eBoxPup - a custom eBox-2300 Puppy - suggestions needed

[pakt]

There have been several discussions on the forum about Puppy and what is probably the smallest x86-based PC available today - the eBox-2300 (also known as the MicroClient Jr & TU-40). ( See especially thread http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=13528 )

Raffy has already created isos for two versions of MiniPup for low-spec PCs with a minimum of 128MB RAM. One is based on Puppy 2.00 barebones, the other on Puppy 2.12 with a development version of HV3 as the browser. Link to Raffy's MiniPups: http://bexa.org/pup

What has been suggested is to make a special version of Puppy customized to run just on the eBox-2300. As this PC has very limited CPU power (a 200MHz low power Vortex86) and 128MB RAM - no hard disk, Puppy runs from a CF card, we need to come up with apps that will still run (relatively) briskly on this PC.

I've started this thread as a place to collect ideas and suggestions for a Puppy version we can call 'eBoxPup'.

Ok, so what should this Puppy contain? The floor is yours

Paul

[klhrevolutionist]

I am on board with this, good job for raffy & tm. !!

My personal view is that openoffice is a must have, only thing is we need a customized version for puppy and this ebox seriously !

Secondly we need to consider how to give the hv3 crew some help for plugins.
A browser is great but people like to surf the web not surf the dead...

Thats it !


**MicroClient**
You need scable to make more portable, no need for monitor.....
Think about a customized keyboard hotkeys that will be easy for puppy/linux newbies. Easy, portable and accessible !

[darkerror05]

One way that you could make this machine useful and also fast I would try using seamonkey for gtk1. GTK1 is much smaller and faster then GTK2. This may be true for other applications. The more apps that are GTK1 versus 2 the faster the machine can be.

Another great idea would be to look at DSL(DamnSmallLinux)'s package list seeing that that project has taken alot of thought into getting the smallest and lightest apps possible.

Finally someone should compile a kernel for that system that only loads the needed modules and drivers for that hardware.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/releases/ <-- GTK1 seamonkey
http://damnsmalllinux.org/applications.html <--DSL app list
http://damnsmalllinux.org/applications.html <--DSL package list

[pakt]

A good, fast browser must be the number 1 application for the eBox. I don't want to start a browser war (everyone seems to have their own favorite). What is essential here is that we use a browser that is responsive on the eBox, yet provides most of the usual features. Also it must work with internet banks. Just that eliminates quite a few browsers.

This thread Maximum web browser, minimum size has a discussion on this.

Neither Seamonkey nor Firefox are responsive on the eBox. Both take take ~27s to start after they have been run once - the first run taking about twice as long. Also there is a noticable delay (~1s) when a key is pressed before something happens.

I took up tempestuous' idea of trying Opera 5.05 on the eBox and was pleasantly surprised - first start 7s, subsequent starts 4s And it was responsive - no delay after pressing a key. Rendering was also notably faster.

Of course there is the question of Opera 5.05 not being open source. This is the free ad-sponsored version. However, the only ad that shows is an Opera image and it doesn't seem to change. MU suggested "replace the AD-gif in /root/.opera/... with a puppy.gif and write-protect it" or it might be more appropriate to leave the Opera image as an acknowledgement to the company - just write-protect it to prevent any other possible ads showing up.

Tempestuous says he can do his banking with this browser. If we are willing to use Opera, then I think this version may just be the most suitable browser for the eBox. Thoughts, anyone?

Paul

[pakt]

Gxine is another problem on the eBox - it is resource hungry and takes a long time to start. Forget playing videos with it - even playing .wma audio will make it stutter.

Dougal made this suggestion to me in a PM: "Xfmedia uses libxine and is more lightweight and simple -- if you're willing to keep libxine."

Also "If you're getting rid of libxine and you still want a music player (and not xmms), you can try Gqmpeg --it's a frontend for mpg321 and ogg123. I posted a dotpup a couple of months ago."

If we still want to try playing video, Dougal suggests "Are you completely dropping video playing? I've got a tiny (9k) command-line player that plays mpeg video, which can be used as the default command in Rox… it uses SDL and smpeg, which might be useful for other things."

I think it may be a good idea to test some of these apps on the eBox. Here is a link to the Gqmpeg dotpup: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=12405
It is compiled for 2.10. I'll give it a try on 2.12.

The mpeg video command-line player could also be interesting to try. Perhaps Dougal can make a dotpup for testing in 2.12?

Paul

[raffy]

Pakt:

I took up tempestuous' idea of trying Opera 5.05 on the eBox and was pleasantly surprised

Thanks for trying that advise from Tempestuous quickly. I see no problem using Opera. At the time of Opera 5+, it is still not free, but now it is. Plus, its performance in downloading (especially when intermittent disconnections are present) can't be rivaled by other browsers.

The Flash version to include with it should be an issue, though - or whether Flash should be included at all. In schools, though, Flash would be needed.

[pakt]

One way that you could make this machine useful and also fast I would try using seamonkey for gtk1. GTK1 is much smaller and faster then GTK2. This may be true for other applications. The more apps that are GTK1 versus 2 the faster the machine can be.

From the Seamonkey homepage, it seems that all versions of Seamonkey, including 1.0.6, use GTK1 - "GTK 1.2.x (1.2.5 preferred)".

Another great idea would be to look at DSL(DamnSmallLinux)'s package list seeing that that project has taken alot of thought into getting the smallest and lightest apps possible.

The emelFM file manager with the popular two-pane design might be good to consider as standard in eBoxPup. Also replacing Geany with Beaver (Geany is very slow on the eBox).

Finally someone should compile a kernel for that system that only loads the needed modules and drivers for that hardware.

It may not be worth recompiling the kernel as that would probably break compatibility with 'standard' Puppy. However zdrv_xxx.sfs can be cut down, e.g. all but 'sis' can be removed from the video modules. Also all but one wired network driver can be removed. Many other modules can be removed in the same way.

Paul

[pakt]

Talking about the 'sis' video driver - has anyone been able to use Xvesa at a higher resolution than 800x600 on the eBox?

When I try 1024x768, my modern TFT panel complains of an out-of-bounds vertical (refresh) frequency: 86.8Hz. The panel is only capable of 55 - 75Hz. I don't believe there are too many monitors or panels that can handle 86.8Hz

That brings me to the next controversial item: Xvesa vs. Xorg. Xorg, using the 'sis' video module, works great on the eBox, even at 1024x768. I haven't done any benchmarking, but I believe Xorg is also quite a bit faster than Xvesa. The reason I believe this is that the 'sis' video driver is optimized for that chip whereas Xvesa is a generic driver using the 'least common denominator' approach - it works for most video hardware, just not very well.

What experiences do other people have with Xvesa on the eBox?

[drongo]

I can think of a niche use for these units. I need to be able to monitor and record ethernet network traffic for analysis of system problems.

I need a small unit which can be placed inside customer's technical racks. Obviously, I'd need to add an external USB hard-drive. The software I'd need would be (at a minimum) Wireshark, VNC (or some other remote desktop app) and all the usual networking utilities (ping, telnet etc, but I think they all come as standard even on cut-down linuxes like Puppy), some form of browser (for control interfaces - not browsing internet). Be nice if it supported stuff like https, ssh, an SNMP browser.

I realise there are lots of network security/monitoring live-CDs around and that some of them are very good. I've had trouble, however, getting most of them to run on older and/or less powerful hardware.

jcoder24 was going to develop a "network admin" Puppy, but I think others dissuaded him by pointing out how time-consuming it was to support a project like that. Seems like an ideal use for a small unit like eBox-2300 to me. You don't need fancy graphics or hardware for most of these apps. (Not true in my case as I'd also like to be able to have something like VideoLAN/VLC on there, but that would just be a "nice to have".)

Or am I in a group of one with these requests/suggestions? (Not that that's a problem.)

[pakt]

The software I'd need would be (at a minimum) Wireshark, VNC (or some other remote desktop app) and all the usual networking utilities (ping, telnet etc, but I think they all come as standard even on cut-down linuxes like Puppy), some form of browser (for control interfaces - not browsing internet). Be nice if it supported stuff like https, ssh, an SNMP browser.

Seems like an ideal use for a small unit like eBox-2300 to me. You don't need fancy graphics or hardware for most of these apps. (Not true in my case as I'd also like to be able to have something like VideoLAN/VLC on there, but that would just be a "nice to have".)

drongo, I think that eBoxPup could just be a good base system for your application. Your special tools could be put in a special 'netmon_xxx.sfs' file that would (if present) load along with eBoxPup. Then voila, your custom netmonitoring system is ready

Someone would have to compile and prepare these special apps for Puppy of course. Easiest, I think, would be as dotpup files. Then someone can install them and put them in 'netmon_xxx.sfs'.

Or am I in a group of one with these requests/suggestions? (Not that that's a problem.)

No, you're in the right group - you also want a lean, fast Puppy for the eBox to run your special apps on. I think we pretty much all want the same base system for the eBox

Paul

[pakt]

I see no problem using Opera. At the time of Opera 5+, it is still not free, but now it is. Plus, its performance in downloading (especially when intermittent disconnections are present) can't be rivaled by other browsers.

If this download performance also applies to this old version then Opera is sounding better and better

The Flash version to include with it should be an issue, though - or whether Flash should be included at all. In schools, though, Flash would be needed.

I'm not that familiar with Flash. Can we find a version that works with Opera 5.05?

Also, do we need permission to include it in the iso?

Paul

[dvw86]

Personally I think that Opera would be fine. I'm no legal expert but Puppy comes with Flash by default.

I'm also okay with only including Xorg. I don't see any need to have two video servers since we know for sure what the video card will be. This will be especially good with the new Xorg work that Barry is doing in 2.13.
Hardware profiling for Xorg

[klhrevolutionist]

It might be a good idea for a tester to put some more stress on this ebox and let us know what is possible.

If your going to go with an older version of any browser you might want to check and make sure it does not have any real issues such as mem leaks, security holes etc..

If the plan is to allow a user to use the computer than that can be accomplished via a web browser. But the casual end-user is not going to want to pay for online word, spreadsheet, games, video, audio......

I might pay for one of these services but would expect to be able to use most of the other items on my personal computer. If this ebox cannot handle that then I would suggest this be targeted at schools, libraries and the like.

[raffy]

I guess the barebones 2.00 with Opera 9.02 is snappy enough (this is the so-called minipup2.00, 48 MB, see bexa.org for the download). What slows the browser are animated GIFs and Flash - probably the user should stick to one browser window when using Flash - this is the usual way schools use Flash in delivering animated content..

Am using minipup2.00 on the Ebox now and testing the sound driver being compiled by Paul and Tempestuous - please see this thread.

ADDITION: The sound driver given by vortex86.com uses Linux kernel 2.4, so this reminds me that it may be good to build an ISO based on Puppy 1+. I therefore started to build on Pizzasgood's EmptyCrust (it's a 1.07). The sound driver is the remaining problem which is being handled in the given thread.

[pakt]

The sound in MiniPup2.00 works now thanks to tempestuous compiling the kernel module for us.

I got a request from Marcus (forum member nibl) in Germany who is interested in using the eBox in a teaching project. He asked me to test a text-to-speech program called 'flite'. With the new audio module loaded in MiniPup2.00, the program worked really well. It can convert text to speech directly from the command line or from a file. It is even possible to save the output in a .wav file.

I've attached one such speech session which I converted to mp3 using sox. Unpack it first with gunzip then just click on the file. The sound is more distorted in this file than live. Enjoy

Paul

[raffy]

This is really great - blind people will find this specially useful.

Hear that, Lobster? Some really great news for Christmas.

[raffy]

While it may be simple, maybe it will help users to know how you installed flite, Paul.

Another option to consider is Puppy 1.02, as it has a Linux 2.6 kernel. Check the download sites from Barry's site: http://puppyos.com/download/downpage.htm

or this http://ftp.nluug.nl/ftp/pub/os/Linux/distr/puppylinux/

The good news is that its browser behaves (in my Yahoo mail) like Firefox - this must be the early release of Seamonkey.

Oops, the system of 1.02 is OSS - discussion of the sound driver for 1.02 is created at forum.puppylinux.net.

[jeef]

Has anyone got the wireless going on this?

[klhrevolutionist]

Is ewayco the only company selling this product ? I could have sworn that there were a couple others ?? If you could point me to more links and info (wiki perhaps) I would appreciate it.

Also has the sound issue been worked out and are there any other issues with the computers running puppy ?

[pakt]

Is ewayco the only company selling this product ? I could have sworn that there were a couple others ?? If you could point me to more links and info (wiki perhaps) I would appreciate it.

klh, you'll find info and tips in the 10th post of this thread: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=13528

Oh, and sound works perfectly if you run Puppy 2.13 on it. Just don't forget to add zdrv_213.sfs to the CF card.

Paul