Carolina - 1.3

For talk and support relating specifically to Puppy derivatives
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bibzpu
Posts: 14
Joined: Fri 08 Jul 2011, 23:26

#1306 Post by bibzpu »

Thanks for the ideas, elroy. I'll certainly give them a try.

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Geoffrey
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Location: Queensland

#1307 Post by Geoffrey »

Updated repo.
smtube-2.1 (QT Search and download videos from YouTube)

smplayer-14.3.0 (QT A great MPlayer front-end)

copyq-2.1.0 (QT, A cut & paste history utility)

QuiteRSS-0.15.3 (QT QuiteRSS is a RSS/Atom feed reader written in C++/Qt4)

focuswriter-1.4.6.pet (Qt text writer)
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ahfade8q4def1lq/signbot.gif[/img]

gcmartin

#1308 Post by gcmartin »

@Geoffrey, @Elroy, @RG66 = The Wonderful World of Carolina.

Request: Could the next version bring MTP integration into the system, OOTB?

Anyway, currently loving it in Puppyland

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Geoffrey
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Location: Queensland

#1309 Post by Geoffrey »

Updated repo, replaced AssaultCube as the old version no longer loaded internet servers, new version assaultcube-1.2.0.2
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ahfade8q4def1lq/signbot.gif[/img]

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Moat
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#1310 Post by Moat »

Carolina 1.2 is simply the schizzle, IMHO! 8)

Been trying out a few more recent distros lately, and was especially interested in the new LTS release of Xubuntu 14.04 and how it (and others) compare to Carolina. And... meh. Carolina does pretty much all that it/they do, but faster/flawlessly from USB stick and is easier to setup, with all of the handy little tweak apps that you devs have included. After throwing dozens of apps at it, I only once ran across an issue involving 'Lina's older glibc(?) - trying to get TeeJay's Conky Manager to work - so no big deal, really.

Just outstanding!

That said - over the months I have ran into a few (minor) glitches that may or may not be directly related to my newb hack attempts at trying out different things - but I'll throw 'em out here anyways, in case some others have noticed similar issues (hopefully providing evidence that it's not purely my fault, after all! :) ). These issues seemed common on a few different frugal USB installs, running on various older (2005-ish) computers here...

1) PupsaveConfig doesn't work - one must enter the desired value (in my case '0', for no periodic save) in the ramsaveinterval line 9 of 'pup_event_frontend_d' in /sbin, to reflect the '0' as set/saved in Pupsaveconfig. Searching the forum indicates this is a somewhat common, older issue?

2) Initially, the "Run Command" from the default Xfce Applications Menu did not work (entering a command and pressing "enter" did nothing), but then seemed to function normally after the App Menu plugin was removed and re-installed to the panel a time or two (a moot point for me anyway, as I'm now using the super-nifty Whisker menu instead).

3) After some odd amount of normal use installing/uninstalling packages, the PPM seems to "break" somewhat - in that, out of the blue, it begins to always display the "error - package xxx failed to install", even though the application appears to install and run just fine. This has eventually been the case on three different 'Lina USB frugal installs I've done.

Interesting to note that, when a Puppy's PPM is working normally, there appears to be a period of time (maybe 5-6 seconds) during the install process where the CPU spikes as PPM goes through some kind of file cleanup/uninstall file writing or ?? - but once "broken", the Carolina PPM doesn't display this behavior - quickly throwing the error message instead. Maybe some important cleanup/data not being done/written? Dunno, but the installed apps seem to function normally.

4) The selected mouse cursor theme (Polar, in my case) appears to have difficulty loading on boot, defaulting to the small black cursor about every other boot - adding various 'sleep' times (of a few seconds) to the '0-cursor-theme' script in the /root/Startup folder has mostly appeared to fix the problem. I think... so far, so good, anyways.

5) Might be a Firefox 26 issue - selecting "Open containing folder" from Firefox's download manager toolbar button opens three instances of Thunar. I haven't been able to find much info regarding a fix (or even the problem, itself) whilst Googling around the 'net. Maybe a result of dragging my .mozilla folder out of the savefile space and symlinking back...? Odd, anyhow.

6) Not a Carolina issue, but the Xfce weather panel plugin only very ocassionally displays any data - and even then the data appears to be a bit out of date/erronous, compared to more local USA sources (Yahoo, Accuweather). Seems like the Norwegian source of data may not be too reliable - shame, really, as the plugin displays a very nice set of info at a very small cost in bandwidth.

Otherwise, lovin' it. Carolina is about as close a sub to my trusty ol' XP that I've run across, in hopping amongst a few dozen distros - Puppy and otherwise. Outstanding Puppy!

Bob
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Carolina 1.2 olive/sand desktop
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Geoffrey
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#1311 Post by Geoffrey »

Moat wrote:Interesting to note that, when a Puppy's PPM is working normally, there appears to be a period of time (maybe 5-6 seconds) during the install process where the CPU spikes as PPM goes through some kind of file cleanup/uninstall file writing or ?? - but once "broken", the Carolina PPM doesn't display this behavior - quickly throwing the error message instead. Maybe some important cleanup/data not being done/written? Dunno, but the installed apps seem to function normally.
It does take a while to do things like checking for missing library files, it doesn't seem any slower than other pups I've tried.
The selected mouse cursor theme (Polar, in my case) appears to have difficulty loading on boot, defaulting to the small black cursor about every other boot - adding various 'sleep' times (of a few seconds) to the '0-cursor-theme' script in the /root/Startup folder has mostly appeared to fix the problem. I think... so far, so good, anyways.
That was a problem we had sometime ago, rg66 worked on that and I'm sure it was sorted.

5) Might be a Firefox 26 issue - selecting "Open containing folder" from Firefox's download manager toolbar button opens three instances of Thunar. I haven't been able to find much info regarding a fix (or even the problem, itself) whilst Googling around the 'net. Maybe a result of dragging my .mozilla folder out of the savefile space and symlinking back...? Odd, anyhow.
Your right, there is a problem, it may be due to the .mozilla configuration, I think it's to do with exo-open being assigned to open files and folders, it seems to be being called a number of times.??

6) Not a Carolina issue, but the Xfce weather panel plugin only very ocassionally displays any data - and even then the data appears to be a bit out of date/erronous, compared to more local USA sources (Yahoo, Accuweather). Seems like the Norwegian source of data may not be too reliable - shame, really, as the plugin displays a very nice set of info at a very small cost in bandwidth.
I have that also, the problem in the clock synchronization, I setup " Psync time server synchronizer " for autostart, but it don't wait for a network connection thought it works on restarting x, I added to the timesync.sh in Startup some code written by mavrothal, so now the timesync.sh looks like this.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
#Psync Time Synchroniser Autorun 
#Synchronises system and hardware clock to a public time server
#Robert Lane 2010 2011(tasmod)

IFCONFIG="`ifconfig | grep '^[pwe]' | grep -v 'wmaster'`"
while [ "$IFCONFIG" != "" ]; do
   sleep 1
    ping -c 1 8.8.8.8
    if [ $? -eq 0 ];then
      break
   else
      ping -c 1 www.google.com
      if [ $? -eq 0 ];then
         break
      fi
   fi
done 


function iswireless  {
      while [ -z "$ESSID" ]
        do
         ESSID=`iwconfig | grep 'ESSID'`
        continue
        done
        sleep 15  #Just to make sure connection is stable.
        exec /usr/local/psync/psyncfunc $TIMEPLACE
 }
 
 TIMEPLACE=`cat /usr/local/psync/setcountry | tail -n 1`
 
 iswifi=`iwconfig | grep 'wlan'`
 
 if [ -z "$iswifi" ]
  then
   exec /usr/local/psync/psyncfunc $TIMEPLACE
  else
   iswireless
  fi      
I've recently updated the repo with a few items also.
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ahfade8q4def1lq/signbot.gif[/img]

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Moat
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#1312 Post by Moat »

Hi Geoffrey - thanks for the reply...
Geoffrey wrote: It does take a while to do things like checking for missing library files, it doesn't seem any slower than other pups I've tried.
Not that it was slower, but that - after the PPM "breaks" - if anything, it seems faster than before - as it appears to be skipping those "things" (i.e. - checking for missing library files, etc.) because of the supposed "error"... yet the installed packages end up working fine. Just odd that PPM broke, yet seems faster than normal.

Thanks for the Psync autostart timesync.sh script. I gave it a try, and although the weather plugin would then work, my (UTC) time was now wrong, and correcting it with the "Set date and time" utility then borked the weather plugin again. :shock: Also, the script appeared to consume a constant additional 3-4% CPU on my system (dialup - not wireless)... :?:

I think I found an easy workaround, though - I used the Country Settings wizard to set the time to other than UTC Hardware Clock (US/Michigan in my case) and re-ran Psync (without autostart) to line things up - and now my system's time reads correctly and the weather plugin works, even after rebooting. 8) It looks like the plugin gets a bit confused syncronizing between a client's UTC timezone and the downloaded data's timestamp, and therefore rejects the data as "out of date". But seems not a problem (here, anyways) when running other that UTC. Cool!

Oops - didn't even think to check the BIOS time settings, tho...

I'm no coder, but I'll fiddle around with the Firefox/exo-open bug as I have time, and see if I can come up with anything useful.

Thanks!

Bob

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Moat
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#1313 Post by Moat »

Moat wrote: I'm no coder, but I'll fiddle around with the Firefox/exo-open bug as I have time, and see if I can come up with anything useful.
Found a fix -

In directory /root/.local/share/applications/ - Create Document > Empty File and name it -

Code: Select all

defaults.list
Open the new file and paste -

Code: Select all

[Default Applications]
inode/directory=Thunar.desktop;
Save and exit.

Firefox should now open the proper single instance only of Thunar when right-clicking "Open Containing Folder" from the Download Manager toolbutton drop-down list. Works for me on two different installs... :)

Bob

chosenbygrace
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Joined: Sun 04 May 2014, 07:51

Re: Carolina - 1.2

#1314 Post by chosenbygrace »

Hi, I've been doing very thorough testing of various linux distros, and the most usable I have found is Knoppix, but, it might have been yours had the internet worked for me. It seems your OS, seems, can't use clear wireless modems. I have a supposed 4g one, though it might be a lie and really be 3g, but anyways, it's one of those, and your OS can't connect through it.

Also, like knoppix, is there a simple way to make your OS a permanence-install onto USB? because it is cumbersome saving some file somewhere and hoping the changes are saved rather than it simply acting like a harddrive with instant changes made to it.

I'm hating knoppix though because it's creator seems intent to not make obvious changes, like forcing everyone to use military time, and on top of that the clock can't be changed and worse it's almost always the wrong time. Even installing time-syncing apps doesn't help nor getting world clocks for like, firefox because those clocks sync to the system clock, stupidly. It amazes me linux as no atomic clock widget when it's supposed to be the most science-friendly OS. There's other grating things about it but I'll spare you.

Btw, if you make a new version can you make one that is able to use the full resolution of an ASUS VS238-HP monitor, because being stuck at 1280 x 720 makes my monitor a waste of money and is embarrassingly low tech. Any Windows using friends I have over would surely think I was stupid for using Linux if I couldn't get something simple on Windows to work like 1080p.

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Geoffrey
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Location: Queensland

#1315 Post by Geoffrey »

Moat wrote:
Moat wrote: I'm no coder, but I'll fiddle around with the Firefox/exo-open bug as I have time, and see if I can come up with anything useful.
Found a fix -

In directory /root/.local/share/applications/ - Create Document > Empty File and name it -

Code: Select all

defaults.list
Open the new file and paste -

Code: Select all

[Default Applications]
inode/directory=Thunar.desktop;
Save and exit.

Firefox should now open the proper single instance only of Thunar when right-clicking "Open Containing Folder" from the Download Manager toolbutton drop-down list. Works for me on two different installs... :)

Bob
Thanks Moat, that fixed it, there is a defaults.list in /usr/share/applications, so I added inode/directory=Thunar.desktop there instead.
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ahfade8q4def1lq/signbot.gif[/img]

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Moat
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#1316 Post by Moat »

Geoffrey wrote:... there is a defaults.list in /usr/share/applications, so I added inode/directory=Thunar.desktop there instead.
Ahh... even better/simpler/cleaner. Thanks 8)

Carolina is now danged near perfection!

Bob

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Geoffrey
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Location: Queensland

#1317 Post by Geoffrey »

Updated repo with a few applications.

tor-browser-3.6-lina.sfs (pre-configured web browser to protect your anonymity)

scratch-1.4.0.1 (With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations)

scratch2-2.0 (AdobeAIR Scratch 2 off line editor)

QuiteRSS-0.16.0 (QT QuiteRSS is a RSS/Atom feed reader written in C++/Qt4)

MasterPDFEditor-1.9.25-lina (QT Master PDF Editor for Desktop Linux is provided by Code Industry Ltd free for non-commercial use.)

LightZone-4.0.0 (Java Digital Darkroom Software - Post-processing software for digital photos)

HathiDownloadHelper-1.0.8 (QT Assistant to download books from Hathitrust.org)
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
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Geoffrey
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#1318 Post by Geoffrey »

Added a few more apps to the repo.

filezilla-3.8.0 (Download and upload files via FTP, FTPS and SFTP)

tintii-2.8.2 (tintii selective colour)

urbanlightscape-1.3.2 (Use Urban Lightscape to correct under- and overexposed parts of an image)


All three have wxGTK as a dependency, previously Filezilla and Tintii were using wxWidgets from the repo which I have now removed.

Tintii and Urban Lightscape are pay for apps for Windows and Mac but are free for linux.

http://www.indii.org/software/tintii/download

http://www.indii.org/software/urbanlightscape/download
Attachments
urban_lightscape.jpg
(47.55 KiB) Downloaded 661 times
tintii.jpg
(66.68 KiB) Downloaded 687 times
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
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Geoffrey
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#1319 Post by Geoffrey »

Another qt app in the repo, Ascii Design
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ascii_design.jpg
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[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ahfade8q4def1lq/signbot.gif[/img]

ac2011
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Joined: Wed 09 Feb 2011, 08:22

run Precise apps in Carolina

#1320 Post by ac2011 »

You might be interested in this. I haven't tested it in Carolina yet, but it works fine in Fluppy which is even older:

"Run the very latest apps on old Puppies"
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=94064

I'm interested in feedback from users of different puppies. I've been using Chrome 37 in Fluppy this way, with Flash 14.

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Moat
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#1321 Post by Moat »

Geoffrey wrote:... there is a defaults.list in /usr/share/applications, so I added inode/directory=Thunar.desktop there instead.
Well, I'll be... this fixed a (probably) related issue in Precise 5.7.1/Firefox, too - and I've noticed the same problem with Firefox in a number of Linux distros ("Open Containing Folder" does nothing) - maybe it'll work with those, as well. 8)

I'll throw a thread up in the "How To's" sub-forum to let folks know.

Bob

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battleshooter
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#1322 Post by battleshooter »

I've never mentioned how much I love Carolina. In fact I'll bet it's a major factor in my lack of Puppy contributions in the last few years. It's just so good I don't need to compile anything or tweak anything. Necessity is the mother of invention, and so I've been lazy ;)

Anyway, speaking of necessity, long story short, I installed Carolina on to a new laptop, but the hardware required a newer kernel. I'd like to upload the Carolina iso I remastered with the new kernel but thought to ask permission before doing so.

Many thanks again for this puplet Geoffrey, elroy, and rg66 :)
[url=http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=94580]LMMS 1.0.2[/url], [url=http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=94593]Ardour 3.5.389[/url], [url=http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=94629]Kdenlive 0.9.8[/url]

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Geoffrey
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#1323 Post by Geoffrey »

battleshooter wrote:I've never mentioned how much I love Carolina. In fact I'll bet it's a major factor in my lack of Puppy contributions in the last few years. It's just so good I don't need to compile anything or tweak anything. Necessity is the mother of invention, and so I've been lazy ;)

Anyway, speaking of necessity, long story short, I installed Carolina on to a new laptop, but the hardware required a newer kernel. I'd like to upload the Carolina iso I remastered with the new kernel but thought to ask permission before doing so.

Many thanks again for this puplet Geoffrey, elroy, and rg66 :)
Thanks battleshooter, do that, the kernel update you offer will be welcome.

There isn't much else we can do anymore, rg66 is busy with X-Slacko and X-Precise and would like to move on to other newer projects.

I was going to post that there wouldn't be another update, I'll continue to add apps to the repo but as far as Carolina go's it will remain at version 1.2 indefinitely.

It would be easier for those that want an updated version to remove the adrive and create there own adding the apps they require from the repo.
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ahfade8q4def1lq/signbot.gif[/img]

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battleshooter
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#1324 Post by battleshooter »

Wow, that's unfortunate. And completely ironic. I seem to have a knack for deciding to say "I <3 Puppy XXXX" right before the project winds down. I did that to Saluki just before it closed down as well. :?

I remastered with Carolina 1.1, so I need to remaster with 1.2 instead, makes more sense if that's to be the final release. I can send you the link when it's uploaded.
[url=http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=94580]LMMS 1.0.2[/url], [url=http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=94593]Ardour 3.5.389[/url], [url=http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=94629]Kdenlive 0.9.8[/url]

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01micko
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#1325 Post by 01micko »

battleshooter

It should be possible to update the kernel with the new init scripts in current woof 'testing'

As a very rough guideline:-

1. Compile a kernel in Carolina using kernel-kit. That will leave you with a kernel-modules sfs and vmlinuz-whatever-version. Rename vminuz-xxxx to vmlinuz and the kernel-modules.sfs.xxx to what ever the ZDRIVE variable is in carolina (see /etc/DISTRO_SPECS). If you don't want to build a kernel get one here, one built in slacko and the other in tahr, but there may be gcc/glibc issues since carolina is an old base.

2. Grab these 2 files init and rc.sysinit

3. decompress your initrd.gz, replace the init script and delete all the kernel modules (everything in /lib/modules).

4. In the main sfs (or if carolina has an original z drive, sorry too ignorant to know) delete all the kernel modules and firmware as the nw kernel has it in the sfs (in kernel kit you have to find it your self, so maybe grab one of the kernels anyway and copy it from there, this is a work in progress and firmware is a bit of an issue atm, but we are working on it).
While in the main sfs replace /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit with the file I pointed at earlier.

5. compress your initrd.gz, compress the main sfs and that should almost get you there.

NB: I have only tried this with very recent woof so ymmv but forum member stemsee has tried it with a variety of pups. Talk to him for further advice.

Cheers
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