Puppy's DistroWatch position

[8-bit]

I noticed on visiting DistroWatch that Puppy Linux is now at 27 in it's click rating.
I realize those ratings are figured from the interest (number of clicks) a distro gets.
But is this lower rating due to no new versions of Puppy being submitted?
Or is people's interest in Puppy going to the dogs so to speak.
I am a faithful Puppy user and my main version I use is Lupu 520 with all the patches I found on this forum and also many many games.
I do have about 5 other versions of Puppy installed that I use once in a while including booting Blue version 5 from an external USB hard drive.

This post is basically to draw your attention to that rating in that we may be loosing prospective new users.

[neerajkolte]

Yes no new official release, and lots of flavors of pup not being listed on distropup might be the cause.
Also the home page puppylinux.com don't have latest pup info or direct download links.

Also when I look on puppy's page on distrowatch it says

*Architecture:i386
*.Desktop:JWM,Openbox
*.Category:Desktop,Old Computers,Live Medium,Netbooks

Puppy is more than this.
How to get some flavors of pup in active devlopment listed under puppy entry on distrowatch.
Namely Fatdog64, Slacko64, Slacko6, Debian Dog, Blue pup, LxPup, Tahrpup.

Personally what I think will attract more people is a Pup which will make use of repos of debian or ubuntu or slacko and ISOs released for both arches 32bit and 64bit.
And their latest news on distrowatch.

- Neeraj.

[mavrothal]

I noticed on visiting DistroWatch that Puppy Linux is now at 27 in it's click rating.
I realize those ratings are figured from the interest (number of clicks) a distro gets.
But is this lower rating due to no new versions of Puppy being submitted?
Or is people's interest in Puppy going to the dogs so to speak.
I am a faithful Puppy user and my main version I use is Lupu 520 with all the patches I found on this forum and also many many games.
I do have about 5 other versions of Puppy installed that I use once in a while including booting Blue version 5 from an external USB hard drive.

This post is basically to draw your attention to that rating in that we may be loosing prospective new users.

I guess you are referring to the "last 7 days" rating because the default "last 6 month" is 14, down 4 from its heydays high, #10.

The multitude of pupplets and puppy-"analogs" is not a problem I believe. They where always there. The fact that there is no new official puppy since Mar 9, 2014 is a problem. Even the "big" distros have a new release every 6 months...

[nancy reagan]

Puppy's homepage in my opinion has always been a disaster.

Would have been nice if BK had given somebody power to submit new puppies.

But this not being the case, why not submit more puppies at Softpedia for a start ?

[tlchost]

Puppy's homepage in my opinion has always been a disaster.

Would have been nice if BK had given somebody power to submit new puppies

Perhaps if an alternate Puppy Home Page was created, it could be submitted to DistroWatch?

Who knows, if one was made, and constantly maintained, Barry might use the content on the "Official" site.

Of course, having a new site that represented Puppy with all the variations, distros, etc., might be a task like herding cats, or living the life of the messengers in the past....deliver a bad message and be executed.

[raffy]

Puppy is 14th and Simplicity Linux is 27th.

This suggests that people mentioning the importance of a distro's frequent releases are correct. It also suggests that a catchy linux name can get you somewhere.

If it gets higher, Simplicity will be a Puppy success story.

[jamesbond]

This suggests that people mentioning the importance of a distro's frequent releases are correct.

If frequent releases aren't possible, the next best thing is frequent news update. On Puppy's flagship website(s), not through this forum. Main purpose is to show the world that the project is alive and kicking. Barry's blog served this purpose before, but it has gone relatively silent over the past year.

It isn't difficult. There are many newsworthy content from the posts here. Take them and re-post/re-blog them on Puppy's flagship website (puppylinux.com/puppylinux.org).

[darry1966]

I would like to say that to be honest it doesn't really worry me where Puppy is in these rankings. It is like Rock groups we follow like say Pink Floyd or Cream they are no longer in the charts but they are still great bands. My Point is we should care more about quality releases than where Puppy is charting for example one of my favourites Absolute Linux is not in the top20 but my word Paul Sherman has done a great job and Absolute is a great distro.

So I look forward to Tux's new effort and well as for Top10 charting I'm personally not worried about and it doesn't influence my usage of a particular distro.

there are great distros which are even on Distrowatch or though the waiting list is useful for new discoveries.

So Puppians enjoy Puppy and its benefits, I know I do.

[mavrothal]

Main purpose is to show the world that the project is alive and kicking. Barry's blog served this purpose before, but it has gone relatively silent over the past year.

It isn't difficult. There are many newsworthy content from the posts here. Take them and re-post/re-blog them on Puppy's flagship website (puppylinux.com/puppylinux.org).

This is a good idea, but a needs some people doing it, and I really have seen no interest... It also needs Barry to "christen" it as "official" so distrowatch will monitor it.

The second should be easy assuming the first is done reliably for a couple of months, but this is a lot of work and no glory, specially if you have to fight on what is "newsworthy"...
That's why I think that releases is the safest.
Here is a timeline of potentially official (ie woof-build) puppies till the end of the year to get puppy back on track
PuppyTahr-6 (666philb)
LXpupTahr (peebee)
X-pupTahr (rg66)
Slacko-6 (01micko)
slacko64 (01micko)
LXslacko ?
X-slacko-3 ?
Quirky Unicorn (BK)

[jamesbond]

This is a good idea, but a needs some people doing it, and I really have seen no interest

It also needs Barry to "christen" it as "official" so distrowatch will monitor it.

Not necessarily, just turn puppylinux.org into that and/or put a link from its main page to a "blog" of some sort. Although, obviously, if we can get Barry to update puppylinux.com that would be better.

The second should be easy assuming the first is done reliably for a couple of months, but this is a lot of work and no glory

Agreed on the no glory part. Agreed on the hard work part. But isn't there anyone who still cares enough about Puppy to do this?

specially if you have to fight on what is "newsworthy"...

Well there is no fight when there is only an editorial team of one (or zero, in this case)

@darry1996, distrowatch means nothing to the converted, like you or me. But it's one useful avenue to attract new users, new blood, to puppy and eventually to this community. People eventually move on (even Barry moved on), so without new blood we eventually cease to be.

[mavrothal]

specially if you have to fight on what is "newsworthy"...

Well there is no fight when there is only an editorial team of one (or zero, in this case)

No, the "fight" will be between the editor(s) and the community members! Because although no one wants to step up to the job, every one has an opinion on how it should be done.

[greengeek]

No, the "fight" will be between the editor(s) and the community members! Because although no one wants to step up to the job, every one has an opinion on how it should be done.

Unfortunately the only people who understand enough about woof and can keep the public face of Puppy true to the BK definitions are those developers (eg currently on git) who are unfortunately already busy enough.

No one else can easily speak for them on important issues. The public face of Puppy has to wait for their input.

Maybe the Distrowatch rating would benefit if there was some way to promote "Puppy LTS" which remains true to the BK/Woof vision but also publicly promote "mongrel Puppies" if such a thing is possible without soiling the image of "woof" Puppy.

Or do the woof devs require a PR committee to assist them. Is that what is being asked for? A collection of contributors who do testing? Or writing web articles? Or making new icon sets? Or wallpaper designs? Or posting Youtube HowTos and videos?

Knowing how best to contribute is the hard part...

[raffy]

A. To make it easy to the user public, we need to support a common puppy. My take is that a variety of slack*, Ubunt*, Deb*, etc won't cut it.

B. Having "woof" as Puppy can be understood only by devs, so if the Puppy idea is "woof", then git will suffice to sustain Puppy (and the only relevant public will be the devs).

I used to support A, but if the new Puppy idea is really B, then I should relinquish work to a qualified dev (Jamesbond could be it, as he has come forward to do something about it).

But if the Puppy idea that we are discussing is still A, where is that Puppy? (Is it the one on ttuuxxx's lap (32-bit), or is it the F*64 Puppy, or both?)

EDIT: Thanks greengeek for hitting the nail on the head.

[Ted Dog]

looks like we are going to get a BK release in a month or so based on his blog.

[mavrothal]

Knowing how best to contribute is the hard part…

BK said some time ago that puppy is a doocracy and this is true for many volunteer projects.
Is almost impossible for anyone to tell someone else what to do. At best (s)he can ask. Nicely…

To make it easy to the user public, we need to support a common puppy. My take is that a variety of slack*, Ubunt*, Deb*, etc won't cut it.

I can appreciate that "one puppy that fits all" would be nice but this ended after 4.x and the person that ended it 6 years ago was BK himself with woof.
As it developed, puppy indeed had 3 main flavors, the mainstream LTS releases based on Ubuntu LTS (Lucid and Precise are still supported and updated…), the "cutting-edge" based on Slackware and the one for "older hardware", build from T2/puppy.
Currently there are only 2 going on, the ones based on Ubuntu and Slackware.
They are not really many!
Regarding the desktops (LXpup, XFCE-pup), heck even ubuntu offers spinoffs with different desktops, why not Puppy. Sure they could become just an additional sfs on the said puppy (say an adrv) but I hardly see the confusion if it is clear that they are (mostly) different desktops of the given puppy. A puppy home page could help a lot on that

Unfortunately the only people who understand enough about woof and can keep the public face of Puppy true to the BK definitions are those developers (eg currently on git) who are unfortunately already busy enough.

Coming to the PR section, this was historically on the shoulders of the puppy builder not the developer/contributor. BK, Micko, playdayz or jamesbond promote their puppies/distros as builders ("release manager" in big distros) not developers.
People contributing in woof-CE should not be expected to do any of these unless they release a puppy. And they do (thus my position about often releases). Micko and slacko 5.7 was the last one.
However, puppy does need a good "public entry" page that will guide newcomers and show that the project is going on.
What this needs is someone(s) that follow what's happening in pup word, can write on a webpage template and modify/create a webpage template as needed.
I can see many people around capable of the first 2(… ) if they can also use seamonkey's composer, should be able to do it with some effort.
Mind you this needs a totally different set of skills than of a puppy developer (BK's web pages are a proof of that )

So the Puppy PR department is now hiring
A web page designer
A home page editor
A puppy news consolidator
A creative technical writer
A marketing expert
Person with more that one of the above qualities are very welcome
No previous experience is required
Successful applicants will be given 5 good karma point per page and a commendation for every 6 months tenure
More info here (alternative approaches are also welcome)

[cthisbear]

I vote >>> bring back Lobster.

Chris

[dejan555]

@cthisbear +1

looks like we are going to get a BK release in a month or so based on his blog.

Oh dear, I just checked, seems like he goes on with his old woof build system, classic Barry, also I can't believe he decided to use these they're so ugly xD

Some nicer green themes here and here

[Ted Dog]

lol BK and his color choices at least he is consistent and self assured. It like anti-apple. ( even when it looks like a granny smiths apple ). That doesn't look too bad, the Neon Orange and yellow one a few years ago still is his most memorable.

[mavrothal]

Oh dear, I just checked, seems like he goes on with his old woof build system,

Quirky has a build system based on woof2 and woof-CE but modified to built quirky. Can not build a puppy (without considerable work).
BK is consistent of retiring from puppy... (though some quirky code had made it into woof-CE and vice versa )

[Iguleder]

I vote >>> bring back Lobster.

Chris

Lobster and playdayz