How about an LTS (Long Term Support) stable Puppy version?

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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tronkel
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How about an LTS (Long Term Support) stable Puppy version?

#1 Post by tronkel »

Over in this thread:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 302#600302

Aitch was talking about an ancient feature of previous Puppies called "underdog".

It occurred to me that somewhere in the sea of Puppies that have been built over this period of time, there is a need for stability and consistency.

An example of this is the Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx edition - an Ubuntu version that continues to impress with it's shear stability and speed - in contrast to the more recent versions that, while having all the latest stuff included, are not exactly paradigms of reliability. The next Ubuntu Precise Pangolin will have a shelf-life of 5 years. One of the all-time best-ever Puppy versions is based on this Lucid Lynx 10.04 LTS - Puppy Lucid.

What about building an LTS Puppy version? Take a vote on which version of Puppy this should be based on and go for it. Any "service packs" built for it over its life cycle would also be subjected to stress-testing before they get released, as is done with the Linux Mint LMDE (Debian) edition.
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#2 Post by musher0 »

I'm all for it.

Puppy is a great distro. However, by the time you get a particular puplet to do what you need it to do, populate it with the programs you need, customize the look and feel, etc., in short, by the time you get productive with it, 2 more puppies are out.

Frustrating, really.

Indeed, a long term version might make people more confident of their Puppy not becoming outdated. Hence interest more people.

Also, because Puppy is small, not all compatibilities with other programs can be or have been tested in a particular Puppy. That can be frustrating too, if you want to try other programs not already in the Puppy repos.

That would mean a stable team, though. And since Puppy is a community distro, maintained voluntarily, it would take very generous people with lots of time on their hands to undertake and sustain this.

Anyway, thanks for starting this discussion. TWYL.
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#3 Post by tronkel »

musher0 wrote:
it would take very generous people with lots of time on their hands to undertake and sustain this.
This is true in any Puppy development situation.

Could be though, that since the LTS developers/contributors would not be working under pressure to produce the goods within such a short time frame, they could pace themselves over longer periods so that their efforts did not require them to work under so much pressure - thus causing less developer "burnout". Ask Barry, Playdayz and Micko (and Yours Truly) about that one!

You often see it suggested that Ubuntu should move away from their six-monthly release cycle. That's correct IMHO. Ubuntu would be a much better product if they did just that.
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#4 Post by Lobster »

by the time you get productive with it, 2 more puppies are out
We iz frisky . . . :)
Good thing.

We already have LTS Puppys - Ttuuxxx has one. An updated 2 series. Wary is another (an official Puppy)
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppyVersionIndex
Lucid has been very well supported . . .
Slacko is coming into its prime
. . . and basically with Woof2 Mick can update whenever he has the inclination and time. Slacko will be around for a time.

Is there room for an LTS Dpup? Always . . .
What we don't have is an LTS committee of cat herders . . . :roll:
Buddha be praised. :wink:

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. . . but not as we know it Jim . . .
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#5 Post by musher0 »

Hey, lobster, if you call me Jim, I'll call you Bones. ;)

Wow, a herd of cats. My idea of hell... Imagine the screeching. :)

To some extent, the "popularity" of a puplet makes it into a kind of LTS. But "to some extent" only. Not the real thing. Not what tronkel had in mind, I think.

Unless you have a warning on the home page, something like:

Warning. Fast-changing environment.
Sensitive natures should not use the
latest Puppy, but the before-last Puppy
to avoid feeling outdated too soon.


Now, that's being honest towards your "customer". :)

(And yes, tronkel, I remember. You initiated Puppy 3.02, was it?)
Lobster wrote:
by the time you get productive with it, 2 more puppies are out
Is there room for an LTS Dpup? Always . . .
What we don't have is an LTS committee of cat herders . . . :roll:
Buddha be praised. :wink:

Puppy Linux Long Term Support
. . . but not as we know it Jim . . .
Last edited by musher0 on Mon 30 Jan 2012, 18:50, edited 1 time in total.
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#6 Post by tronkel »

Musher seems to get the idea of what I meant.

Yes this would be presented to the "customers" on the front page of the Puppy website as a stable version - with conservative, maybe oldish packages. Use this version if you need it to just work and with as few bugs as possible. Think of the way Debian Stable is presented to its target audience.

Development of this version will be about serious bug-squashing, so any experienced testers/bug-hunters would be most welcome - again think of Debian and its triagers.

Why is this LTS version a good idea? It provides a port in a storm to users who are getting fazed with all of the "experimental" mainstream Linux versions at the moment. Ubuntu with Unity as well as those distros who have gone down the Gnome 3 route. Linux Mint has been only partially successful so far in easing the pain here for users less than satisfied with the usability of these versions.

Puppy being the flexible and free-thinking distro that it is, is well-placed to see this sort of thing through to a successful conclusion. It's no accident that Puppy has climbed to No 8 now on Distrowatch. Users are turning to it out of necessity these days with all the turmoil around Linux at the moment.

I'll bet this LTS would be appreciated by many users.

We need opinions on where the starting point would be and how to progress the idea. It's probably a job for the Community rather than for Barry.
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#7 Post by mavrothal »

The way I see there are basically 3 choices RHEL/CentOS/Scientific v6 (NOT Fedora), Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and Debian. RHEL is focusing on a different class of hardware, Debian is in the middle of its cycle, so that leaves Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

The "problem" with LTS releases though, is that after 3 months is all hard work and no glory for the developers and the alpha/beta testers. Most of the devs and the testers eg the people that generate most of the traffic in this forum would be "out of job".
See Debian that you mentioned. 50+ of linux users are running something based on Debian, but only a small fraction of them the official Debian.
Triage is not fun.
Following up on tickets is not fun.
Maintaining packages is not fun.
Getting submitted packages (pets) through quality assurance is not fun.
Who on his/her right mind wants to do that for free and then have the next person telling him the this is an "old and boring" puppy.

Seriously, though I do not know if there is a real need for that LTS release. Is there anyone that uses puppy in a production machine (eg a machine that money depends on it directly or indirectly)?
Is there anyone "forcing" a happy puppy user of version X to change to version Y?

Looks to me it's all fun and games. So the more puppies the merrier.

The only real problem I see with the explosion of puppies is that devs are consumed rebuilding puppy from ditro A or B and compiling pes for it, and there is very little advancement in puppy itself.
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#8 Post by BarryK »

As Lobster said, Wary (and Racy) is LTS.
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#9 Post by Flash »

Would someone please explain what LTS means in this context? :? Thanks.

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#10 Post by James C »

Long Term Support.

As an example, Debian Lenny 5 (the prior LTS release) was released in 02/2009 and wasn't replaced until Debian Squeeze 6.0 was released in 02/2011...basically the base remains stable for a long period with only periodic updates.In a word, more stability instead of frequent totally new releases.
HTH.

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How about an LTS (Long Term Support) stable Puppy version

#11 Post by Monsie »

Hi all,

Long Term Supported distro releases are tending now to be built with a linux kernel that is designated for long term support also... a period of two years minimum but possibly longer. In this sense, both Wary and Racy fit the bill because both have kernels that are officially supported over the long term by the maintainers such as Greg Kroah-Hartman. This recent article https://www.linux.com/news/featured-blo ... rnel-trees explains a little bit about which kernels are currently being supported for the long term.

Cheers,
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#12 Post by tronkel »

I don't doubt that Wary and Racy are intended as LTS versions - therefore either could be used as such.

Let's consider the"marketing" aspects of these 2 versions.

Especially in the case of Racy, this version is promoted as being more suitable for newer hardware (says so on the tin). This appears to imply therefore that this version is "cutting edge" and is then at odds with the adjective "conservative" as an LTS description would convey. Descriptively then. Wary appears to fit the LTS description better. Also in the case of Tuuxxx's 2.16X, this is a mixture of a conservative kernel and modern packages - so it seems to fall between two stools in this regard.

This LTS idea is more of a presentational concept than a technical one. Of course the kernel version used is fundamentally important for the implementation of the LTS version. As part of the sales pitch for the Racy and Wary versions there is no mention of a fixed term for providing support c.f. Ubuntu talking about 5 years for Precise Pangolin. Stipulating this fixed term has served Ubuntu well up to now, so maybe Puppy should also make available something along these lines.

Then there is the question about who undertakes this LTS. Barry has always been inclined towards the more experimental and creative side of Puppy development. No-one else can compete here. Seems as if this LTS would best be undertaken by the Community - thus easing the burden on Barry of providing support. In other words, the Community could relieve Barry of some (but maybe not all) of the donkey-work involved in providing support. Come on chaps - you can rise to the situation and learn new stuff as well!

Contenders for the basis of this LTS could be Racy/Wary as well as Lucid 5.2.8/3-Headed Dog and Slacko - the last two being stable relatively bug-free and providing stuff that suits a very broad range of users and their hardware.
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#13 Post by darkcity »

I think some kind of bug tracking system is more important than tagging on a LTS label - which couldn't be backed up as it is all community developed

bugs can be voted to be fixed - so developers get a taste of what users would like

github is an example
https://github.com/

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#14 Post by darkcity »

XO Puppy already uses github

https://github.com/mavrothal/Pox_git/

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#15 Post by musher0 »

Hi, darkcity.
darkcity wrote:I think some kind of bug tracking system is more important than tagging on a LTS label - which couldn't be backed up as it is all community developed

bugs can be voted to be fixed - so developers get a taste of what users would like

github is an example
https://github.com/
I completely agree. I think that's a great idea. As a recent exemple, bugs have been reported concerning shutdown recycling in racy 5.22 and the latest slacko (latest as of this writing).

Maybe github would be overkill, given the community nature of Puppy. But a simple list with headers such as (thinking out loud, here):

Bug -- Bug date -- Extensive Description -- puplet -- derivative puplet(s) -- solved (Y/N) -- solved (date) -- author of fix -- link to or description of fix.

That should be simple enough to implement on a Puppy-related site. There already is an alternative forum. Why not add this?

To come back to my example, such a follow-up list would make it easy to spot what has been done to solve the problem.

Generally, a list like this would save people and developers lots of time and energy.

After all, this is PuppyLinux, not RabbitLinux (multiply-rapidly-Linux) nor GerbilLinux (round-and-round-in-carousel-Linux). It should be like the name says, and as it used to be: your best OS friend, intelligent and reliable.

My 2 cents. BFN.
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#16 Post by darkcity »

great idea, maybe its a simple adding some information to the thread title in the 'Bugs' section and adding sub forums for each version off Puppy (with an 'Other' forum for less popular derivatives).

I know we already use [solved], maybe using [confirmed] would be useful too. Possibly a [Feature request] option would be handy.

One problem is that only mods and original posters can change the title - maybe some extra mods allowed to change titles just in that sub forum?

:idea:

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Good thoughts

#17 Post by SilverPuppy »

If I were going to pick one, it would be Lucid Puppy. It supports virtually all modern hardware and a lot of older hardware. I am posting this from a Compaq Evo N410c with a 1.2GHz PIII processor and a 16MB ATI something-or-other video chipset. Puppy is installed to the hard drive (full install) and it runs perfectly. It also supports installing packages from the highly-popular Ubuntu repositories, and standalone .DEB packages, as well as the excellent .PET format. It has an attractive, clean, polished appearance, and an excellent feature set.

The fact that 5.2.8 is in its fourth bugfix update says that this is already recognized by the community. Why not make Lucid Puppy 5.2 the official LTS version of Puppy, and put nothing but stability development into that version? Focus the effort on perfection, and then as feature ideas come along, they can be added to a new Puppy, to be kept in alpha for a long time, then seriously tested as a beta for awhile, then finally released as stable several years down the road, once it has achieved the reliability of Lucid, and making it the new LTS version.

One of the great problems with Linux is the "herding cats" that is Linux development. Puppy seems to be the one distribution that could break the mold and really make a significant dent in MicroStupid's market share. I have been around Puppy for awhile, even contributing a tad bit of code, and have seen what a great community this is. The danger is in the last post: "Feature requests." In order for any product to become a LTS product, all feature requests MUST be deferred to a future version rather than shoved into the current, or you can never achieve a truly finished product, since new code and therefore new issues are constantly being introduced. Most of the cat herd hasn't realized this, or at least, hasn't developed the discipline to do this. Can we do this?

I think that Puppy with a LTS product would seriously begin to eat the lunch of some of the older, more famous Distros. I will post more about that soon. Look for a new forum entitled "Confessions of a Puppy cheater." I will start it basically with a blog post about my recent experiences with some *GASP* NON-PUPPY Linux! ;D

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A few things I think would greatly improve Lucid

#18 Post by SilverPuppy »

Here are a few things that I think should really be fixed in Lucid to make it friendlier for normal people:

1. The improper shutdown code that I contributed wasn't really totally polished, and wasn't used intact. It doesn't work at all in its present implementation. Because the system assumes UST on the RTC at boot, the superblock last write time is often in the future if you live West of Greenwich, which makes a quiet fsck fail. Either the clock needs to be set first, or I don't know what, but it doesn't work. I also had set it up to reboot after the fsck so it never dumped out at the # prompt, which is anathema to "normal people." This has been removed or broken in the current implementation, and I have yet to figure out which.

Enh.......I forget the rest. I'll post more later, perhaps in the right place. This gives a good example of a bug to squish.
Last edited by SilverPuppy on Sat 31 Mar 2012, 02:12, edited 1 time in total.

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Oh, one more thing.....

#19 Post by SilverPuppy »

I remembered another. I suppose this falls under new feature, but it is such a glaring problem that I think it should fall under the category of finishing an existing feature that only partially works.

When the Package manager installs a package, any files that already exist are overwritten. If this package is removed, they are then deleted, and nothing remains. This has crashed my install on at least one occasion. The package manager install script needs to make a list of files in the package, see if they already exist, and if they do, it needs to archive them with the uninstall logs. The uninstall script needs to then be modified to not only remove the new files, but also put the old ones back.

This is not a perfect solution, as it could open some interesting versioning cans of worms, but it would be a great improvement over leaving missing files upon uninstalls. Perhaps I should pursue this as its own thread.....I've toyed with doing it myself, but I'm not really that clever in bash, and someone who was could do it a lot more quickly, and probably better, too....

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Re: Oh, one more thing.....

#20 Post by jrb »

SilverPuppy wrote:When the Package manager installs a package, any files that already exist are overwritten. If this package is removed, they are then deleted, and nothing remains.
You must have a full install?

When you use frugal, livecd or usb installs no original files are ever deleted as they are contained in the puppy.sfs read-only file. This is the main reason I quit using full installs early on in my puppy career. I love the fact that no matter how badly I screw up :roll: the original operating system is intact and usable. :D

Forget full-installs. They are only for REALLY ram challenged machines.

Cheers, J

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