Is puppy-linux gearing up for future?

[mekalu2k4]

hi everyone. Compliments of the season. I am back after a long break, as my old 18.4 inch laptop is going great with puppy slako 5.7 - thanks to guys here.

I don't want any new updates or new versions, puppy is gr8, running 24/7; we rarely switch off our machine. My family is happy. No budget either for purchase.

Recently we were window-shoppping during Xmas and realized 2015 might have new range of machines.

So, I want to know if puppy (or linux in general) will be upgraded for

1. new processors - broadwell series
2. touch and gesture features
3. low-cost, low-end conf, light-weight machines (like chrome)
4. stylus / digitizer pen
5. fan-less machines (I believe linux will be the best?)

Especially chromebooks are available at low prices. But installing linux on chrome seems bit tricky (based on a few posts on this forum)

can you guys specifically comment on above points for linux support?
regards,

[gcmartin]

Hello @Mekalu2k4

Specifically

• LightHouse64 is the closest thing in the PUPPY kennel that satisfies some of what you ask in both items 2 and 4. It does not do multipoint(s). It is the only PUP which has some basic mouse button 1 features that operate OOTB on Touch PCs (HP desktops/laptops in my case).
• Chromebook PUP intends to address 3 and maybe item 5, too,

Hope this helps

[mekalu2k4]

Thanks Martin for your response.

As I stated, I am curious to find out the answers. But really someone or the other needs to try / test out various aspects. There are too many distros, and then several flavors etc.

Now I am using the holidays to download and test out different linux ISOs frm USB. I have a 64gb USB drive and so far downloaded fatdog, lxpup, ubuntu etc. Experimenting on Dell XPS 18inch tablet. Each distro has its merits and demerits. I want to post my experiences at the end - not sure if that will be of any interest or use to the forum community.


Coming o Lighthouse64, its website says it is no longer maintained. But I will try it as part of what I am doing now. I remember you replied to one of my previous posts early this year pointing towards lighthouse. http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=93995

Thanks again

[neerajkolte]

I want to post my experiences at the end - not sure if that will be of any interest or use to the forum community.

Hi brother,
Many user's (including me) will be interested to know your experiences.
Please do share.
Thanks.

- Neeraj.

[wboz]

1: Yes, as long as people keep upgrading the kernel. Kernel development is what accommodates newer processor families, See (currently, Dec 14) Slacko, Tahrpup just to quote the mainstream ones.
3,5: Low-spec is Puppy's middle name! Most are designed with older hardware in mind, and newer hardware even at the low end is far more capable than midrange 5-yr-old machines ... so I say no problem. Granted a few may use higher-memory DE out of the box but that's more the exception than the rule (I consider anything beyond XCFE/Cinnamon to be higher-memory-need).

4. Stylus ... I think there maaaay be some support for wacom pens/tablets, but honestly I haven't read about it. Search and y shall (probably) find.

2. Touch and gesture ... uh ... I got nothing. And this is what worries me most of all the five you mention, truthfully. Not something the Puppy developers are going to solve in isolation; it's going to entail co-opting tools developed for other desktop environments (Gnome? KDEPlasma5? LXQT?) and possibly just adopting one of those DE in order to enable touch for certain pups. I don't know how much work it's going to be to do so. More than I can do anyway --- I reach the limit of my coding ability at editing text conf files

[mekalu2k4]

Hi Wboz,

Thanks for your reply.

Yes I agree with you on your points except - 'Touch and gesture ... uh ... I got nothing.', especially when we know that Linux is for older machines (so, there will be a lag between Linux and other commercial OSs) to keep them going.

As I stated in this thread, I started testing different versions of Linux on Dell 18.4 inch tablet. I will post my experiences in different threads (I hope community likes those), but for now I would like to summarize:

- On screen keyboards for tablets are available, working fine; supported by a few of the distros already.

- Wacom is supported by a few distros.

- Touch is already in a few distros in its basic form - fatdog64, Mint, Lite etc But multi point touch (zoom, pinch, right click etc) are yet to come.

- gesture is not yet available. In fact most linux distros do not activate built-in webcams automatically. For that matter all drives are not automatically mounted (or displayed on desktop) in a few distros
- Issue of root password (different from distro to distro) is still an issue

- compiz is still complex to work with, but now looks simple as it is bundled with a few of the distros. Not sure if developers are actively working on this. But there is 'kwin' now catching up.

- some distros do not have office bundled (note that MS office is not part of MS windows also, one needs to buy)

So, there are issues, but there are more benefits too. For me (who cannot invest much for computers and looker for economical alternatives) future for Linux distros is bright. Few computers were shipped with unix earlier, but not any more. May be it is god idea to sell our old latoptop/ computers with linux installed?

[way12go]

Dear Friend,

I am also on low budget, actually zero budget.

In 2016 hp will release new highly advanced super computers with super processors, super memory ( no more RAM no more HDD -- same super memory for short-term and long-term memory ) and super fast transmission.

They will be releasing something in 2015, may be a new Linux Distro designed for new systems and in 2016 they will buid new operating system, completely new from scratch/beginning.

It will be great if you don't buy anything.

Save money in bank and you can buy hp -- code name:machine -- powered device.

They will also release super mobile computers.

I keep typing super, it's close to super if not super.

Thanks.

All the best and best of luck.

We need LUCK - EXISTENCE.

[way12go]

....

The Machine is HP Labs’ biggest project. A large team of talented researchers at HP Labs, and across HP, are working to bring The Machine to life. They cover a wide range of disciplines including semiconductor physics, photonics, systems engineering and software architecture.


http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/systems- ... hemachine/


....

[way12go]

....

The Machine is HP Labs’ biggest project. A large team of talented researchers at HP Labs, and across HP, are working to bring The Machine to life. They cover a wide range of disciplines including semiconductor physics, photonics, systems engineering and software architecture.


http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/systems- ... hemachine/


....

Watch this video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJj5h2jAikA

....

[bark_bark_bark]

Stuff from HP fail to work after a very short amount of time. IMHO, I don't think such a thing is really worth investing in.

[Keisha]

Stuff from HP fail to work after a very short amount of time. IMHO, I don't think such a thing is really worth investing in.

Millions of owners of 20-year-old HP Laserjet printers still going strong would beg to differ with you.

The HP Pavilion desktops from ~ 2008 with Asus M2N motherboards are pretty good. I still have one into which I've stuck a quad-core AMD Phenom II x4 945 cpu, with a BIOS upgrade. Also a Blu-Ray DVD player and r7 AMD 260X video card so it can output hdmi to my tv. Its hard disk carries both Porteus-MATE-v3.1-x86_64 so I can watch DVD's, and Quirky Unicorn 6.21 so I can watch Netflix. Man, I tell ya, that Woody Allen is a genius...

[wboz]

Fantastic that is exciting news. Even if just a prototype. The migration of OS from HDD to 16GB on-board SSD is a step in that direction - there is no reason OS needs to live in a separate location to be selectively pulled into RAM (sound like .. Puppy is 15 years ahead??? ), and there is also no reason RAM should be dumped when power is list. They SHOULD converge and they wait both on fixed state RAM and an OS designed to keep everything as close to the CPU as possible. HP has it right. This is the first I've seen of a major corp going in this direction -- if it works it'll transform computing.

On the subject of HP quality -- must disagree. Have had two work laptops and both extremely durable and appealing, if conventional. Dad has a consumer laptop -- same. I will say they are a bit boring traditionally but they are getting better

[bark_bark_bark]

Maybe a 16GB SSD may have been something worth getting excited about in 2009, but it isn't something any corporation should be proud of putting in their hardware here in 2015.

[bigpup]

The migration of OS from HDD to 16GB on-board SSD

This is a cheap way to get the operating system working from an SSD.
A 16GB SSD should not cost very much.
It would be a good speed increase to the operating system.

and there is also no reason RAM should be dumped when power is lost.

Yes there is a reason.

Do not get SSD storage ram confused with operating ram memory.

They do need to work in different ways.