Standardization of Puppy Linux Desktop and App Platform

[mikeb]

I was being harse due to topic frustration

Does throw up the odd bug with softmaker office now and then but at least you can use full screen stuff now .... upward and onward.

Its not just pup stuff but the likes of gtk do not seem to understand the concept of consistency either ..... a major developers headache.

mike

[anikin]

On standards, desktops and frustration ... mince no words

Who said my raging was limited to games this time Linux has it right between the eyes, note foul language used a lot!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnsXRdU98uw
Have a look at his other videos, this one for instance:
Debian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veLXI9DdSiw

[Q5sys]

wow... 4 pages and no one has posted this yet...

[bark_bark_bark]

There is no such thing as standard that can meet everybody's needs.

[battleshooter]

wow... 4 pages and no one has posted this yet...

That's brilliant Q5sys. xkcd sums it up.

[darkcity]

There is no financial backing to write and co-ordinate standards for Puppy. Niceties like ease-of-use across the whole system for non-technical people aren't something that developers make for the joy of it. You may be better off with a different distro or OS.

Having said that Woof community edition goes some way towards standardizing Puppy creation, for those Puppy versions that use it.

[mikeb]

There is no financial backing to write and co-ordinate standards for Puppy.

Well although that would help if there were some consistent frameworks the topic was about puppy adopting Linux standards rather than creating its own to make package building easier.

Seems the trolls have moved in so I doubt if there will be any further serious discussion here.

mike

[Q5sys]

There is no financial backing to write and co-ordinate standards for Puppy. Niceties like ease-of-use across the whole system for non-technical people aren't something that developers make for the joy of it. You may be better off with a different distro or OS.

Having said that Woof community edition goes some way towards standardizing Puppy creation, for those Puppy versions that use it.

I think that's less of a problem than the fact that everyone has their own view of what should be 'standard'. A simple glance at the massive difference between various puppy releases should show that.
Just considering the WM/DE alone, we various puppies use JWM, LXDE, Openbox, Razor-qt, fluxbox, KDE, Trinity, XFCE.

Agreeing on a standard will never 'work'. Barry has defined a Puppy as using JWM... so that's the historic standard, but that's one that many people diverge from due to the goal that they want to accomplish.

Now the WM/DE issue is just one, in ever facet of the OS... there are different opinions on what should be used and how it should be used. Just look at the debates that rage over GTK vs QT in the Linux world.

In my personal opinion... if we are going to agree on a "standard", it should be about a framework that makes different parts interchangeable with more ease. But I think that's impossible since we are dependent on upstream projects which dont care about that. That is unless we want to create our own home brew solution for everything. Personally I think that's a bad road to go down.

[mikeb]

Hey ho...repeat oneself time but why not...have any window manager that FOLLOWS XDG standards

after all do you not have bathroom fittings that FOLLOW PIPEWORK STANDARDS so the plumbing does not LEAK?

Is you car fitted with tyres that CONFORM TO STANDARDS regardless of brand and style chosen so they FIT the RIMS?


is this too complicated or something?

mike

[Q5sys]

is this too complicated or something?

mike

No, but some upstream projects could care less about your precious standards. Are we going to 'ban' software that doesn't conform? How exactly are we as a community supposed to control what someone does? We could all 'agree' on a standard, but that doesn't mean anyone has to follow it. Everyone can say that puppy will follow freedesktop's standards for a WM... and then I can go make a puppy that uses i3 or fvwm. A standard is only as good as long as people care to follow it.


Hell...

As the standards for setting default applications have been recently changed, not all programs will comply with them yet. Indeed, the programs provided by freedesktop.org's xdg-utils package do not fully follow their own standards!

Source = https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/De ... plications

If the people who are writing the damn standards they want everyone else to follow, dont even bother to follow them completely... I think this shows that it's just a free for all. Standards like this end up to be nothing more than suggestions with no weight behind them.

Do we really want to follow that path into making every decision a debate and have puppy development get weighed down by the stupid politics that we've seen other distros imploding under? Has anyone looked at the mess Debian is in recently? I'm sure in a year things will smooth back out for them... but the politics of open source always seem to do nothing but hurt projects.

[mikeb]

If the people who are writing the damn standards they want everyone else to follow, dont even bother to follow them completely... I think this shows that it's just a free for all. Standards like this end up to be nothing more than suggestions with no weight behind them.

Ok i was being hopefull....I always likes to think improvements are possible.

It's hard to admit that Iinux really is the joke that its claimed to be but thats being realistic.

It would be nice to have an alternative to Windows/Apple that can be taken seriously....
I use it myself but never offered it to business clients.

mike

[Q5sys]

If the people who are writing the damn standards they want everyone else to follow, dont even bother to follow them completely... I think this shows that it's just a free for all. Standards like this end up to be nothing more than suggestions with no weight behind them.

Ok i was being hopefull....I always likes to think improvements are possible.

It's hard to admit that Iinux really is the joke that its claimed to be but thats being realistic.

It would be nice to have an alternative to Windows/Apple that can be taken seriously....
I use it myself but never offered it to business clients.

mike

At this point the distros that can be taken seriously, IMHO, is Red Hat's offerings. Ubuntu while having some nice business solutions, still has too much of an air of 'linux for noobs', for some business to really take it serious. OpenSuSe is taken serious in Europe, but elsewhere its mostly ignored. I sometimes wonder how much life it has left it in before its aquired by someone else. But with all the Anti-US sentament due to all the NSA revelations, I'm sure their business has started to flourish again as European companies want to deal with a company that's not US based like Red Hat.

Outside of that... most of the distros are not taken seriously in the business world. And Puppy is certainly at the bottom of that list.

[mikeb]

I had suse enterprise on a new netbook...it lasted a week or so before starting to fail.... that phase of selling linux on machines was short lived..I wonder why.
I wonder if googles twist on linux with its 'standard' approach had any influence on its popularity.

Old saying..'united we stand divided we fall'... minorities have a hard time.

By the way the netbook worked nicely using XP run from an SD card though I ended up with slax and a 3 year battle to get video happy...Its sold now thankfully. If your time is free then a bargain is to be had...

mike

[B.K. Johnson]

@Mikeb

I am just seeking information. No flaming intended. And I think the questions are germane to the topic.

I note you have several machines with different puppies.
Can you set out a subset/all in your kennel with the key application(s)/features each has installed and what determines which of the machines you boot. i.e what occasions? for which purpose? why one over the others?


B.K. Johnson
tahrpup-6.0.2 PAE, slacko-5.7, frugal install, multi OS flashdrive SYSLINUX boot, CPU-Dual E2140. 4GB RAM

[mikeb]

That could be one boring list .....

apps depend on who predominately uses the machine in question...all except small core apps and utils are sfs files so each has a different set.

machines...presently 2 x compaqs pentium 3 1GHz maxed with nvidia cards, one atom dual core ITX 945 graphics but nvidia card added (spare machine in cupboard for future but the old gear keeps on running well ) and one lenovo x60s netbook... similar spec to the other dual core but centrino rather than atom...now living on a boat so use has changed somewhat.

default on all but lenovo is slax 6 based..xfce4 desktop.
laptop varies due to network arrangement...wifi or 3g or none.

All machines have windows 2000 and XP . Much of the software is the same on linux and windows for ease of switching (browsers/email/office etc etc... though obviously there is a pile that only work well on windows.)

All have puppies with a xfce4/rox hybrid desktop...lighter than the usual. ..notably 4.12 with slax kernel and lucid ... for testing /experimenting/development...working on updating the slax to lucid era core. All have archive save, save folder and multiple sfs loading and multiuser so similar to slax in terms of abilities but with the puppy type boot wrappers.

there's probably more to add but you get the gist hopefully. This arrangement has not changed much (apart from the laptop being new to the scene to replace the awfule HP netbook...2133 say no more) for several years.

mike

[Keisha]

...At this point the distros that can be taken seriously, IMHO, is Red Hat's offerings....

...and the two distro's which are basically RHEL without the branding and the expensive support subscription: CentOS (maintained by CERN in Switzerland ***edited: explanation of this shocking statement, below***) and Scientific Linux (maintained by FermiLab in Illinois).

Since Germany's SAP (it makes the manufacturing process management software used by Mercedes, BMW, and VW-Audi) has standardized on OpenSuSE, OpenSuSE is not going to disappear. It is possible that SAP may take OpenSuSE's further development in-house. No telling how this would affect OpenSuSE's availability.

One problem with settling on a single standard is, it makes you vulnerable to your distro being hijacked by whoever can gain control of that standard by first embracing it and then extending it to include their own proprietary tweaks. Microsoft is not the only offender in this regard. Just look at the devolution of KDE between versions 3.5 and 4. Or, look at how Ubuntu has fallen away from open source principles relative to Debian.

The universal consensus seems to be that LibreOffice is destined for success and Apache OpenOffice is doomed.

But the fact remains, every version of LibreOffice I've tried so far either fails to start or else crashes with bad result (e.g. involuntary reboot) on my local install of Quirky Unicorn. Meanwhile, Apache OpenOffice runs like a cross between a Swiss watch and a bat outta hell!

[8Geee]

Keisha alludes to a very sublime point, thats becoming as subtle as a thrown brick. I see standardization as an axiom of giga-corporate. Take a look for example at how Intel is developing according to a Windows standard, or how Android/Google is the nexus in smartphones. 32-bit is already a dinosaur waiting for that asteroid. Marketers push delta-tech, with a sugar-coating. We must change, we must advance, we must evolve. In reality, the "bill-of-goods" the end user gets has, shall we say some mysterious goings-on like data collecting in the OS, remote diagnosis and repair in the newest Intel CPU structures... unattended and unconnected, and other mysteries.

Diversity, and freedom of choice conspire against this, but at the CPU level, we are very much near standards, one for desk, one for portable, and one for mobile. Lets face it, ultimately the CPU dominates all things computing. We can get browsers to behave, an OS to behave, but we are all at the mercy of a CPU that tries to achieve standardization to a few very large interests.

My point here is standardization of Puppy is not, nor ever will be a good, positive thing, and Puppy like many other Distros in the world march to the beat of the CPU in the computer. When the CPU moves towards standardization, as it appears now, all things below the top of the pyramid are severely influenced.

[Q5sys]

CentOS (maintained by CERN in Switzerland)

Um... what? I've never heard that before.Scientific Linux is made in a partnership between CERN and Fermilab. It's been like that for years. These days CentOS is controlled by Red Hat... in that past though it was independent.

[Keisha]

The way I see it is this: CentOS is not maintained by CERN in the strict legal sense, but CentOS is maintained by Red Hat only in about the same sense as Ubuntu is maintained by Canonical.

In both cases, yes everybody is welcome to contribute and offer feedback, and yes there is a "Linux developer company" at which the distro is officially maintained.

But with both CentOS and Ubuntu there is both a 600-pound gorilla customer in the living room calling the shots who has the final say, and an 800-pound gorilla competitor.

With Ubuntu, Dell Computer is the 600-pound supporter gorilla: the main user group providing feedback and design input, and so each successive Ubuntu is finalized to accommodate Dell's needs, since Dell offers Ubuntu to its customers as its Linux alternative to Windows. And Canonical relies on Dell users (a significant percentage of whom are US government and especially military contractors and personnel) to form a large enough base to keep Canonical going as a viable business entity under increasing competition from 800-pound gorilla Microsoft plus every other Linux distro. So for all practical intents and purposes, when it comes to Ubuntu, Canonical is the calf and Dell is the cow, so Ubuntu is really a Dell product even though the DVD sleeve says Canonical.

Similarly, CERN is the dominant user group providing feedback and design input, and so the design of CentOS will be finalized by Red Hat to accommodate 600-pound gorilla CERN's needs. CERN in turn offers its own branded spin of CentOS to its academic and corporate associates as its Linux alternative to Windows. Red Hat is dependent on those users in turn carrying over the RHEL user culture to those corporations they move to and work with, to maintain Red Hat as a viable business entity under increasing competition from 800-pound gorilla Oracle and, in the future, perhaps OpenSuSE. So for all intents and purposes, at the present moment, when it comes to CentOS, Red Hat is the calf and CERN is the cow. So I say CentOS is a CERN product, even if the DVD sleeve says Red Hat.

[popey]

The way I see it is this: CentOS is not maintained by CERN in the strict legal sense, but CentOS is maintained by Red Hat only in about the same sense as Ubuntu is maintained by Canonical.

Ubuntu development is sponsored by Canonical in that we hired many people to work on the project. Many community people contribute, but Canonical is a significant single contributor.

With Ubuntu, Dell Computer is the 600-pound supporter gorilla: the main user group providing feedback and design input, and so each successive Ubuntu is finalized to accommodate Dell's needs, since Dell offers Ubuntu to its customers as its Linux alternative to Windows. And Canonical relies on Dell users (a significant percentage of whom are US government and especially military contractors and personnel) to form a large enough base to keep Canonical going as a viable business entity under increasing competition from 800-pound gorilla Microsoft plus every other Linux distro. So for all practical intents and purposes, when it comes to Ubuntu, Canonical is the calf and Dell is the cow, so Ubuntu is really a Dell product even though the DVD sleeve says Canonical.

Absolute rubbish. Dell is just one of our partners, and the development process doesn't work the way you describe at all.