Woof CE Debian Stretch and Devuan Ascii Based Development

[musher0]

(...)
Now, here's a menu ...

Straightforward navigation - with Favorites, Recently Used and a search field

Courtesy of... you? Who's the author?

[Moat]

Hi musher0!

Courtesy of... you? Who's the author?

Just a bit of personal playing with theming on top of the standard Whisker menu in rg66's X-Tahr (includes a self-made background .png).

The latest Whisker has now incorporated app description pop-ups when hovering over entries. It's a great, full-featured-yet-still-light and functional menu - only requires that Xfce panel be installed. I love it!

Bob

[Moat]

Then why not have a single-level menu that unfolds all the way
from the North Pole to the South Pole !!!

Yeah - just like Windows XP! That goes a bit too far in the opposite direction (of which I think M$ eventually got the idea...). Balance, balance...!

Bob

[musher0]

Hi Moat.

I thought you would answer me this:
https://gottcode.org/xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin

Whisker menu is by the same guy who developed FocusWriter. So it has to
be good! Unfortunately it's for the xfce environment only (as you mentioned).

BFN

[musher0]

For the record:
radky's PupMenu is also offering a "Favorites" feature.

[Moat]

Unfortunately it's for the xfce environment only (as you mentioned).

Only the Xfce panel itself has to be installed - and not the entire environment/metapackage IIRC. I have it installed and running on XenialDog (Openbox/Lxpanel) and vaguely recall it wasn't at all large, and only pulled in an extra, small lib or three. One could toss out the few included panel plug-ins and make it even smaller, I'm sure.

On that same XenialDog, I've both Lxpanel and Xfce panel running at the same time, and using the same background .png image - I just shortened Lxpanel's left-hand side enough to accommodate a bit of Xfce panel to fill that remaining open space with Whisker's menu button. Can't even tell that it's not a normal part of Lxpanel...

I believe Peppermint OS does it the same way (Lxde/Lxpanel plus Whisker running atop a small slice of Xfce panel).

Bob

[musher0]

Clever!

[musher0]

Hello all.

Do any of you people have a 2nd USB DVD reader/burner on your
DPupStretch?

If so, is DPupStretch recognizing this external drive as /dev/sr1 ?

You should have a proper ISO-9660 DVD or a movie DVD in it to do
this test.

I have tried detection with:

blkid
cd-info --dvd
cdrecord devices
cdrskin --devices

Result: nada, zilch, rien, nothing. Those utilities see no /dev/sr1.
(Hoping you'll have better luck.)

The funny thing is:
-- flburn recognizes the USB DVD burner at /dev/sr1 and successfully
burns an iso to it;
-- vlc can read a movie just fine from /dev/sr1.

But I cannot boot Quirky-8.2 "xerus" (for example) from that drive, I have
to boot it from /dev/sr0, which is the internal DVD reader. (Edit, July 23,
2017: Actually, this remark goes in Barry's XerusQuirky thread, but I'm
leaving it.)

This is very mysterious.

TIA for any insight.

[OscarTalks]

VLC 2.2.6 "Umbrella" Media Player
Compiled in Stretch Pup
Lua enabled
VLsub extension version 0.10.0 installed and working
This still has the rollback ffmpeg 2.8.x libs included
Need to test if building against ffmpeg 3.x has been fixed yet.
Qt libs also included
TESTING ONLY
https://yadi.sk/d/nxx9TP2i3HcXB5?force_show=1

[musher0]

Thanks, OscarTalkls.

Downloaded both the pet and sfs.
Will be back with a test report in a day or so.

BFN.

[musher0]

Hello Oscar.

About the new vlc for DPupStretch:
I tested the sfs. No go here. Please see attached.

i did manage to bypass the libvlccore problem by creating a libvlccore.so.7
symlink to libvlccore.so.8, but then the lua problem appeared.

IHTH.

[OscarTalks]

Hello musher0,

Thanks for the report.
Sorry it doesn't seem to be working for you.
Some of those errors are a mystery to me. There should be no dependency on libvlccore.so.7 as it links against libvlccore.so.8 only. I don't understand the Lua mismatch either. This, and some of the other errors, may be arising from other things you have installed. Is there already an older VLC in your system?

I guess there are only a few of us testing and using Stretch Pup and we will need to arrive at a standardised system base, otherwise compiling programs will prove difficult.

[rufwoof]

Just woof-CE'd Puppy Debian Stretch (x86 testing branch) using all of the default choices. Produced a 248MB iso file.

Extracted initrd.gz, vmlinuz, puppy sfs, zdrv ... to HDD (on my sda4 ext2 partition) and booted using grub4dos menu.lst entry of

Code: Select all

title WoofCE Puppy Debian Stretch x86
find --set-root /PuppyDebianStretch32/puppy_stretch_7.0.0a1.sfs
kernel /PuppyDebianStretch32/vmlinuz pmedia=ataflash psubdir=/PuppyDebianStretch32/ pfix=fsck pupsfs=sda2:/PuppyDebianStretch32/puppy_stretch_7.0.0a1.sfs zdrv=sda2:/PuppyDebianStretch32/zdrv_stretch_7.0.0a1.sfs
initrd /PuppyDebianStretch32/initrd.gz

(clickable thumbnail)

Booted straight to desktop/quickrunfirstsetup and setup OK. Net connected OK (had to run connect). Created save folder system OK.

Had to install scrot (i.e. PPM working OK) to grab a screen image as mtpaint (print screen) captured a sloping vertical edges type image

Firefox ESR installed and playing youtubes OK, mpv working great. Saving fine, loading sfs's fine (using UnionFS) i.e. loaded the devx and Glade started up OK.

32 inch 720p TV as a monitor (so created a additional xorg.conf Monitor Section entry of (in reflection of the DVI-I-2 port that I use from a nvidia card to that TV - that running xrandr indicates as the name; And the Modeline that running cvt 1280 720 reports))

Code: Select all

Section "Monitor"
   Identifier   "DVI-I-2"
   VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
   ModelName    "Monitor Model"
Modeline "1280x720_60.00"   74.50  1280 1344 1472 1664  720 723 728 748 -hsync +vsync
   Option "PreferredMode" "1280x720_60.00"
EndSection	

and edited the Screen sections 'Monitor' to point to that

Code: Select all

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Card0"
	Monitor    "DVI-I-2"
....

Early days, still need to tweak the fonts ...etc. but generally woof-ce built easily and seems to be running well.

Neat .... seems to be multi-user i.e. I Ctrl-Alt-F3 and got a login prompt and logged in using root/woofwoof userid/password ... to a cli, and then Ctrl-Alt-F4 back to the gui session.

[Pelo]

Sub-menus discussion :
i agree with moat... everything depends on quantity of applications, sub-menus become necessary when thousands of apps, but our puppies stretch are more barebones than full featured as a dpup by pemasu.

hungarian friend csipesz just put usr/sharre/applications directory link to the desktop, user opens it and choose what app he needs.
Sure you must know what an app does.
Sub-menus are more for newbies.. but will make oldbies stressed.
Thinking about the 50% of ex-windows downloaders, sub-menus can be of much interest, perhaps that is the reason why musher0 wants oldbies change jwm to aewm. Perhaps..

The idea : use puppy stretch-fr if you like sub-menus (aewm included). Why to fight ? Puppy has enough versions to please everybody.

[rufwoof]

hungarian friend csipesz just put usr/share/applications directory link to the desktop, user opens it and choose what app he needs

I do the same Pelo. Basic install = xorg + jwm + pcmanfm
jwm takes care of the panel/tray, pcmanfm is the file manager and when run with pcmanfm --desktop also takes care of desktop icons/wallpaper. I leave the MENU bare except for ExitX and use desktop icons to open favourite programs and have a bookmark in pcmanfm to /usr/share/application (open file manager, click bookmark and ... all the installed programs are displayed).

That keeps things simple. Everything including startup programs coded into ~/.jwmrc No need for navigating or maintaining menus.

I usually also set the WINDOW (special) key to the right of the spacebar to pop up gmrun ... that enables programs to be launched by command name (press WIN and type gparted <enter> .... or whatever). i.e I have .jwmrc entries that include

<Key mask="" key="Print">exec:scrot -d 3</Key>
<Key mask="" key="Super_L">root:1</Key>
<Key mask="" key="Super_R">exec:gmrun</Key>

I don't bother with themes either, just use the default in-built themes (Raleigh for gtk2, adwaita for gtk3). Again helps keep things light/simple/fast.

[Pelo]

tuuxxx, the main hobby now with a Puppy is to build puppies; and try them. Then abandoned it and try a new one.

Sure we are waiting for stable versions, for which a LTS Long time support will be available.
If yours is this one, users from non linux world will load only this one ! Install and install so many 'flavours' will borry most of us. Which one to choose ? we even don't know what is inside, often old apps not in Puppy spirit, as VLC.
A LTS will be the criteria.
'training' versions should be labbelled as 'training version, or personal Pupplets, not for public release.

Then the version i got from Ally archives is really stable, no bugs, is it tuuxx's one, i don't know.. My only Purpose is to test PPM, with hypothetic new apps from Stretch. If apps are the same no need to change our usual Precise Puppy for students experiments

[Pelo]

about VLC, bugs are known. Why do you install it ? Do you care to choose a version experienced as working well in the forum or do you choose the first that appears in your system ? Do you try at least play a CD ? a DVD...
When VLC is here, it's quite sure you are missing MPEG (Debian wrong choice)

About MPV Why not ? Mp3 tested. MPEG too. Drag files, MPV play them.
Video MP4 : Ok.. no trouble
mpv media player for Precise Puppy, tahrpup, Slacko more detailed feed-back by some users. Jlst provides a pet.
As usual many comments about install... no comment about how it plays music ? or videos ? Jump there to feed back your experience with MPV on Stretch, Puppy Stretch

[Pelo]

Hardinfo should mention who is the dev
Because we don't know and a dev can wish not to have Pelo as user..
There is a 'gentleman' agreement about that with Musher0.

[OscarTalks]

My VLC 2.2.6 is working fine. CD's and DVD's and all downloaded videos including HEVC/h265 format all tested and play without problems. No evidence of any bugs as yet. This was compiled from source by me.

I also have a gmplayer which I compiled and which works well. The mpv was included in the distro and also seems fine but I haven't tested it much. SMPlayer is then an option as a front end for mplayer or mpv. Media players are sometimes a question of personal choice. Compiling VLC was just an experiment. I do like it but the alternatives are also satisfactory.

My Stretch is based on biltoo's build with kernel 3.14.79 but I have now done quite a lot of remastering of it. I must say I am very happy with it. Compiling packages for sharing does rather require that we have an "official" or "agreed" base Puppy distro to work from, but perhaps we are still some way off from being able to achieve that.

[Pelo]

MPV works wit mp3 mp4 and Mpeg, not tested more
I use VLC when Gnome-office fails (rare).

About Libre Office, bigger than your puppy, there is an alternative choice with Goffice (SFS is on ly 7MB not 250mb)
I can assume that gnumeric is a better spreadsheat than Calc. It was even better than Excel, from which it is a clone.
Why our devs hardly work to keep Puppy light and speedy do not install Goffice as defaut ?
goffice-lucid-528-ja-2.sfs: 7212 K : no trouble with Puppy (ies) Stretch