Puppylinux on Phone/Tablets: the definitive thread

Under development: PCMCIA, wireless, etc.
Message
Author
cthisbear
Posts: 4422
Joined: Sun 29 Jan 2006, 22:07
Location: Sydney Australia

#76 Post by cthisbear »

don570

" to my surprise I can use my wacom tablet with quirky alpha "

Quirky pre-alpha on Raspberry Pi2 and 3

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 463#924463

Chris.

invisideath
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun 05 Feb 2017, 22:42

What i am looking for

#77 Post by invisideath »

I don't have a ton of experience in linux, so i wouldn't be much help on development, but what i would be looking for is this:

I would like an alternative to google or apple to run as an OS on my phone that i can make calls and send texts. Thats really it. I think as more and more information comes out about Government interference with google and apple and cell phone in general, more people will be looking for Open Source options. While there are rumors with ubuntu touch and plasma and sail fish and Firefox OS... none of these are great options because they are very device specific. My favorite thing about Puppy is how small and forgiving it is about hardware. Would be happy if it just turned on and allowed me to use the internet/make calls/and text.

Tor would be a pretty cool thing to.

User avatar
souleau
Posts: 148
Joined: Sun 23 Oct 2016, 15:24

Re: What i am looking for

#78 Post by souleau »

invisideath wrote:I don't have a ton of experience in linux, so i wouldn't be much help on development, but what i would be looking for is this:

I would like an alternative to google or apple to run as an OS on my phone that i can make calls and send texts. Thats really it.
What you need is this:

Image

Lots of people who prefer to communicate anonymously have a so-called burner phone on the side.
It's a phone with an anonymous pre-paid sim-card, without GPS, wifi, or datalogging apps.

Puppyt
Posts: 907
Joined: Fri 09 May 2008, 23:37
Location: Moorooka, Queensland
Contact:

Puppy on a Windows 7 Oak Trail tablet, 1.5GHz 2GB RAM

#79 Post by Puppyt »

Thanks for initiating and contributing to this historical thread, good to see Nooby's comments here - seems I will be always following in his footsteps...

So I inherited a rugged tablet, a CL900 with N-Trig instead of Wacom touch functionality. 2011 is already ancient history for such products but it is My First Tablet. Unsure that I could get a Linux distro working as "well" as the native Win7, I have first persevered with doing as many tweaks as possible, updated all BIOS and hardware drivers etc etc, contemplated Tiny7 and similar cutdown modifications, even toyed with ExoPC UI and other methods to have tablet-functionality as reliable and comfortable as is (sometimes) claimed on the tin. Consulted sites like "Gizmos Freeware" for the latest and greatest in security and basic productivity etc etc. Really all I need is with basic BT/browser functionality to check emails, is to open multiple pdf files and annotate on the fly. So I threw out all Adobe, MacroShaft Office and have Xournal and FlexiPDF, PaleMoon or SlimJet on. Not having the multiple workspaces of Linux is a major, major drag for Win7 tablets, I think.
Now after over 12 hours of running one of those *essential* "antivirus" programs on a 64GB HDD that is not even half full, I am more than ready to dua-boot with any Linux distro just so I can have the true flexibility and control I am used to from Puppy.

I've got a few options, but each will take some nutting out. The BIOS limits booting to cd/dvd, floppy, hdd and usb key - maybe Plop 5 on the hdd will let me boot multiple test distros from USB and SDcard, with less risk than dual-booting on the Win NTFS drive...
OOTB tablet-friendly linux distros seem to have moved away from 32-bit already (e.g., Black Lab, others I can't recall), but of those that might work here (e.g., Zorin 12.1core, Mint 18.1 xfce, PhoenixOS, Bodhi 4.1), they all look a tad on the large side. Maybe N-trig will 'just work' in those with more recent kernels. On the Puppy side, Lighthouse 5.03G (thanks g.c. martin for the heads-up) would seem to be a good match, and I'm interested also in testing LxPupXenial 16.08.2, and LxQtPup-14.12.01. Who knows, maybe ninotix's PRER 5.5.3 (Racy) and even Lupu 5287 might be go-ers. Has anyone had experimented on similar tablet hardware they might like to post some sage advice please?

UPDATE: Happy break -"usb key" doesn't mean 'keyboard' as I supposed, so I'm able to boot natively from USB. (Learn something every day.) As I write the tablet is going through a bootup process for Lighthouse 5.0.3, the last 32-bit version Tazoc was able to complete before his debilitating illness. I actually found Smokey's (and Co.) Multipup r24 http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 185#941185 and am trying that on a 2GB stick I had spare. Unfortunately I realise now that I should have included a swap partition on the USB drive, as loading to RAM is a *bit slow*. Fingers crossed...

UPDATE 2: Well when I pulled the plug on it, I saw that behind the blackout/hibernation, it had loaded up to the Xorg select and test stage. But I shrunk the drivespace to put a swap partition on and hopefully accelerate future boots. I can boot with usb keyboard and usb-puppy install on a hub! I did not know that was possible, maybe a feature in more recent Grubs that I thought wasn't available earlier.
The main issue is that dual-booting on a tablet may be complicated without BT or touchscreen ability for the level of the bootloader/GRUB. I even attempted to load Plop5 as a way of an alternative approach to load puppy or other distros from a sd-card. (Windows gave me a bluescreen of death on shutdown, so something to sort out there.) I would still need to have a usb keyboard to enable choices, however, which is cumbersome. Looking for options currently on that particular front.

UPDATE 3: Hmmm so it doesn't look like the Win7 bootloader supports touch, unlike what I see reported for Win 10 at least. And there doesn't appear to be any real interest in getting touch support going in Grub, from what I can see. So I'm clueless as to how to proceed from here - perhaps the Chuwi-type tablets with Android and Win 10 might have some clues... or maybe there's a touch-supported bootloader somewheres, or even a mini kernel (something the Win10 bootloader appears to be). Otherwise, a usb keyboard looks like being required whenever dual-booting Win7 with something - which is not a viable solution for a tablet with bluetooth capabilities, I think.
Can't get a decent display from the Lighthouse503-era Xorg. Looks like I should try Tahr and work my way backwards etc.
Search engines for Puppy
[url]http://puppylinux.us/psearch.html[/url]; [url=https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=015995643981050743583%3Aabvzbibgzxo&q=#gsc.tab=0]Google Custom Search[/url]; [url]http://wellminded.net63.net/[/url] others TBA...

Puppyt
Posts: 907
Joined: Fri 09 May 2008, 23:37
Location: Moorooka, Queensland
Contact:

#80 Post by Puppyt »

Spent way longer on this project than intended to get dual-booting on a Motion CL900 tablet. All the usual trip-ups: imperfect iso downloads I skipped MD5 verification on; forgetting to make a swap partition available; and, re-using flakey old USB sticks for testing were probably the most frustrating issues. Some discoveries:
+ the latest Bodhi 4.1.0-32 works, live. Touchscreen working from the get-go, but to a new user spoiled with Puppy the opportunities to rummage under the hood just aren't there (getting hardware settings etc),
+ unetbootin just wouldn't see my intended USB drive, in Puppy. Even when I reformatted to Fat32. It's a drawback that unetbootin won't work with ext2 etc formats. Used the dd command for non-Puppy ISOs.
+ good to know that for this hardware I can boot from a USB hub with keyboard and mouse in the chain too
- major drawback at present is lack of touch support or BT keyboard capabilities either at the Grub, or Windows 7 boot manager level. Looking for a bootloader with such features enabled, otherwise without a usb keyboard you can't choose to change the system booted into.

I guess that one solution might be is that after booting into the default system, and go back into the boot manager to edit the boot order, then reboot into the new selection. I have to leave this project now due to time constraints, but I might test a few other USB Puppy isos through the week.

UPDATE: Notes to self - remember to blacklist the i915 module, as bigpup explains here http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 777#925777, and remember to track Insomniacno1 and greengeeks [and Pelo's] similar efforts to have a working Puppy tablet...

UPDATE TESTING 16May (32-bit only, live, OOTB function):
Non-puppy distros (using dd command on a ext2 usb):-
Zorin 12.1 core, works/touchscreen issues
Mint 18.1 mate, works
Bohdi 4.1.0, works

Puppy (slotting iso contents into Multipup r24-prepared structure on ext2 usb):-
Slacko-700 b3, touchscreen unfocussed, n-trig stylus good, no bt yet
LighthousePup-5.03-G+Mariner sfs, no touch, no bt

Wishlist:
LxPupSc-16.07.1
LxPupXenial-16.08.2-pae
LxQtPup-14.12.01-s-nopae
PuppyTahrLite6.1.1-Legacy-64GBRAM (discontinued)

PhoenixO-v2.0.3.115
Search engines for Puppy
[url]http://puppylinux.us/psearch.html[/url]; [url=https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=015995643981050743583%3Aabvzbibgzxo&q=#gsc.tab=0]Google Custom Search[/url]; [url]http://wellminded.net63.net/[/url] others TBA...

User avatar
Eathray
Posts: 723
Joined: Sun 06 Sep 2009, 19:42

#81 Post by Eathray »

I'd like to add just a couple thoughts to the conversation...

1
Phones and tablets cannot replace the full sized computer because of physical limitations. Sometimes we need a full sized screen for visual convenience and sometimes we need a full sized keyboard if we are going to do any significant writing. The older we get, the more true these needs will be. I have both a phone and tablet, and even though I use them daily... they are both tinker-toys compared to my laptop. If I could only have one of the three, I would take the laptop, and it's an ancient Winbook.

2
Yes, we could really use a Puppy for devices. Not specifically for Puppy, but as an alternative to the duopoly that is Apple/Google. They are both ridiculously proprietary and becoming more so. At this point, you cannot even exercise the most basic control over your Droid such as choosing where to install an application. They are both actively seeking to prevent root privileges which means a lot of software you might want to run is not available to you until the right exploit shows up for your particular device. And... These guys are actively tracking everything you do and everywhere you go, creating a profile of you and your family which opens you up to all kinds of negative possibilities like identity theft, harassment for your political or social views, you or a loved one being stalked, hacking and financial damage, and yes, unreasonable and sometimes warrant-less searches and seizures by one's own government.

Even if all it did was supplement one's laptop or desktop and had a very limited amount of apps... I think the benefit of a Puppy phone/tablet would be immeasurable, especially if it could readily sync with your computer across your local network and serve as an extension of it from, the couch, the shop or garage, the porch, etc. When you leave home with it, all you really need is your ability to call and text, then do a few things while your out like browse for shopping or send an image. Anything more than that... you probably want to take your laptop with you.

Just my two cents, or points. I would not only use one but I would BUY one... if anyone out there feels entrepreneurial :) and it does not need to be complex whatsoever or run Android apps, the vast majority of which are nothing more than time-wasters.

User avatar
Moose On The Loose
Posts: 965
Joined: Thu 24 Feb 2011, 14:54

#82 Post by Moose On The Loose »

Eathray wrote:
Just my two cents, or points. I would not only use one but I would BUY one... if anyone out there feels entrepreneurial :) and it does not need to be complex whatsoever or run Android apps, the vast majority of which are nothing more than time-wasters.
rfo basic is not a waste of time.

There are folks who report success making a phone flip back and forth between being purely Linux and acting android on the fly. It involves a change-root.

futwerk
Posts: 397
Joined: Sat 07 May 2011, 22:04

#83 Post by futwerk »

can this qualify? no programmable skills involved.
Attachments
pyppyonbbw.jpg
http://www.mediafire.com/?wd7yz5puzwm5y
(9.47 KiB) Downloaded 442 times

s243a
Posts: 2580
Joined: Tue 02 Sep 2014, 04:48
Contact:

#84 Post by s243a »

Moose On The Loose wrote:
Eathray wrote:
Just my two cents, or points. I would not only use one but I would BUY one... if anyone out there feels entrepreneurial :) and it does not need to be complex whatsoever or run Android apps, the vast majority of which are nothing more than time-wasters.
rfo basic is not a waste of time.

There are folks who report success making a phone flip back and forth between being purely Linux and acting android on the fly. It involves a change-root.
This is probably mostly true. The kbox website gives some description of what you can do with linux on android if you aren't running as root. Basically all programs need to be in the same folder because of the way android sandboxes applications from each other.

This means for instance that you can't update busybox in the official way from the ap store and that linux must reside in the same folder as the terminal emulator. There are probably more limitations which would make the non-root approach a lot less useful than the root approach.

However, if you want a somewhat complete version of linux that doesn't require root on android, there is supposedly a version of debian that doesn't require root.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... cuntubuntu

It may be more useful on a tablet then a phone because a typical linux desktop is not optimized for a phone sized display, like android aps are. However, if you can do xforwarding then you might get a more readable display.

Pelo

There are so many Puppies and none for phones.

#85 Post by Pelo »

"It may be more useful on a tablet then a phone because a typical linux desktop is not optimized for a phone sized display"
Devs, wrte tis in you to-do list.
There are so many Puppies and none for phones.
I am wrong. Hungarian show one in their forum. Info coming soon, checkin later.

Post Reply