttuuxxx

[prehistoric]

@alienjeff, etc.

Now that you're posting bugs found in Puppy 4.00, try to remember to post a note here when you find something working there which has not be satisfactory in Chihuahua. Having working examples to compare makes debugging a great deal easier. When we have people testing multiple versions, we might as well get all the advantages.

[jonyo]

I've gone back to xvesa. Though I have a cursor now when selecting Xorg with the fix, I now have the original prob where when the 'pute is left for some time, when I get back, at random, the cursor is gone making shutdown difficult at best.

Runs very well with xvesa.

Checked it out a bit but ran across mostly old stuff. Any news on nvidia drivers?

Installed the latest Seamonkey form the official site to usr/lib & works good.

Also installed the latest FF 2.14 from the official site, extracted it to use/lib & think may have messed up the beta FF..but FF2.14 is working good. Starts with the original browser icon but ended up putting another link to the desktop that also fires it up.

I'll start another save file to see if I have that password prob with beta FF.
Not sure but don't think I tinkered with the password settings.

Must say that i've not ever had better response or speed on the net using the rt2570 driver with the wusb54g linksys usb adapter, though it rakes ~ 8 steps to fire up on start.

[prehistoric]

@Jonyo,

If that problem returns when you are running with a SW cursor something very strange is happening. Next time it happens would you mind using the keyboard to bring up the main menu and select restart X? If it suddenly reappears, we will have a clue.

Problems with configuring nvidia drivers have me running tombh's wNOP on one machine, (GeForce 3, 1 GHz Athlon, 1 GB RAM) even though the Compiz/Fusion eye candy isn't my cuppa. It works remarkably well. Tom would be the best reference for a how to.

[RR Koothady]

Dear Tronkel and Others who are striving to make Chihuahua better...

I have been trying to remaster a Puppy with XFce over the last few days. My objectives were three:

1.XFce renders Indic Fonts perfectly (JWM and ICEWM do not)

2.Install Firefox 3.05b - since this is the only browser in Linux that renders Indic fonts correctly

3. Install Abiword 2.6.2 - since this version renders Indic Fonts correctly and the earlier versions do not.

I tried remastering Standard 3.01 Puppy. I removed Abiword2.4, jwm and ROX Filer using PizzaGood's PetBeGone. Didnot remove Seamonky as I had read somewhere in this forum that this might cause seriuos dependency problems. Installed XFce4.41, Abi2.6.2, Firefox 3.05b and SCIM for inputting Indic Languages and all the available Indic locale files. Remastered. ISO size was about 120 MB. When I booted using this remastered ISO - all the pdf files that I had in my system were being shown as executable files and I could not open them. Then I resorted to a remaster without removing ROX and JWM - ISO was 230meg.Reboot using this showed the same above problem.

Then I went around scouting for XFce Puppies. Had trouble in downloading DCL and Dragon Puppy. Downloaded Happy Linux, NOP r6, Lobster's Shard (based on NOP r1).

Happy Linux has Seamonkey browser. This is a beautiful XFce Puppy - but I could not remaster it without facing the above problems.

NOP r6 and Shard - Opera could not be removed. Hotpup Removal from NOP-r6, remastering with the above softwares - yielded an ISO of around 180 megs, but alas ... when I rebooted - it opens a "Standard JWM-ROX Puppy" and not the "NOP XFce r6"!

Then tried Lobster's Shard. Remastering was without any problem. But I could not remove Opera and XaraLX. Remastered ISO was 230megs. Surprisingly I faced no problem with this remaster at all. (Note: I didnot remove ROX and JWM in this). Pdf files that were showing as executable files in the earlier remasters were not facing the problem now. A working Indic XFce Remaster, though 230 megs heavy!

Tried Dingo yesterday. Alas! ROX Filer crashes when the script ""/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/immodules/im-scim.so" "scim" "SCIM Input Method" "" "" "" is placed in "immodules" file located at /etc/gtk-2. (This is an essential script necessary for making SCIM available in all the Gtk apps.)

I tried Chihuahua today. What a beauty this is! I have all the softwares preinstalled in this. Removed HotPup. Could not remove Conky. Removed Planmaker. Installed latest Gnumeric. Had ROX and ICEWM intact - as PetBeGone doesnot show ICEWM in its menu!

Installed all the above Softwares. Then installed OSMO (Tamil version) too. Remastered. Wow! The final remaster is just 130 megs! And it boots without any problem whatsoever!

As for Firefox - palying flash files from youtube - this is not a problem. I downloaded libflashplayer.so file (version 9.0.124) from the Adobe Flash website and placed it in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins folder. Restarted Firefox 3.05b. And it plays the flash files nicely.

Firefox is saving passwords perfectly for me.

I have some minor issues with this remaster though. I shall put them up in this thread shortly.

One interesting observation: ttuuxxx's ICEWM's button and mouse icons are being used in my XFce remaster too!

I wish to thank and congratulate all you guys!

Cheers! Please keep it Up!!

Ramesh

[alienjeff]

@RR Koothady

Next time put a little more effort in auditing your screenshots before posting.

Hint: look at the browser/YouTube window ...

[prit1]

Tested the latest A6 today and noticed that my network did connect once and then went down. I tried rerunning network wizard several times, but network is not working anymore. This uses RT2500 module for wireless connection. This works fine now in Puppy Dingo.

I could not find Gnumeric? Is it present? I thought it might be as Abiword is there. I love the look of this community edition.

[tronkel]

@prit1

Purely for reasons of space I didn't include Gnumeric in the Chihuahua ISO. I used Planmaker instead since it's a lot smaller. Idea is to keep the basic Chihuahua ISO under 100MB

You can though, download a 21MB sfs file called Lassie_Office_302.sfs that contains both the latest Abiword 2.6.2 and the latest Gnumeric. You could also try wolf_bones_301.sfs. It contains the above plus Firefox 3 Beta5 plus Thunderbird with Enigmail as well. Just rename it to wolf_bones_302.sfs if want to use it with Chihuahua. It was originally intended for Wolf Pup but should also work OK in Chihuahua. You can download these from:

http://www.puppylinux.ca/tpp/tronkel

Since I can't test wireless networking with my Chihuahua set up at the moment, I can't help with this very much. I have also had wireless issues with a 3.01 based Puppy on the Classmate PC that Caneri helped me to solve. The RT2500 module may need to be blacklisted and replaced with an updated version. I wonder if you could perhaps extract the module from Dingo (older kernel version 2.6.21.7). That could well solve the problem.

[tronkel]

@ramesh

Glad you like Chihuahua. Still a lot of work to do to it, but it's getting there.

I wonder if you might be better off trying to re-vamp Chihuahua using Unleashed, rather the doing remasters. I haven't used remaster very much , but as as far as I remember, there can be issues as regards removing unwanted stuff from the ISO. Seems to be a bit hit and miss, and could be time-consuming as well.

You can search the forum for tips on how to use Unleashed. Well worth the effort. You'll have much more control and end up with a much better-functioning ISO that way.

[RR Koothady]

Thank you tronkel. I shall start building one from the unleashed from now on.

Thank you AJ for your suggestion. I wanted to show the background wall paper, file icons, panels of XFce, plus Gnumeric, Abiword, and Firefox. That's why the windows were placed in a way so that the final image could show all I had desired.

Ramesh

[gerry]

@RR Koothady- before AJ comes back, I think you missed his point, which is that one of your windows appears to showing pornography.

Gerry

[ttuuxxx]

Dear Tronkel and Others who are striving to make Chihuahua better...

I tried Chihuahua today. What a beauty this is! I have all the softwares preinstalled in this. Removed HotPup. Could not remove Conky. Removed Planmaker. Installed latest Gnumeric. Had ROX and ICEWM intact - as PetBeGone doesnot show ICEWM in its menu!


I have some minor issues with this remaster though. I shall put them up in this thread shortly.

One interesting observation: ttuuxxx's ICEWM's button and mouse icons are being used in my XFce remaster too!

Ramesh

Hello
really you don't have to remove icewm its only 700kb and the shutdown menu button is like 50kb or so, well under 1mb
as conky goes, don't uninstall it, I tried that in the past and my system became unstable, best to just to delete the startup lines.
if you have any problems just shout.
ttuuxxx

[prehistoric]

It appears my frustration with video content on the web has led RRKoothady astray. Trying to understand a foreign culture over the Internet is not easy, still less when you have no idea which things are deliberately skirting the edge of cultural norms.

The video in his screenshot is at the end of the link hidden in my post above. It is a joke, not actual pornography. While others find this arousing, I keep wondering if she might be related to Serleena. Strange things show up in singles bars.

Caveat Videor. (Let the viewer beware.) or, possibly, Caveat Videora.

[prehistoric]

@tronkel, ttuuxxx,

After celebrating an apparent victory over the black/frozen screen problem on two problem machines, I was happy until I tried another install on a new flash drive. Insignificant changes in timing produce a "frugal" install which shows the problem most of the time, even after I make the changes which seemed to fix it before. It could be due to a defective drive, but, if so, it is a very peculiar defect, showing up only in very special cases.

I need to strip Chihuahua down to a minimum and add things back in one-by-one to find the culprits. Even the default Icewm configuration is too complicated. I'm also going to put an installation on a 350 Mhz P II, to see if that makes things worse. For debugging purposes, worse is better.

[ttuuxxx]

@tronkel, ttuuxxx,

After celebrating an apparent victory over the black/frozen screen problem on two problem machines, I was happy until I tried another install on a new flash drive. Insignificant changes in timing produce a "frugal" install which shows the problem most of the time, even after I make the changes which seemed to fix it before. It could be due to a defective drive, but, if so, it is a very peculiar defect, showing up only in very special cases.

I need to strip Chihuahua down to a minimum and add things back in one-by-one to find the culprits. Even the default Icewm configuration is too complicated. I'm also going to put an installation on a 350 Mhz P II, to see if that makes things worse. For debugging purposes, worse is better.

Wow prehistoric your really dedicated to this, Excellent Job, I wish we had 10 people like you. My icewm package isn't all that complicated, it has only what is needed to show blinky and freememory, and a couple of themes, sure try a untouched version, but we will be back in the same boat once we put blinky and freememory back in
LOL I just looked at icewm in gslapt for dingo need to get 21MB and after unpacking 79MB of diskspace will be used, And thats without blinky of freememory LOLOLOL or nice themes. Like my 700kb packages has, LOL its worth fixing.
ttuuxxx

[jonyo]

@Jonyo, If that problem returns when you are running with a SW cursor something very strange is happening. Next time it happens would you mind using the keyboard to bring up the main menu and select restart X? If it suddenly reappears, we will have a clue.

Had a few lockups when I tried this before (requiring power button to get out) in setting up xorg with the fix, sometimes it just went straight to the desktop & seemed to bypass restarting xorg. The lockups occurred when after x successfully restarted from the menu, then wouldn't respond at the command line.

I'm not quite setup to try too much on this setup right now. Have quite a bit of time invested in xp & ~ 5 pups, & haven't sorted out a full backup yet plus the HD is near full so have to sort that all out first.

I'm a little leery when I have lockups in pup where I also run xp (particularly with no backup) cos I ended up with a boot prob in xp (disk error on boot) once after dealing with a lockup in pup. Only happened once when locked up in pup setting up the rt2570 driver in muppy.

I'm pretty sure though that on one attempt at restarting xorg, the cursor reappeared.

I didn't find fiddling with xorg easy without a cursor & was mostly stumbling about trying to apply the "true" fix. In the end, ended up with xorg.conf.new file in root. though there were a few in the right place ..at one point.

[prehistoric]

Only happened once when locked up in pup setting up the rt2570 driver in muppy.

This matches one problem I've had with the rt2500 driver. When I reboot, I get a trap and stack trace when modprobe loads that driver. Turns out the device has a real eeprom to hold some parameters, even when you change OS and remove the hard drive. I would like to disable this so I could debug the rest of the system, but, so far, hacking the pup_save file hasn't allowed me to complete a boot. This can't be the entire problem, because the other problem machine doesn't even have wireless.

One clue, I'm running the same system now from a different kind of flash drive without problems. We could have problems with the unionfs and different drive speeds. Even so, we should be able to separate these problems from X problems. If your cursor really came back after an X restart, there may be a bug in unionfs. The other possibility is RAM which has a soft error at long intervals. If you have a stand-alone memtest, I would run that for some time, just to be safe.