How best to do minimal Puppy?

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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dulac
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#16 Post by dulac »

Pizzasgood wrote:I know there are a couple redundancies with Puppy, but some things should just come with an os, such as a graphics editor, or a document editor.
...
On the other hand, if someone wants a barebones system, they obviously know what they're doing, so it wouldn't be too much for them to just remaster their own cd.
[1st]
Well , the true is that most people don't use a graphis editor. Some do!
Most people use a document editor... Some don't!

[2nd]
However rude the request, it was... It made some rings to bell when connected with your previous comment:

The hardest part of linux, for (maybe) begginers and initiated ones, is in the installing of programs. I think any distro, specially Puppy, would be mature when such problem is gone (Ignoring other issues, please).

So I envision a future Puppy as one like an easy Lego. Were is simple to unload (*.pup)s , to load (*.pup)s ... and to save the new state to a new ISO file. We have now the Lego... the easy will come latter.

It is less far than it was some time ago, thanks to PUPPY's Master Arquitect (and big dad) ;)

Yeap! It may not be that far... If the idea is on the table.
(unless we are already there... are we?...)

Regards,
DuLac
There are so many good and free OSs out there... But most people are stucked with
the mouse-maker OS because of all the nice programs they didn't do... Sad! Isn't it?!?

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Flash
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#17 Post by Flash »

RMW, your post didn't seem rude at all to me. Quite the opposite.

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dulac
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Re: Barebones interest

#18 Post by dulac »

Marv wrote: 1 - I agree the term barebones is slippery. Barebones as a firewall/NAT machine may mean Coyote on a floppy where for a solid server it may mean Tinysofa classic.

2 - For Puppy, I think the crux is that adding with either pupget or dotpup is quite smooth but removal in general is more difficult so what I would call a core iso can be quite useful.

3 - With wget and Dillo one can add a preferred browser (Opera in my case) simply and really the games and minor duplications seem pretty small potatoes.
Yap! My thoughts to...

1 - A barebones should have what is needed to evolve:
a) an install/remove utility
b) A text editor (for configuration)
c) A basic browser to get applications.

2 - removing is as important as installing.
It shoud be easy as 123.
Puppy seems to be heading there!

3 - With those above there's no need to worry about the completeness
of Puppy... it will adapt to the users need as a modular distro.
IF the new state is saved to a user build Puppy.
But then, beaware of malware Puppys.

Regards,
DuLac.
There are so many good and free OSs out there... But most people are stucked with
the mouse-maker OS because of all the nice programs they didn't do... Sad! Isn't it?!?

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Pizzasgood
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#19 Post by Pizzasgood »

In my experience with Legos (pretty good, if I do say so myself, though nowhere near the level I've seen at places like the Iron Reich), they too are harder to take apart than to put togeather. Not only because it's painful to demolish that Megas-XLR inspired rubberband-powered gun with the chrome exhaust pipes, working trigger, monkey wrench, and 'dozer blade, but also because those pieces can get stuck togeather pretty tight. Better than a model that falls apart, though. :)

I actually haven't taken apart that gun yet. I need to get a decent digital camera so I can savor its goodness forever, and stick it on my website like I promised to over a year ago. Right now it's sitting on my shelf next to the big mech with cool shoulder pads that move with the shoulder and awesome fully-articlulated ankles that I built a year earlier.


As for barebone Puppies, I'm going to make one this weekend/week. Personal-Pan Puppy, I'll call it. The main reason I'm doing it is because I have some experaments I want to run that require remastering, and a smaller Puppy remasters faster. Also, I can then release mini-pups of the results and let the users make their own Puppy over them.
[size=75]Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib[/size]
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sunburnt
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#20 Post by sunburnt »

Suggestion: Xwin, 2 or 3 WMs, setup wizards & std. utilities - editor, file man., etc.
No real apps. to speak of, end user can just use unleashed packages to flesh it out.
With any luck we can get new packages like GeexBox, MythTV, or a work alike, also cluster setups.
It'd be great, slim Puppies built with a paticular purpose in mind.

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Pizzasgood
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#21 Post by Pizzasgood »

I changed my mind about the name. It's going to be Empty-Crust Puppy. Personal-Pan will be the log-in version I'm thinking about.

I'm also going to hold off until 1.0.7 is out, since it's already so close. In the meantime, I'm working on an idea I came up with while stripping 1.0.6. It's a hacked PupGet (called PupBeGone) that uninstalls the packages that come standard with Puppy and don't let you get rid of them. It's not the cleanest way to do it, and needs you to download the unleashed package for anything you want to remove (so it can get the file list so it knows what to uninstall), but it's faster than doing the same thing by hand. It's basically like a reverse unleashed, but you only need to download what you're removing, not the whole thing. I spent a good bit of today working on that, and it's mostly functional. I need to add a couple things, but that will have to wait 'till tomorrow. My poor mind can't take any more grebs and seds.

Once I get it done, I'm going to dotpup it, then make a modified version that's compatible with my HackyRemaster script to strip 1.0.7. I'll be able to work much more quickly then.
[size=75]Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib[/size]
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kethd
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#22 Post by kethd »

I know that I care about this topic -- but I have not actually worked with this aspect of Puppy, so I can't claim to really understand the details...
But it is clear to me that we need to strive for two improvements from the status quo:
1) Every version of Puppy should come with an absolutely minimal accompanying version that just barely runs enough to be able to add stuff to. In a perfect world, this would actually be the core of StandardPuppy -- there would just be an extra file of "everything else". Some modular fantasy, where CorePuppy + StdApps = StdPuppy.
2) More relevant for most of us, since after all 50MB is already rather small as distros go, keep trying to make all aspects of re-mastering in every way as simple as possible. In particular, make it very easy to get a menu of all components of Puppy, just click the empty boxes of what you want to add, unclick the boxes of what you want to remove, press a button and get a New Reborn Puppy configured any way you want, no understanding needed, all cross-dependencies etc handled automagically...

kethd
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Utopian Puppy Remastering

#23 Post by kethd »

Further daydreaming... In a perfect world, one could go online, make menu choices, and download whatever Custom Puppy one wanted.
That is not likely to be practical, at least in the near-term. But is seems like it could be feasible to offer a special PuppyMaster: an iso image of a CD that boots to a menu that lets you customize your Puppy any way you want, with all required components on the CD, and either make a new custom CD, or install the customized Puppy onto other devices.
You might be wondering, isn't that Puppy Unleashed? Well, I've looked that over a few times... Looks very daunting! I don't have that comfort level with Linux yet. And I also don't have a good Internet connection. I have occasional access to broadband -- I need to be able to get everything in one big download and take it back to my liar to digest -- I can't fetch packages piecemeal during the build process.

RMW
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#24 Post by RMW »

I suppose what I'm looking for is a sort of "object oriented" puppy (Oops Puppy?). A system that has nothing in it except basic Xwin and the ability to configure an internet connection. Everything else installed (and uninstalled) by dotpup. All modular. About the only things I'd want standard in the base install are one command line and one graphical text editor, and the PupGet (which if I understand correctly is on the way out) and DotPup package retrieval programs.

Essentially, the first time you run Puppy you'd be "remastering". Sure, take much longer to get up and running, but you'd have only what you needed. Many personal Puppys would be much smaller than the standard distro, and a few much bigger. Heck, mine is already much bigger, be nice to be able to trim it down by removing all the stuff I never use. This "remaster first" Puppy would provide a perfect starting point for my AMOS system.

And honestly, I am in no way trying to be rude, and I do apologize if it comes across that way.

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rarsa
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#25 Post by rarsa »

the first time you run Puppy you'd be "remastering". Sure, take much longer to get up and running, but you'd have only what you needed.
One of the great advantages of puppy is that you put the CD in and it works. No confusing choices for the new users.

More advanced users can already remaster it to their liking. So I like the intentios to simplify even more the remaster to lower the threshold.

I don't think that "the first time you run Puppy you'd be remastering" is appropriate, you first need to use something to understand if you want it or not. How would new users know what each option really means if they haven't used them?

I think that status quo is actually good: The first time you run puppy you get the default. If you want something different then an only then you get to make choices.

One of the most frustrating things installing some distros is when they start asking questions as if I knew what they are talking about. Those distros are good for people with prior linux experience, not for new users.

So to round up my opinion:

- Improving remastering GREAT!
- Remastering 'first time you run puppy' not so good.

kethd
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Schizoid MS PuppyMaster

#26 Post by kethd »

These two assumptions seem at least *possible*:
A1) An ISO image could contain an image of a MS (Puppy) CD with multiple sessions (tracks?).
A2) Puppy booting from an MS CD could launch a menu allowing a choice of where to "revert" to, in the contained sequence of saved Puppies.
*IF* those were both true, than a ten-personality schizoid PuppyMaster could be made, and offered for download. And the non-adept user could start it up, and just choose any one of say ten canned versions to launch. And then perhaps could install that chosen version onto some other media?

keenerd
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#27 Post by keenerd »

Puppy has a monolithic structure. Everything is based on a single usr_cram.fs file. The usr_devx and usr_more are a step in the right direction, as more segments make remastering easy.

Why not push this as far as possible? Instead of using squash fs, use tar.gz. On boot, any tar.gz files (on the CD) are examined. If they look like PupGet files, the tar.gz is unzipped and "installed" as a PupGet. Then the tar.gz is copied to ramdisk

"Installed" is in quotes because the files aren't actually decompressed. Symlinks are made where the files would go. If you dropped the nmap pupget on the CD, it would make a symlink in /usr/sbin called "nmap" that points to "tar /ramdisk/nmap.tar.gz whatever_file_you_need_from_the_archive"

The files needed are unzipped on the fly. The only trick will be preventing these files from being saved back to the pup001 file.

No big usr_cram, just a bunch of tar.gz files in the ISO. Adding or removing packages is then completely trivial.

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