Slacko 5.7 final - 8 March 2014

[majorfoo]

Full install of PAE version on sda4 partition
Changed browser from firefox to seamonkey
added audacious, bibletime, wbar and few other pets
Everything working - no problems to report at present time

Looking good -
Thanks for all your hard work on this project

[nooby]

Thanks Micko! I am so embarrassed. I still fail to get
if I is best suited with PAE or NON-PAE. I don't get what it is about.

I have a Desktop HP/Compaw it use the AMD x2 old cpu computer
built around 2007 or something but works good for my purposes?

I did down load both but want the good advice from you guys.

Is this a NON-PAE machine? it is 64bit if that is important.

Now to test it I report back.

[debernardis]

Hello all,
in order to upgrade, I copied on my Slacko 5.6 usb stick (which is my main driver at work ) the following files from the extracted 5.7 image:

initrd.gz
vmlinux
puppy_slacko_5.7.0.sfs

Am I right? Everything seems to work so far.
Thank you very much for everything!

EDIT: don't want to get you in a hurry, but, where do I get kernel source (and possibly headers?) pet? Need them for virtualbox

[nooby]

debernardis I should let the guys that know things to answer
but my general experience is that one can get in trouble.

better to replace or start new Dir with slacko 5.7 wall to wall
with the old one but if you are on a small USB then delete all the
old files for slacko and put in the new ones and start all over.

You can save bookmarks from 5.6 separate by placing them on
the USB ? Okay over to those who know. I tryed to upgrade now
and it did not went well. So I started new and that went well.

AFAIK I am now in the Non-PAE OS and that went well. Sound
and Graphics and Firefox and so on.

[mavrothal]

EDIT: don't want to get you in a hurry, but, where do I get kernel source (and possibly headers?) pet? Need them for virtualbox

Headers in devx. Source SFS in http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... -slacko14/ and mirrors (as the first post says )

[debernardis]

EDIT: don't want to get you in a hurry, but, where do I get kernel source (and possibly headers?) pet? Need them for virtualbox

Headers in devx. Source SFS in http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... -slacko14/ and mirrors (as the first post says )

Thank you very much. I needed that little kick. This forum confirms to be a nice community

[DC]

Hi,
Does anybody have a version of VLC with DVB working in slacko 5.7?

My normal pet "vlc-2.0.3_twoflower.pet" won't even open.

thanks

dc

[Jim1911]

@nooby

As I understand it, the main advantage of PAE is the ability to access ram memory. So if you have more than 3GB it should be more suitable otherwise stick with non-PAE.

[nooby]

Ah yes now that you remind me that is the purpose of PAE.
I have exactly 3GB RAM

[slick-puppy]

I did a full install of Slacko 5.7 final and so far everything seems to be working good here.

I compiled and installed some modified dvb modules and installed some modified dvb headers (For The higher bitrate feeds) and it looks like my dvb apps are going to be fine also.

Thank you for your time and trouble it took to get this done.

The Screen Shot is Galaxy 28 3900 H 29861 CBS Feed:

[gcmartin]

FYI

Just a note: Anyone can use PAE or non-PAE and will get identical packages, services, and subsystems NO MATTER how little or how much RAM you have.

PAE takes advantage of a feature in the Intel/AMD CPUs to allow RAM access. A few PC CPUs dont have this feature, yet most in the world do. PAE's advantage is that it doesn't care how much RAM you have as the hardware will make all of the RAM the PC has available to your PCs.

The original 486 architecture did NOT have this additional feature. In 1995 AMD, first, Intel next, began building PCs with the feature.

BOTH non-PAE and PAE distros, again, provide exactly the same operations, look, feel, services, subsystems and applications! EXACTLY the same. And, you will NOT lose or gain anything magical whether you use one distro or the other.

From the system's ability to let one achieve a work objective, neither denies that.

There have been measurements all over the PC world from 1996 - 2010, including here in Puppyland which have shown that PAE has NO negative impact versus non-PAE if your PC is built with the CPUs that contain it. In fact, all assert that the hardware does what its suppose to, while the OSes, in some cases show improvements with PAE operation on PCs with less than 1GB RAM. This information is published all over the internet. Some show much gains, other show little, but all show that the architecture works. And, authors of these reports have feelings about this too...some accurate...some not so. There are even some that points to some words as having some meaning that they perceive as correct, while the industry has measured and found the hardware performance proper and without penalty.

Architecturally, PAE hardware will access ALL RAM no matter how little or how much you have. PCs which do NOT have the feature cannot present much more than 3.5GB to the OS. That's all there is.

Advice: If you have a system which can run both distros, YOU CHOOSE and feel comfortable that what you choose will run to meet your needs.

Developers: Have made their distros with both in some cases as they recognize that some community members have PC whose RAM exceeds 3GB. As such, they help the community by providing the PAE version knowing full well that PAE works on over 99% of the PCs while not providing any negative impact to use. They do so to benefit users.

In reality, RAM consideration should NOT enter the discussion as it has been shown to not matter in measurements.

This is post's subject is published, again, because the topic continues to be a hotbed for some and it really shouldn't be. If you have a PAE PC...You choose either distro. If not, you have NO choice.

FYI

[James C]

There have been measurements all over the PC world from 1996 - 2010, including here in Puppyland which have shown that PAE has NO negative impact versus non-PAE if your PC is built with the CPUs that contain it. In fact, all assert that the hardware does what its suppose to, while the OSes, in some cases show improvements with PAE operation on PCs with less than 1GB RAM. This information is published all over the internet. Some show much gains, other show little, but all show that the architecture works. And, authors of these reports have feelings about this too...some accurate...some not so. There are even some that points to some words as having some meaning that they perceive as correct, while the industry has measured and found the hardware performance proper and without penalty.

In the interest of fairness all information should be presented.

Yes,there are studies and tests that conclude that PAE has no negative impact on computer performance. However,there are plenty of studies and tests that do show a negative impact. Such as...
http://askubuntu.com/questions/151068/f ... vs-non-pae

But this requires slightly more overhead over non-PAE, which can lead to slightly decreased performance.
Here's a very simple explanation: in non-PAE mode, a 32-bit CPU must lookup (access) two tables to access a physical memory address; in PAE-mode, it must lookup three tables to do so. The one additional lookup requires some (very small) extra time, thus imposing additional overhead.
At the end of this answer are two images from the Wikipedia PAE article, illustrating the above point.
NX/XD bit: The PAE kernel also supports the No-eXecute/eXecute-Disable bit on 64-bit processors; this can help prevent some kinds of virus/malicious attacks (buffer overflows), but IMO this doesn't matter much when choosing 32-bit kernels for Ubuntu.
...but in practice this overhead is negligible (almost nothing)...
Phoronix has done a number of tests over the years which show that on systems with 4GB or less, the PAE kernel may be at most approximately 5% slower than the non-PAE kernel. This is only for a specific test application; the usual difference is less than 1%.
Tests for 12.04 LTS - 8 GB system!
Tests for 11.04 - 4 and 8GB systems

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... 3264&num=1

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... ae64&num=1

Phoronix has done a number of tests over the years which show that on systems with 4GB or less, the PAE kernel may be at most approximately 5% slower than the non-PAE kernel.

Even 1% could be significant on a low-ram computer.

Red Hat is fairly well-known in the Linux world...

http://people.redhat.com/nmurray/RHEL-2 ... epaper.pdf

The performance impact is highly workload dependent, but on a fairly typical kernel
compile, the PAE penalty works out to be around a 1% performance hit on Red
Hat’s test boxes. Testing with various other workload mixes has given performance
hits ranging from 0% to 10%.

There's lots of evidence to support both sides of the matter but let the user decide for themselves.But to say,or omit, that there is any evidence of a performance penalty is disingenuous.

[Puppus Dogfellow]

Slacko Puppy 5.7 PAE and Non-PAE plus respective devx.sfs mirrored

[James C]

There have been measurements all over the PC world from 1996 - 2010, including here in Puppyland which have shown that PAE has NO negative impact versus non-PAE if your PC is built with the CPUs that contain it.

Using absolutes when evidence exists to the contrary may cause these little disagreements. Users are free to choose and use the version thay want....but full information should be disclosed.

Hopefully on to other more important things......

There are even some that points to some words as having some meaning that they perceive as correct, while the industry has measured and found the hardware performance proper and without penalty.

[PaulR]

My savefile problem has returned with 5.7. As I mentioned it further up this thread I thought I'd post here rather than in Bug Reports.

Booting off a USB, saving using the defaults (admin, 512mb, no encrypt etc) to sda1 (formatted ext4 and having just Linux Mint installed). Tried saving Puppy in ext2 and ext4 format with and without additional characters in the savefile name.

This is the non-PAE version on a Thinkpad T42 1GB - Puppy isn't installed in any way.

Not sure if this is any help, I'm afraid I don't know where to start looking...

Code: Select all

▶—— /initrd/tmp/bootinit.log ——◀

'FATAL' messages may be insignificant.

hwclock: can't open '/dev/misc/rtc': No such file or directory
mount: mounting none on /proc/bus/usb failed: No such file or directory
Bypass looking for vmlinuz on sda1
missing argument to `-iname'
missing argument to `-iname'
missing argument to `-iname'
missing argument to `-iname'

I can mount and browse the slackosave file I created at first shutdown and it all seems to be ok.

Paul

[gcmartin]

No problem @James C. As I have expressed over and over which you dont like. But, there is much accuracy in what I shared. Again my last sentence summarizes, saying,

... This post's subject is published, again, because the topic continues to be a hotbed for some and it really shouldn't be. If you have a PAE PC...You choose either distro. If not, you have NO choice.

Doing my best to put this whole discussion behind us on what runs on 32bit PCs. You show RedHat, and in the past I have shown both Intel and AMD. In fact they produced lab reports as far back as 1995 when they presented to Industry leaders showing no loss and in some cases greater benefit. You believe whomever you want and you are free to interpret as well.

Let's move on.

You and I help developers when we test their creations to validate functionality and stability.

My advice to membership who have questions on this remains the same. "You choose! And in 99% of the cases, you can use either with no expectation of penalty while getting stable service."

[j3nnydeguzman]

Hello, I tried using linux and downloaded slacko 5.6 and I noticed that website texts appear different from browsing with chrome in windows.
Does anybody know how I could make my chrome browser look the same as when browsing with windows xp?
Here's a comparison:

windows:


slacko:


Also, do I need to install some drivers? Maybe NVIDIA? Because, it feels like a brand new installed windows XP without graphics drivers installed yet.


And is there a virtualbox sfs already for slacko 5.7? I downloaded virtualbox-4.3.8.sfs from http://shinobar.server-on.net/puppy/opt/ but it doesn't work with 5.7 so i moved back to 5.6... It says problem with kernel something and need build module..

[nooby]

I've testedSlacko 5.7 and are very disappointed.
Failed to find the trusty old WMPlayer or what the name is.
I fail to understand P-music. Too complicated to get for this newbie.

It takes forever to load a mp3 pr mp4 file and are not tintuitive to use for me.

I know Zigbert as a very friendly caring person so no criticism to him at all.

His preferences and mine are totally opposite. I did not find wmplayer
in the repo either not even VLC player. Which is demanding for me to use
but many times easier than P-misc and loads fast and not super slow.

So I stick with using Lucid which have wmplayer already installed?

Lucy worked effortlessly playing almost any kind of music files
that I fed it with, no delay or problem.

[zigbert]

nooby
You are absolutely right that pMusic is made to fit my personal request. On the other hand, most of the added code is to support others requests. And it would be very kind of you if you could offer some time to make pMusic better. I am very comfortable with the fact that you prefer another player, but still, - disappointed users are those who can help me to take the right decisions of how pMusic should act. Sometimes it is all about a developers choice of how things should work, but still; apps may evolve to a stage that pleases both of us.

I would be thankful if you describe your disappointment in the pMusic forum thread. Please be as specific as possible. Remember - we might have different ways to do things, and maybe I haven't seen the way you do things. It does not take forever to load a mp3 for me, so obviously we don't press the same buttons.


Sigmund

[playdayz]

IMHO, Pmusic is an extraordinary achievement. It has been a treat to watch it develop over the years. The only problem I ever had with it is that because it is written with scripts instead of compiled it cannot (or could not) handle very large music collections (mine is around 7,000 tracks). I have mentioned this to Zigbert and he is quite forthright about this. I have always wondered if those scripts could be somehow compiled. Anyway, I usually used Audacious, which was/is available for Lucid and probably is or could be available for Slacko. I *think* nooby might mean "Gnome Mplayer" which was the default music player in some versions of Lucid. Gnome Mplayer is present in Slacko as the default video player and could be set as the default music player.

Add: Menu -> Setup -> Default Applications Chooser -> Audio Player (pull down menu and choose Gnome Mplayer).