Puppy 4.4 'Woofy'

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technosaurus · #41 Post by **technosaurus** » Mon 14 Sep 2009, 04:20

Latest geany is 683k without any drastic code hacking. The size is mostly due to the scintilla improvements. I am still an advocate of putting it into the devx since it is mostly for highlighting code that you would mostly only need if you also had the devx installed. If code browser does C and C++ that is the most important followed by genie and vala

I almost forgot to mention my little experiment with Ermine pro. The developer granted me a full license and it basically allows you put a whole package into a single binary. upx doesn't work with it but you can easily put it in an sfs for a compressed, simple 2 click run. It's not choicepup but it works... results with my abiword tests have been promising thus far. This would be a good option for those programs that don't make the final cut.

DaveS · #42 Post by **DaveS** » Mon 14 Sep 2009, 05:52

Its a testament to the helpfulness of this forum that I can now comprehend (if not fully understand) most of what Technosaurus wrote. Cool.........

Lobster · #43 Post by **Lobster** » Mon 14 Sep 2009, 05:57

I have written to Technosaurus and Gray about coordinating the project.
I am pleased to say Technosaurus has replied:

I could probably do at least the first couple 4.4.x releases if no one else steps up.

As Barry will be busy after the release of 4.3
versions 4.3.1 and 4.3.2 which will be dealing with patches and updates
(and leading to 4.4) can now be begun immediately.

Thanks Technosaurus

DaveS · #44 Post by **DaveS** » Mon 14 Sep 2009, 06:08

If the last episode is anything to go by, whoever takes on this mantle is going to need a thick hide.

#45 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Mon 14 Sep 2009, 06:41

DaveS wrote:If the last episode is anything to go by, whoever takes on this mantle is going to need a thick hide.

Hmmmm lets test it shall we ????

Hey "technosaurus " you couldn't compile yourself out of a metal box, you overgrown outdated rusted metal dino from the past!!!!

(ttuuxxx now sits and waits for for technosaurus to take the bait, shhhh "Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting wabbits", Elmer Fudd)
lol ttuuxxx

James C · #46 Post by **James C** » Mon 14 Sep 2009, 06:42

Guess the prospect of all the drama is why everyone is rushing to volunteer.

technosaurus · #47 Post by **technosaurus** » Mon 14 Sep 2009, 06:52

@ttuuxxx - I would but you are probably already doing it anyways

#48 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Mon 14 Sep 2009, 07:25

ok technosaurus handled it good

he past, anymore victims ???
ttuuxxx

raffy · #49 Post by **raffy** » Mon 14 Sep 2009, 12:37

If you recall, Barry started with Puppy 4 looking at QT as a possible base, although he settled later for GTK. Now technosaurus is doing work in the same direction (QT). It will be good to see even a 4.3CE-QT with the wonderful little apps that technosaurus has been building.

For the true 4.4, dogone has a good point, which is for us to first identify the outstanding features of 4.4 before starting to organize for it.

Patriot, your help here in the Forum is very much appreciated, especially on the inner workings of Puppy. Don't be discouraged so soon by "money"-laced posts.

ecomoney · #50 Post by **ecomoney** » Mon 14 Sep 2009, 17:40

The Mission cybercafe is simply a room of computers running puppy linux, where people (from all over the world) come and use linux for the first time. Above are the major problems weve found (and we have already overcome with some much appreciated help). Its a safe bet that others are experiencing the same problems when they try Linux for the first time with Puppy.

Puppies objective is to be "friendly to linux newbies". These issues are barriers to the "man off the street" adopting open source, free, secure operating systems, and reducing the computer waste/control/frustrations/expense associated with certain commercial OS's. If these problems were removed, Puppy would be more widely used and more successful...its as simple (and non-controversial) as that. The code/techniques for overcoming them are already developed, its just a matter of whoever is "in charge" including them.

But lets not start that again

Lobster · #51 Post by **Lobster** » Tue 15 Sep 2009, 03:24

Barry has mentioned on his blog that we should stay with the 2.6.30.x series kernel

Moving up to the latest in the 2.6.30.x series would be a reasonable thing to do. But then, you have to consider that there may be other 3rd party drivers compiled for 2.6.30.5, maybe by tempestuous, so there would be a big investment in staying with 2.6.30.5.
...but, this is a decision that the 4.4 coordinator would have to make.

I have changed the objectives on the wiki accordingly (remember they are still organic and fluid)
have included an initial desktop wallpaper

From Tronkels comments and the maturity of some of the Woof builds
Is it feasible to have something like this:

Releases
4.3.1 (Alpha 1 of 4.4) patches and updates
4.3.2 (Alpha 2 of 4.4) Upgrade ALSA to 1.0.21a, Upgrade X.Org to 7.4 (or 7.5), Transmission added, AdBlock Plus or MonkeyMenu in Seamonkey
4.3.3 Woof Built Upup - Puppy, built from Ubuntu packages and able to install further packages from the Ubuntu repositories. Barry Kauler Puppy built from Ubuntu Jaunty packages
4.3.4 Woof Built Dpup - Using Debian Ttuuxxx is working on
4.3.5 Woof Built Tpup - (Fatdog) Kirk is working on, a build from packages compiled in T2
4.3.6 (Beta 1 of 4.4)

tronkel · #52 Post by **tronkel** » Tue 15 Sep 2009, 16:34

I reckon it should be made as simple as possible for everyone to understand where the CE version is coming from.

Lobster has listed various derivatives above as possible bases for 4.4. Mixing pre-final versions en route to 4.4 Final seems over-complicated though. Lobster does mention DPup and UPup there as interim versions. Both of these are wonderful variants of Puppy and any of these would make excellent bases for 4.4 but --
to make it simpler, faster and easier for the developers of 4.4 (whoever they turn out to be) it might be more sensible to stick to the final version of 4.3 that is due to appear next weekend as the basis for 4.4.

Why? - the Woof build system even for the current beta version is stable and fast and would make the job of building 4.4 all that much easier. Versions of UPup DPup etc. are so good now (even as alpha versions), that they also justify CE's of their own!

But for the moment maybe better to concentrate on using 4.3 Final as the base for 4.4CE. In due course end user choice will also be enriched by CE's based on the other Woof-based UPups and Dpups.

So loads to go at for everybody, loads of work to do and very rich choice for the end-users given the willingness of developers to muck in and contribute.

kirk · #53 Post by **kirk** » Tue 15 Sep 2009, 17:26

Releases
4.3.1 (Alpha 1 of 4.4) patches and updates
4.3.2 (Alpha 2 of 4.4) Upgrade ALSA to 1.0.21a, Upgrade X.Org to 7.4 (or 7.5), Transmission added, AdBlock Plus or MonkeyMenu in Seamonkey
4.3.3 Woof Built Upup - Puppy, built from Ubuntu packages and able to install further packages from the Ubuntu repositories. Barry Kauler Puppy built from Ubuntu Jaunty packages
4.3.4 Woof Built Dpup - Using Debian Ttuuxxx is working on
4.3.5 Woof Built Tpup - (Fatdog) Kirk is working on, a build from packages compiled in T2
4.3.6 (Beta 1 of 4.4)

I think if we change base packages, that should probably be called Puppy 5. With 4.3, Barry has upgraded a lot of libraries, but glibc and other packages are the same. These other packages are getting a bit long in the tooth, and really need some updating, but that requires a rebuild, Puppy 5. Which I think/hope Barry's going to take care of.

As far as upgrading Xorg, I wouldn't upgrade past the latest for Xorg 7.3. Xorg 7.4 has some nice features (fully automatic hardware detection/configuration, better font handling) but is really in period of transition with KMS and has some real problems. The proprietary drivers (ATI, Nvidia) support Xorg 7.3 and much older, so that's not a problem. Actually ATI dropped support for all cards older than about 2 years if you're using Xorg 7.4. Here's the pros and cons:

Xorg 7.4

Pros:
* Could do away with Xorgwizard.
* Newer cards detected.
* Better Font handling (Could use all TTF font's except a couple for rxvt)
* Slightly smaller.
* Slightly faster start up.

Cons:
* More bugs (especially with intel, soon ati drivers to transition to kms)
* Proprietary ATI driver drops support for older cards.

I actually built Fatdog2 both ways, ended up going with 7.3, but the no Xorgwizard thing was very tempting, and worked pretty well.

And not to start a browser war, but I think we really need an official Firefox pet package. Firefox is getting somewhere in 25-30% range of all web traffic, and whether or not you like Firefox is irrelevant, what this means is that no web site designer with half a brain will produce a web site without testing it with Firefox. Though I'm not sure if it's reliable with Flash and Puppy's version of glibc. It didn't used to be, but Barry's did a lot of upgrades and maybe glibc wasn't the problem. Here's a good test if you have Firefox running in 4.3:

http://my.yahoo.com/

If you play with that page for a while it would crash with Puppy 4.1.2 and Firefox 3.

Seamonkey2 may fill the bill too, since it's the same engine. I've always been a Seamonkey proponent, due to it's size/features, but recently I've found some sites that just don't work correctly with it. (www.priceline.com)

Aimless rambling ends.

DaveS · #54 Post by **DaveS** » Tue 15 Sep 2009, 17:35

Yes to Firefox. Size has always been a factor as a mail client has to installed, but Simple Mail works really well, and its cool being inside the browser.

ecomoney · #55 Post by **ecomoney** » Tue 15 Sep 2009, 20:52

Xorg 7.4 requires no xorgwizard? Go for it!

MinHundHettePerro · #56 Post by **MinHundHettePerro** » Tue 15 Sep 2009, 21:13

ecomoney wrote:Xorg 7.4 requires no xorgwizard? Go for it!

kirk wrote:Actually ATI dropped support for all cards older than about 2 years if you're using Xorg 7.4.

Aren't you the recycler

/MHHP

raffy · #57 Post by **raffy** » Tue 15 Sep 2009, 23:21

Well, a number of our beloved developers are essentially saying they are available:

- kirk
- gray
- technosaurus
- patriot

And tronkel seems ready to do the coordinating.

Version 5 is currently Barry's baby, so perhaps all community updates that would get in after 4.3 will have to be called 4.4CE.

Note also that Ted Dog has posted something here:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=341455#341455

Ted is one of our leading developers when it comes to kernel tweaking, and especially in optical disk writing/rewriting of Puppy.

technosaurus · #58 Post by **technosaurus** » Tue 15 Sep 2009, 23:37

I would have to agree with kirk and add that we should probably install xorg (and all related packages) to --prefix=/usr instead of /usr/X11R7 as do most distros now. For backwards compatibility /usr/X11R7 would just be a symlink back to /usr.

As it is now, I regularly end up copying all of X11R7 to /usr so that packages will compile without a lot of manual configuration

It works better, packages compile easier and it will actually save a small amount of space. It also helps prevent having conflicting packages - for example 4.2.X has 2 conflicting versions of libfontconfig. I could go on for a while on this one, but I won't.

Right now I am targeting Puppy's core libraries and apps for recompilation and am averaging a 20% size reduction.

I am also pondering making a single shared library for all of the graphics libraries that has symlinks for the originals (png, gif, jpeg, tiff) the thought is that they would likely share a significant amount of code at the machine level and therefore save some space and speed up some graphics programs that link to several of them... Any thoughts on the value of this?

I got that idea because have also been making true build scripts that compile all files at once (using -combine) instead of making objects first, thus allowing the compiler to optimize across all code files instead of just within that one .c or .cc file - leaving the rest to the linker (which can miss a lot of optimization potential)

I am attaching an example - latest dev version of mtpaint. I would like to recompile it with some better graphics if someone were willing to update them (I will post a tar.gz with the graphic files if I get any volunteers)

BarryK · #59 Post by **BarryK** » Wed 16 Sep 2009, 01:13

Lobster wrote:Barry has mentioned on his blog that we should stay with the 2.6.30.x series kernel

Moving up to the latest in the 2.6.30.x series would be a reasonable thing to do. But then, you have to consider that there may be other 3rd party drivers compiled for 2.6.30.5, maybe by tempestuous, so there would be a big investment in staying with 2.6.30.5.
...but, this is a decision that the 4.4 coordinator would have to make.
I have changed the objectives on the wiki accordingly (remember they are still organic and fluid)
have included an initial desktop wallpaper

From Tronkels comments and the maturity of some of the Woof builds
Is it feasible to have something like this:

Releases
4.3.1 (Alpha 1 of 4.4) patches and updates
4.3.2 (Alpha 2 of 4.4) Upgrade ALSA to 1.0.21a, Upgrade X.Org to 7.4 (or 7.5), Transmission added, AdBlock Plus or MonkeyMenu in Seamonkey
4.3.3 Woof Built Upup - Puppy, built from Ubuntu packages and able to install further packages from the Ubuntu repositories. Barry Kauler Puppy built from Ubuntu Jaunty packages
4.3.4 Woof Built Dpup - Using Debian Ttuuxxx is working on
4.3.5 Woof Built Tpup - (Fatdog) Kirk is working on, a build from packages compiled in T2
4.3.6 (Beta 1 of 4.4)

Don't take the "431" number. I plan for 4.3.1 to be a bugfix release of 4.3. After that you can use the numbers 432 - 439 as alphas and betas for 4.4.

Lobster · #60 Post by **Lobster** » Wed 16 Sep 2009, 05:15

Don't take the "431" number

OK that is reserved. Wiki changed

Any other ideas or suggestions that would be useful to focus on and help the emergence of Puppy 5 also welcome

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppy44

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Puppy 4.4 'Woofy'

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