My Last 6 Months In Derivatives

[gcmartin]

I have been looking at Puppy for several years now. At first, it was from a "that's nice" viewpoint. This progressed to testing, comparing, and getting involved minimally at first. As Puppy matured, I witnessed, sometimes heated, discussions on it directions, uses, and audiences. But, I never deployed Puppy because it seemed to be lacking a very important ingredient...sharing. While working with a community member on this lack of sharing I also discovered FATDOG, LightHouse and QuickSet. Each of these 3 authors were bringing to the table very interesting concepts which really began to peak my interest in Puppy, because, together, (if they ever came together), an implementation would surface that would begin a whole new generation of Puppy Linux....more along the lines of an evolutionary achievement. A LiveCD/LiveDVD that has an OS running on non-writable media (so to speak) while the hard-drives ONLY contained user data. This is a game changer in that no longer is the OS a part of any backup consideration, per se. ONLY user data. And, my data protection schemes simplify as well.

To summarize, starting in Fall of 2010,

• Full SAMBA came to being - This allows anyone to turn any Puppy into a Microsoft LAN PC and to build a NAS and Print server without thought. Further Full SAMBA allow me to go further by implementing it in such a way as to manage user access to data and to manage user logon for data use in the LAN. Something that can be very simple to a Very powerful LAN manager ability.
• FATDOG - This is NOT a Puppy replacement on a 64bit platform as it is shoved at us. This is an implementation that is NOT constrained by memory because all 64bit platforms I have seen have 1GB+ memory. This, even though the Distro owners are not owning up to it, is not a Puppy anymore, this is a FATDOG in that they can begin addressing merely stability as opposed to shrinking some author's packages and then trying to stabilize the packages. This again is a very significant game-changer.
• QuickSET - This Puppy implementation brought forth the notion of reducing the user experience to a WYSIWUG desktop, bypassing all of the prior text based screens to get functional. This author ALSO, changed the LiveCD start-up to provide a Boot-Manager at Live Boot which provides numerous options including OS boots, HDD master boot record maintenance, adjusting boot options and additional easy to use methods of booting a PC. This again is another of the game-changers
• LightHouse - This has a tremendously complex packaging made simple in its presentation for use. The most significant of these is the work he put in over the past 6 months in addressing boot-time selections for the running system. This allows a LiveCD/LiveDVD to boot with packaging that might be different from the ISO that was downloaded, easily, by just "copying" it the Live media using "growisofs" and booting. This is a major game-changer as without efforts of remastering and understanding all of that, its been reduced to a copy and boot operation. Simple.
• MultiPUP - A simple approached developed to take multiple distros and combine them into one bootable LiveCD/LiveDVD where the person booting a PC can select which distro they want to be booted. Thsi again is a very new methodology introduced for the Puppy community.
• PXE - One of the greatest, if not the greatest addition to the Puppy community in 2011. This allows a PC to support "other LAN connected PCs" so that they can boot without using their own hard-drive or DVDs to do so. This technology adds what is called a PXE server function to the PC allowing other PCs to use it for booting. The author has further extended this so that it can take any Puppy community ISO, including a MultiPUP ISO and make it available for booting from the PXE server. This is major! Because, now, all of us can deploy LAN PC that don't have HDDs, floppy drives, CD/DVD drives or any media drives on the PC that will be booted. Now, all I need is motherboard, monitor, keyboard, and mouse...no moving parts, no fans, just processor and RAM on the motherboard. A game-changer!
• ClusterPUP - has made it easy to take several PCs (less-than or equal to 128) and have them operate as a single powerful high-performance system. Further, his implementation allow you to keep addng PCs without having to restart the Cluster. This is a Puppy game changer.

Just imagine for a moment A FATDOG-QuickSET-LightHouse with MultiPUP, PXE running with SAMBA serving the NAS and controlling my LAN users on a little 64bit PC which I don't have to dink around with trying to crunch packages for the sake of stability. There is more memory there than I possibly use today. I think this configuration should be called SuperDOG. And if you're following the Terminal Server forums and the latest activation of ClusterPUP, everyone of us are on the verge of possibly having our very own WATSON in our homes helping us become better people of the world.
Note: "Watson" is the class of IBM Unix machines that dethroned the world chess champions and the best players ever at Jeopardy.

The achievements of these contributors, if they choose to work together, will launch a whole new era (Chapter) in BarryK's initial dream. Its a new era, gentlemen...a new era! The game has changed. Its NOT about how small a program is anymore, its about running RAM High-performance systems. As always, there are going to be nay-sayers, but it appears that we are at the doorstep of one of the greatest technological achievements on a grass roots level that this community has contributed, yet.

Does anyone other than I see where we, Puppies, are headed within our homes and vehicles?

[puppyluvr]

Hello,
I have often said that if you could get all of the major players, and the individual elements that they each bring to their own Pups, and integrated it into one ISO for todays hardware, as you said, a "SuperPup", that it would dominate....

The list of advancements is amazing, and you have listed some of the biggest, most Puppy changing ones.. Samba and PXE to name the biggies...
I am a bit amused to see my little CD/DVD buddy in there with the big boys..But its implementation with PXE booting does open up whole new worlds... Many of these things are "Cool" by themselves, but combined they open up Linux in a way that will make Puppy a major achiever in the near future, where other distros seem to be stagnating, Puppy just keeps on solving problems, and resolving issues, at a staggering pace...

I am pleased to see you included Lighthouse right from the start..
Tazoc is a genius..period...My first Puppy was Lighthouse 2.15...
The "On the fly" use of SFS files, the modularization, the custom scripts everywhere...Lighthouse has always been ahead of its time....I dont mean to go off on a Lighthouse tangent, but seriously, use it...Every aspect is customized; icons, scripts, even Rox....I strive to reach that level of "personal touch"...

We are a collective ...
We are each small, but...
Together, we can overcome all,
We are the Future,
We are Puppy.....

Resistance is futile....

[SouthPaws]

Kennel Team... Assemble!!!

It's time for...
Power Pup/Dog!
(a mini-cd sized 200mb power distro)

and...
Super Pup/Dog!
(a regular cd sized 700mb super distro)

OK team, that's the challenge... Can you do it?... Of course you can!
(suggested target date... how about May 1st)

[efiguy]

WoW!!! Swell Posts All

A "WildWindowsWhupper"

gcm - excellent reference material you've written, must try some of the new derivitives, only wish i had skill, hardware, and time to help.

jay

[Lobster]

Some more considerations

If Saluki gets off the ground we may have more sharing
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppy6

Puppy Lucid 5.2 has over 50 contributors
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppy52
. . . and is being updated
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppy521
More people compiling, testing and colloborating on then previously
It is also woof based
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Woof
- another component allowing us to go in the direction of Dpup, Spup
and Upup with the possibility of a rpm woof means we can share
software from Debian, Slackware or Fedora

[gcmartin]

A key point to re-reference: I am NOT advocating that anyone STOP developing the 32bit systems that is currently on the table.

But, the most important thing I AM ADVOCATING is a Dog that exploits the power of the 64bit platform, first and foremost, developing with the understanding that YOU HAVE 1GB minimum for the platform.

It is evident that 32bit is covered by all of the achievement. I, personally, agree with the target that it publicly addresses. It is good for the world to provide this. Many countries are selling and sending old PCs to developing regions of our world.

FATDOG has a 64bit starter base to build from; ("Like starting with a 747 and building a Space Shuttle designed around the facts of the atmospheric environment as opposed to just air'). What I mean, said differently, is "suppose, instead of a 32bit PC with 128MB of memory, I gave you compilers and a 64bit MP system with 1024MB of memory?" Could we combine the parts into a "space shuttle" where we do NOT constrain the components that go into the system?

As I have watched over the years, some of the many components that go into constraining 32bit to meet 128MB limit have been a prime reason for some of the problems PUPs have had to deal with. I contend that with newer 64bit systems that many of the users apparently already have, its time that we seriously look to meeting what the manufacturers are producing, today.

So, yeah, SuperDOG developed separately without those modifications to constrain, will provide a much more stable system than we have witnessed thus far with fewer user complaints and increased functionality far and away above anything we could achieve being 32bit and constrained..

AND, allowing current 32bit PUP development to continue.

FATDOG was a correct and timely start. And, there will be "nay-sayers" up unitl something like this goes live. But should it ever do, watch the community that emerges and continues it. These are superior tools and options.

Hope this is very clear.
P.S, If you haven't noticed, a SuperDOG exceeds the basis of current MS desktop implementations for home or office. This is an altogether new kind of ram-based PUP.

[oui]

Hallo

Oh, I see, you consider that the goal of the actual most existing PC' s is too small?

But too small for what? To enter single chars into the little editing windows of a computer fan's forum, a thing that 8 bit computer did proceed excellently until 20 y. ?

Why all this power? For better transmitting of the not welcome advertising business from Google in my browser and breaking of my hears with videos, flashes and 'music' I am not wishing to see or to hear?

I also use a portable as one of my two PC's. the portable has an AMD64 and I am using fatdog500 a lot of time on it. ok it is good but not a revolution...

point1:

and the fact that fatdog500 did install different applications as our other 4 PC's at home use in puppy is more an handicap as a better performance because I can't any more interchange my files from PC to PC directly without to reinstall the same applications as on the 32bit puppy's

point2:

I don't see some wonder full applications having urgently need of the power of full 64 bit in our scope of packages at all except perhaps some music/video programs

for example:

kdenlive is only available with the full kde core background for quirky 1.2 and it kde is extremely slow (better you start only the kde applications out the jwm menu but the integration is not very adequate at this time: you have to manage this matter manually). as KDE4 works perfectly in debian testing 64 bit but about as slow as well as in puppy but full installed I am really thinking about the use of the Debian from Scratch package in preparation for Squeeze (but available for old stable) to make an ISO as the goal of Debian from Scratch is to make a live version of Debian. but I suppose that the only 2 GB of ram of my laptop are to small to have a chance to load into the RAM, expand the file system in RAM and start it from RAM, because I am affraid that it is not possible actually to increase in decisive kind the speed of KDE4 because of the use of technical choices having to do as you say with the 16 and 32 bit architecture of the most installed PC' s in the world.

I understand you meaning. I was in the same situation 1982..1983 as DOS and Windows later did over run the environment of the micro informatic as I already did use with the TMS9900 (16 bit partially 32 bit) range of micro computers having a kind of high level assembler with many auto increment commands and enough RAM on the same chip as the processor (yes: a Puppy concept... and on the chip), computer that I did program at the office: it was really a hard concession for us to go back to the initially 8 bit range of IBM play PC's for managers because all the professions and major users did decide to adopt the choice of IBM excepted a little number of users mainly at the university and medicine, who did prefer Apple until today.

your engagement for 64 bit is ok but please argument with concrete applications.

not with an ISO for those being only surfing on the web!

[gcmartin]

Thanks Oui

... your engagement for 64 bit is ok but please argument with concrete applications. ...

Qui, We all agree with you. "Its about applications". And its about stability of these on the 64bit PCs that are popping up all over the place which allows for our increasing application stability and performance.

I believe all of us want a Ferrari. But, I believe that those of us who want that Ferrari are enormously happy when that Ferrari starts and runs everytime we turn the key.

Further, with the Puppy tech advances enriching our experience, we may all benefit by exploiting that Ferrari with those tech advances. Think of it now being a Ferrari with a Viper suspension. Better, think of it becoming a Viper.

Metaphor humor aside, YES, applications; and advances we've seen on a 64bit Puppy OS, that could be built to perform providing an environment for much more stable applications on this newer technology.

I am NOT recommending that because there is GB(s) of RAM on a 64bit OS, that we not be prudent about memory use. I am NOT. I am saying, though, that we all have seen our fellow Puppy 32bit developers work feverishly to reduce needed programs to fit within the 128MB constraint and as a result, often times, there are stability problems that users have to endure. So, if the hardware and the OS allows a much larger area for programs to run, the Puppy developers should have some freedom to provide PETs and SFSs which were not cut so drastically as they cause stability problems with there use.

This thread intends to discuss a look at taking advantage of the 64bit hardware, with 64bit OS able to accommodate applications in such a way that the administrator and user experience is RAM based (performance) and stable; with the plethora of new technology our developers now offer us.

Yes, all of this CAN easily fit into a single platform, comfortably.