Precise-light - 17March2019 - for older hardware

[jrb]

New Improved Version WoofCE-testing-17March2019: Older versions moved to post 3.

4th Update:
precise-light-5.7.2-mk2.0.iso___precise-light-5.7.2-mk2.4.iso.delta
32Mb - md5sum 76beaa3ac825311d4014fbb658c463e3
ISO size 116 Mb
See here for a list of fixes and instructions on how to use the .delta.

Base Version for .deltas
precise-light-5.7.2-mk2.0.iso
md5sum=06583fd75527dc24bf47b997b160e517
ISO size 110 Mb

The latest (4th) update gets the latest Firefox and some of the latest chromium based browsers working.

This new version is build with a later WoofCE containing numerous improvements. It also has some updated software and some oversights corrected. I also learned a bit more about building Puppies so all files are now listed in /var/packages/builtin_files and all packages are listed in /var/packages/woof-installed-packages. Unfortunately the new Woof places the /packages folder in /var as opposed to the old system of placing it in /root. This will create a problem with your old savefiles. Not insurmountable but easier to create a new one I think.

Old text:
Recently I found an Acer Aspire One ZG5 in our local recycle. Took it home, reinstalled XP, ordered a new battery and it was as good as new. Installed upupbb32 and it bogged right down, 1GB memory just wasn't enough. So I tried various older puppies and Precise and Tahr worked quite well although quite outdated.

I also want to take this opportunity to recommend my very simple to use Portable Browser Installer which works very nicely with Precise-light. Or you may wish to use Palemoon-27.9.4SSE portable installer if you have a very old SSE computer.

Thanks to perdido, musher0, mavrothal, sheldonisaac, Volhout, mikeslr, peebee, 666philb, nic007, sindi, proebler, sheldonisaac and rcrsn51 for input and testing. Thanks to futwerk for the great desktops.

Hopefully this will be of some use on your older hardware. Good Luck, J

[jrb]

Portable Browser Installer now builtin (3rd update). Will install and setup portable versions of:

• Firefox ESR
  Firefox Quantum
  Vivaldi
  Iron
  Seamonkey
  Palemoon
  Thunderbird

OscarTalks dillo-3.0.5-precise.pet. is a very small browser which will access many (not all) websites.

Calibre ebook viewer and converter works well and can be setup as a portable install. I've only been able to get the 3.XX series to work.

FreeOffice works quite well and can be setup as a portable install. (You have to give them an email address to receive registration key)

[jrb]

Both versions come with Linux Kernel: 3.14.56PAE because that's the kernel I've had the best luck with on all my old and new hardware from P4 to i5.

Comes with Gtk+3 so will run some modern apps. See browsers above.

Apps are fairly complete with some substitutions:

Rtfed instead of Abiword.
No spreadsheet
playmusic using ffplay as the media player
Peasywifi is the default connect. No frisbee
Evince instead of Epdfview

See here to get peasyscan working.

I use FreeOffice installed on my hard-drive for word processing and spreadsheet. It works very well in Precise.

Old Version 5.7.1 WoofCE 9Sep2017
Precise-light-5.7.1+0 comes with no browser but ones that work are listed below. The ISO comes in at 112MB
md5sum=5b674c362519dea9016dfe0d4c0bc55b

The first update, precise-light-5.7.1+0.iso___precise-light-5.7.1+1.iso.delta is available. See here for a list of changes in the update and also instructions on how to use it.
md5sum of .delta file = 48b8acb6b37af2955aae46a0f6c91b8e
md5sum of new .iso = f68a98bf29e55666418c0a2b9aa25f58

The second update, precise-light-5.7.1+0.iso___precise-light-5.7.1+2.iso.delta is available. See here for a list of changes in the update and also instructions on how to use it.
md5sum of .delta file = 4db8e238cc461c81bd98dfbdf9e4b5f4
md5sum of new .iso = 3ac4f703ea1318c9d2d5d0d00b67d634

The third update, precise-light-5.7.1+0.iso___precise-light-5.7.1+3.iso.delta is available. See here for a list of changes in the update and also instructions on how to use it.
md5sum of .delta file = 915ebace4656793e4f3e73f024fe8efd
md5sum of new .iso = 20769337e5b1c454e915aea2e1ea10bd
ISO comes in at 107MB

[ally]

mirrored here: http://archive.org/details/Puppy_Linux_Precise

[jrb]

mirrored here: http://archive.org/details/Puppy_Linux_Precise

WOW! Are your ever quick. Thanks ally

[mavrothal]

Nice!
Do not remember if this was also true for Precise original but on first shutdown will not save on ext4 partitions.
This is because guess_fstype reports ext4 as ext3 resulting in failure when trying to "mount -t ext3 /dev/sdxN" to generate the savefile.

[nic007]

Just a mention: I used the original Precise 571 last week, stripped out only two components, ie. libLLVM and the old browser and made a new sfs at maximum xz compression. The new base sfs is 107MB. I did the same with Tahr Puppy. Both are using Seamonkey 2.48 (I just downloaded the tarball from the Seamonkey site ande made an sfs-addon).

Edit: I've noticed jrb used a newer kernel ie. the same one Tahr 605 has which is rock solid so I have swopped kernels too. My base sfs is now 111MB (which includes the zdrv) and still have the same applications as the standard Precise 571 release. Not bad.

[jrb]

Nice!
Do not remember if this was also true for Precise original but on first shutdown will not save on ext4 partitions.
This is because guess_fstype reports ext4 as ext3 resulting in failure when trying to "mount -t ext3 /dev/sdxN" to generate the savefile.

Thanks for trying it. I've had problems in the past with input/output errors with ext4 so all my drives are ext3. If you can suggest a fix I'll be happy to incorporate it.

[jrb]

Just a mention: I used the original Precise 571 last week, stripped out only two components, ie. libLLVM and the old browser and made a new sfs at maximum xz compression. The new base sfs is 107MB. I did the same with Tahr Puppy. Both are using Seamonkey 2.48 (I just downloaded the tarball from the Seamonkey site ande made an sfs-addon).

You had my hopes up for a bit, but I just tried Seamonkey 2.49.1 and it wanted GTK3. Still Seamonkey 2.48 is fairly current. I'll make a note of it in the intro. Thanks


Edit: I just tried 2.48 and it does indeed work.

[perdido]

Just a mention: I used the original Precise 571 last week, stripped out only two components, ie. libLLVM and the old browser and made a new sfs at maximum xz compression. The new base sfs is 107MB. I did the same with Tahr Puppy. Both are using Seamonkey 2.48 (I just downloaded the tarball from the Seamonkey site ande made an sfs-addon).

You had my hopes up for a bit, but I just tried Seamonkey 2.49.1 and it wanted GTK3. Still Seamonkey 2.48 is fairly current. I'll make a note of it in the intro. Thanks

I installed gtk3 in Barry's 5.7.1 and it works fine, might be ok for yours too.
Built the pet from deb packages from ubuntu 12.04, it does not seem to be kernel specific.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 410#907410

.

[jrb]

I installed gtk3 in Barry's 5.7.1 and it works fine, might be ok for yours too.
Built the pet from deb packages from ubuntu 12.04, it does not seem to be kernel specific.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 410#907410
.

Thanks for that perdido. I'll add the link to your .pet here:
http://www.ibm-pc.org/puppy/libgtk-3-0_ ... recise.pet

Edit: Hey, I just installed perdido's .pet and seamonkey 2.49.1 starts right up without complaint. Excellent, who knows what else will work?

[nic007]

Yes, Seamonkey 2.48 was the last GTK2 version but quite new anyway. Thanks for GTK3 though, good to have for new browser releases in future.

[nic007]

There's a nice Precise VLC2.16 download from OscarTalks mentioned in one of my recent posts, works well. A later version may work with GTK3?

[bigpup]

ext4 support in Precise is probably not in it or not complete.
Precise development was about the time ext4 support was getting into Puppy.

[mavrothal]

Nice!
Do not remember if this was also true for Precise original but on first shutdown will not save on ext4 partitions.
This is because guess_fstype reports ext4 as ext3 resulting in failure when trying to "mount -t ext3 /dev/sdxN" to generate the savefile.

Thanks for trying it. I've had problems in the past with input/output errors with ext4 so all my drives are ext3. If you can suggest a fix I'll be happy to incorporate it.

Just replace it with the one from more recent puppies

[musher0]

Hi gang.

Forum member Norgo builds Seamonkeys 2.49.x based on GTK2 as a
hobby, for fun! PM him? Sorry for leaking the secret out, Norgo!

He's offering a German version of SM-2.49.4 here,
and a French version of SM-2.49.3 here

All you guys have to do is get and install the English language pack for
one of the above,
from https://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/2.49.4
or https://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/2.49.3
and away you go!

BFN.

[nic007]

Hi gang.

Forum member Norgo builds Seamonkeys 2.49.x based on GTK2 as a
hobby, for fun! PM him? Sorry for leaking the secret out, Norgo!

He's offering a German version of SM-2.49.4 here,
and a French version of SM-2.49.3 here

All you guys have to do is get and install the English language pack for
one of the above,
from https://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/2.49.4
or https://www.seamonkey-project.org/releases/2.49.3
and away you go!

BFN.

Good to know but is it fully operational and functional, I mean does EVERYTHING really work as it should? I guess one wouldn't know if you don't test it thoroughly. Just installing that GTK3 package (which seems small enough) is a safer option.

[norgo]

... Just installing that GTK3 package (which seems small enough) is a safer option.

gtk+3-3.18.9|gtk+3|3.18.9|1|BuildingBlock|70370K|
at-spi2-atk-2.18.1|at-spi2-atk|2.18.1|1|BuildingBlock|300K|
at-spi2-core-2.18.3|at-spi2-core|2.18.3|1|BuildingBlock|2170K|

[sheldonisaac]

.. on first shutdown will not save on ext4 partitions.
This is because guess_fstype reports ext4 as ext3 resulting in failure when trying to "mount -t ext3 /dev/sdxN" to generate the savefile.

Oh, I'd been concerned about that; bigpup commented a few posts down.
But when I downloaded it today, and put it on the SSD (sda1, ext4) of this Latitude E6410, it made the save folder OK ??

I just looked, and see

Code: Select all

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 25984 Apr  6 09:00 /mnt/+mnt+home+PrecLight+puppy_precise_light-5.7.1.sfs/sbin/guess_fstype

Code: Select all

ls -tl /mnt/home/PrecLight/
total 130920
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root     4096 Apr  7 18:31 precisesave-apr7
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 80244768 Apr  6 09:03 puppy_precise_light-5.7.1.sfs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1326009 Apr  6 08:59 initrd.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  3574864 Apr  6 08:59 vmlinuz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 27488288 Apr  6 08:59 zdrv_precise_light-5.7.1.sfs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 21413888 Dec 23 20:10 adrv_precise_light-5.7.1.sfs

[jrb]

I just got FireFox66 working. That's the good news. The bad news is I don't really understand how. But here goes anyway:

I downloaded firefox-official-66.0.tazpkg from https://mirror.clarkson.edu/slitaz/packages/cooking/. (There are other language versions in there as well) Why would I do that you ask? Because at it's core Slitaz cooking is basically about the same era as Precise and many of the packages will work in Precise. I then installed gtk+3-3.14.8.tazpkg. Then I installed Perdido's libgtk-3-0_3.4.2_i386_precise.pet from above. After all that it seems to be working very well. (Trial and Error)

The tools that I use to work with tazpkgs are already in my Precises, just right click on a tazpkg and you will see taz2pet and untaz2. I am attaching them here in case you want to use them somewhere else.

Edit: The process works just as well with the official download at http://www.mozilla.com