Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[toddyjoe]

Mark, I just saw this thread after some time away from the forums. I tried doing exactly what you accomplished with Pico Pup a couple of months ago but became too frustrated trying to rebuild the minimal Pico Pup. Puppy 1.08 is still my favorite Puppy and perfect for my music applications so this smaller compatible version is VERY exciting news to me. You said ALSA is still included? I cannot wait to try this after the download. I thought my search for the ideal Linux distro for my needs was over but maybe not.

As always, good job and thanks for sticking with this project!

[raffy]

Has anyone tried skype with micro muppy, or is this possible at all? it should be easy to install skype - just decompress and run, especially the qt-lib-static version.

The reason I ask is the possibility of promoting browsing and skype-ing appliance hooked to TV - I will post a picture in a moment.

[sunburnt]

Monitors are still pretty expensive, but most homes have a TV.
They're not hi-res but you use what you got, it works okay.
You just need a cheap TV card & Puppy dialogs that fit on screen
& the fonts set to larger & bolded, then reading dialogs works.

[blubb_fallo]

Where can MicroMuppyOpera be downloaded? I can't find it anywhere.

[MU]

ok, reactivated it.
I did not want to offer Isos any more on this server, but Micronuppy is very small, so it should be ok.
Mark

[Todd]

I have mirrored MicroMuppy and MicroMuppyOpera at:

http://www.toddrichardson.com/archive/

Todd

[ljones]

Is it possible to add ROX to this at all? I'm wondering if I can add rox and use its pinboard and icon strip (over JWM's) at the bottom of the screen .

ljones

[MU]

I will not add Rox, as I had to add Gtk, too.
Also it would break the concept.

The concept is to have a "single application Linux".
Only Opera for Internet-Cafes.
Or qiv for LCD-picture frames.
Or such.

I added XFileExplorer only to make it easier for developers to customize their own Micromuppy.
They then could remove XFE for the final Iso.

Having Rox would give the user many options, that give the wish for more options.
So I think for such a purpose Todds LitePup or Murgas Meanpuppy are suited better.

Mark

[ljones]

My mistake, I was thinking of doing this manually rather than in the ISO or anything, whoops!

BTW what is this version of puppy based on? Is it slackware 7 or a newer version?

thanks

ljones

[Todd]

This version is based on PicoPup, which in turn was based on Puppy 1.08, which in turn was originally (key work "originally") based on Slackware.

Todd

[blubb_fallo]

Thanks, Mark, for reactivating the d/l.

MicroMuppyOpera - that's a pretty lengthy name for such a tiny OS! How about "MMO"? After all, the www is the greatest MMO ever, and this OS is designed to explore it.

First off, it did not boot with 32 MiB ram. (I tried PuppyOpera - that did.) Curiously enough, not even 64 MiB sufficed here. It got stuck while loading the ramdisk, don't ask me why. There was plenty swap, but the system couldn't make use of it.

What is the advantage of having a bigger (and hence problematic) initrd.gz over a small one together with a thoroughly pruned down pup_xxx.sfs? - By the way, I am writing this from PuppyOpera on a Pentium 233 mmx with abovementioned 32 MiB ram (using dillo in this extreme case, not Opera). That is slightly beyond fun, but it works. With, 64 MiB ram, it feels quite comfortable already.


Anyway, I tried MMO at my bigger machine, and I have to say, all in all, cute idea! Playing around with the once booted MMO from within, i. e. neither rebooting nor even going back to commandline (except for jwm restart), was also a good exercise for my Opera skills. I made the window fully visible and resizable again, added more items to the jwm root menu, and managed to have Opera open downloads with arbitrary executables. Nevertheless I think, this OS is not too far away from a slim and slick web browsing terminal that is ready to be used and promoted on a bigger scale. Currently, many of those public terminals are based on ridiculously oversized, ressource-hungry and, not at least, expensive software.


Some remarks/suggestions:

For shared use, a button that allows to delete all private data would be helpful. If you like, I can make one and send it to you.

Without tabs, the interface gets confusing when two or more pages are open. Many people might not know how to make the pagebar visible. I'd rather omit the jwm taskbar and show the Opera pagebar (tabs) on default instead. I couldn't find out a way to do the former, though.

It would be nice if proper localisation could be chosen during startup (keyboard, maybe even the corresponding Opera language file, either by automatically editing opera6.ini or, most easily, copying the xxx.lng to english.lng).

More than 2 of the 18 MiB are due to the flash/shockwave lib. Unfortunately, it does not work. Of course, the better solution would be to make it work somehow (I've had no luck so far), but otherwise, the lib could also be left out.

Both the Opera prefs (e. g. associations) and the builtin Opera source editor (which can be used to edit any file!), as well as Ctrl+Alt+F1, could be disabled alltogether by mapping the Alt key to something harmless. The side effects (spoiling a few special Opera shortcuts) would be neglectable for the intended audience, I think.

As long as the user is allowed to save files, s/he can currently browse the whole directory tree and move files around. Perhaps Opera could run as less than root? I know, that would be quite big a change.

[sunburnt]

blubb_fallo; Perhaps you'd like to mod MicroMuppyOpera to move all of the
image.gz file that's not needed for booting to a pup_mmo-002.sfs file?
Just the dir.: /usr needs to be made into a Squash file.

I looked & the image.gz file is: 36MB, & /usr dir. is: 26MB, so the image.gz file
would end up being 5MB, & the Squash file would end up being 13MB.
Decompressed to memory, the image file would take up ~ 10MB.
Then it'd boot within 32MB, with the Squash file remaining on the boot media.

I just made a sfs file maker, so this is a perfect opportunity to try it out.


Update: I made a pup_mmo-002.sfs file, & it's 12MB in size.

Now I'll make another one with "unionctl" in it so a union can be made on /usr
And also copy the standard Puppy 1.0.7 boot scripts to image.gz.

I think this will do, to make MMO into a base Squash file distro. setup.
Then extra sfs files with the apps. in them can be swapped in & out.

[sunburnt]

I made a MicroMuppyOpera with a usr_cram.fs file.
It boots to:

Registering UnionFS
UnionFS: Hidden dir. /root/.usr is not a valid branch.
UnionFS_read_super: Error parsing options.
Mount: Mounting none on /usr failed, invalid argiment.

The weard thing is, I made the dir.: /root/.usr in the image.gz file,
& checked to be sure it's there, it is...
I'm puzzled as to why the Union mount error says that it's not a valid branch.

[MU]

I can't help here.
I just extended picopup.
That one had ripped of everything like support to save things or .sfs files.
So adding those features back would be not trivial, I fear.

It might be easier to slim down a litepup instead.

Micromuppy makes sense in situations, where it is not wished to save settings.
Internet-terminals will not want the user to save things (porn, warez).
So in the evening, you switch off the machine, and turn it on next morning, to start with a "clean" system.

Concerning tabs and such in Opera:
Yes, feel free to upload any modifications, they are welcome.
You also should add more fonts.
I just was interested by the goal to add X to picopup, but will not customize micromuppy any further.
If people use it to create own customized micros, I'd be happy to host them.

Mark

[noprob]

I read all I could about this very small running puppy and have just now finished downloading it via http://puppyfiles.org/isos/MicroMuppy/

I would like to state that the original site has been trashed/hacked and I hope is corrected soon,such a waste of Puppy promotion area.

original site hacked-> http://puppyfiles.org/ <-Please fix!!!