Puppy 5.1 to 6

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mavrothal
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#136 Post by mavrothal »

As far as I'm concern, I do not care to turn puppy in a mini-distro. I'm just looking for a framework that may bring developers together while they keep scratching their own itch.

I'm sure there are better ways, I just doubt that agreeing on a single puppy is one of them.
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rcrsn51
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#137 Post by rcrsn51 »

jemimah wrote:There's at least half a dozen small distros that make it easy for a regular user to both add and remove software. I'm honestly curious why the people who wish Puppy was more like TinyCore, AntiX, Slax, xPud, or Slitaz don't just switch.
Precisely. TinyCore is a cute idea, but once you install a few major apps, its footprint is almost as big as a basic Puppy.

And don't bother trying to use TInyCore as a live CD/live USB/rescue distro because it can't do anything useful until you download a bunch of extensions.

I've had a number of Windows repair people tell me that Puppy is their favourite rescue Linux.

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RetroTechGuy
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#138 Post by RetroTechGuy »

jemimah wrote:There's at least half a dozen small distros that make it easy for a regular user to both add and remove software. I'm honestly curious why the people who wish Puppy was more like TinyCore, AntiX, Slax, xPud, or Slitaz don't just switch.
...Or that those who want Puppy to be as large, complete and powerful as Ubuntu, Debian, Redhat..., don't switch...

I really like that Puppy is quite complete, for all of the basics, without all the bloat that comes from "fringe" tools. And it is generally extensible, if someone really wants to install those tools (i.e. power users aren't limited, but at the same time newbies aren't overwhelmed).

As I've said before, the one main change I would request is that the live-boot CD always check the pupsave for errors, before loading, as corrupted pupsaves seem to be the bane of newbies.

While not a Linux newbie, I started using Puppy as a live-boot CD + pupsave combo -- nothing to install (pusave on the HDD). Every few days my pupsave would become seriously corrupted, requiring a rebuild. This seems to occur less frequently (or perhaps "almost never") when running the pupsave from a flash drive (different "sync" branch in the code). I found this chronic corruption quite irritating. I have since re-mastered the 4.3.1 CD to perform a fsck on boot and I no longer have corruption problems.

The power users who don't like that particular feature can easily turn it off (as they both know how to use the boot options, and how to remaster the CD...assuming that they haven't done a true Frugal or full-blown install -- which allows them to configure it in their menu.lst).

The newbies would not have to learn how to turn it on, since it would happen automagically.

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jemimah
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#139 Post by jemimah »

RetroTechGuy wrote: While not a Linux newbie, I started using Puppy as a live-boot CD + pupsave combo -- nothing to install (pusave on the HDD). Every few days my pupsave would become seriously corrupted, requiring a rebuild. This seems to occur less frequently (or perhaps "almost never") when running the pupsave from a flash drive (different "sync" branch in the code). I found this chronic corruption quite irritating. I have since re-mastered the 4.3.1 CD to perform a fsck on boot and I no longer have corruption problems.
Have you seen this? http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=55823
A proper check for an unclean unmount can now be implemented. I don't know if anyone's even told Barry about it or not.

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RetroTechGuy
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#140 Post by RetroTechGuy »

jemimah wrote:
RetroTechGuy wrote: While not a Linux newbie, I started using Puppy as a live-boot CD + pupsave combo -- nothing to install (pusave on the HDD). Every few days my pupsave would become seriously corrupted, requiring a rebuild. This seems to occur less frequently (or perhaps "almost never") when running the pupsave from a flash drive (different "sync" branch in the code). I found this chronic corruption quite irritating. I have since re-mastered the 4.3.1 CD to perform a fsck on boot and I no longer have corruption problems.
Have you seen this? http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=55823
A proper check for an unclean unmount can now be implemented. I don't know if anyone's even told Barry about it or not.
No, I hadn't seen that. Thank you. I'll try it on my 4.3.1 pupsaves.

Though this is still something that a newbie would need to learn how to implement (rather than have it occur automagically for them).

I would really like to "corrupt" and convert (soon-to-be former) MS Windows users, by giving them a free, easy to use replacement OS... ;)

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jemimah
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#141 Post by jemimah »

Well ideally, we'd put that in woof, or at least add it to all the puplets so nobody needs to deal with it anymore. Pair that with Ext3/4 save files, and fscks after an unclean shutdown (Puppy couldn't do this before because all shutdowns were technically unclean), and it should be relatively bullet proof.

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RetroTechGuy
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#142 Post by RetroTechGuy »

jemimah wrote:Well ideally, we'd put that in woof, or at least add it to all the puplets so nobody needs to deal with it anymore. Pair that with Ext3/4 save files, and fscks after an unclean shutdown (Puppy couldn't do this before because all shutdowns were technically unclean), and it should be relatively bullet proof.
This would be perfect.

Linux has a lot of peculiar things, and that resulting steep learning curve is much of what discourages newbies (Puppy, of course, conceals most of those under the GUI, so it's not nearly so alien).

BTW, is ext4 really that good?

I recall the earlier days of ext3, a friend was regularly getting severe filesystem corruption -- as it turns out, it has to do with the feature/belief that you need not rescan a drive after a crash, because it has a journalling system. When I searched for the issue, I discovered that the gurus recommended fscking the system as soon as feasible (i.e. bring up the system, get any files you needed right now, then umount and fsck).

For this reason, I've stayed with ext2 for the time being (while I may need to scan after a crash, the filesystem will be repaired and fully functional before I mount it). And with Puppy, the OS partition is so small that it's not painful to perform fsck on every boot.

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RetroTechGuy
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#143 Post by RetroTechGuy »

jemimah wrote:
RetroTechGuy wrote: While not a Linux newbie, I started using Puppy as a live-boot CD + pupsave combo -- nothing to install (pusave on the HDD). Every few days my pupsave would become seriously corrupted, requiring a rebuild. This seems to occur less frequently (or perhaps "almost never") when running the pupsave from a flash drive (different "sync" branch in the code). I found this chronic corruption quite irritating. I have since re-mastered the 4.3.1 CD to perform a fsck on boot and I no longer have corruption problems.
Have you seen this? http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=55823
A proper check for an unclean unmount can now be implemented. I don't know if anyone's even told Barry about it or not.
It does indeed work on Puppy 4.3.1

And my (automagic) startup fsck is vastly faster, since the shutdown was clean (I would still, for newbies sake, implement an auto-fsck on startup if the devs can be convinced -- if the shutdown was clean, it doesn't take very long -- if the shutdown was not clean, you should run even though it takes more time).

rameshiyer

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#144 Post by rameshiyer »

I have installed Lucidy Puppy 5.1 in hard disk. I would like to know whether I can upgrade to 6.00 by auto update or any separate pet package, if any. Or I have to install Puppy 6.00 from ISO file. ( after burning to CD).

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ttuuxxx
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#145 Post by ttuuxxx »

Who said 5.1 will be Puppy 6.0?I think it should be 5.1 to 5.9.
Usually a next puppy version is a complete new base, plus we have Quirky,Wary, the new dpup, plus on going discussions about building 6.0 from scratch, I for one am 100% against a Ubuntu release taking 2 version numbers in a row. Plus I never read at Barry's blog that 5.1 will be 6. If you aks me its kind of arrogant to think that one release will continue without debate, without looking around at other projects. Really now!
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James C
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#146 Post by James C »

[quote="ttuuxxx"]Who said 5.1 will be Puppy 6.0?I think it should be 5.1 to 5.9.[ quote]

Nobody.The plans for Lucid Puppy are the upcoming 5.2 release.Playdayz and 01micko are working on 5.12 as I'm typing.
AFAIK, there are no decisions about what will be Puppy 6 and when something will be released.
In the other thread about a possible Puppy 6 there is basically no agreement so we'll just have to see what happens.

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ttuuxxx
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#147 Post by ttuuxxx »

James C wrote:
ttuuxxx wrote:Who said 5.1 will be Puppy 6.0?I think it should be 5.1 to 5.9.[ quote]

Nobody.The plans for Lucid Puppy are the upcoming 5.2 release.Playdayz and 01micko are working on 5.12 as I'm typing.
AFAIK, there are no decisions about what will be Puppy 6 and when something will be released.
In the other thread about a possible Puppy 6 there is basically no agreement so we'll just have to see what happens.
Hi James puppy 5 only was released a couple of months ago, usually a puppy series number last around 1yr, so there is tons of times for puppy 5 to grow and mature, I'm not saying that puppy 6 should be in developement stage yet, not at all, First we need to talk about it and then we need someone to build it etc, but what gets me is the title of this thread "Puppy 5.1 to 6" 5 series has nothing to do with 6 series, like 2 series had nothing to with 3 series and 4 series had nothing to do with 3 and 5 series, usually its a drastic base change, so to keep with puppy tradition the 6 series is a new puppy that has nothing to do with 5 or 7 version, hence puppy 6 should not be in the threads title.
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#148 Post by scsijon »

I believe that puppy6 is still in the "argue stage", don't expect anything to even become a serious alpha for some time yet, like six months. At least I hope not!

scsijon

PaulBx1
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#149 Post by PaulBx1 »

For this reason, I've stayed with ext2 for the time being
Other good reasons - it's small and fast, like Puppy. And it works better for reducing writes to flash drives, which is a major market for Puppy.

I'd like to add another vote to do an fsck on every boot, now that the pupsaves seem to be closed clean (or at least we have that capability). And we need to get it right on encrypted pupsaves; I think "pfix=fsck" still doesn't work with them, despite this being a very simple thing to fix. It's an old problem. <sigh>

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RetroTechGuy
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#150 Post by RetroTechGuy »

PaulBx1 wrote:
For this reason, I've stayed with ext2 for the time being
Other good reasons - it's small and fast, like Puppy. And it works better for reducing writes to flash drives, which is a major market for Puppy.
An excellent point, Paul! I hadn't thought about the flash drive write issue...
I'd like to add another vote to do an fsck on every boot, now that the pupsaves seem to be closed clean (or at least we have that capability). And we need to get it right on encrypted pupsaves; I think "pfix=fsck" still doesn't work with them, despite this being a very simple thing to fix. It's an old problem. <sigh>
Yes, the ability for "puppy pfix=fsck" to automatically scan and repair encrypted volumes would be GREAT. That is the only real reason I haven't changed over to at least a lightly encrypted volume (though I suspect that "heavy" is nearly the same speed, on most near-modern machines).

BTW, it occurs to me that having a brief script of load instructions, which Puppy checks for on booting, could be useful. If it's not there, it continues as normal.

Suppose we set the default to "fsck" every boot, but you don't like it, you edit the "pupstart.ini" file (it doesn't exist...yet), and enter "nofsck" to disable this auto-feature. Want to make a backup of your pupsave on every boot? Put the instruction to the pupstart, and it is done before booting. Etc, etc, etc...

This script could allow substantial user customization, without remastering the CD -- one could continue booting from CD, using a pupsave, while tuning their system operation to their favorite settings (no grub, no remastering...).

You could consider putting it inside the pupsave, but then the pupsave would have to be loaded, before you could read these options (making fsck potentially impossible). However, I suppose it could mount, read, umount and run...
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#151 Post by its-me-again »

tronkel wrote:Nooby wrote:

Well, OK there's a start about making some sense out of this.

How about implementing a hybrid project that might be called "Puppy Unity", or "Unity Puppy" ,"Puppy Unified" or even "Puppy Noobie" etc. etc.

This version would contain the best parts of several Puppy versions.
i.e. bits of Lupu (Quickpet etc.), Quirky and Macpup.

The end result would be way over the usual Puppy size limit. At this point, Ttuuxxx gets called in and applies the scissors in the usual way.

This resultant puplet might be the one to recommend to newcomers.
I think you are onto something. Have youy seen Lighthouse Puppy is kind of what you are saying. a full os more stuff than other puppies. its kinda like a full os equil to ubuntu etc. its built on slackware adn 431 adn woo. adn it has lots of other neet stuff. its the only puppy that can load 40 sfs files at once. http://www.lhpup.org/about.htm

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#152 Post by christhi »

As a reply to another poster, the fixed numbering scheme in development is a bad idea. It's not that useful, and it's one of the main reasons why actually Ubuntu had to many bugs in the past during its official releases.

Since Ubuntu has a stick rock hard schedule of releasing a new version every 6 months, they'll release something whether of not it's stable, so it's nonsense. That, unless you like spending half of your computer uptime trying to solve bugs, then eventually de-installing out of frustration.

Moreover, Ubuntu's not really a good example to follow in general, especially for such a DIY, grasroots distro as Puppy (opposed to the huge costly organization behind Ubuntu).

My idea for 6.0: Slack+Deb/Ubuntu+Fedora compatibility... all in the same distro!

How's that?

Keep up the good work, devs!

christhi
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#153 Post by christhi »

As a reply to another poster, the fixed numbering scheme in development is not a very good idea.

It's not that useful, while being one of the main reasons why Ubuntu had to many bugs in the past during its official releases. I say that because I myself have experienced some very stupid problems (like Xorg not even working!) during much awaited final releases.

Since Ubuntu has a fixed rock hard schedule of releasing a new version every 6 months, they'll release something whether of not it's stable, so it's nonsense. That, unless you like spending half of your computer uptime trying to solve bugs, then eventually de-installing out of frustration. They also always seemed to attempt cramming up as much software on a 700 Mb cdrom ISO that they seem to be doing it without even considering the basics... like huge, needless fancy programs, while you don't even have small, useful, web apps like ssl, mySQL, Apache, sometimes even the whole suite of compilers.

Moreover, Ubuntu's not really a good example to follow in general, especially for such a DIY, grasroots distro as Puppy (opposed to the huge costly organization behind Ubuntu).

Ok now I'll calm down.. ;)

My idea for 6.0: Slack+Deb/Ubuntu+Fedora compatibility... all in the same distro!

How's that?

Keep up the good work, devs!

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#154 Post by Q5sys »

RetroTechGuy wrote: I suspect, however, that offers of good beer or Scotch might allow you to bribe some of them to work on your desired goals... ;)
I never understood why people who want specific work arent willing to drop some $ to get it. I've offered several of the devs here to do specific work for me for $. Some have respectfully declined saying that they arent doing it for the money, but for their personal goals. Others have been more than happy to do certain work when they have time. And I think thats the way it should be. If you want a dev to do 'your' work instead of 'their' work, give them some incentive.
Im always up for offering $ for projects I want to do but dont have the skill to do. I just wish I had a few million so I could really get some work done. haha. :P

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