I just thought I'd pass on a few things about the new puppy version. I've had a couple of ups and downs with it but that is not a criticism, just an observation. I worked through things so far by myself and a couple of comments hereafter are relevant to previous versions. Overall impressions of the new puppy are good and confined mostly to what I actually use. Since I'm back to dialup I had a friend download the ISO for me which I then burned to CD myself.
Live CD:
I decided to go for the full install as usual. I've noticed a little problem booting from the Puppy 4 series live CDs. It's not a serious one and probably has more to do with my 96mb of ram! My old laptop is an IBM 380XD. I've got a 600mb ext2 partition and a swap space as well as a 3gb space for Windows 98SE.
On the version 3 cd during the bootup from the live CD it usually tells me its loading the sfs file and all goes well as usual. However I found that with 4 Dingo, and 4.2 it stalls and drops me out to the # prompt after it searches for previous versions of the sfs file and I get a message about not finding tty. I'm not sure what to do at that point so I reboot:
I did try "puppy pfix=ram" to load into memory but I get the same error.
If I enter "puppy pfix=noram,no10" at the prompt during the boot up all goes well. Puppy loads normally. Note that with the new puppy you are presented with a nice entry screen and have to press F2 to get to the prompt and command list.
First Impression of the Live CD:
Slow initial load probably due to my pfix. Nice setup screen, interesting vista-esque clock and calendar on the desktop, and an updated new look for the menus and windows. Additional controls for changing these have been included and other bells and whistles which is good!
Several icons were overlayed due to the 800x600 screen on this laptop. Notably the trash and lock, and the icons for the various mounted/unmounted devices. I like having them on the desktop but I have to spread them out and I found that they don't stay put for the next reboot!
As a general observation I've noticed a tendency for some of the default configuration windows to be displayed larger than my desktop supports; i.e. I can't see everthing. When I attempt to make them fit even then I can't always access/see all of the window sliders/margins etc. If you have an 800x600 display you can see this in Seamonkey's configuration or the modem probe window. I'm not sure what everyone's plans are as obviously 800x600 resoultion is eventually going to go the way of the Dodo. Should this still be addressed for retro-versions? On the other hand some of the displays on the newer machines are quite small so I'm not sure where this belongs or what your thoughts might be. I'll try and provide a couple of screen shots later on.
Setup:
I ran the setup wizard as usual, full install. I did notice long delays during the installation so some patience was required. At times it seemed like nothing was happening, probably due to the pfix and my ram issue, so patience was required because all good things come to those who wait. Puppy just silently worked in the background coming back to life with a whirr of the drive.
Grub:
I usually check on grub manually just to see if everything is okey-dokey. Through an oversight I did have a jumpdrive in the usb port so when grub installed it failed to put the Windows 98SE partition properly into the menu.lst file. Instead I got an entry for the jumpdrive! I edited the menu.lst file manually to include my windows partition. Note to self, take out the darn jumpdrive next time!
After Grub was sorted out on hda2 I rebooted and removed the Live CD.
Second Impressions:
Typical reboot and config of the keyboard and display. The default grub display is very nice. I found though that my ram challenged machine was still somewhat slow to load. I had to wait for the clock, calendar, and other gizmos to load. Once there though things were responsive. I moved the lock away from the garbage can. The mounted devices though were all overlayed. It's still good to have them on the desktop though! It was nice to be able to tinker with the widgets, display, gtk, etc., to make the desktop look the way I wanted it to. I do like it very simple though! I stick with clearlooks olive.
Modem:
The modem configuration is much improved! I'd had problems with my Realport 10/100 ethernet card/56kmodem in 4 Dingo. It had worked in Puppy 3 but Puppy 4 Dingo wouldn't load if the pcmcia modem was in the slot. Again the modem could not be found. Probe brought up a new config window. The device came up as "martian_dev" which I then blacklisted because no modem was found to be working. I clicked on the button to clear the setup. I clicked on probe again and it found the correct modem! Awesome! All I had to do then was enter my connection info and bingo! I was connected to the net.
Seamonkey:
Thanks for keeping Seamonkey as the default! I like it better than Sylpheed. Plus I missed all of the Seamonkey suite.
Gparted:
I still use this too!
Bubbles:
Its missing. My spouse loves this game so I'll be putting that on the computer for her.
Third impressions:
Still to come but things are looking very good so far. I'm pleased with Puppy 4.2 Thanks to Who-do and all contributors!
Greg