Puppy's Future

[Bruce B]

I simply don't know. If anyone has rough ideas, please tell.

-------------------------------

[linuxcbon]

It will take over the world.

[Caneri]

Well...don't panic and always have your towel.

[alcy]

@ Bruce B

I think that people like you (having read quite a few posts of yours ), Nathan F , MU, ttuxxx et al ( I am sorry , but I am just giving examples, don't kill me if I haven't named someone) should probably ask for Barry's permission to take this work forward as a collective developers team ( I know the single developer idea is liked by a lot of people, but still, I think work that can be divided and worked on won't yield any less efficient results) , and get to know all the internal workings of Puppy (if there's anything that you ever wanted to ask Barry about).

In this way, Puppy won't just remain a treasure for the users on www.murga-linux.com/puppy and would be hopefully the best community supported, efficient , you-know-what linux distro and more than that, an exhilarating experience for its users worldwide.

[cthisbear]

Bruce B :

" I know the single developer idea is liked by a lot of people "

And here's my vote.,
I'm sick of the whingeing, cringeing, crying going on about Barry.
" Good riddance " say I......sitting out in the outback desert,
and now deserting us.

No! Here is the man for me.
Strong, knowledgeabe, articulate.....yet still approachable and humane.
John Murga loves this chap as well.

So I humbly submit .......... atang1 .

" I have known Barry for a long time from(since) Framingham. "

http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/29209

Chris.

[Caneri]

Hey Chris,

Yes..we all know that if Barry showed up at the major telecoms and said to use Puppy...well they would...without a doubt wink wink nudge nudge....alas I tried to sway a major telecom here in Canada for nearly a year and all I got was the keys to the front door (alas they only worked to let myself out though..grr)

I think the hitchhikers guide will work...a towel dries up the crying and gives you a place for lunch....or am I mistaken.

Streak on,
Eric

EDIT: I have known Barry since pork and beans myself...ok..Hi Barry..lol

[brymway]

Is there a future for Puppy without Barry?

[MU]

Is there a future for Puppy without Barry?

yes.
The revolutionary concept from Barry is:
1) reduce to the minimum.
2) write a completely new startsystem using layers.

The "rest" is:
3) updating the Kernel
4) updating libs and programs


1) is done.
2.) is done. (with patches from the comunity)

3) For the Kernel we have some experts here, that provide new modules, but sometimes also experimental Kernels.
So Barry is not strictly required.

4) The libs can be built with T2 or be used from Slackware. This can be done by the comunity in future. I already do it in Muppy.
The programs are updated by the comunity, they do it already.

We should not oversee, that Barry is a "maniac".
he likes to test and tweak.
Puppy 4 includes a lot of new experiments, like compiling all libs from scratch.
But it does not introduce revolutionary new concepts (except Barrys new eventsystem).

With Puppy 3, Puppy had reached a status, that could be called "final" (by concept).

So the main task in future will be, to update the packages, that make up Puppy, and keep pace with new Kernels for better hardwaresupport.

Mark

[otropogo]

Is there a future for Puppy without Barry?

yes.
The revolutionary concept from Barry is:
1) reduce to the minimum.
2) write a completely new startsystem using layers.

The "rest" is:
3) updating the Kernel
4) updating libs and programs



Mark

I think you missed at least two, Mark:

5) .making sure it works as advertised, and/or

6) correcting all of the misleading menus and documentation

It seems to me that a very large part of the problem with Puppy is that the skilled coders are all too eager to surge on to creating new features, while very few are interested in making sure the old ones keep working. And this lack of interest is especially acute in areas of legacy hardware, where Puppy has long claimed to excel.

Support for the parallel port, pcmcia, serial port (RS232), scsi, and boot floppies are just five areas that spring to mind.

[raffy]

I guess the question needs to be a simple one: Will you stay to help carry forward Puppy's development?

I answer "Yes".

EDIT - just saw this post by Mark:

So the main task in future will be, to update the packages, that make up Puppy, and keep pace with new Kernels for better hardwaresupport.

Barry is not alone - we are still here and Mark IS still here.

[Lobster]

Will you stay to help carry forward Puppy's development?

Yes indeed.
And funnily enough Barry will be staying on to carry on Puppy's development . . . just in a different way . . .

So Puppy will continue to mature
And as always improve

For example:
Simplux - Puppy + Gentoo
http://simplux.org/

Puppy + Gnome
Considered impossible - but MU is on it . . .

Puppy + Debian
(being planned by Tronkel)

Compiz Fusion? Done it.
Eeepc - many versions. More to come

NOP - what a great basis for stable use . . .
http://www.puppylinux.org/wiki/archives ... e/puppynop
(In this case it really is 'rocket science')

Who runs Puppy?
Those who run with it.

[brymway]

Excellent! Very encouraging. Glad it will be carried on. I somehow don't think that Puppy has yet reached its full popularity. It just seems too good to be low on the list. I've got a few people I'm working on converting and using Puppy to do it.

So Puppy it is.

[Bruce B]

I guess the question needs to be a simple one: Will you stay to help carry forward Puppy's development?

I answer "Yes".

I'm sure you and other high stander coders can relate with this. As we code, we do our best, but at the same time we learn more about the particular job at hand.

Have you ever gone back and found how much better you can write the same project code the second time around? I suppose you have. Some things are so obvious on the second time around, makes a guy wonder why he didn't see it the first time around.

I think it would be a blast if a few of us took any Puppy version from about 215CE thru 4.00 and thoroughly revisited the code and updated some of the apps.

Frankly, I don't see a need in the near future for a version 5, does anyone. My preferences would be work out minor problems and not so minor problems with existing versions. Then release incremental releases.

EDIT - just saw this post by Mark:

So the main task in future will be, to update the packages, that make up Puppy, and keep pace with new Kernels for better hardwaresupport.

Barry is not alone - we are still here and Mark IS still here. :)

Yeah, there is good 'ole Mark (and many others). How nice it would be to revisit the packages. Lot's of tuning and refining to be done.

[ttuuxxx]

Will you stay to help carry forward Puppy's development?

Yes indeed.
And funnily enough Barry will be staying on to carry on Puppy's development . . . just in a different way . . .

So Puppy will continue to mature
And as always improve

Puppy + Gnome
Considered impossible - but MU is on it . . .

Puppy + Debian
(being planned by Tronkel)

I'm not off my Vacation but when I read this I had to respond
@@@ UPDATED @@@
Puppy + Gnome + KDE = "Living Water" I've been building this for months, Hundreds of hours working with Gnome/KDE and I have them Both working at the same Time. Just the applications, not the system, If I wanted Kde or Gnome, I would download a cd. If I wanted some great applications not built for puppy but for Gnome/KDE, Basically I compiled what I needed to get the programs working. Made it slim and trim. The puppy Way http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... h&id=10346
Thats an image of Gnomesword + KDE Bibletime

Puppy + Debian
(being planned by Tronkel)
I've also started getting the synaptic package manager partially working on puppy, But thats put on hold. Other things had to be finished first.

Thats one of puppy problems, Developers go their own way, I've been posting for months that I've been working on Gnome/KDE. But still nobody has an idea other than the loyal "Living Water" users.
Puppy needs a Developers only Forum site, where they can focus on a project as a group effort without added distractions and just release test candidates. and go off feedback that way. Really how many hours did Mu + ttuuxxx work separately to archive almost the output. Sure he used slackware and I compiled, but still, I could of went his way, or he could of went mine. It would of been half the work, and we would be twice as far in the same amount of time.
Plus a universal base package would be great. Like a kde base, or Gnome base. It would be so handy, for Variants etc. Hint to the wise Gnome is way easier to get going then KDE on puppy

There was a question of puppy 5.0(doesn't have to be now, Next year if you want. No Rush)
Seriously it should be named "Puppy 5.0 BARRY" out of respect for him and his "5" years building this project, Perfect Number.
Next If I had a preference I would it make it compatible with the most popular distro on the planet "Ubuntu". You say this sounds stupid ??
Well lets look at it, Ubuntu has a great repo that you can download all you want from the web, all i386, all precompiled, KDE, GNOME you pick, plus they list which libs you need and links to the libs. http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/ Thats has been an issue for a long time with new users who find it extremely frustrating at first to compile packages or even just to install devx is pain for them. You can even download the kernel as a package from them, already patched and ready to go. That might be pushing it a bit,
But Barry has always done the kernel, I haven't seen anyone on here do one? I could be wrong. But thats a different ballpark on its own. Maybe some notes from Barry would be good on the Kernel, actually his last command line view would even be better.

As T2 Goes, I've been working with it for the past few days, The last frozen stable release was Nov2007, They do have a updated Subversion. Which is really fresh, but its once again not a stable release. But they are planning on releasing version 8 really soon:) So basically puppy would have 4 choices
1st continue 4 dingo series and fix and patch releases
2nd Use the T2 Subversion and take your chances, From what I've heard its stable.
3rd Build a T2 stable with current and updated/removed most packages
4th Start from scratch and add current "puppy only" software plus default applications.

Decisions, Decisions, How will this turn out? What I would like to see is a closed anonymous polling station, Just opened to contributors in General. The reason for this is because you can't have new users making uneducated decisions about a base which they couldn't understand do to the fact they are new to Linux. The only way I could see that is a locked forum, with a forum "poll". Basically all involved would have to be invited in and if they were overlooked maybe they could pm a message to the person who created the forum and give reason why they should be invited/added to the list. I don't think it should be just the main developers deciding everything. Because for one thing they all kind of respect each others decisions and just might follow one main developer, which that developer might have a bias decision to start with. So the more Linux savvy individuals you have involved the better chance you have breaking "Think Tank" (where one view can alter and change everyones view in a small group of people and sometimes drastic and terrible outcomes can happen)
But I guess thats up to the community
take care
ttuuxxx

[bambuko]

. . . Frankly, I don't see a need in the near future for a version 5, does anyone. My preferences would be work out minor problems and not so minor problems with existing versions. Then release incremental releases. . .

I know my vote doesn't matter I am just a user and a newb
but I couldn't resist - I totally agree with you Bruce !
and now back to lurking and keeping my gob shut

Chris

[raffy]

Disciple has opened a puppylinux repository at sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/puppylinux

Please see this thread.

Maybe this is also a solution to the "developers' discussion"?

[SirDuncan]

Good to see that you haven't completely left, Ttuuxxx. I have actually been trying to build an Ubuntu compatible Puppy. I once tried Ubuntu, and although I did not like the distro, I liked the package manager and repositories. Since then, I have been learning about Ubuntu and trying to figure out how to make a Pupbuntu (for lack of a better name) variation work. Unfortunately, I have not gotten too far due to my lack of Ubuntu savvy and inexperience with Puppy building.

I also see no reason for moving to version 5 so quickly. I think that the community should work on polishing 4.1 and gaining a better understanding of how the current system works before trying to innovate. Work on the final Barry build until we have a rock solid base. This gives the community time to work through the growing pains and gain confidence. Then, and only then, do we work to expand upon Barry's work.

As for who will stay, I will. I cannot say how useful I can be, but Puppy is the distro that made me decide that Linux was worth a place on my hard drive. I will do what I can to ensure that others may have the same chance.

[ttuuxxx]

Good to see that you haven't completely left, Ttuuxxx. I have actually been trying to build an Ubuntu compatible Puppy. I once tried Ubuntu, and although I did not like the distro, I liked the package manager and repositories. Since then, I have been learning about Ubuntu and trying to figure out how to make a Pupbuntu (for lack of a better name) variation work. Unfortunately, I have not gotten too far due to my lack of Ubuntu savvy and inexperience with Puppy building.

I also see no reason for moving to version 5 so quickly. I think that the community should work on polishing 4.1 and gaining a better understanding of how the current system works before trying to innovate. Work on the final Barry build until we have a rock solid base. This gives the community time to work through the growing pains and gain confidence. Then, and only then, do we work to expand upon Barry's work.

As for who will stay, I will. I cannot say how useful I can be, but Puppy is the distro that made me decide that Linux was worth a place on my hard drive. I will do what I can to ensure that others may have the same chance.

I most certainly agree with you Sir.Duncan, I tried Ubuntu also and the only thing I liked a lot was the package manager and online repository. I give them a A+ for that but the rest of the package look and overall feel, I would give them a E-, But for hardware compatability I would give them a B- because Tv-out didn't work out of the box but it did on puppy
ttuuxxx

[big_bass]

removed

[MU]

Important for Puppy 3 was the slackware compatibility.
Before it used a chaotic mix of packages from many different distros.

In Puppy 4, this was dropped again for T2. Now there are even suggestions to switch to Ubuntu.

That is a real problem, there is no continuity.
In Puppy3 I have no problem to import Files from older versions of Slackware, like vsftp from 10.2.

Using Puppy for customers requires continuity.
So I update to Slackware 12.1/gsb currently.
Also slackware is the oldest distro, known for stability and packages, that were compiled to need only few dependencies.
If I try out sometimes files from other distros, they punish me with the requirement to download a bunch of libs, that fatten Puppy, and reduce compatibility.

For me, Puppy 4 was a "step back".
It seems to be faster and smaller than 3 at first sight, but just try that:
remove gtk1 and tcl/tk and some more from 3.
Remove the serial probing from the startscripts.
Optimize the startscripts, e.g. when you add sfs files (I do that in Muppy alpha, it boots very fast now using sfs files).
Then again compare the size and speed, now it would be a fair comparison.

Instead of breaking compatibility again and again, I think it would make more sense, to have a look at enhancing compatibility with other systems.
E.g. XDG and Mime is very incomplete in Puppy.
There still is so much to do...

Mark