Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[Q5sys]

This really isnt specific to just precise but for all of the ubuntu based releases. I know it will take some time for Canonical to release MIR into their products... but It's going to happen if Shuttleworth has anything to say about it. So I'm curious to others ideas of how that move might affect puppy's future development of the Ubuntu line of releases.

Will we work to modify puppy to use MIR, and assist Ubuntu in porting applications over to it... or will we stop basing future versions on it once MIR goes live?

I dont know the future, and I dont claim to know the answers. I'm curious as to others peoples thoughts before I start to form an opinion.

If you havent heard... here are some links to read.

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1235
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/03/ubuntu-mir/
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/03/canonical-announce-custom-display-server-mir-not-wayland-not-x
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTMxNzg

[jamesbond]

Wayland is here (or not, depending on who you ask), and Puppy isn't using it. GTK3 is here too and Puppy isn't using it.

On another note, Lucid Puppy went well beyond Lucid Lynx's shell-life.
It was not that long ago that Lupu got replaced by Slacko as the "official" puppy, and even after that it continued to linger around under "three-headed-dog" name.

The way I see it, is that Barry will probably stick to the latest version of Ubuntu that still uses Xorg. MIR will probably be only considered once Xorg is no longer maintained and everyone else have moved to MIR (which isn't going to happen over night - even if MIR is mature and production-ready today).

Of course I'm not Barry and not speaking on his behalf - this is pure speculation

[sunburnt]

Don`t like new and latest, let it mature and become stable first.

The one article showed what Canonical has got so far, and it`s not much...
I agree with the writers assessment, MIR earliest hope will be next year.
And then you can add another year to that for it to become truly functional.
So Precise won`t even be on the radar by then, not much to worry about.

[mikeslr]

Hi All,

Predicting the future of Puppy now that MIR and Wayland are on the horizon:

There was Puppy before there was woof. There are Puppies even though there is woof, that is Puppies which are not built using the binaries of other distros to wit: Carolina and, if I recall correctly, FatDog prior to the latest versions based on Slackware.
Unless MIR or Wayland were constructed by people having no knowledge of how Xorg works, the probability is that upon their dissembling it will be discovered that all three are “variations on a theme.” People do not re-invent the wheel: they only apply newer insights to improve it. The wheel is still round, only the material used has changed. MIR and wayland probability will turn out to use much of the structure employed by Xorg, substituting new sub-routines for those of Xorg considered no longer to be “state of the art.”
So there are four possibilities: Woof will be adapted to use MIR or Wayland or either. That will depend on which direction debian, Archlinux, and Slackware take. When Barry K first developed woof many thought debian was the best candidate for its use. But Barry K preferred Ubuntu. Experience has shown, however, Slackware to be an excellent choice. Over the last several months, simargl has demonstrated that the woofing of Archlinux is not just theoretical, and with his newly found interest in more closely configuring Archpup toward Puppy standard he, or others who favor Archlinux, may well be on the verge of a solid Puppy-Arch combination opening up the wealth of Archlinux's repositories to “mere” Puppy users. The advantage of woofing Ubuntu was the latter's abundance of applications. Most of which we don't employ because to do so would require inclusion of the bloat inherent in Ubuntu which runs counter to Puppy's philosophy and because other, less bloated applications, can accomplish the same real-world tasks. Consequently, depending on which side of the wayland-mir divide debian, slackware and Archlinux take, what Ubuntu does may prove to be superfluous. Whether adapting woof to wayland or mir may also turn on which would require Puppy to accept more bloat.
The fourth possibility is that woof may be abandoned. Barry K's conceived woof as a vehicle to ease development and reduce the necessity of storage and bandwidth. Those objectives have proven illusory. Rather than devoting time to perfecting one or two (32 & 64-bit) Puppies, and developing applications and customizations for them, the efforts of Puppy's devs are scattered among several mostly incompatible variants, retro-fitting other distro's apps for use in Puppies and constantly improving woof so that the foregoing can take place. Since applications from other distros can rarely be used “out of the box” --or because devs just like to publish their creations-- pets built for each Puppy variant are stored online requiring additional storage. I can't say whether the total bandwidth used by all Pups is greater or less than were there only two pups. I suspect not.
Far more important to Puppy's future is its adaption to GTK-3. Its employment, as far as I know, is what each of the major distros are already using, or to which they are heading. Already much of the current specialized applications developed for Ubuntu are, despite woof, of no value to Puppy. If and when the maintainers of the applications which provide Puppy's base applications use only GTK-3, Puppy will become obsolete if it has not adapted.
What will be the fate of Puppy? That will depend on Barry K. and others. Barry K is the master. I hope his interests will continue to pave the way for creating a compact, resource-efficient, user-friendly, open source distribution capable of being deployed to what otherwise would become obsolete computers. That was his original vision. That is Puppy's role in the Global Village. That is the magnet which draws the bulk of Puppy's users. But in an endeavor which is not driven by the profit motive, direction will be set by the interests and vision of each individual. Puppy –indeed, Linux in general-- is a do-ocracy. Those who can do, can also wait for others to do. Sometimes a leader leads because he has the vision. Sometimes the leader is just someone being kept in front by the push of those, although not in the lead, who have an objective. Sometimes disciples, standing on the shoulders of a giant, have a clearer view of terrain. And sometimes disciples, like lemmings, follow a leader over a cliff.
Puppy, and Linux in general, is open-source. Barry K has demonstrated what can be done. There will be Puppy. And if not, there will be “Froggy” or “Piggy” or something, or nothing.

mikesLr

[scsijon]

Both Wayland and GTK3 are being 'played' with by a number of interested 'puppy people'.

There is a Wayland thread around with some interesting info, and thunor is starting with gtk3 with a beta of my mage2 which has gtk3 inbuilt to create the dialog we need to make gtk3 'puppy compatable'.

I am sure others will join in as they both evolve and become more useful or needed.

But major additions like these take time and none of us are intending to break the working system.

[RJARRRPCGP]

[simargl]