Sumo Puppy Night Kde 4.6.3

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oui

Sumo Puppy Night Kde 4.6.3

#1 Post by oui »

Announcement

(announcement text will follow later after upload!)

oui

I need your help to finish it (::) !

#2 Post by oui »

Hi

"Sumo" Puppy Night Kde 4.6.3 will be a remastered version of the great Puppy Night Kde 4.6.3 made by Josep2424 (see the thread Puppy Night Kde 4.6.3).

It is provided to be used in completely different way from the usual usage of Puppy and for this reason,

I need your help to finish it!

My problem is to turn off the invitation to save at restart or shutdown after the first start because I don't want to use it at all!

Has anyone already made ​​such a change, and how?

oui

Why Sumo Puppy Night Kde 4.6.3

#3 Post by oui »

Why?

Hm, following ideas:

Since the long time I am using Puppy Linux (all the time without any interruption on the PC of my wife, in dual boot with the last Windows XP, we need XP for the chip card transaction to use the internet banking, no way in Linux, of our family network with 5 PC's; on my both own PC's / laptop in dual boot with Debian SID and/or Slackware), a very long time as I am one of the 10 first members of this message board having written more than 1000 messages and did register in the month of his creation in 2004, I did need to use the other main distributions precedently named to manage some jobs beeing not possible or difficult to realize or to use in Puppy.

This year, I did erase my other partitions (Debian, Slackware, Mandriva) :lol: !

I only have 2 partitions sda1, swap, and sda2, the rest of the hard disk (160 Go alt. 500 Go :D ).

And I only have 2 Linux versions: My Sumo Puppy Night Kde 4.6.3 to work, and an other Puppy or derivate to test or process somewhat outside the Sumo Puppy Night Kde 4.6.3.

Puppy is some time already able to manage really exigent jobs and I did work to fatten is as far I need to achieve my goals without Debian.

And I am sad to see that Linux saves as many hidden files than Windows though I am fully aware.

And I am sad to work with save files... My last despiting experience with them was testing the original version of Puppy Night Kde 4.6.3: no way to start the save file after having invested a lot of time (erase a lot of applications to shring the big ISO of Puppy Night Kde 4.6.3 and to install and test a lot of my favorite applications) to prepare the restart.

So I did organize a different way to work with Puppy.

---------------------------------------*---------------------------------------
--------------------------------------*-*--------------------------------------

INSTALL PUPPY IN THE PARTITION OF AN OTHER LINUX
(*1

My sda2 was initially a real regular Linux file system from an other installation in which the sub directory for the frugal installation of Puppy's were with the usual folder organisation: boot, bin, etc, lib and all the usual other Linux directories. The directory name /home was also reserved for the other linux and in /home was my home directory named "my".

To use the same files in Puppy without to change much things, I only did give /home a second name /f ("f" as f-iles on English or German or f-ichiers on French) and this pre existent organisation was not changed so that it would be possible to reinstall an other Linux distribution like Debian in this file system without changes if I take care to install so, that the installations software don't erase the partition :roll: !

(*1 = avoid please ext4 or reiser file systems as not all Puppy versions are adapted to proceed well with them!

--------------------------------------*-*--------------------------------------

MAKE THE USER FILES COMMON!


I did create in sda2 /f/my divers subdir used by divers Puppy's (no standardisation in Puppy :cry: !) in ~/my-documents or in ~/my-applications:

mkdir /mnt/sda2/f/my/bin

oh, excuse me, in Puppy Night Kde 4.6.3 without save file, you have to write
mkdir /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2/f/my/bin :wink: (*2 also, I continue in the adapted way for Sumo Puppy:

Code: Select all

mkdir /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2/lib
mkdir /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2/tmp
mkdir /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2/PDF
mkdir /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2/spot
mkdir /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2/Screenshots
mkdir /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2/Spreadsheets
mkdir /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2/Textual
(even all the sub dir's that very creative Puppy user built in her ~/my-documents or in ~/my-applications!).

After this preparation, I can erase in the /root directory of my actual Puppy installation both /root/my-documents and /root/my-applications

and replace them with a link:

Code: Select all

ln -s /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2/f/my /root/my-documents
ln -s /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2/f/my /root/my-applications
With this procedure, THIS Puppy (each Puppy I am testing, or daily using) did learn to use the old /home/my renamed /f/my of my Debian partition and all her content but not her hidden files as each Puppy has his hidden files in his root.

The systems are separate but the user files are common!

And you can do it as well with only one or after that 10 different Puppy's, all Puppy's use common user files!

(*2= if you don't know which you are using, visit the subdirectory /initrd/mnt in your Puppy Night Kde 4.6.3 and you will see which dev_ro number is marked as «mounted»
--------------------------------------*-*--------------------------------------

WHY DO I NEED A SAVE FILE?


Yes, why do I need a save file if I can organize my file systems so that the user files are common?

Hm, of course, the user files are common but not the setting files being in /etc, in /root and sometimes in /home/user_name if I am using a non Puppy System!

More, divers user files are hidden files in sometimes difficult to find directories!

For example are all the files, a great number of files, for Seamonkey hidden in the directory /root/.mozilla/seamonkey/.... So I will never find any documents produced or used by Seamonkey in the subdir's created in /root/my-documents :cry: but allways in the hidden directory! For people as I using Seamonkey since Puppy use Seamonkey to replace the initial Mozilla suite that we did use in the past, the hidden Seamonkey can use several hundred MB and totaly consume all the memory space of an usual save file!

In this case, it is not really rational to let this byte-eating tiger in the poor save file of 1 to ten or more Puppy puplets: it is nonsens - one exemplar and a saving copy of it are enough for all puplets!

How to do it:
- Start Puppy from CD, connect if necessary to the internet
- Open Seamonkey and after that your mail box correctly once.
- Seamonkey create and fill the needed subdir at the place named above.
- Close Seamonkey completely.
- Move the subdir named above with all its content into /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2
- Replace the now missing subdir in root with a link:

Code: Select all

ln -s /initrd/mnt/dev_ro2/seamonkey /root/.mozilla/seamonkey
(in the next Puppy version or derivate, you only need an adequate link!)

If you do that in the same kind with other great consumer of file memory (Skype, instant messenger of you choice, and the in some cases monster consumer, wine, the hidden /root/.wine subdir contains the same as the user part of a Windows system, sometimes an other hidden Seamonkey user part sub directory for gecko browser in Windows :roll: :lol: and more!) and do not install more applications as delivered with your Puppy, sometimes a really little save file with only 32 MB can be enough for a long time (some of my save files did stay constant with 5..6 MB consumed and 25..26 MB free).

Hm! Puppy recommends to create a save file with 500 MB and I need only 1 % of it really :oops: ? And if I test, try or play with 10 different Puppys I use 5 GB of my partition to really need only about 50 MB :idea: ?

Is it realist to use a save file under such conditions?

--------------------------------------*-*--------------------------------------

SPACE SAVING IN THE lupu_528.sfs


As the lupu_528.sfs did increase to a very high point, actually 646 MB after space-saving measures :roll: (this because it is made with a puplet that includes the KDE 4.6.3), the next conclusion that I did make was that it was never optimal to hold different applications in the ISO or in the main *.sfs file of the ISO!

There are especially applications having a great frequency of updates and being often relatively big applications:

- Seamonkey
- Open Office or Libre Office
- some big Instant Messengers.

As a good option to save file memory or shrink the lupu_528.sfs after I did erase a lot of applications that I don't find necessary (all games, Abiword, Dillo, Gnumeric, Geany as I use Kwrite for the same things, gexec, geko-mediaplayer, homebank, nicoedit, osmo as the KDE calendar shows the right national holidays and is built in, picbuz, retrovol as the alsa mixer does exactly the same, sylpheed as the Seamonkey suite did always include a good email client!) and it was not enough to avoid that the lupu_528.sfs don't become more than the size of a standard CD, I did move my Seamonkey and Open Office outside from the lupu_528.sfs and include a good instant messenger being under ongoing development and being from an architecture being known from all mozilla derivates named Instantbird (I hope that it will become a great instant messenger after it will his development will be finished).

The 3 applications are now directly in the root of my partition and connected with Sumo with adequate links in Sumo!

A very good effect of that, is that there is no problem to actualize them now and as the browser are subject to frequent actualization, I am happy, I can actualize without restriction and without to change somewhat within my lupu_528.sfs !

So that the real size of Sumo Puppy Night Kde 4.6.3 is now

646 MB of the lupu_528.sfs, squashed (it is effective very more unsquashed!)
+ the size of Open Office depending of the version that I am using actually
+ the size of Seamonkey (*3
+ the size of Instantbird (*3

(*3 = it would be possible to recompile the two mozilla child so that they can use the same libraries and save so a lot of memory capacity on the hard disk but as the development is not the same, it would probably be the cause of a loose of performance for the one or the other or both!

--------------------------------------*-*--------------------------------------

Why KDE 4 and other very heavy goodies being not usual in a puppy.sfs ?


KDE 4 is probably one of the most competitive Desktop managers available for both Linux and Windows.

I use daily performances like good calendar, possibility to turn 90 degree my screen on fly and turn it back after the short use to show high documents turned high and large documents turned large, it is important in case of using Snapshots to show AND print out land maps etc. as cartography applications generally don't offer an adequate printer output! etc. (hit on «system settings» > «display and monitor» >> «resize and rotate your display» (don't forget to accept the new setting else it will turn again to the precedent one a few seconds later!)

The KDE menu can easily be adapted to the own needs: Only a short mouse right hit on the K-menu icon left at the bottom of the screen, and you directly access to the «edit applications» routine (KDE Menu Editor) and change, if you spend the time all details you want (language of the texts, names, order of appearing in the menu, sub menus etc.)

What are the other goodies built in:

java, needed by OO and diverse important applications, merkaartor, I know the software will not be maintained any more but it is the only one stand alone software I know for Puppy in matter of cartography, wine 1.1.44 (as wine has a very smudge installation's way straggling on different main and sub directories of the system, disgusting a such procedere!, I did not move it into the root of my partition but I did install it as permanent and not actualizable part of the lupu_528.sfs :roll: . I know, it is not optimal and I would prefer to find all the wine stuff in only one subdir as it is the case for Open or Libre Office...), qemu + mtools same thing as for wine, as qemu requires more communication today with drivers of Linux the installation of qemu requires now a more complex environment. but I use it only to start Windows 95 and test new puplets so I did install a old version acceptable for both jobs but probably not the best one! nted music score editor and divers little applications (clex, ddrescue, testdisk, frisbee, ciao prolog, yap prolog the little version of midori static, links2 and ted as there would be no text system at start as Abiword did be erased) complete the stuff in CLI or Xwindow...

oui

Remaster Puppy Night Kde 4.6.3

#4 Post by oui »

Remaster Puppy Night Kde 4.6.3 to built you own Sumo as you want and need:

(Notice: this message is not finished as long as this line appears, and will be changed)

nooby
Posts: 10369
Joined: Sun 29 Jun 2008, 19:05
Location: SwedenEurope

#5 Post by nooby »

As you may know I don't get much on this level
but love that you do such things. You learn and
many others can learn from your example here
so much appreciated that you share your findings
and result of your work on achieving what you want.

There are threads that discuss how to use puppy without
a save file. So look for them too so get some tip.

One way would be like member seaside did using a small
z file that just have such things as local time and keyboard
and screen resolution and such in that z file but use no save file.

so your not alone having these ideas hopefully you find these
people and you could inspire each other to find the best technical
and logical practical solution. Hope you don't see this as a derail.
Just wanted to encourage you to go on with your project.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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