Other Distros

[Colonel Panic]

http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/pulseau ... rent-beta/

Wed Jan 13 00:01:23 UTC 2016
Hey folks, happy new year!
After upgrading to BlueZ 5 recently, everything seemed to be working great,
but then it was pointed out that Bluetooth audio was no longer working.
The reason was that the newer BlueZ branch had dropped ALSA support and now
required PulseAudio. So with some trepidation, we began investigating adding
PulseAudio to Slackware. Going back to BlueZ 4 wasn't an option with various
dependent projects either having dropped support for it, or consiering doing
so. After several iterations here refining the foundation packages and
recompiling and tweaking other packages to use PulseAudio, it's working well
and you'll likely not notice much of a change. But if you're using Bluetooth
audio, or needing to direct audio through HDMI, you'll probably find it a lot
easier to accomplish that.
Best of all, we're finally a modern, relevant Linux distro!
Thanks to Mario Preksavec, Heinz Wiesinger, and Robby Workman for a lot of
help and testing. Bug reports, complaints, and threats can go to me.
Also, enjoy a shiny new LTS 4.4.0 kernel and consider this 14.2 beta 1.

Note: Slackware is NOT going to add systemd. It’s too controversial and there is no need. Your sleep will be sound now.

I tried Slackware 14.2 beta, but unfortunately I couldn't get the network configuration to work. Slack usually configures itself automatically when I install it but it didn't this time.

[EDIT: I did finally manage to get it to work, using netconfig and selecting "DHCP" from the menu. Third time lucky.]

[Colonel Panic]

Another good one; I've just installed ROSA R6 (not to be confused with Mint 17.3, which is also called Rosa) and it's working well. I installed the KDE version, but there is also an LXDE one available although you can install LXDE from the repos if you have KDE. It uses the urpmi package manager.

Its official name is Rosa Desktop Fresh. It has an attractive interface;

http://www.rosalab.com/products/desktop_fresh

[Pelo]

Festival 'old Puppies' in Marseillan (France)
I choose these ones for the Classical Grand Prix.
First they were selected for their speed, howver they are 32Bits, as they run Fully in RAM, 64 Bits Puppies were pushed out the selection due their size and ugly look
Tharpup just miss some points to get selected...
The three best Puppies will be burn in Gold !

[eric52]

Pelo, what a charming competition!

[Pelo]

I will enjoy only when an OS will allow us to speak to the computer, and not to write him with a keyboard.
Speak 'french', that is an evidence. Typing in English all day long is really boring...

[eric52]

Pelo, you might get your chance. There is research for cyber-neural interfacing to benefit amputee prostheses. But be careful what you wish for; the computers will soon speak back.

[Colonel Panic]

I've just installed the 64-bit version of Salix 14.1 Mate. In my experience it needs a bit of fiddling around with file permissions before it will boot to a graphical interface, which is why I couldn't really recommend it for Linux newbies; but once that has been done it works fine.

Have to say too that I really like the look of Salix - the light blue colour scheme and wallpapers (there is a choice of several) combine to make a very restful, pastel effect.

[EDIT; I was unfortunately unable to get Softmaker Office working in it, so although I'm not going to wipe it just yet I'm back using Absolute 14.12 which is also based on Slackware and which does allow Textmaker et al. to work.]

[watchdog]

android-x86-4.4-r4.iso from:

http://www.android-x86.org/download

I used a netbook and a 4 Gb usb key with android-x86 installed by unetbootin. To obtain persistence:

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/sdb1/data.img bs=1M count=1 seek=3000
mkfs.ext2 -j /mnt/sdb1/data.img 

assuming that sdb1 is the usb key you are preparing with puppy.

Android on PC is slow but after updates it's workable for using some particular apps.

EDIT: I would suggest to replace in android the default browser by Atlas Web Browser which you can set for a faster light surfing.

[Pelo]

ah watchdog, that is of great interest, Bookmarked something that can make us experiencing something really new. I will try this asap.
Downloading the ISO.
android-x86-4.4-r4.iso a special topic for that should not be idiot.
"The Android-x86.org is glad to release the 4.4-r4 to the public. This is the fourth and probably the last stable release of Android-x86 4.4 (kitkat-x86)."
take a glance at reviews by testers

[Colonel Panic]

Another good one; I've just installed ROSA R7 (not to be confused with Mint 17.3, which is also called Rosa) and it's working well. I installed the KDE version, but there is also an LXDE one available although you can install LXDE from the repos if you have KDE. It uses the urpmi package manager.

Its official name is Rosa Desktop Fresh. It has an attractive interface;

http://www.rosalab.com/products/desktop_fresh

[Colonel Panic]

I've just installed the latest testing version of Vector 7.2, A0.3.6, and it's working well and is one of the few distros available now which allows you to log in as root.

One thing I don't like about it though compared to earlier releases is that they've gotten rid of the Quick Picks, which was a really good way of installing some of the more popular software packages people would use.

Also, Vector has a simpler installation process than Slackware, which is a plus for new users in particular. However, this comes at the cost of being able to set up the ability to mount USB drives and windows partitions automatically when the distro boots up, when you're installing the distro; as you can in Slackware and other Slack-based distros such as Salix and Zenwalk.

[bark_bark_bark]

I installed Slackware 14.1 yesterday alongside Windows 7. The only thing different I really had to do this time was install the binary nvidia drivers, and that went smoothly.

[starhawk]

For once I took a look at a non-Pup.

Linux Mint "Rosa" XFCE.

Compared to Puppy, there's a lot more of what I'd term "polish" -- it fits together better if you know what I mean. Puppy is kind of cobbled together from whatever works and fits... Mint is a bit more elegant in that regard. (Ever watch Star Trek...? Think of our stuff as a bit like the Borg... crude but highly effective tech. Mint is more Federation style, hardly a cable in sight.)

That said, I couldn't get the old Chromium offered (v.34) to install while running from DVD, and it is rather obese at 1.3gb of download. Took nearly an hour just to get it downloaded!

[bark_bark_bark]

star trek references do not compute. I myself am a Doctor Who fan.

[starhawk]

Off Topic: Dr Who is one show I wish I knew more about. I've only ever seen one episode. Loved it to bits, but haven't had the opportunity to catch more since (USA, no operable TV signal -- with few exceptions I find TV to be mostly trash, so up till now I've not really felt like I was missing anything of importance).

On Topic: there are scripts in Puppy that barely sort of work but haven't been touched since 2003 or so. I once asked my local guru friend to help me understand a script that's part of PetGet -- he ragequit about halfway through because of how badly it was written. Something about taking an MD5sum of an MD5sum, IIRC... the overarching philosophy of Puppy is that if it works, it's good enough -- even if the thing that works is really just a bandaid fix that isn't meant to be permanent. Heck, there are parts of mainline Puppies still extant, I'm told, which date back to about v.2.14...

Let me take a different tack with metaphors, then. Cars.

There was a car in East Germany called the Trabant. It's probably the most well known car of its kind... it had its fifteen minutes of fame as the most common make of vehicle to find its way through the Brandenburg Gate immediately after the wall came down -- but there's a lot more to it than that.

A Trabant is a crude machine as far as automobilia (I think that's a word) is concerned. Its body isn't sheet metal, but rather a composite of cotton canvas and plastic called "Duroplast" that can be pressed into shape like sheet metal despite being a little easier for the government of the time and place to source and produce. The engine in a Trabant isn't sophisticated, either -- it is the mechanically simplest two stroke smoke-bomb that they could come up with, and IIRC it has a nasty habit of drinking oil almost by the gallon -- and not just what you have to mix in with the gas! It is simple, basic, clunky and clumsy to the point of brutish -- but dreadfully effective if what you want is simple and basic transportation with absolutely as few frills as you can stand. The upshot is that a particularly gifted chimpanzee can be trained to fix one when something breaks down (okay, I exaggerate -- but only slightly!) and with regular attention, it will last until the body panels disintegrate entirely... and, depending on the condition of the chassis (it's hardly a monocoque type construction!), it very well could outlive even that prediction.

But the Trabant was one more thing -- transportation for a population that desperately needed that brutishly simple vehicle. It could be said that the Citroen 2CV, Fiat 500, Renault 4CV, and indeed the original VW Beetle were all intended for the same purpose -- but they all manage to pull it off with more panache and flair -- and in some cases, elegance -- than the Trabant.

Puppy is a Trabant. It is simple, effective, functional -- but its construction (not to mention the stuff under the hood) is truly frightful! With regular tinkering, of course, it will run virtually forever -- and while you may need to pull it completely apart and rebuild it every so often just to keep it running, it's worth it because it gives you exactly what you want, nothing more, nothing less. (You wouldn't be using it otherwise.) True, there are other choices (in the relevant car paradigm that would be Volkswagen's Type 1 (not yet called the Beetle) and a number of offerings by Wartburg) but there's just something about this particular one that makes you smile, even if it does take most of a weekend to fix it when you go 'round that one bend a bit too fast.

[Colonel Panic]

Puppy as a Trabant? Quite good, except that Puppy is one of the fastest distros out there, whereas a Trabant is, er... slow.

I think if Puppy was a car it would be something like an old Lotus Elan;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT7bAd9Pra0

[Keisha]

Hi everybody,

In case anyone is wondering where I disappeared to, about a year ago...I tried Fedora, and then soon thereafter Korora which is a fully-fleshed-out family of Fedora spins (mainly, Korora includes the gcc compiler. This was helpful, because I needed to compile my wifi driver first before I could get online). There's a KDE spin, a Mate one (in regular Fedora the Mate spin comes with Compiz, not sure if the Korora one does or not), a Cinnamon one, a Gnome 3 one, and an XFCE one.

I placed the (64-bit) XFCE spin on a 16 GB usb 3.1 stick, which did take a bit of trickery, and there are a few quirks in Fedora/Korora which require some learning...but, once accomplished have never looked back. It boots reasonably quickly, is absolutely reliable, it Just Works, is almost as fast as Puppy/Quirky, and the package manager is about the equal of Synaptic (in other words, superb).

If someone could take the principles involved in creating DebianDog and apply them somehow to Fedora/Korora 23, to come up with a slimmed-down loads-in-ram version, I think it would be a world-conqueror. At least, on equipment new enough to run it.

PS Yes it is possible to boot Korora from the grub4dos on my first hard disk. Here is the relevant section of menu.lst. An empty marker file named korora-23-usb resides in the top directory of the usb stick where Korora is installed. A copy of the Korora kernel is in /mnt/sda1 (where grub grldr and menu.lst reside) in subdirectory /Korora-23.

Code: Select all

# menu.lst produced by grub4dosconfig-v1.9.2
color white/blue black/cyan white/black cyan/black
#splashimage=/splash.xpm
timeout 10
default 2

title DebianDog-Jessie-686-pae on sda1
root (hd0,0)
kernel /DebianDog-Jessie-686-pae/live/vmlinuz1 from=/DebianDog-Jessie-686-pae/ changes=/DebianDog-Jessie-686-pae/live/ base2ram copy2ram noauto init=/bin/systemd nomodeset irqpoll
initrd /DebianDog-Jessie-686-pae/live/initrd1.xz

title TahrPup-605CE
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd  /this-is-sda1
kernel /TahrPup-605CE/vmlinuz
initrd=/TahrPup-605CE/initrd.gz

title korora-23 on usbstick
find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd  /korora-23-usb
kernel (hd0,0)/Korora-23/vmlinuz-4.3.4-300.fc23.x86_64 root=/dev/mapper/korora-root ro rd.lvm.lv=korora/root rd.lvm.lv=korora/swap rhgb quiet LANG=en_US.UTF-8
initrd /initramfs-4.3.4-300.fc23.x86_64.img

Cheers from the dark side!

[6502coder]

Puppy as a Trabant? Quite good, except that Puppy is one of the fastest distros out there, whereas a Trabant is, er... slow.

I think if Puppy was a car it would be something like an old Lotus Elan;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT7bAd9Pra0

I'm with you! That Colin Chapman beauty with the stainless-steel backbone and minimal weight is very much like a classic Puppy! My first dream car...never did own one of course.

[Fbang]

I've yet to see a decent Windows PE live disk desktop.

[cthisbear]

" I've yet to see a decent Windows PE live disk desktop."

Falcon boot cd.

Chris.