Puppy Stardust 006

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jpeps
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Re: backgrounds

#46 Post by jpeps »

prehistoric wrote:
jpeps wrote:No biggee...just convert the jpg's in /usr/share/background_original to png's in /usr/share/background. Bottom line...use png format for background. (although I think they worked in 005)
Getting backgrounds to work is not the problem, as you can see in that screen shot.
On my settup, jpg's in /usr/share/background corrupt right away, and don't load.

dalderton
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#47 Post by dalderton »

Has there been a change in the CUPS program. It is working perfectly on 005 but when I made a seperate installation of 006 (both hard disk installs on separate partitions) it goes through the motions including identifying the printer involved (HP5550 Deskjet) but will not print a test page. I rebooted to 005 and it works perfectly. Any thoughts?
Other than that I have been using 005 as my primary OS and am very satisfied with it ,staying true to Barrys original with useful mods seems to be the answer.
Regards Dennis .

jpeps
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#48 Post by jpeps »

A number of us reported that we couldn't print test pages, but otherwise it works.

dalderton
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#49 Post by dalderton »

jpeps Well how about that.You are right.Normally the test page works but not this time. Everything good .
Regards Dennis

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zigbert
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#50 Post by zigbert »

I will remove /usr/sbin/background_reshape to avoid image cropping when changing wallpaper. This is a tool Barry introduced to keep format of wallpapers when stretching. It does only work for jpgs and for pictures in 4:3 format, and relies on some apps from the netpbm package which I of course want to get rid of :) .......... to be honest, I don't see the value of such a program on Stardust. The wallpapers in the iso are all stretchable, and when user chooses his/her own, it will be chosen because it fits screen.

dalderton mentioned that printing testpage works in 005. Good news. That means it is not a font, but a netpbm tool. probably some of them......I will find out.


Sigmund

JMW4th
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#51 Post by JMW4th »

From the viewpoint of a brand-new-to-linux user, I simply cannot sing enough praises about Stardust 006.

it's the most newbie-friendly puppy I've seen.

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zigbert
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#52 Post by zigbert »

I installed Robs xf-prot, and it seems to work. Great job, thank you!!!
Weather_station and RssFeed is also updated.

Thursday already, and our release-schedule tells us that we will meet in a Stardust 007 thread in some days. :)
Here is a sneak peek of what is coming up.

Image

nooby
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#53 Post by nooby »

I am a spoiled child.

Wanted to download the StarDust. But it says
Concurrent download limit exceeded.
does it exist in any other host? than the one at the first post.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

dalderton
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#54 Post by dalderton »

Zigbert
Sorry about this but the test page will not print. The printer works fine but it will not print test page.
Incidentally I have tried most of the Puppy Derivatives and at this stage Stardust is my pick. Many Thanks Regards Dennis.

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prehistoric
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Prints on Samsung ML-1710

#55 Post by prehistoric »

Zigbert,

I almost reported an error when my Samsung ML-1710 did not print after I added a ppd file for it, then I remembered the bug. When I tried printing from Abiword, it worked fine. Curiously, the error message does mention a missing font. (See attached screen shot.)

I've attached the ppd file, so you can add it to your definitions. I think there are enough of these printers out there to make it worthwhile.
Attachments
Samsung-ML-1710-gdi.ppd.gz
gzipped printer definition file for Samsung ML-1710
(5.72 KiB) Downloaded 403 times
printer_error.jpg
Printer error shown by CUPS after attempting to print test page on ML-1710.
(72.93 KiB) Downloaded 381 times

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zigbert
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#56 Post by zigbert »

Sorry Guys, I forgot to mention, - The print-testpage-bug was also fixed yesterday.

I'm not sure about the ppd-files (because the lack of knowledge). How many of these files should we include to really improve the printer-driver situation? Then, how big would this pack be? And why hasn't this been done earlier?


Sigmund

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zigbert
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#57 Post by zigbert »

nooby
I don't know about any mirrors, but I downloaded from puppylinux.ca a couple of hours ago, and it worked just fine. Maybe you were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Please try again.


Sigmund

nooby
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#58 Post by nooby »

Thanks but they say the same.

Concurrent download limit exceeded.

I failed to find your files there but tested pupitup iso and got same message as on Asia host

Hahahh Ttuxx told me to jsut hit F5 a few times and that worked. 5 minutes left to download now.
Last edited by nooby on Fri 29 Jan 2010, 09:02, edited 1 time in total.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

nooby
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#59 Post by nooby »

success, I write from a frugal install of Stardust now so success on my HP/Compaq Desktop computer. But Stardust could not get my Acer wired connection to work but it did wireless out of the box which is rather unique. Thanks for the pupradio thing. Very contagious.
Stardust maybe will be my preferred puppy from now on?

now that I have Stardust save file named stardust will it find that one or let me chose among many save files or does it load the first it find?

I did not write puppy pfix=ram but only pfix=ram so could the extra word there be a typo?


BE AWARE!!!!
If you have Puppy installed, you MUST run this with the prefix 'puppy pfix=ram'. Else, the Stardust desktop will not install.
Should it really be puppy pfix=ram because IIRC usually it is just pfix=ram and not puppy in front of it?

And if one do it from a USB maybe one should change from cd to usb?

Just me trying to get it right. No nitpicking.

Not to prehistoric

another work around that is much more easy is to just do F5 and that solve it.
Last edited by nooby on Fri 29 Jan 2010, 18:18, edited 1 time in total.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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prehistoric
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Stardust 005 => Stardust 006 xdelta available

#60 Post by prehistoric »

Hi nooby,

If you read the post by 01micko following Zigbert's original post, you will find there is an xdelta to convert Stardust 005 to Stardust 006. If you have 005, this may get around the "concurrent download limit exceeded" problem, and cut download time as well. All the 431 puplets should have xdelta.

Zigbert,

If we were talking about the megabytes used by Windoze drivers, there would be an issue in including printer ppd files. The file above is only 28k unzipped. If you don't feel like putting all these definitions in the distribution, I'd recommend a separate pet of printer definitions. People with specific printers could install the pet, check out the printers they need, copy those ppd files to a safe place, then uninstall the pet. After that, they would only have to copy the ppd files from the safe place to /usr/share/cups/model. This would result in zero wasted space for unused printer definitions, and it would cut the frustration of finding, downloading and trying things that, for some unknown reason, don't work in Puppy.

Above, I was reporting a successful test under Stardust 006, so we know the Samsung ML-1710, like the Brother HL-2040, is supported. If you give me any encouragement, I'll check on a few other systems around, and see what printers other people are actually using. After I've tested that these work under Stardust, I'll post the ppd file I used.

Regards,

prehistoric

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zigbert
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#61 Post by zigbert »

prehistoric
I think it is a great idea to collect external ppd-files into a pet. It could either be included into the iso, or we could provide a download link in the the html-page (/usr/sbin/cups_shell). - Depending on size and usage.
I don't know much about printing (except I want it to work :D ). Please help me and other puppians.


Sigmund

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prehistoric
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printer pet

#62 Post by prehistoric »

Zigbert,

I'll start a thread for the pet tomorrow, after I've tried out 006 on a few more machines, (so I'll know what problems people are likely to encounter before I write the instructions.) My idea is to collect ppd files, or equivalents, for every printer someone reports working with a specific unmodified pupplet, starting with Stardust. When someone reports a problem, that goes into a different thread on printing.

Naturally, I can think of something for you to do. This is simple, (I hope.) When a printer is added to a system, the description file should be copied from /usr/share/cups/model to a location where it will not be removed when the pet is uninstalled. After the pet is uninstalled, there should be an option to restore the descriptions of working printers on the system to /usr/share/cups/model. This will give people working printing with minimum overhead.

This same technique could be used for font packages. As you know, these can take a lot of space. Once you have things set up as you like, you can uninstall the pet, and only keep the additional ones you have actually used, plus a number required for system functions.

For people with more space than they know what to do with, there is no particular reason to uninstall. For machines where space is tight, this makes it easy to get things working and down to minimum requirements.

What do you think?

prehistoric

jpeps
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#63 Post by jpeps »


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zigbert
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#64 Post by zigbert »

prehistoric
What model to be used for installation depends on the result you get. Your ppd is 5kb, which gives us 100 printerdrivers in 0.5 megabytes. - Sounds not bad.

Sigmund

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prehistoric
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ppd files

#65 Post by prehistoric »

zigbert wrote:prehistoric
What model to be used for installation depends on the result you get. Your ppd is 5kb, which gives us 100 printerdrivers in 0.5 megabytes. - Sounds not bad.

Sigmund
That's 5 KB gzipped, when unpacked in /usr/share/cups/model it takes 28 KB of RAM. Losing 2-3 MB of RAM would be significant, if all the definitions stay there all the time. The ppd files aren't the biggest problem. There are some printers that just don't follow that model, and require larger drivers of their own.

I've done a few more tests. An HP Laserjet 1320 worked "out of the box" with the definition already available, (once I found the correct entry.) An HP Photosmart 8250 I encountered probably matches requirements for the 8200, which is said to work perfectly with the HPLIP package from HP. I don't have experience with this, but will check. Several manufacturers have similar "universal" Linux driver packages available which take megabytes.

We have decisions to make about where to cut-off built-in support and provide a separate custom pet. Even if much better drivers exist, I would like to include working ppd files in the basic printer support package. There are probably only half a dozen manufacturers furnishing distinct large "unified" driver packages worth having. One problem is that the resulting printers are sold under different labels, so consumers are not aware of who actually built the device.

As jpeps' link shows, most printers usable under Linux are in the Open Printing database. Yesterday, I found a ppd file there for a Samsung ML-1740 about which we had a question. This looked very similar to the file for my ML-1710. I'm hoping to hear back about a success.

I also dug out an ancient Canon BJC-210 I have, and found a ppd file for it. (Unfortunately, while the device appeared ready to work, the ink had fossilized.)

I'll try several other printers today, at friends' houses. At present, I'm testing all of these under Stardust 006, using the test page in Abiword instead of the CUPS test page. When 007 comes out, I won't have to warn people about this, will I?

Added: Just so people will not think I'm trying to take credit for someone else's work, here's the link to Patriot's CUPS topic I've been using. What I'm trying to do is merely to confirm that things now work under Stardust.

I can now confirm that the splix-2.00 pet works with my Samsung ML-1710 and another ML-1740. Splix is 58 KB., versus 5 KB for the ppd file for the ML-1710, but after I count the number of ppd files it can replace, with full functionality, I've decided splix-2.00 makes more sense. I have the HPLIP lite pet, and will test that on that HP Photosmart 8250 when I next have access to the printer.

One problem is that even the lite version of HPLIP is 3.8 MB, and some printers require additional plug-ins. HPLIP makes more sense as a separate package than as built-in support.

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