Puppy Stardust 009

[zigbert]

Puppy Stardust 009

Stardust 010 is released here

This is still Puppy 4.3.1 - thanks to Barry for this wonder-OS

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Focus on desktop flow and user easiness.
- Desktop in DeepThougt taken to next stage.
- Cleanup in apps, menus and kilobytes.
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Left: Default desktop with utility tray..........Right: Extended menu-system

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Left: User-friendly widget system...........Right: Switch global color-theme in one click

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Left: Easy access to desktop apps.........Right: Control center with complete handling of services

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Powerful tools to manage trays and menus

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Left: Improved integration with filebrowser..........Right: Many new apps

ivansampa has made a youtube-presentation


Download
username: puppy
password: linux
pup_stardust-009.iso (99Mb)
md5sum: 0989da47d15ff8d33d3c9bef9e856ce3

BE AWARE!!!!
If you have Puppy installed, you MUST run this with the prefix 'puppy pfix=ram'. Else, the Stardust desktop will not install.

Here is the good old Stardust icon-theme updated for Puppy Stardust (thanks to 01micko)



Comments version 009
This is just a bugfix-release.

Changelog since Stardust 008:
# moving starter-scripts from $HOME/my-applications/bin to /usr/share/stardust/bin/
# Bugfix: Starting cpu_freq, Startmount... started endless loop. (thanks to trio)
# Bugfix: some scripts calling rxvt failed.
# Bugfix: set DefaultAudioMixer to retovol.
# Bugfix: weather_station widget: height and theme mismatch.
# Bugfix: Rubix cube was misspelled in menu as 'Rubix - cube'




____________________________________________________________________________

The following list shows many items that is taken out of the iso. But, it is not as critical as it seems. Most of these are tiny apps, and you have not been aware of many of them. Simply because other apps do the job.

Aqualung has left, and Pmusic is back. Pmusic has evolved in both features and speed, so It is more a matter of longterm strategy. I hope it will be possible to build more around ffmpeg in the future. We could hopefully get rid of lidsnd, libsamplerate and maybe libxine...

Gadmin-Rsync is out as well, since it crashed on first run. I don't think Pbackup fill the backup issue completely. It would be wonderful if there exists a tiny but complete backup suit.

If you see something that you would have changed, added or removed, I will be very glad if you mentioned it. Because of my limited time, it would be best if you deliver the patch.... My knowledge of network/internet tools is close to zero, so these are nearly untouched.

Possible improvements are easy to see
- Improve artwork.
- alternative multimedia tools using ffmpeg.
- hunt more files we don't need.
- upgrade gui in some of the scripts.
- extend the control center.
- replacement of Gparted (901kb)
- boot Puppy with pfix=fsck
- driver adds/updates
- ...

This is meant to be a full featured user-oriented Puppy....Though, I have to admit that the biggest modem drivers is removed.




So what's added
- Stardust desktop environment - including pcc (Puppy control center), desktop configuration tools and Pwidgets
- Pwireless2 (replaces Pwireless)
- ATI graphic drivers
- Broadcom wifi drivers
- splix - Samsung, Xerox, Dell printer drivers
- acpid
- Pmusic (replaces aqualung)
- woo-ff
- printoxx
- floppy-formater (replaces floppy-format.sh)
- gtkmoz (replaces PuppyBrowser)
- Pupradio (replaces pstreamvid)
- seahaven
- lameSMBexplorer (replaces pnethood)
- pstartupsound
- startmount
- fileedit (set to defaulttextviewer)
- default-wizard
- RetroVol (replaces absvolume and zmixer)
- Galculator
- Pscreenshot



Some scripts has been upgraded
- cpu-scaling tool
- fixmenus
- icon_switcher
- JwmThemeMaker
- Pburn
- sfsconverter
- theme_switcher
- you2pup




And what does the Stardust-generator change
- Install desktop at first startup rather than keep it in the iso to save space
- snap desktop icons - medium grid
- simple Pmount facelift
- Xlock is fixed
- start pCD instead of defaultmediaplayer when click on audio-CD icon
- seamonkey buttons
- defaultaudioplayer is changed from aqualung to pmusic
- defaultaudiomixer is changed from zmixer to retrovol
- Net-setup goes to Pwireless2 for wireless configuration
- Darker background color in: rxvt, geany, abiword
- Generates icon-themes, gtk-themes and analog clock-skins




And of course, something had to leave
*** Programs ***
- absvolume
- aqualung
- background_reshape
- burniso2cd
- calcoo
- cdp
- cgtkcalc
- didiwiki
- e3
- floppy-format.sh
- gcolor2 (color chooser)
- gdmap
- gexec
- gfnrename - maybe better than PRename, but this is bash and easy updated.
- glightoff
- gtkdialog markup editor - devx ???
- gtklogfileviewer - Does any script use anymore ???
- gtksourceview
- libmad
- libsnd (mhwaveedit (not updated) and aqualung used libsnd)
- madplay
- mtpaintsnaphot.sh
- Net-setup (old version)
- nicoedit
- pcdripper
- Pdisk - could maybe be in use by some wizard
- picpuz
- pictureviewer
- pmirror/mirdir
- pmwget (PMirrorget)
- pnetnood
- pplog
- pstreamvid
- ptooltips - tool to show tooltips in gtkdialog - not longer in use
- PuppyBrowser
- PuppyPdf - Abiword does exactly the same
- Pwireless
- pwsget
- quisp
- rsync / gadmin-rsync - crashes on first run
- securetelnetshell
- tile
- waveplay - linked to aplay
- xAutoconnect - Pwireless2 should do the job
- xcalc
- xclipboard
- Xconsole
- xfontsel
- ycalc
- zfind
- zmixer

*** Trimming ***
- cdrkit - Pburn has very few dependencies
- jwmconfig2
- netpbm

*** Control panel has ditched some ***
- countrywizard
- XserverWizard
- wizardwizard
- And plenty of menu items

*** Graphics ***
- All wallpapers
- some Gtk-themes
- All Icon-themes
- many mini-icons

*** misc ***
- some apps NOT in control center has also lost their place in the menu
--> sfs-version-converter - warnings pointing to it is changed.
--> Pstopwatch - Ptimer should be enough.
- some documentation files
- some audio files
- the biggest modem drivers
- many fixed fonts

Puppy 4.3.1 Bugfixes
- JWM tray configuration.
- JWM keyboard shortcut configuration.
- Xlock - Lock screen.
- Kill pid of wallpaper setter when closing window.
- Shutdown / Reboot from menu after NFS error.
- Execute code from Geany with 'execute' button.
- Xf-prot virus checker (thanks to tasmod)
- Allow unique 24 pixel icons and symlinked icons in icon-themes.

[technosaurus]

Stardust is looking great, we need to make it the default for the CE.

[prehistoric]

Zigbert, 009 Looks great here. Still testing.

[Ray MK]

Hi

Playing with 009 now - looks stunning - and very n00bie friendly.

Very best regards and many thanks for a Super Puppy - Ray

[Kirby]

Thanks
I am glad you said to wait for 009 because you were right it didn't take long for it to come out. What 3 mins?! LOL I will download it now.

[01micko]

delta...

pup_stardust-008.iso:pup_stardust-009.iso.delta

checksumdf4e472f99dbe5dad8a0795b595e874e pup_stardust-008.iso:pup_stardust-009.iso.delta

[technosaurus]

I found a couple of general things in the installer script that may be slowing it down

use the "&" at the end of commands to allow the script to continue where possible
(if the result is later needed then disregard or set them up as follows)

current example:
resizepng ....
[4 times]
blendpics ....
[4 times]
(8 things in series)

instead example:
resizepng .... && blendpics .... &
or
resizepng .... |blendpics .... &
(will do all 4 sets of 2 in parallel)

the longest item is probably fixmenus and fixwidgets... moving them up to the earliest possible point and use "&" so it can work in parallel - would help too

I'm trying to figure out what files actually changed between 008 and 009 regarding Stardust desktop - not .xinitrc or stardust_installer

I have gone through all of 008 and cut ~2MB without removing anything - so I also added FBReader and dia -- don't want to start all over as it took several hours

[pemasu]

Still using Stardust 002 because of all installed programs and configurations. I have other frugal Stardust install subdir 005, downloaded 008 yesterday to replace it and now 009. Better not to change name, such is new versions rate.

No need for Bugs thread with this speed.

Thanks to zigbert and all the people who has improved it.

[drongo]

I usually run my laptop with Xvesa as Xorg sometimes has trouble with it (Dell Precision M70). I wasn't paying attention and let Xorg set up the resolution. It came up with something very low-res (800x640? Sorry wasn't really paying attention.) When I went to Puppy Control Centre none of the tabs or buttons worked except the "X" in the top right hand corner. Not really sure if this is Stardust specific or whether it affects all recent Puppies. When I used Xvesa instead everything is fine.

Is there anything specific you would like me to test or should I just mess around for a while and report my results?

Looks great by the way. (Well, except in very low-res Xorg!)

[prehistoric]

Found that favorites menu (right mouse button) entries for Linux firewall and PCC fail to open the named applications. Suspect this has to do with changed locations versus 008.

[drongo]

There's a drop-down tool-bar (correct name?) at the top of the screen. In Xvesa the mouseover tooltip is missing from the camera icon. It should say Pscreenshot, presumably?

[technosaurus]

another ?? - is there a particular reason you can't use

ln -s
instead of
cp -u

While I'm thinking about it, I have often wondered why we don't just have a "current theme" directory which is just a symlink to whichever folder contains the chosen theme's icons
That way changing the theme would only involve changing the symlink and refreshing.... Am I missing something... it feels like playing the game taquin, shifting all the images around

[technosaurus]

@Zigbert - did you still want to do more with ffmpeg - I compiled some of my examples

I can't make nice pretty frontend GUIs like you, but I have some backends set up

Here is a cheaper way to do webcam shots

Code: Select all

rxvt +sb -bg orange -geometry 80x2 -e ffmpeg -y -f video4linux2 -s qvga -i /dev/video0 ~/stream%d.jpeg

qvga can be vga ...
~/ can be any dir
jpeg can be whatever image format

careful though it will make a LOT of images unless you specify a lower frame rate (not sure the flag for that at the moment)

edit:
to take one image per second
-r 1
to take images for 3 seconds
-t 3

so this will give you 3 jpegs in your root directory at vga resolution

Code: Select all

ffmpeg -y -r 1 -t 3 -f video4linux2 -s vga -i /dev/video0 ~/camshot%d.jpeg

similarly here is a cheap way to capture webcam video
rxvt +sb -bg orange -geometry 80x2 -e ffmpeg -y -f oss -i /dev/audio -f video4linux2 -s qvga -i /dev/video0 ~/a.avi

I think oss can be alsa?
qvga can be vga
recommend using avi as above and converting with woof to prevent lag due to trying to compress

And finally desktop capture (requires ffmpeg compiled with x11grab)

Code: Select all

rxvt +sb -bg orange -geometry 80x2 -e ffmpeg -f oss -i /dev/audio -f x11grab -s 1200x800 -r 5 -i :0.0 x11-session.avi

I forget exactly how to find resolution - maybe grep xorg.conf for PreferredMode

[prehistoric]

There's a drop-down tool-bar (correct name?) at the top of the screen. In Xvesa the mouseover tooltip is missing from the camera icon. It should say Pscreenshot, presumably?

The current name for that item is "utility tray". You can find it's characteristics through Ptray, which you get by clicking on the "manage trays" button on the "desktop" tab. Once Ptray comes up, you can select "utility tray" from the list in the upper right corner, then press "reload".

Now, we come to some weirdness. The initial desktop is, as you say missing that tooltip on mouseover. (Already reported.) After I added a couple of items to the utility tray, the tool tip for Pscreenshot started appearing.

[prehistoric]

Zigbert,

I'm still scratching my head over some things which take excessively long times on that 550 MHz machine. (Though I can report that 009 does run on it, and also runs very nicely on that quad-core machine previously mentioned. I've had no particular problems on the dual-core machine I'm now using, either.)

On that low-end machine, I plugged in a fast compact flash card in an IDE adapter, so I could test what happened when I eliminated seek time and rotational latency from disk accesses. Initial boot times compare favorably with those on much faster machines using hard disks. It is only after the desktop begins installing that speed becomes a real issue. With 384 MB RAM, we appear to have well over 100 MB of free RAM after the OS comes up. This operation appears to be processor-bound.

While graphics operations can be processing intensive, the size of icons means the data involved is measured in KB/icon, which will fit in cache on nearly all machines, so the time required should be directly proportional to the number of icons and processor clock speed. As for updating menus, isn't that primarily working with text files?

Even with the 20-30x overhead of interpretive languages, these operations would appear to be unusually slow. Can you put your finger on any processing task which might profitably be rewritten in C? (I might even be able to do that. C has been around since neolithic computing using minicomputers and flint chips.)

I agree with technosaurus that symbolic links might be useful, but lack current experience with implementations of some command-line options he suggests. Time to run some experiments.

[technosaurus]

I cut enough out to add fbreader and a slightly cutdow dia as well as a bunch of updates and fixes. Here is the sfs:
http://puppy-development.googlecode.com ... up-431.sfs

[technosaurus]

I used optipng to cutdown the size of the pngs - the color templates are actually smaller (in bytes) when they are larger (in dimensions)

[zigbert]

technosaurus

Stardust is looking great, we need to make it the default for the CE.

When the Stardust desktop environment is getting more complete, I will split it from the rest of the iso. It is just so much easier for me to develop on a hardcoded system. Testing on different Puppys would probably given me a bug-report-overload, and I wouldn't have any time to actually develop.

I found a couple of general things in the installer script that may be slowing it down

Please hack the developer script. I am VERY interesting in help. I am not at all a good programmer, so things could for sure be improved. At the moment the installer script is too slow...... Be aware that the 'building menu structure' could be done in my pre-installer-script (the stardust generator script that I use to build the iso). I could just reuse some code from /usr/sbin/fixmenus to build all starter-scripts in /usr/share/stardust/bin/, and to detect the correct icon (see $HOME/.stardust/tmp/iconlist)

I'm trying to figure out what files actually changed between 008 and 009 regarding Stardust desktop - not .xinitrc or stardust_installer

The most importing changes is that all scripts in $HOME/my-applications/bin are moved to /usr/share/stardust/bin. This interferes with the whole stardust core system. fixmenus is the ONLY script used to build these starter scripts. Ptray, Pmenu, icon2desk and fixmenus_menuitems uses these starter-scripts to generate correct menu/tray/desktop items.

I have gone through all of 008 and cut ~2MB without removing anything - so I also added FBReader and dia

How did you remove 2Mb, - that is VERY interesting. What is FBReader, and where can I get it and Dia?

While I'm thinking about it, I have often wondered why we don't just have a "current theme" directory which is just a symlink to whichever folder contains the chosen theme's icons

2 reasons
- Themes doesn't have to be complete. The Pixmaps directory may contain global images (as 'add widget', startbutton or whatever)
- During the setting of theme, it is generated a 24x24 pixel set of the icontheme, which is used in the original menu. This was in fact not necessary, since jwm scales icons just fine. But now, I have made the icon_switcher more flexible. It will convert icons to 24x24 if not existing. That means a icon-theme could contain a unique 24x24 icon-set (as in Stardust), or the icon-switcher will provide a generated 24x24-set.

Here is a cheaper way to do webcam shots

Yes, a Pcam would have been a great app. I can't give it time, since Stardust requires my focus, but hopefully, one of our gui-guys grabs this chance.

And finally desktop capture (requires ffmpeg compiled with x11grab)

Have you compiled it ? Trio already maintains Pscreenshot, and if he has time and motivation, I am sure he is willing to give Pcapture a hand.

I used optipng to cutdown the size of the pngs

Where is optipng, and how do we use it?


Thanks for all your feedback
Sigmund

[zigbert]

There's a drop-down tool-bar (correct name?) at the top of the screen. In Xvesa the mouseover tooltip is missing from the camera icon. It should say Pscreenshot, presumably?

Fixed


Sigmund

[zigbert]

Can you put your finger on any processing task which might profitably be rewritten in C? (I might even be able to do that. C has been around since neolithic computing using minicomputers and flint chips.)

I am not the guru to tell how things should have been done. - I am simply not good enough to tell. But it is obvious that the icon-generation in $HOME/.stardust/stardust_installer is the feature to blame. If you want to make some testing/rewriting/deleting..., please hack this script, and tell what you find


Sigmund