Minimalist Base Distro

[gcmartin]

Thus any already running OS in a LAN PC, without installing or modifying anything, can get an X-desktop on @RufWoof's distro and operate as if they were sitting at its console.

An example. his distro is setup and running in a closet/attic/basement/out of sight with no keyboard, mouse, or monitor and he can control it from other PCs in the house without having to add anything to the PCs in the house. A Windows/MAC/Linux user simply opens their RDP client and logon to a desktop on @Rufwoof's PC. Nothing installed. This can be done using a smartPhone/smartTablet by opening its RDP app enclosed from the Play Store(s).

Remember, this is not a suggestion but an option that could be useful. These authors bring GREAT functionality to the table for using Puppy Linux in so many ways, beyond the great things that mainline PUPs have been doing over the years.

Puppy enables so much in many useful ways. What I find extremely important is how @RufWoof, @ETP, @, and others have taken the general purpose capability of Puppy Linux and applied it for something practical in the home. These productions are tailored for some specific benefit in the home use.

Great ideas from all trying to help

[darry1966]

Here is a new build based on Lucid Maverick 001 it has drivers in iso no separate zdrive. I have included xarchiver and frisbee .pets as well in the same location.


http://sourceforge.net/projects/puppy-l ... lds/files/

Original Lucid Maverick Info: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=59990



Thanks to Ally files also here with many other fine Barebones choices:https://archive.org/download/PuppyLinux_barebones

One last build based 5.11 Lucid:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/puppy-l ... o/download

[gcmartin]

Another practical use which might be a wide-spread use would be to have a PUP distro specifically designed to run a WOOFCE builder for new PUPs, as its mission. Boot it, drags some needed info to an on-screen bucket, and push go to wait for it to spit out a brand new, tailored distro.

There are other good practical apps beyond those we see.

[rufwoof]

An example. his distro is setup and running in a closet/attic/basement/out of sight with no keyboard, mouse, or monitor and he can control it from other PCs in the house without having to add anything to the PCs in the house. A Windows/MAC/Linux user simply opens their RDP client and logon

Just verified that to be sure. Unplugged monitor, keyboard and mouse. Powered on the puppy PC - waited a minute for it to boot/settle and from a Windows PC RDP's into the Puppy PC and had full screen/mouse/keyboard control OK.

There is a web server in the googledrive repository, so conceptually a CD based version with no HDD's could be identified to the router as being in the DMZ and be accessible externally. One of those timer switch plugs that power off/on the PC once/day could reset the image back to 'pristine' and if the web pages were static they could be remastered into the read only (CD) core.

Or keep the pup behind the router firewall so that other LAN PC's can PXE net boot a local (to PC) puppy, or just RDP/VNC a remote puppy desktop from within Windows.

Open up port 5900 I think it is on the firewall and you could remote VNC into the pup from anywhere.

I suspect the more ideal hardware for this pup if being run as a 'server' would be a solid state device, no fans or other mechanical fire-risk hardware, just a pure electronics board. A x86 type version of a Raspberry Pi type thing. As a 'client' it works well on a wide range of kit from relatively old to relatively new, thanks to employing XVesa and a late kernel (with up to date firmware/modules). I intentionally strived to make it generic.

[technosaurus]

Another practical use which might be a wide-spread use would be to have a PUP distro specifically designed to run a WOOFCE builder for new PUPs, as its mission. Boot it, drags some needed info to an on-screen bucket, and push go to wait for it to spit out a brand new, tailored distro.

There are other good practical apps beyond those we see.

I've been on about that for a long time. We already have multiple files in $HOME/,packages, so why not add a separate one for metapackages? I could see gnome{1,2,3}-suite/lite, kde{3,4,5}-suite/lite, xfce{3,4}-suite/lite, rox, classic puppy-{x.xx} etc... where they only have dependencies.

Why have puplets when you can just have "flavors" that you can install on top of a light base or even on top of your favorite set of flavors.

... but I would not start with woofCE. Iguleder had a much better system that wasn't filled with tons of clutter

[greengeek]

As a 'client' it works well on a wide range of kit from relatively old to relatively new, thanks to employing XVesa and a late kernel (with up to date firmware/modules). I intentionally strived to make it generic.

Just be aware that xvesa does not work on some hardware (including my Toshiba M700 unfortunately).

People have mentioned "framebuffer" etc but I don't understand how to use such things yet. I wish there were some relatively foolproof "default" way of having video working successfully on every machine. If that could be found it would really open the door for more uses of minimalistic Puppies.

[technosaurus]

here is a tarball of the changed files in my jwm-lite.

You'll also need nanosvg.h, nanosvgrast.h and stb_image.h ... and manually add -lm or the CFLAGS in src/Makefile (first run ./configure --disable-jpeg --disable-png --disable-cairo --disable-rsvg). ... don't worry it will still load jpg, png and svg, just with half the resources.

[anikin]

technosaurus,

Will it be of any benefit to me, if I disable icons:
./configure --disable-icons --disable-nls --disable-fribidi --disable-debug --disable-shape --disable-xinerama --disable-xmu

[technosaurus]

technosaurus,

Will it be of any benefit to me, if I disable icons:
./configure --disable-icons --disable-nls --disable-fribidi --disable-debug --disable-shape --disable-xinerama --disable-xmu

you wouldn't get any icons but resource usage becomes extremely low. My microsaurus experiment used under 3mb of ram with xvesa jwm and rxvt running when background color was flat black with no icons. Using goingnuts' gtk1 multicall binary it was still under 8mb though using rox1.x and browsing in dillo. On most systems that is hair splitting, but it makes a huge difference in boot speed (I got it down to 220milliseconds on a fast machine with an SSD). I ended up using netsurf framebuffer instead with modified slitaz utilities for configuration...I still use netsurf on one of my old DECTops ( Geode gx2 with 128mb of ram)

[darry1966]

Edited see post below.

[darry1966]

Corrected build based Sulu with Precise puppy retro kernel - Barebones:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/4banf ... 48bare.iso

[Pelo]

Sulu barebones more than 150MB ! it's not minimalist !
Saluki013, racy 5.3, thin slacko 5.3.3, dpup exprimo will run all computers, quite full featured, browser included, for less than 120MB

slacko-5.3.3YAT-v1-EngHun-01micko-csipesz-2015-nov.iso = 80MB (2015) with wireless and audio drivers. Browser included.

A puppy user genérally uses it for general purpose. Root just to remove or add some stuff even needs less than users.
Lot of libraries will be never used. Some Libraries even don't have linux applications to run with.

[darry1966]

original 166. Thats the way it turned out, It is still minimal no browser, no abiword, no cups, no media player etc. But hey thanks for the smart arse comment,

[darry1966]

New Barebones squeeze build based 5.2.7scsi by Puppyluvr.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/rpm1t ... e3.2.7.iso

[Pelo]

slackbox 5.7 95+26MB with firefox, would be 80MB without... but no barebones.(print stuff, lib DRI removed)
Minimalist is with a browser, barebone is without, is'nt it ?
Saluki is a Puppy 130MB all featured and nice. It's a Puppy, simply.

[darry1966]

Yes must try Slackbox.
My builds may be a bit bigger in some cases but they count as they have no
Abiword, no Mplayer, No Pmusic, No Xarchive (Use Xarchiver instead or XFE),
No Browser, No cups, and a lot of other stuff like pscan, the Peasy series of stuff like peasyscan peasypdf etc just the basics.

Barebones vary in size.

[rufwoof]

Sulu barebones more than 150MB ! it's not minimalist !
Saluki013, racy 5.3, thin slacko 5.3.3, dpup exprimo will run all computers, quite full featured, browser included, for less than 120MB

Depends upon what measure you use. My most recent Wary XVesa weighs in at a 69MB ISO http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 518#871518 But uncompressed its more like 146MB. For that current version clicking the desktop remaster icon defaults to no compression, spitting out a initrd (with puppy sfs and all firmware/modules included (100MB approx)) of 146MB. Use gexec to "remaster high" and out pops a 65MB initrd. The non compressed remaster remasters in less than 5 seconds (high compression remaster obviously takes longer, more like 5 minutes).

For that you get a recent kernel so all recent firmware/modules (runs on recent/new hardware), a desktop with the latest firefox just a single click away. A TopDog layer that is another click away - that adds the abiword, gumeric ....etc type things in, and SFS's a few clicks away to add Libre, Skype ...etc on top.

The barebone version includes RDP (remote desktop, so Windows boxes can remote control the puppy desktop) and Samba, so Windows boxes can share the same folders/files. A PXE server is also included for good measure, so reboot, click remaster, click PXE server and any other PC on the same LAN that are hard wired can net boot the puppy if so desired (handy fallback option should the PC not boot and puppy needs to be loaded to help debug/fix the problem).

Oh and it has 5 desktops - where the wallpaper and icons/icon arrangements can be different on each of those desktops. Its difficult to revert to other choices when you get used to such 5 multiple desktops (or whatever version you might modify to such as 12 desktops with a month calendar wallpaper on each such that desktop icons can be arranaged to coincide with particular days/dates).

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... h&id=92466

[darry1966]

"Depends upon what measure you use"

Exactly!

[rufwoof]

The choice of compression used makes a huge difference. For fair comparisons you need to measure like-for-like.

Take my Wary-XVesa for instance. Around 200MB in total fully uncompressed - of which around half of that is modules/firmware. Strip down firmware and you can make the figure lower, at the expense of less hardware being supported.

Apply low/fast compression and the figure drops to around 110MB (lzop -1)

Apply medium compression (gzip) and the figure is more like 90MB.

Apply high (slow) compression (xz -e) and you can reduce that down to less than 70MB. A ocean apart from the 200MB non compressed.

Many of the 'smaller' figures quoted will reflect reduced functionality (less hardware supported) and high compression being utilised.

A reasonable actual choice is low/fast compression as you can achieve a near 50% reduction in size for little if any cost (transferring 200MB from disk to memory (non compressed) takes around the same amount of time as transferring 100MB of low compressed data, and then decompressing it). With high compression whilst the data transfer is faster the extraction (decompression) is slow, often slower than what it would have taken to data transfer non compressed.

In short, when comparing, make sure you use the same ruler for both.

[rufwoof]

I'm surprised that LZ4 compression hasn't been more widely adopted. That's been a available option in more recent linux kernels, but few if any seem to have enabled that option in practice (kernel config option and having the appropriate additional libs/exec's installed).

I've installed lz4 binary and associated libs into Wary XVesa and have compiled/installed mksquashfs and unsquashfs exec's that support lz4. Some kernels have lz4 flag enabled in dot configs, but sadly I've not yet found a kernel that supports lz4 (such as initrd.lz4). A benefit is that lz4 whilst compression speeds are comparable to alternative choices, decompression speeds are much quicker (around 4x faster), such that a comparable single build speed (compression), but multiple decompression (boot/usage) speed - makes lz4 a desirable choice IMO.

Excepting that lzop -1 is a reasonable general choice IMO. Fast, relatively light compression/decompression.