Mini Review of Tahrpup-6.0 PAE

[B.K. Johnson]

Mini-review of tahrpup-6.0 CE

First impression of tahrpup-6.0 is that it is stable, has the staple set of puppy core programs plus at least one that is not normally installed out of the box in puppy - vlc-2.1.4. Mine is the PAE version running from a 8 GB flash drive as a frugal install on a box with 4GB RAM. It has been up for over 3 hours while I browse with Palemoon with an intermittent connection, type this review in Leafpad, play some mp3s in vlc and fail to install Seamonkey via quickpet. All this before I do a pupsave. (The failed download was gracefully done).

On first booting I was surprised to see QuickSetup first run dialog sitting atop the desktop - a nice and sensible change. You might get the impression that there isn't much that's new but there is. There is under the hood the "save to folder" and "kernel swapping" features which I have not yet used. What you do see is a revised quickpet accessible from Menu=>Setup, 666philb has expanded the tabs to 11 categories: Info, Browsers, Internet, Audio, Video, Graphics, Games, Office&Other, Useful pets, Desktop ans Drivers. There are many and popular selections within each of these categories. And if you don't find a pet you want among them then the PPM is just a click away. You can also jump to the forum, access previous bug-fixes and woof. Many users are going to find the expanded quickpet very convenient.

There are a couple aesthetic changes I'd like to see in quickpet.
1. Rename the button "Exit". "Change" may suggest that the user wants to change a completed action. Exit just suggest the end of the session whether or not anything was cone.
2. On some pages, for example, Browsers, Internet and Audio, center-align the icons, not the text. With all that empty space, a one line sentence describing the pet could be considered.

My big grief was my inablity to connect to the internet because ndiswrapper did not work for my adapter. This is my fourth distro with this problem; all have had to be retrofitted with ndiswrapper pets for the kernel used in each particular distro. It required me to pester community members and developers in the forum or via PM fo build the pets. I wish I didn't have to hassle anybody. Asking how to compile it to avoid the pestering has fallen on deaf ears. As if there is a conspiracy of silence on this issue. Developers need to agree on an approach to ensure ndiswrapper works out of the box. I may be the lone voice repeatedly crying out but there are many Windows users who come to Puppyland with adapters that don't have Linux drivers, get exasperated and leave. Devs, make the transition easy for them, either by compiling ndiswrapper in the kernel, providing a pet with the distro or for the technically minded, source and HowTo compile/make instructions to create their own pet.

When I did not have a working ndiswrapper, I used frisbee/wpsupplicant with a flaky connection. It was excruciatingly annoying to see ugly pop-up windows with the intermittent warnings that wlan0 is down, Requesring IP address ..., Acquiring ..., 1.192.168.1.1 is acquired on. The big ugly boxes detract from the overall professional look and feel of the distro. Advise but not so intrusively. [Acknowledged that this is out of the control of the distro developer.]

Finally, the desktop. The cool blue background is cool but get rid of those dogs on the desktop Phil; provide a nice set of alternative wallpapers.

B.K. Johnson

[666philb]

hi B.K. Johnson,

thanks for the review, i'll answer some of your points below...

seamonkey from quickpet is installing fine for me

the exit button in quickpet says 'cancel' but could be changed to exit

you do get 'tooltip' descriptions of the packages in quickpet if you hover the mouse over them, some of these could probably be better. it would be good to 'gettext' quickpet for non english speakers. (any takers?)

ndiswrapper was included in tahrpup, but i included the wrong one in the noPAE iso, and due to the way i included it needs 'depmod -a' in a terminal to work. when discovered a note was added to the main tahrpup thread in the outstanding issues section (ssecond post), with instructions and a .pet for noPAE.

your request for instructions on how to compile it hasn't fallen on deaf ears, i just haven't replied to your PM yet as i've been busy.

you can turn the info boxes off in frisbee .... there's a tick box

wallpapers are always a bone of contention as different people like different ones... i'm personally happy with tahrpups looks, the other wallpapers included are a kind of history lesson ... puppy 1 bootloader, then tahr alpha, then beta.. musher0 posted a link on the tahr thread for wallpapers https://launchpad.net/~atareao/+archive ... .0_all.deb

thanks

666philb

[B.K. Johnson]

666philb
You wrote:

seamonkey from quickpet is installing fine for me

Same here too! I had no problem with Seamomkey. In fact my intent was to commend tahrpup, quickpet and nluug for their cooperation in producing a graceful exit when my flaky connection quit during the seamonkey download.

you do get 'tooltip' descriptions of the packages in quickpe

Did not notice until now but what's there is not fullsome enough. How about just expanding the tooltip info? That would be much easier for you I think.

Re ndiswtapper, the issue in tahrpup is resolved. I was more concerned about the recurrence and the need for the developers to agree on a common approach in light of more Winsows refugees with non-Linux adapters. I suppose this is more an appeal to 01micko and mavrathol.

your request for instructions on how to compile it hasn't fallen on deaf ears, i just haven't replied to your PM yet as i've been busy.

Happy to hear. Anxious to try.

you can turn the info boxes off in frisbee .... there's a tick box

Now that I have ndiswrapper working I don't expect to use frisbee but I'll file this tip away. Thanks.

musher0 posted a link on the tahr thread for wallpapers ...

Attempted installation failed. I'll try again.


B.K. Johnson