XenialDog (Ubuntu 16.04 'Xenial Xerus' LTS, 32-bit)

[Pelo]

That is bad news for the repository.

About RAM indicator, is it so important ? Windows 7 starting does not reach the maxima. Xenialdog is ok at home (faster than Xenialpup).

[Pelo]

our old VIPs in France had a debate too about meanings of Free and Htop. It's not the same thing that is measured.
in Memory there is inactive, active and free.
Mister processor will empty inactive memory if free memory become to low to allow him to work. If you have 4GB, it will not empty memory, I know some puppy builders who store files in memory
The only thing to look is swap. As soon as swap is used, you are in the limits.. Swap should never be used. It's a rescue system. Close some programs.
Screenshot is my old Acer's one 512MB. Use old Puppies for these laptops. Browsers nowadays quite fulfill 512Mb
The bigger your RAM is, The more inactive Memory will be kept, because no need to kick it out.

[fredx181]

About RAM indicator, is it so important ?

In my opinion sure it is. You have the luxury of 4GB (same for me, I have 3GB).
But what if someone who has only 512MB reads about XenialDog and wants to try, he/she should know about it.

For example, I think they explain it right on the Lubuntu website http://lubuntu.net/:

For advanced internet services like Google+, YouTube, Google Docs and Facebook, your computer needs about 1 GB of RAM.

For local programs like LibreOffice and simple browsing habits, your computer needs about 512 MB of RAM. See minimal for systems below that RAM.

From what I tested XenialDog will run even with 340MB RAM, but when running firefox with multiple tabs, Youtube etc.., swap will be used soon (as you also said) and the system get's much slower.

With 512MB RAM it will be a lot better, but still depends on what programs you use and how many at the same time.

You can test btw, by adding e.g.:

Code: Select all

mem=512M

To kernel boot command line. It will be limited then to 512MB.

Fred

[Pelo]

I have an Acer aspire 1640 512MB .
Even running a Puppy slacko 6.3.0 is not a good idea. Xenialdog is not for running on such computers.
it's impossible ! Without adding anything my RAM is around 500MB occupied. No audio or video running..
I can try XenialDog with My acer, perhaps i am wrong . I am curious. Go ! feed back to-morrow.
But i'am quite sure Puppy Linux has better results. I installed Ubuntu in the past, ubuntu was slower than windows XP after ten minutes.

Processor is a worker. the les he can store beside him (the RAM) he has to go and return to the swap (Hardisk) . He loose a lot of time. This is why RAM was created.
Hard disk is slow, very slow. for typing it's ok, man is really slow to type. But install a Debian system for secretary works ??? If someone ask you to watch a video, what will you do ?
For My Medion 64bits, four processors, 4GB XenialDog is really nice, but for the Medion, not for my poor Acer , with hard disk fully written . That is important too, looking for free space on hard disk .

[fredx181]

I can try XenialDog with My acer, perhaps i am wrong . I am curious. Go ! feed back to-morrow. Smile

Yes, please do, such tests are always welcome!

Fred

[Pelo]

no wireless ! but data are surprising low about Ram used, around 120 on Acer, compared to 500 with Medion.
Frisbee should always be With another network wizard.. I will install one. But really XenialDog will hardly run my old laptop, the poor get very fast to 80° if the CPU works hard
New feed-back later.

[mcewanw]

no wireless ! but data are surprising low about Ram used, around 120 on Acer, compared to 500 with Medion.

Possible not getting wireless because rfkill package not installed. Hope new iso can be released soonish with that fix Fred because many may be put off seeing no wireless on their machines.

RAM used shouldn't be showing 500, I feel, unless checked with browser already running - should check immediately on first booting up with no programs running. But maybe each machine is different in how it sets up Shared Mem, which we now know is part of the amount shown in Xenial htop used RAM display.

William

[Pelo]

debate (fight ?) about memory usage is useless for people with one GB or more. Processors and RAM are here to be used, even 70% of Ram used is fluent.. Only games would freeze the computer. Puppy passengers are not gamers

If The poor passenger has an old laptop with only 512MB The debate is quite different ! Is it a good choice to install a nice Xenialdog that will freeze all the time ? Think about the temperatue too. Often it's the first alert you get
The main debate too is that you care what a distro is made with, the passenger cares only what he is able to do with. .
(i use passenger because most users in the forum only search to administrate their Distro, not to use it)

[fredx181]

If The poor passenger has an old laptop with only 512MB The debate is quite different ! Is it a good choice to install a nice Xenialdog that will freeze all the time ? Think about the temperatue too. Often it's the first alert you get

Do I understand well that Xenialdog doesn't work well on your old Acer?
(I mean you fully tested?)

I am going to test later (when I have the chance) on a 512MB computer.
What I did for now is sort of simulating 1 core and 512MB RAM on my HP Compaq 6710b laptop dual core (I think it's around 8 years old) by adding this to my kernel commandline:

Code: Select all

nr_cpus=1 mem=512M

Probably not a totally fair comparison with a "real old" 512MB computer, there are more factors of course.

Result: It runs pretty well, even with running firefox (just a few tabs opened) temperature OK.
See screenshots.

Fred

[fredx181]

=========================================
*** New iso image uploaded ***
=========================================

Reason is mostly because the custom XenialDog repository is down, fixed now in new release by changing it to dropbox, see below 6.

Choice of two ISO's: XenialDog-openbox_jwm-2016-05-21-firmware-all and XenialDog-openbox_jwm-2016-05-21-firmware-basic.
Difference is that firmware-all has package "linux-firmware" installed, recommended if you need e.g. wireless.

Firmware-all:
Iso: XenialDog-openbox_jwm-2016-05-21-firmware-all.iso Size: 289MB
Md5sum: XenialDog-openbox_jwm-2016-05-21-firmware-all.md5

Firmware-basic:
Iso: XenialDog-openbox_jwm-2016-05-21-firmware-basic.iso Size: 244MB
Md5sum: XenialDog-openbox_jwm-2016-05-21-firmware-basic.md5

*** Changes, fixes and information: ***

1. New version of xvidcap, 1.1.7a,:
Changed: removed dependency of pulseaudio, (works fine with oss driver (/dev/dsp) )
This way install space required will be a lot smaller also.
See also here:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 369#902369
2. New version of precord, 9.0.4:
Changed: Added dependency: lame
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 369#902369
3. New version of jwm-setup, 0.0.2:
See info and changes here:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 044#902044
4. Added rfkill, needed by frisbee (specially if using a HP machine)
5. New version of gnome-mpayer-1.0.7, with DVD support now:
6. Changed Xenialdog repository address (old address is down): installed is apt-transport-https (depends on it for to work with dropbox):
Address for the Xenialdog package repository in /etc/apt/sources.list is now:

Code: Select all

deb https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/36381953/XenialDog/Packages/ ./

See also here: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 709#904709

Download links on first post updated.

Fred

[Pelo]

I had no intention to use XenialDog with my old computer.
About temperature, It's a default of Acer laptops (well known) .
It's a distro that i appreciate with my 4GB Medion Akoya. I tested it with Acer to bring you some data, but no Web , no browser active, that will not help you.
Old puppies are the best, for old computers.
I told i will try again with a different wizard, frisbee fails to connect? but it's not unusual.. Let me some time. On Sunday, there was swimming Europe championship, i watched it on my TV
Reality :
I don't have ethernet connection, because i am 600 kms far from my ADSL box.
CD player is unserviceable
Temperature get to 80° in five minutes if processor (only one) 'mouline' hum in english very active a long time.

[fredx181]

I told i will try again with a different wizard, frisbee fails to connect? but it's not unusual.

Yes, frisbee can be a little buggy.
If you see all buttons greyed, it's probably a case of not recognizing your wireless adapter.
If buttons not greyed, just try "Restart Networks" button, I experienced that suddenly the wireless networks could appear then.
Or, as William wrote, it could be because rfkill is not installed (needed by frisbee), this is fixed in the new ISO release.
Btw, if (as you said) even slacko doesn't run well then I'd say there's a real problem with your Acer.

Fred

[Pelo]

Pwireless should do the job. But i do not intend to spend much time testing XeniaDog on my old computer. I use it from time to time. Its a second hand one (from my daughter), saved from destroy.

[mcewanw]

debate (fight ?) about memory usage is useless

Pelo, please do not try to stir up trouble with such very dubious (fight?) remark. It is not humorous, particularly in recent circumstances, and I do not appreciate the attempt, which is certain troll-like behaviour and completely wrong anyway.

William

[mcewanw]

Or, as William wrote, it could be because rfkill is not installed (needed by frisbee), this is fixed in the new ISO release.

Downloading now Fred. Many thanks.

William

[mcewanw]

Hi Fred,

I downloaded XenialDog-openbox_jwm-2016-05-21-firmware-all.iso, extracted casper and booted with appropriate grub4dos menu.lst on my HP Elitebook 2530P, which used wireless module iwlwifi and in other DebianDog family members has always worked fine with Frisbee (as long as rfkill installed).

XenialDog booted up fine, so right-clicked on panel network icon and chose "Setup network" to bring up Frisbee configure window. Problem... no wireless lan network came up in my "Scan Results for wsl1" window.

I've tried rebooting several times and repeated the above steps with similar result, but with a couple of random variations:

Sometimes on booting up I find that 'Frisbee 1.2 - Configure Network' comes up with all the buttons greyed out other than Diagnostics and that no wireless lan is being detected in the Scan for wireless networks window. Other times, all the buttons are there but no wireless lan found in the Scan window. When that happens, if I press Diagnostics Button, then Edit Configuration button in resulting "Frisbee-Wireless Diagnostic Tools" window and simply close the resulting pop-up "wpa_supplicant.conf" window, the scanned window (always? - not sure) magically becomes filled with discovered wlans and I can then setun my wls1 interface wireless interface successfully. Once thus setup and save2flash, XenialDog boots fine and wireless works reliably for me.

So the issue seems to be a Flakey Frisbee, which is maybe a good thing on this occasion, since is flakey enough that I can experiment a bit and see if I can find what the problem is.

I'll report back tomorrow when and if I find out more.

William

[fredx181]

Hi William,

Sometimes on booting up I find that 'Frisbee 1.2 - Configure Network' comes up with all the buttons greyed out other than Diagnostics and that no wireless lan is being detected in the Scan for wireless networks window. Other times, all the buttons are there but no wireless lan found in the Scan window. When that happens, if I press Diagnostics Button, then Edit Configuration button in resulting "Frisbee-Wireless Diagnostic Tools" window and simply close the resulting pop-up "wpa_supplicant.conf" window, the scanned window (always? - not sure) magically becomes filled with discovered wlans and I can then setun my wls1 interface wireless interface successfully.

Nice find! The Edit Configuration button seems to refresh things.
I have also problems finding networks with frisbee, but only sometimes.
The "Restart Networks" button always made the networks appear for me though.

Found some wrong things, BTW, e.g get-status should be get_status in /usr/bin/frisbee.
And some more, to late now for me, bedtime, get back about it later.

Fred

[mcewanw]

Found some wrong things, BTW, e.g get-status should be get_status in /usr/bin/frisbee.
And some more

Hi Fred,

I can see, like me, you have been undergoing the arduous task of going through the multiple frisbee scripts looking for what might be the problem.

However, as far as I can see there is no get-status function in /usr/bin/frisbee (I think...), only get_status, which matches with the function in /usr/lib/frisbee/func. EDIT: I'm wrong - I see there is get-status wrongly used at line 386 (I did actually also come across that earlier, but forgot about it by looking at so much at once...) I originally thought there were lots of function naming errors like that because for a little while I was wrongly looking at /usr/share/frisbee/func instead of the similar, but different /usr/lib/frisbee/func. As far as my code reading suggested, /usr/share/frisbee/func isn't used at all and nor is the folder /usr/local/Frisbee (which mustn't be renamed '/usr/local/frisbee (lowercase)' or then /usr/share/frisbee/func becomes the used one!!! (crazy...). It is complex/all-over-the-place, so I may be wrong...

I've also been looking at the functions connect, reset_wpa, start_wpa, and /etc/init.d/frisbee. I think this program has maybe been hacked around too much over the years so it is all over the place. Unfortunately, I haven't come across anything particular that would explain the inconsistent results frisbee is giving me when used in XenialDog. Because sometimes works, sometimes partly works (shows the buttons) and sometimes doesn't work (buttons greyed out), I think it is probably timing issue, but I've found it impossible thus far to determine what.

Frisbee seems far too complex, to be honest, for all we need it for. I'm going to try PeasyWifi or whatever it is called - tried that long time ago, and though there were a few issues to using it on DebianDog, they weren't major, and the program is simple in both structure and function, which is what I would prefer - if it will work (it doesn't out of the box call up rfkill though, which I need, but easy enough to arrange - I'll look back DD thread to the time I worked on PeasyWifi and see it it works for me on XenialDog. Kind of given up on frisbee this particular time.

William

[rcrsn51]

IIRC, the problem with PWF in the "dogs" was dhcpcd. PWF needs it and Frisbee got it from a special package.

[mcewanw]

It was in MintPup I began work on using PeasyWIFI after finding out how to configure wifi manually per below link:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 549#855549

rcrsn51 gave us a number of helpful pointers to adapting it for MintPup at that time.

Toni shortly after made a couple of specially crafted PeasyWIFI debs, though I don't seem to have tried the final experimental one he preferred:

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 843#855843

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 817#856817

I haven't tried yet, but hope that last package by Toni will be usable or easily modified to work in XenialDog. Toni was in top form at that MintPup creation time, and I hope he will be bored and come back soon :-)

William