ChurchPup Alpha Discussion

[WhoDo]

I especially liked the CityLife one. It has a certain subtleness to it. Cool.

Yes, that's my favourite too. It conveys the message while leaving so much open to personal interpretation as the spirit is moved. Just like the Word, really.

Cheers.

[Subito Piano]

Christopher, you are right -- and so is cb88! IF we could get a Bible program sans java and wine, that might be perfect for the Lite version. The full version would be, well, FULL!

FWIW, i have a copy of the NASB Quick Bible. I simply open it as text and have basic search functions available. I also have Bible Time but use online Bibles the most.

Also - any good thoughts on how to reduce the memory usage without sacrificing needed programs? (Heh, heh -- i say this but i'm not the one doing the work on the full version! )

Seriously, if anyone sees a way to cut the fat please post it here.

[LOF]

Right first of, WhoDo thanks for all those screenshots and ideas. They really are awesome. Thanks for your suggestions, I'll leave it open to the community to decide what they like and dislike. Does anyone have a preference towards any themes/backgrounds? (BTW I agree, Citylife is nice)

As to the future style of ChurchPup production:

Maybe the end goal will be to have:
- A full blown ChurchPup iso (aimed at actual Churches and power users)
- A light/lite ChurchPup iso (aimed at your everyday Christian with average/older machine)
- Individual packages for each program in ChurchPup
- An SFS with all ChurchPup addons (ie everything added that wouldn't be in normal Puppy)
- An SFS with all christian addons (ie just the christian programs)

We're sorta doing a number of these already (packages/full-blown)

This would allow a huge variety of different options to those interested.

They could:
- Add ChurchPup or Christian programs to their existing Puppy
- Go from scratch either big or small
- Just add programs they like/want

Hopefully that makes sense. This is just me talking BTW, I haven't talked to my team yet.

[37fleetwood]

believe it or not I'm still here I downloaded the alpha and really like it. I am not a seminary student nor a pastor of a church but I do apreciate having the ability to get to the bottom of some semi advanced lines of inquiry. I have a newer computer and would rather have the option to get a full boat iso rather than going the more modular way. I also apreciate the need to make an iso compatible with smaller more limited systems. personally I wouldn't mind too much if the full iso pushed into the dvd range as long as good stuff were being added . I just apreciate that you guys are willing to put this together for guys like me who don't know too much about doing this kind of work.
May God richly Bless your efforts!
Scott

[cb88]

what exactly does a sword module consist of anyway? I assume it is just a text file or a database with an index I see no reason why it could not be accessed with a program written in practically any language. Even if it is a binary file that could be figured out....

[KF6SNJ]

what exactly does a sword module consist of anyway? I assume it is just a text file or a database with an index I see no reason why it could not be accessed with a program written in practically any language. Even if it is a binary file that could be figured out....

Each module has three files. For example, the Book of Concord has concord.bdt, concord.dat and concord.idx. Yes, you could attempt to open them with AbiWord or another text program, but it may not appear very meaningful (most of it looked like gibberish, but I was able to read the words "three ecumenical creeds"). However, if you would like to create a cli based application to use a sword module, you have a lot of work ahead of you. I don't quite understand how the program accesses the modules so that what we see it readable. Honestly, I am happy just to have a tool that already works.

[Subito Piano]

I'm probably talking myself into doing the lite version. Hmm....

Maybe it should be called ChapelPup!

If i do, i'll need some help. First off, what is a good lightweight Bible study program? If Wine is a resource hog, then the Bible program has to be native Linux. I think that something with basic search functions and the ability to add several translations would be good. If would can keep memory usage down and have dictionaries, etc., so much the better.

My thinking on a Lite version is not so much the CD size but the memory/CPU usage. In other words, i think it's OK to have 200 MB on the CD BUT i want to keep the memory needs down to the traditional Puppy limit of 128MB, able to run on a P-II or maybe even a P-I without dogging it! (OK, OK, terrible pun there...)

Any thoughts?

[klu9]

"if wine is a resource hog"

I'm no expert, but I don't think WINE can be a resource hog; remember it stands for "WINE Is Not an Emulator".

It doesn't consume resources, it just provides a compatibility layer for Windows programs. The amount of resources consumed depends on the Windows app and the operating system.

I even remember reading somewhere that people had measured Windows programs running faster in WINE on some distros than in Windows itself.

But I may be wrong.

[Subito Piano]

P.S. regarding Bible software for the lite version-- Puppy 3 is, of course, slackware-compatible. Does that give us access to a lightweight program? For instance, there are a couple listed here. I have no experience with Slackware packages in Puppy but am willing to try -- however, if someone has already done this, a little guidance is welcome! Basically, i've only used Bible Time in Linux (and e-sword in Windoze); mostly i go to online sources such as BlueletterBible and BibleGateway.

Again, the goal is speed and older equipment; the regular ChurchPup, not lite, is for a complete set of packages.

Thanks!

[KF6SNJ]

I tried the gslapt package for puppy. Yes, the slackware apps worked, but unfortunately, it made other packages that I had installed using either the pet installer or dotpups not work. I wound up having to completely reinstall puppy to fix everything. To me, it wasn't worth it. I don't believe that directly using slackware packages on puppy is the best of ideas. It would probably be better to port over what we can and leave it at that. Such being the case, we already have several viable bible study tools that readily available. Also, ChurchPup doesn't need to be too big to begin with. I would say not more than about 250Mb, and even that may seem a bit large. We really should keep it simple.

[Subito Piano]

I thought i'd post this here because it's been a friendly group and represents a lot of experience and knowledge.

I could not load either the alpha or the beta ChurchPup on my regular machine.  It ran fine (although slow) on our old Pentium-II with a 350 clock speed and 192MB of RAM. But on my main computer with an AMD (athlon?) 1GB clock and 384MB RAM, fuggetaboutit!

I got the following error every time i loaded using pfix=ram:

kernal panic - out of memory & no killable processes

trying other boot methods gave other messages such as:

run fsock is recommended (something like that)

and:

fixing recursive fault but reboot is needed
(rebooting did nothing)

also:

process hotplug (pid: 21871, ti=d6336000
tash=c13a1030 tastti=d6336000)
stack (followed by a series of numbers)
fixing recursive fault but reboot is needed
unconfs, do delay copyup of "utmp"

The ONLY way i got it to boot was by first booting up on the old computer, saving  the pup_save file to a USB stick, then plugging the stick in on my main computer and rebooting -- and even that was whacked when it came up.  I tried pfix=purge with a pup_save file and even deleting all my old pup_save files from every partition--then it brought the ghost of an old one back up and loaded it---?!?!??!??! This all represents a few hours of work....

So i thought, is my computer going?  I have a good CD-drive to boot from but the CD-RW drive is apparently not working (for the past two weeks), plus for that long i've had to warm up the computer for five minutes or so before the video works correctly -- in other words, i boot up and the screen is a disaster, so i wait five minutes and then hit the reset button. Maybe the motherboard is freaking out?? -- but other Puppies load just fine. I burned one ChurchPup beta CD on an external burner and one on another computer altogether using two different downloads (i checked the md5, etc.) and tried booting from both--same results! What gives??

My only hypothesis: i recall Barry mentioning that the 3.01 Puppy had two versions -- the first release was based on the newer kernel and some users reported problems with it, so he released a second version with the older kernel.  Perhaps the ChurchPup beta is built on the newer kernel and my machine can't handle it? But i recall using the Puppy 3.01 CD with the newer kernel without problems. Maybe my memory is wrong. (Mark, do you remember which kernel you built ChurchPup on?)

Well, such is my experience.  What do you make of it?  Any thoughts/suggestions?  Did the beta boot for you all?  

Thanks -- !

[KF6SNJ]

I am running ChurchPup as my full time Puppy OS now. Only problem is that I have to run the ALSA sound wizard everytime as it does not seem to save my previous settings. Also, USB audio doesn't seem to work either. Small things really. So far so good.

[PrairieDog]

It ran fine (although slow) on our old Pentium-II with a 350 clock speed and 192MB of RAM. But on my main computer with an AMD (athlon?) 1GB clock and 384MB RAM, fuggetaboutit!

Good morning Subito!

I'm sorry for your Grief.
Reading the descriptions of your two systems I would have guessed Churchpup would have Never run on your pentium-II. (and just barely on the ADM)
I tested it on my wifes computer that has a 3 ghz celeron and 512 megs of ram and got the same message ( kernal panic - out of memory & no killable processes )

I restarted after plugging in a usb flash drive with a swap partition on it and it worked. So I'm going to say 512 megs +swap is going to be a minimum.

Have you had a chance to try smaller iso yet?

My only hypothesis: i recall Barry mentioning that the 3.01 Puppy had two versions

Should I try building this with the older kernel? just a thought ,maybe we should wait for more feed back.


Good morning KF6SNJ!

Glad you're having some success at last. I have a couple of questions, did you have these sound problems with regular puppy 301 or any previous version? and could you post some specs for your puppy machine? Just megs of ram and swap or no swap is all I'm curious about.

Gentlemen, have a good day,


The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?

Mark

[KF6SNJ]

I have 12289Mb of swap enabled. I went back to my AMD Athlon XP 1800+ running at about 1536Mhz. My sound card that I am using is a Sound Blaster Live 16. The emu10k1 works, but I have to enable/configure it every time. I did not have this issue on Puppy 2.17.1 or 3.00. However, if that is my only problem, and I am using the 3.01 Alpha 2, then I am doing quite well all things considered.

[PrairieDog]

Hello,
Thanks for Church pup, but without PPPoE i like many others cannot access the internet. did you leave this out or have i missed it.

Michael an eccentric English gentleman.

P.S I am running 301a seamonkey to write to you.

Oh No!! I forgot PPPOE. Just an oversight,Michael,and I'm glad you caught it. I guess you really couldn't miss it if you use pppoe!

The pet package at Ibiblioftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributio ... tched2.pet
should install OK but I'll check it out as soon as I get a chance. (Getting ready for work right now)

I will rejoice in the God of my salvation

Mark

[active2138]

Hi Folks
Not sure if I'm in the right place here so please forgive me if I'm not. I've been waiting and watching for your alpha, I haven't had time to actually try it yet but have a few comments after reading posts.
1) Yes please keep up two streams, a 'FULL' and 'Lite' for old hardware, this provides best for ex-windows converts and users of old hardware like me who have found Puppy so useful.
2) Why have Wine and MSPPT viewer when Open Office does PPT very well as far as I can see? Perhaps this can save some space?
3) For a lite Bible program, maybe this is a crazy idea ( I am not a developer at all) but could something be done with applications for PDAs? My son uses a Bible program from Olive tree, works great and is tiny, perhaps if you were starting from scratch you could create some code to work with the Bibles and commentaries etc that are formatted for these PalmOS/Pocket Windows applications? Or perhaps there is a low-resource Palm OS emulator out there that would make it easy? There is a good Windows PalmOS emulator you can use to check out code. I think online Bible does a PDA version, maybe they would be willing to offer some assistance?
4) Procon is fantastic, I have been using it for a while now, it has made it so easy to make all my PCs safe(r) it has been hard to find a free filter that works in anything other than Windows explorer, except the excellent K9 which only works in XP and 2000.

Keep up the Great work!!!!
John

[LOF]

Thanks for your feedback and encouragement. Hope you like ChurchPup even more once you try it out!

As to your points.

I'm not sure if this has been fed back to the forums yet but what we're now thinking about is removing Wine and PowerPoint from the final iso and instead have it as an addon package that would include Wine, Powerpoint viewer and maybe some of the other viewers.

Also the PDA Bible idea sounds awesome. I've no experience with anything relavent here but hopefully some others do? Any other feedback is welcome on that idea.

Thanks again for your feedback. Keep it coming folks. We want this project to just keep getting better.

Over and out.

[PrairieDog]

Hi active2138 and welcome,

Why have Wine and MSPPT viewer when Open Office does PPT very well as far as I can see?

Just to confirm,Wine and Powerpoint will not be built into Churchpup but will be available as add-on packages. I really like the way PowerPoint works under wine but it was a redundant program and I had to trim the fat somewhere!

To update, I've been going through the beta finding and fixing little mistakes, some menu improvements, setting some default run actions ,tracking down missing icons,and generally playing with the programs to make sure they work. I'm hoping the next version will be slimmed down enough that more people will be able to test it.

I'm shooting for 350 to 375 megs for the iso. That's HUGE for Puppy but small compared to many Linux distros. The ChapelPup version that our Brother Subito Piano is working on will stand in the gap for the lower resource machines.

I'm thinking the next version will be called ChurchPup RC1, It will be available before Christmas, and Subito is hoping to work on his ChapelPup version over his Christmas break.

All thy works shall praise thee, O LORD; and thy saints shall bless thee

Mark

[Subito Piano]

Hi! Having some trouble getting esword to run under wine. The fonts are either not there or are invisible. This occurs under both Puppy and Mepis, with MSTTF core fonts downloaded in the Mepis OS. Ubuntu CE got it to work. Has anyone gotten this to work in Linux under wine?

[cretsiah]

dont know what else can be said i love it