OneBone resurrection

Under development: PCMCIA, wireless, etc.
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Nathan F
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OneBone resurrection

#1 Post by Nathan F »

Ever since Barry K first mentioned his intention to create a console only Puppy I thought it was a superb idea. I have an older Toshiba laptop that goes with me on the road a lot, but the specs aren't exactly too high on it. The original OneBone was about the perfect match for it, leaving a good deal of memory free even after caching itself. But that's several versions ago, for one thing. And there were a few things I wanted to change about it also.

So I've taken the latest packages out of Puppy-2.10 and built a pretty nice iso that is CLI only. It's in a slightly rough state right now but it has some nice features already, for instance this one will start up the gpm daemon automatically if your mouse is detected correctly, and it also has a package manager and a spreadsheet program (sc), plus the lucent and smartlink modem drivers. It's kind of hard to get the size down much smaller at the moment since Puppy's base libraries have grown so much but it's within about a megabyte of the original now. I stripped out a few other miscellaneus things like background images and icons while I was in there too.

So I plan to release this iso when it's a little more polished, even though it will probably only see very limited circulation. But I'd like some input on what the community might like to have in a CLI system besides what is already in there. The main apps are right now:

Elinks with javascript support
MidnightCommander (does everything)
SC spreadsheet
e3 and MP text editors

So guys give me a clue, what else would you like to have in there?

Nathan
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marksouth2000
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Re: OneBone resurrection

#2 Post by marksouth2000 »

Nathan F wrote:So guys give me a clue, what else would you like to have in there?
X. Seriously. Just the teeny VESA server is enough for most uses. I have been hoping that someone would do a Onebone+basic X Puppyversion.

OK, I'm going to get flamed for this, but the thing is that console applications are most useful under X, since you can have multiple xterms open and be browsing the web, reading email, reading netnews, editing a file and compiling a chunk of code all at the same time. Leaving out the bloated X apps with their GTK dependencies is fine, one could do the list above with links, mutt, slrn, vi and gcc without needing more than a bunch of xterms. You don't need menus either, people can type commands in the terminals.

Good grief, this is so ... retro 8)

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Nathan F
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#3 Post by Nathan F »

Well, that's interesting. I see the point, really, but don't intend to put an X server in there. I suppose it might be possible to give and easy to download and install conversion that has xvesa and maybe ctwm or something. And an xterm of course.

I was thinking along the lines of other CLI apps like antiword, tinyirc, the like. Ways to fill out the iso and make it more useful.

Nathan
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gliezl
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#4 Post by gliezl »

My choice:
nano
hexedit
minicom
unrar
wvdial
htop
nmap
mpg123
nail
bashburn
hydra
orpheus
lxslpit
-------
as a pupget: when u decide you'll make it to a server. :-D
sshd
iptraf
bind9
squid
openvpn
samba
xmail
tcpdump
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~Margaret Fuller[/i][/color]

raffy
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Nice idea

#5 Post by raffy »

This is a really nice idea. I will add two items that you can place at the bottom:

- Internet telephone (ex., Skype without the GUI?)
- Arachne browser for Linux (well, it delivers GUI in DOS, but I haven't tested the Linux version yet)
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

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Nathan F
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#6 Post by Nathan F »

Arachne is hopelessly out of date, and it's a graphical browser anyway. I'm sticking with Elinks but have also been toying with Netrik a bit. I still think Elinks is the best.

As for internet telephone well I'll just have to investigate some options.

Nathan
Bring on the locusts ...

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Nathan F
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#7 Post by Nathan F »

A few extra things meeting with my approval so far-

tinyirc
mpg123
bashburn
htop

The version of naim I tried would not die politely and spiked at 99% cpu usage, not good. I may try again with a fresh source build, but I think most geeks will be satisfied with tinyirc. With e3, mp and mcedit there are plenty of editors, so nix to nano or anything else, really. In fact, I kind of really dislike e3 so far and might just remove it. I personally can't stand using wvdial and really prefer eznet over it, but if someone can point out any benefits maybe I'll leave it in. I'm looking now at nail and orpheus and both sound great in theory, but I will have to try them before giving a thumbs up. Nail has been merged into Mailx, and it looks like it has all the features needed in a mail client. I was most pleased to read that it can do smtp, as most CLI mail clients require a Sendmail setup to transport mail off your local machine.

I'm excited now, this is beginning to look good to me.

Nathan
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marksouth2000
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#8 Post by marksouth2000 »

Nathan F wrote:I suppose it might be possible to give and easy to download and install conversion that has xvesa and maybe ctwm or something. And an xterm of course.
That would be cool. Please do that. Rxvt is a good choice for the xterm, and even twm would be enough window manager for the purpose.

Think of this for even older, weedier, hardware than Puppy will run on at present.

This would have one happy user at least :)

[/quote]I was thinking along the lines of other CLI apps like antiword, tinyirc, the like. Ways to fill out the iso and make it more useful.[/quote]
Yeah. Lots of lightweight apps accessible from the commandline and lots of windows to type their names in :)

You also mentioned mpg123. That was one that sprang to my mind, but does Onebone have ALSA already? ISTR that Barry left it out.

Sounds like you're letting yourself in for a lot of work. Call on me (PM or email - see below) if you want some help.

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#9 Post by Nathan F »

As of right now it still has alsa and a lot of sound tools. There shouldn't be too much more work to do, most of it is already done. I'm just evaluating a few more applications right now and creating a couple more unleashed packages, getting ready to put a beta iso together. I'm not planning to turn it into a big project right now. If I was I'd probably go so far as to recompile the kernel to provide a framebuffer console option, and hack a bit more into the startup scripts. But I think I can leave a good base in place, for anyone who would like to take it a little further.

The offer of help is appreciated, just be ready to give it a test for now.

Nathan
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Pizzasgood
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#10 Post by Pizzasgood »

recompile the kernel to provide a framebuffer console option
Is that what would be needed to be able to see text in the CLI while the framebuffer is enabled? When I use a framebuffer in 109CE I can see text, but in 2.XX I see no text. Fbv (shows an image using framebuffer) does work in both versions though.

I haven't actaully started looking at why this happens yet, but it's on my to-do list. When I saw that I thought I'd ask and maybe save myself some time.
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Nathan F
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#11 Post by Nathan F »

Code: Select all

modprobe fbcon
I have it compiled right into my kernel, which is going into Grafpup when I eventually find the time. However, new kernel means old modules don't work, means packages out of the Puppy repo that include modules no longer work. So that's why I have no plans to do it right now.

Nathan
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#12 Post by GuestToo »

of course, you can move a job to the background by pressing ctrl+Z and use fg, bg and jobs to switch between tasks (unlike dos, linux is a multitasking environment)

also, you can setup more terminals in inittab, so you can switch between tasks by pressing ctrl+alt+F2 etc etc

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#13 Post by GuestToo »

by the way, i have a Bashburn 1.6 dotpup package ... that version of Bashburn used setterm -clear to clear the screen ... i had to write a setterm script to workaround the fact that Puppy did not have setterm ... the latest Bashburn is 1.8 and uses clear, so it should just run in Puppy

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#14 Post by Pizzasgood »

Thanks. After I added Barry's extra module pack and modprobed it, it worked.

Yeah, those extra terminals come in handy sometimes. Linux is cool like that.

Maybe include wput. I've only used it once or twice, but it was pretty nice.
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#15 Post by Nathan F »

I checked out bashburn from svn, as the current tree has dvd support. Wput might be a good idea, I have used it and it works quite nicely. BTW a beta iso will be along in an hour or so.

I'm also thinking I might add transmissioncli.

Nathan
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marksouth2000
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#16 Post by marksouth2000 »

GuestToo wrote:of course, you can move a job to the background by pressing ctrl+Z and use fg, bg and jobs to switch between tasks (unlike dos, linux is a multitasking environment.)
Yes, that's how we did it back in the 70's and in the 80's when we had to share the VAX across multiple VT220s. It's also the reason why everything can be done from inside Emacs. (Better mention that before someone suggests I install Slackware 8.0 and use Emacs for everything.)

Some technical progress has been made in the intervening decades, however. Now, even the most pathetic PC can easily cope with a basic windowing environment and have multiple terminals visible, which is easier on the eyes and more convenient, not to mention being able to copy and paste the way the MIT gods intended.

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#17 Post by sunburnt »

The TinyX package is only 1-2MB in size, a 532KB tar.gz file...

Or the Kdrive package MU's hosting, I got it working with Pico_Pup that he has.
But I couldn't get GTK working properly to display the dialogs I'd made for it.

Other 1 floppy distros (SlimLinux, 1DiskX, etc.) have X & Yeah or RatPoison WMs.
CLI will be larger I'm sure, so even JWM probably won't add much to it (overall).

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Nathan F
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#18 Post by Nathan F »

Okay guys, here's my first take on it. I've uploaded this as a torrent file but if anyone has problems I can provide an ftp link also. The main programs are as of now:

Elinks with javascript
MidnightCommander
E3 text editor
MP text editor
Transmissioncli torrent client
Tinyirc irc client
mpg123 mp3 player
Antiword .doc viewer
Htop process manager
SC spreadsheet
pkgtool package manager

Coming in at a whopping 28megs this should easily run on a 64 or 45 meg machine, probably on a 32 meg box even. No X at this time, but if I add it I will probably use either ctwm or twm and a simple xterm. More than likely I will just create a small X package that you can download if you wish but leave it out of the iso.

It's certainly not done yet, but seems to be pretty good to me. I need to update the help index with some of the new programs (most have help available with the man command) and maybe add some Onebone specific instructions also. Like how to get onto the internet for one. A couple other packages I'm still evaluating like mailx (nail) and maybe a few games. I even compiled fortune. Plus I might edit inittab to provide for more virtual consoles. Anyway, give it a spin, tell me what you think, and give some suggestions. I can't promise I'll use everyone's ideas but I'd like to hear them.

Nathan

torrent url:
ftp://texasangel.org/pub/iso_images/pup ... so.torrent
EDIT
direct http transfer:
http://grafpup.com/download/iso/puppy-o ... elinks.iso
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#19 Post by zigbert »

mp3blaster is a very nice program. Like xmms without X - well, not really, but - play, browse, playlist, que...

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#20 Post by Nathan F »

Well I have an answer for those of you who want to open multiple programs and have them all visible at once, and it can be done without X windows. Here's a screenshot of the venerable program Twin (TerminalWIndowManager). I can't believe it took me so long to find it.
Image
You can do most of the things you would expect from a regular WM including opening multiple windows, resizing, moving, minimize, maximize, and if the GPM daemon is running it can all be done with the mouse also. So the only major component missing would be a root window.

I've packaged it up and if the extra themes are removed it comes in at around 600K, so while not light this is way smaller than adding Xvesa along with a WM and terminal emulator. So I think when I build the final iso I'll add this program. I may also create the minimal X package I talked about earlier, but like I said not for the Onebone iso.

Nathan
Bring on the locusts ...

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