Carolina - 1.3

For talk and support relating specifically to Puppy derivatives
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bibzpu
Posts: 14
Joined: Fri 08 Jul 2011, 23:26

Puppy on chromebook

#1301 Post by bibzpu »

Below is my post at the Beginners Help forum:

My only computer for the time being is an Acer C720 chromebook running xubuntu in developer mode

My favorite puppy version (Carolina namely) boots up and runs fine off of a usb flash drive except for two important issues.

No sound. No touchpad (a usb-connected mouse works though).

I have very little programming experience.

If anyone can even point in the direction of how to modify puppy to have sound and track movement on a recent chromebook, please post.

This puppyite misses the sound of the bark and the touch of the tail.

Bibzpu

elroy

Re: Puppy on chromebook

#1302 Post by elroy »

bibzpu wrote:No sound. No touchpad (a usb-connected mouse works though).
For sound, open a terminal window and enter 'alsamixer' (without the single-quotes). Arrow right or left to move between the desired categories; arrow up or down to increase/decrease volume. Your volume may be muted by default. If the volume is muted (for example on the 'Master' track) no audio will be heard. Simply arrow over until it's highlighted, and then arrow-up to un-mute and increase the master volume. If your system uses jack or another type of sound system, you may want to referrer to the Saluki forum. When you're finished, click the 'x' on the upper right of the window to close and save your changes.

As far as the mouse touch-pad goes, ensure that the xf86-input-synaptics-1.5.0-i486.pet is installed (I'm currently using lina-lite-005, and it is included by default, and I'd bet a weeks wages that is also the case with Carolina-1.2, too). You can do this by opening the Puppy Package Manager (make sure you're connected to the internet). When the Package Manager fires up, enter xf86-input-synaptics into the search box, and click the button 'Find Pets'. From there click install, then download, and if you get warning messages to the effect that it'll be overwritten, then it's already installed; at that point you can cancel-out.

Once it's installed (xf86-input-synaptics-1.5.0-i486.pet), or rather, once that you've verified that it's installed, go to the main-menu button (the 'Windows' button), then 'Control Panel', then 'Desktop' and select 'Mouse and Touchpad'. Make sure that 'Device' is set to 'Synaptics Mouse'. Select the 'Touchpad' tab and ensure that 'Tap touchpad to click' is checked.

Edit: If you still don't have success, you may want to peruse the Saluki forum; many of these issues were solved previously with Saluki,. And being that Carolina is a Saluki derivative, you may find success with those methods.

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Geoffrey
Posts: 2355
Joined: Sun 30 May 2010, 08:42
Location: Queensland

#1303 Post by Geoffrey »

@elroy

Hi stranger hows it going, long time no hear, good to see your still lurking around :wink:
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ahfade8q4def1lq/signbot.gif[/img]

elroy

#1304 Post by elroy »

Geoffrey wrote:@elroy

Hi stranger hows it going, long time no hear, good to see your still lurking around :wink:
Going good...you need to pm me your pidgin account (and rg66's, too) to make contact. I somehow lost that..

Yeah, I'm still lurking...puppy is the bomb.

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Geoffrey
Posts: 2355
Joined: Sun 30 May 2010, 08:42
Location: Queensland

#1305 Post by Geoffrey »

elroy wrote:
Geoffrey wrote:@elroy

Hi stranger hows it going, long time no hear, good to see your still lurking around :wink:
Going good...you need to pm me your pidgin account (and rg66's, too) to make contact. I somehow lost that..

Yeah, I'm still lurking...puppy is the bomb.
Yeah, yahoo stopped working in pidgin, using Google talk now, I'll send you my info.

Cheers.
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ahfade8q4def1lq/signbot.gif[/img]

bibzpu
Posts: 14
Joined: Fri 08 Jul 2011, 23:26

#1306 Post by bibzpu »

Thanks for the ideas, elroy. I'll certainly give them a try.

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Geoffrey
Posts: 2355
Joined: Sun 30 May 2010, 08:42
Location: Queensland

#1307 Post by Geoffrey »

Updated repo.
smtube-2.1 (QT Search and download videos from YouTube)

smplayer-14.3.0 (QT A great MPlayer front-end)

copyq-2.1.0 (QT, A cut & paste history utility)

QuiteRSS-0.15.3 (QT QuiteRSS is a RSS/Atom feed reader written in C++/Qt4)

focuswriter-1.4.6.pet (Qt text writer)
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ahfade8q4def1lq/signbot.gif[/img]

gcmartin

#1308 Post by gcmartin »

@Geoffrey, @Elroy, @RG66 = The Wonderful World of Carolina.

Request: Could the next version bring MTP integration into the system, OOTB?

Anyway, currently loving it in Puppyland

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Geoffrey
Posts: 2355
Joined: Sun 30 May 2010, 08:42
Location: Queensland

#1309 Post by Geoffrey »

Updated repo, replaced AssaultCube as the old version no longer loaded internet servers, new version assaultcube-1.2.0.2
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ahfade8q4def1lq/signbot.gif[/img]

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Moat
Posts: 955
Joined: Tue 16 Jul 2013, 06:04
Location: Mid-mitten

#1310 Post by Moat »

Carolina 1.2 is simply the schizzle, IMHO! 8)

Been trying out a few more recent distros lately, and was especially interested in the new LTS release of Xubuntu 14.04 and how it (and others) compare to Carolina. And... meh. Carolina does pretty much all that it/they do, but faster/flawlessly from USB stick and is easier to setup, with all of the handy little tweak apps that you devs have included. After throwing dozens of apps at it, I only once ran across an issue involving 'Lina's older glibc(?) - trying to get TeeJay's Conky Manager to work - so no big deal, really.

Just outstanding!

That said - over the months I have ran into a few (minor) glitches that may or may not be directly related to my newb hack attempts at trying out different things - but I'll throw 'em out here anyways, in case some others have noticed similar issues (hopefully providing evidence that it's not purely my fault, after all! :) ). These issues seemed common on a few different frugal USB installs, running on various older (2005-ish) computers here...

1) PupsaveConfig doesn't work - one must enter the desired value (in my case '0', for no periodic save) in the ramsaveinterval line 9 of 'pup_event_frontend_d' in /sbin, to reflect the '0' as set/saved in Pupsaveconfig. Searching the forum indicates this is a somewhat common, older issue?

2) Initially, the "Run Command" from the default Xfce Applications Menu did not work (entering a command and pressing "enter" did nothing), but then seemed to function normally after the App Menu plugin was removed and re-installed to the panel a time or two (a moot point for me anyway, as I'm now using the super-nifty Whisker menu instead).

3) After some odd amount of normal use installing/uninstalling packages, the PPM seems to "break" somewhat - in that, out of the blue, it begins to always display the "error - package xxx failed to install", even though the application appears to install and run just fine. This has eventually been the case on three different 'Lina USB frugal installs I've done.

Interesting to note that, when a Puppy's PPM is working normally, there appears to be a period of time (maybe 5-6 seconds) during the install process where the CPU spikes as PPM goes through some kind of file cleanup/uninstall file writing or ?? - but once "broken", the Carolina PPM doesn't display this behavior - quickly throwing the error message instead. Maybe some important cleanup/data not being done/written? Dunno, but the installed apps seem to function normally.

4) The selected mouse cursor theme (Polar, in my case) appears to have difficulty loading on boot, defaulting to the small black cursor about every other boot - adding various 'sleep' times (of a few seconds) to the '0-cursor-theme' script in the /root/Startup folder has mostly appeared to fix the problem. I think... so far, so good, anyways.

5) Might be a Firefox 26 issue - selecting "Open containing folder" from Firefox's download manager toolbar button opens three instances of Thunar. I haven't been able to find much info regarding a fix (or even the problem, itself) whilst Googling around the 'net. Maybe a result of dragging my .mozilla folder out of the savefile space and symlinking back...? Odd, anyhow.

6) Not a Carolina issue, but the Xfce weather panel plugin only very ocassionally displays any data - and even then the data appears to be a bit out of date/erronous, compared to more local USA sources (Yahoo, Accuweather). Seems like the Norwegian source of data may not be too reliable - shame, really, as the plugin displays a very nice set of info at a very small cost in bandwidth.

Otherwise, lovin' it. Carolina is about as close a sub to my trusty ol' XP that I've run across, in hopping amongst a few dozen distros - Puppy and otherwise. Outstanding Puppy!

Bob
Attachments
snapshot2.jpg
Carolina 1.2 olive/sand desktop
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Geoffrey
Posts: 2355
Joined: Sun 30 May 2010, 08:42
Location: Queensland

#1311 Post by Geoffrey »

Moat wrote:Interesting to note that, when a Puppy's PPM is working normally, there appears to be a period of time (maybe 5-6 seconds) during the install process where the CPU spikes as PPM goes through some kind of file cleanup/uninstall file writing or ?? - but once "broken", the Carolina PPM doesn't display this behavior - quickly throwing the error message instead. Maybe some important cleanup/data not being done/written? Dunno, but the installed apps seem to function normally.
It does take a while to do things like checking for missing library files, it doesn't seem any slower than other pups I've tried.
The selected mouse cursor theme (Polar, in my case) appears to have difficulty loading on boot, defaulting to the small black cursor about every other boot - adding various 'sleep' times (of a few seconds) to the '0-cursor-theme' script in the /root/Startup folder has mostly appeared to fix the problem. I think... so far, so good, anyways.
That was a problem we had sometime ago, rg66 worked on that and I'm sure it was sorted.

5) Might be a Firefox 26 issue - selecting "Open containing folder" from Firefox's download manager toolbar button opens three instances of Thunar. I haven't been able to find much info regarding a fix (or even the problem, itself) whilst Googling around the 'net. Maybe a result of dragging my .mozilla folder out of the savefile space and symlinking back...? Odd, anyhow.
Your right, there is a problem, it may be due to the .mozilla configuration, I think it's to do with exo-open being assigned to open files and folders, it seems to be being called a number of times.??

6) Not a Carolina issue, but the Xfce weather panel plugin only very ocassionally displays any data - and even then the data appears to be a bit out of date/erronous, compared to more local USA sources (Yahoo, Accuweather). Seems like the Norwegian source of data may not be too reliable - shame, really, as the plugin displays a very nice set of info at a very small cost in bandwidth.
I have that also, the problem in the clock synchronization, I setup " Psync time server synchronizer " for autostart, but it don't wait for a network connection thought it works on restarting x, I added to the timesync.sh in Startup some code written by mavrothal, so now the timesync.sh looks like this.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
#Psync Time Synchroniser Autorun 
#Synchronises system and hardware clock to a public time server
#Robert Lane 2010 2011(tasmod)

IFCONFIG="`ifconfig | grep '^[pwe]' | grep -v 'wmaster'`"
while [ "$IFCONFIG" != "" ]; do
   sleep 1
    ping -c 1 8.8.8.8
    if [ $? -eq 0 ];then
      break
   else
      ping -c 1 www.google.com
      if [ $? -eq 0 ];then
         break
      fi
   fi
done 


function iswireless  {
      while [ -z "$ESSID" ]
        do
         ESSID=`iwconfig | grep 'ESSID'`
        continue
        done
        sleep 15  #Just to make sure connection is stable.
        exec /usr/local/psync/psyncfunc $TIMEPLACE
 }
 
 TIMEPLACE=`cat /usr/local/psync/setcountry | tail -n 1`
 
 iswifi=`iwconfig | grep 'wlan'`
 
 if [ -z "$iswifi" ]
  then
   exec /usr/local/psync/psyncfunc $TIMEPLACE
  else
   iswireless
  fi      
I've recently updated the repo with a few items also.
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ahfade8q4def1lq/signbot.gif[/img]

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Moat
Posts: 955
Joined: Tue 16 Jul 2013, 06:04
Location: Mid-mitten

#1312 Post by Moat »

Hi Geoffrey - thanks for the reply...
Geoffrey wrote: It does take a while to do things like checking for missing library files, it doesn't seem any slower than other pups I've tried.
Not that it was slower, but that - after the PPM "breaks" - if anything, it seems faster than before - as it appears to be skipping those "things" (i.e. - checking for missing library files, etc.) because of the supposed "error"... yet the installed packages end up working fine. Just odd that PPM broke, yet seems faster than normal.

Thanks for the Psync autostart timesync.sh script. I gave it a try, and although the weather plugin would then work, my (UTC) time was now wrong, and correcting it with the "Set date and time" utility then borked the weather plugin again. :shock: Also, the script appeared to consume a constant additional 3-4% CPU on my system (dialup - not wireless)... :?:

I think I found an easy workaround, though - I used the Country Settings wizard to set the time to other than UTC Hardware Clock (US/Michigan in my case) and re-ran Psync (without autostart) to line things up - and now my system's time reads correctly and the weather plugin works, even after rebooting. 8) It looks like the plugin gets a bit confused syncronizing between a client's UTC timezone and the downloaded data's timestamp, and therefore rejects the data as "out of date". But seems not a problem (here, anyways) when running other that UTC. Cool!

Oops - didn't even think to check the BIOS time settings, tho...

I'm no coder, but I'll fiddle around with the Firefox/exo-open bug as I have time, and see if I can come up with anything useful.

Thanks!

Bob

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Moat
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Joined: Tue 16 Jul 2013, 06:04
Location: Mid-mitten

#1313 Post by Moat »

Moat wrote: I'm no coder, but I'll fiddle around with the Firefox/exo-open bug as I have time, and see if I can come up with anything useful.
Found a fix -

In directory /root/.local/share/applications/ - Create Document > Empty File and name it -

Code: Select all

defaults.list
Open the new file and paste -

Code: Select all

[Default Applications]
inode/directory=Thunar.desktop;
Save and exit.

Firefox should now open the proper single instance only of Thunar when right-clicking "Open Containing Folder" from the Download Manager toolbutton drop-down list. Works for me on two different installs... :)

Bob

chosenbygrace
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun 04 May 2014, 07:51

Re: Carolina - 1.2

#1314 Post by chosenbygrace »

Hi, I've been doing very thorough testing of various linux distros, and the most usable I have found is Knoppix, but, it might have been yours had the internet worked for me. It seems your OS, seems, can't use clear wireless modems. I have a supposed 4g one, though it might be a lie and really be 3g, but anyways, it's one of those, and your OS can't connect through it.

Also, like knoppix, is there a simple way to make your OS a permanence-install onto USB? because it is cumbersome saving some file somewhere and hoping the changes are saved rather than it simply acting like a harddrive with instant changes made to it.

I'm hating knoppix though because it's creator seems intent to not make obvious changes, like forcing everyone to use military time, and on top of that the clock can't be changed and worse it's almost always the wrong time. Even installing time-syncing apps doesn't help nor getting world clocks for like, firefox because those clocks sync to the system clock, stupidly. It amazes me linux as no atomic clock widget when it's supposed to be the most science-friendly OS. There's other grating things about it but I'll spare you.

Btw, if you make a new version can you make one that is able to use the full resolution of an ASUS VS238-HP monitor, because being stuck at 1280 x 720 makes my monitor a waste of money and is embarrassingly low tech. Any Windows using friends I have over would surely think I was stupid for using Linux if I couldn't get something simple on Windows to work like 1080p.

User avatar
Geoffrey
Posts: 2355
Joined: Sun 30 May 2010, 08:42
Location: Queensland

#1315 Post by Geoffrey »

Moat wrote:
Moat wrote: I'm no coder, but I'll fiddle around with the Firefox/exo-open bug as I have time, and see if I can come up with anything useful.
Found a fix -

In directory /root/.local/share/applications/ - Create Document > Empty File and name it -

Code: Select all

defaults.list
Open the new file and paste -

Code: Select all

[Default Applications]
inode/directory=Thunar.desktop;
Save and exit.

Firefox should now open the proper single instance only of Thunar when right-clicking "Open Containing Folder" from the Download Manager toolbutton drop-down list. Works for me on two different installs... :)

Bob
Thanks Moat, that fixed it, there is a defaults.list in /usr/share/applications, so I added inode/directory=Thunar.desktop there instead.
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ahfade8q4def1lq/signbot.gif[/img]

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Moat
Posts: 955
Joined: Tue 16 Jul 2013, 06:04
Location: Mid-mitten

#1316 Post by Moat »

Geoffrey wrote:... there is a defaults.list in /usr/share/applications, so I added inode/directory=Thunar.desktop there instead.
Ahh... even better/simpler/cleaner. Thanks 8)

Carolina is now danged near perfection!

Bob

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Geoffrey
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Joined: Sun 30 May 2010, 08:42
Location: Queensland

#1317 Post by Geoffrey »

Updated repo with a few applications.

tor-browser-3.6-lina.sfs (pre-configured web browser to protect your anonymity)

scratch-1.4.0.1 (With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations)

scratch2-2.0 (AdobeAIR Scratch 2 off line editor)

QuiteRSS-0.16.0 (QT QuiteRSS is a RSS/Atom feed reader written in C++/Qt4)

MasterPDFEditor-1.9.25-lina (QT Master PDF Editor for Desktop Linux is provided by Code Industry Ltd free for non-commercial use.)

LightZone-4.0.0 (Java Digital Darkroom Software - Post-processing software for digital photos)

HathiDownloadHelper-1.0.8 (QT Assistant to download books from Hathitrust.org)
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ahfade8q4def1lq/signbot.gif[/img]

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Geoffrey
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Joined: Sun 30 May 2010, 08:42
Location: Queensland

#1318 Post by Geoffrey »

Added a few more apps to the repo.

filezilla-3.8.0 (Download and upload files via FTP, FTPS and SFTP)

tintii-2.8.2 (tintii selective colour)

urbanlightscape-1.3.2 (Use Urban Lightscape to correct under- and overexposed parts of an image)


All three have wxGTK as a dependency, previously Filezilla and Tintii were using wxWidgets from the repo which I have now removed.

Tintii and Urban Lightscape are pay for apps for Windows and Mac but are free for linux.

http://www.indii.org/software/tintii/download

http://www.indii.org/software/urbanlightscape/download
Attachments
urban_lightscape.jpg
(47.55 KiB) Downloaded 661 times
tintii.jpg
(66.68 KiB) Downloaded 687 times
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ahfade8q4def1lq/signbot.gif[/img]

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Geoffrey
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Joined: Sun 30 May 2010, 08:42
Location: Queensland

#1319 Post by Geoffrey »

Another qt app in the repo, Ascii Design
Attachments
ascii_design.jpg
(31.32 KiB) Downloaded 644 times
[b]Carolina:[/b] [url=http://smokey01.com/carolina/pages/recent-repo.html]Recent Repository Additions[/url]
[img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ahfade8q4def1lq/signbot.gif[/img]

ac2011
Posts: 134
Joined: Wed 09 Feb 2011, 08:22

run Precise apps in Carolina

#1320 Post by ac2011 »

You might be interested in this. I haven't tested it in Carolina yet, but it works fine in Fluppy which is even older:

"Run the very latest apps on old Puppies"
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=94064

I'm interested in feedback from users of different puppies. I've been using Chrome 37 in Fluppy this way, with Flash 14.

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