Puppy 2.15CE "Viz" - Development Ideas/Requests

[rarsa]

what is important in the Puppy Linux be thought of as one distribution with a central point of contact and control.

I agree with you. I may be mistaken or have a very simple and naive mind but one thing I like about puppy is that it has central control: Barry. I may not always agree with his desicions but I respect them.

How does this thread got to this? I don't know, but let's make the best CE we can

[WhoDo]

Please ensure that you include the latest versions of the network wizard and the rc.network script

Done and done. Thanks, rarsa.

[Pizzasgood]

Ick. The old method was nasty. I'll figure out PETget next week. I think the basics are still the same, so it shouldn't be to much work. I also need to see how PupBeGone stores the package-list package. I don't remember if I installed it normally or different. I want it to be normal if it isn't already, it makes cooperation with Unleashed and PETget easier.

Ideally, the functionality of PupBeGone will be integrated with PETget someday. Barry said he'd intended something along those lines when making Pupget, but never got around to it. It would definately be better if maintained by Barry, because he has a better idea of how he wants the packages handled. My setup was originally conceived as a part of HackyRemaster, without much care for elegance or correctness (thus the "Hacky" prefix).

@Lob: Do you mean the Defaults-Wizard? It should work out of the box. I actually made a separate package for that already, before I started on Pizzapup (I believe it's updated to match the most recent version too).

This week was rougher than I expected, so I didn't have time to package my Pizzapup stuff. I'll start on that next week, probably using either the PETget or Unleashed format, to facilitate use with 2.15CE. Most of it will be pretty easy because they're basically already decompressed Unleashed packages, I just have to change a couple things to work with the normal Puppy (like using "pup_" rather than "pza_").

Speaking of Defaults-Wizard, I have been meaning to improve its interface (probably with gnocl). It won't happen in the very near future, but looking at WhoDo's proposed calendar, it should make it in with plenty of time.

[WhoDo]

Speaking of Defaults-Wizard, I have been meaning to improve its interface (probably with gnocl). It won't happen in the very near future, but looking at WhoDo's proposed calendar, it should make it in with plenty of time.

Which version, the one ending in May or the one ending in April?

Just as well you didn't look at Lobster's alternative. In that case it should've been done already!!!

Cheers

[Lobster]

@Lob: Do you mean the Defaults-Wizard? It should work out of the box. I actually made a separate package for that already, before I started on Pizzapup (I believe it's updated to match the most recent version too).

Eh yes . . . that is what I meant
Looking at PetGet I don't think (at present) it contains anything I particularly want (maybe the extra codecs) Are the Gimp and Firefox versions up to date?

This is why I created the browser default page to link to up to date wiki pages for specific and 'the main' packages
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppy215WebPage

It is similar (they were designed to be interchaeagable) to the wiki main page
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppyLinuxMainPage

These links are how I quickly upgrade to the latest Komposer / Xfce / Java or whatever I need . . . and can often provide info on the most requested updates . . .

Theoretically PetGet or PSI or the "extra programs" wizard that I seemed to have dreamed would be easier. Not yet (for me) they ain't . . .

Any ideas? Suggestions? Plans?

[smokey01]

I have also had problems with Firefox although I do like it, for the moment I have reverted back to Seamonkey which is performing fine. Firefox was continually shutting down. I left the Firefox icon on the desktop and pointed it to Seamonkey and the family barely noticed.

I do like thunderbird and would like to see it included but I don't like not being able to use direct hyperlinks. To get round the problem I drag&drop the link onto the browser icon which works fine.

OO probably is not required and can be installed if required but a powerpoint viewer is essential. There are many emails today with powerpoint files attached. Not being able to view them has driven many people I know back to windows.

Gxine still seems to have problems with some WMV and ASF files even after installing additional codecs. This is another important issue that needs to be resolved to maintain credibility.

The other biggie that most people hate is having to mount drives. It's easy to do but it's a turn off for many.

I am pretty satisfied with Puppy. It does almost all that I need except video in Skype. Skype is the only software I need Windows for.

Not that I use MSN Messenger but is GAIM able to commuicate with it? I couldn't get it to work for my son.

I would like to see a WEBCAM application be included as part of the standard apps.

I think the installation Wizard could be improved. It would be good to have a standard set of drivers included but many others could be downloaded and installed on the fly. This would help keep the iso smaller by only having what you need installed instead of tonns of bloat like windows. It's not possible to include all drivers so why try, simply have them accessable online somewhere as a PET which installs automagically.

I thought it could be done but after reading a few post now I'm not sure. When upgrading from say 2.13 to 2.14 is it possible to keep all your old settings such as:
Browser Bookmarks
Icons & links
Wallpaper
Network settings
Modem settings

I'm sure you get the idea but this is a little biggie if you know what I mean. It can sometimes take you weeks to get the confuguration just as you want it. I know I don't want to have to repeat it every six weeks.
I actually tried what I thought was a frugal install but it didn't work. I must have copied the files to the wrong directories. Maybe this could be included in Puppy Universal Installer, or is already there?

There are so many good features that are already included such as speed, simplicity, functionality. I can't understand why everyone is not using Puppy. I think it may be the odd Windows application or fear.

Their loss.

Keep up the good work guys. Thanks

[LOF]

Hi All,

Just thought I'd contribute to a subject only briefly mentioned in this thread.

GIMP vs Gimpshop

As a Photoshop user I actually find the original GIMP easier than its modification. I find GIMP's layout individual and easier to use than a version that has been twisted to make it look like something its not actually very similar too. I hope that makes sense but what I'm really trying to say is, I'd take GIMP over Gimpshop 10 times out of 10.

[Billcnz]

ha ha .... I was testing the new alpha but didn't realize the full effect of the green theme as I was using a pre-existing save file so I got quite a surprise after installing to a partition and rebooting.

Anyway, well done guys it's a great start.

Wonder if anyone is keen on updating the universal installer so that customizations and settings from the livecd get carried over to the install (my scriptings not good enough yet).

Bill

[JB4x4]

I took my first look at Viz today - very eye pleasing. I did notice a couple of things. Thunderbird is of the 1.0.x series, and (if kept) should be updated to the most recent version. And, I don't believe either Thunderbird or Firefox were in the Start menu.

Keep up the good work, I will be looking forward to the beta and Final versions.

JB

[puppyfan12]

OO probably is not required and can be installed if required but a powerpoint viewer is essential. There are many emails today with powerpoint files attached. Not being able to view them has driven many people I know back to windows.

Perhaps using the 1.9mb ppviewer.exe with wine will sufffice?

Gxine still seems to have problems with some WMV and ASF files even after installing additional codecs. This is another important issue that needs to be resolved to maintain credibility.

That's not a puppy problem, that's a problem with whoever is delivering the content using proprietary codecs that have be legally licensed to redistribute them with puppy. Speak up by contacting the author and complaining that they're not reaching their entire audience by using the closed formats they chose to use.

The other biggie that most people hate is having to mount drives. It's easy to do but it's a turn off for many.

Not automounting is by design. Puppy has one of the easiest mounting systems I've seen. However, I'll mention your suggestion for automounting because I've seen a few posts requesting it for removable media.

*edit* just added this snippet I got from my LUG mailing list

Microsoft hit with $1.5 billion patent verdict

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6161 ... ag=nl.e589

Apparently now it's clear even for Microsoft that they
shouldn't be using the MP3 format.

And it should be obvious for others that they
shouldn't be WAV formats.

Save this link for the next time someone complains
that their distro does not provide AVI, MP3 or other
proprietary format support out of the box.

I am pretty satisfied with Puppy. It does almost all that I need except video in Skype. Skype is the only software I need Windows for.

There's a linux version of skype that's available as a dotpup. I haven't tried it yet. If it doesn't support video perhaps you should suggest that to the skype development team?

Not that I use MSN Messenger but is GAIM able to commuicate with it? I couldn't get it to work for my son.

Yes I use gaim for MSN, ICQ, AIM. (not a fan of the IRC implementation but it is supported)

I would like to see a WEBCAM application be included as part of the standard apps.

That's been mentioned as well somewhere, I'll include that suggestion.

I think the installation Wizard could be improved. It would be good to have a standard set of drivers included but many others could be downloaded and installed on the fly. This would help keep the iso smaller by only having what you need installed instead of tonns of bloat like windows. It's not possible to include all drivers so why try, simply have them accessable online somewhere as a PET which installs automagically.

Not everyone has internet access on PC's that puppy is used on. Not including drivers makes it frustrating for end users. zdrv_*.sfs contains the puppy driver package. I believe if you remove it, you'll essentially be wiping out the drivers you consider "bloat".

I thought it could be done but after reading a few post now I'm not sure. When upgrading from say 2.13 to 2.14 is it possible to keep all your old settings such as:
Browser Bookmarks
Icons & links
Wallpaper
Network settings
Modem settings

I'm sure you get the idea but this is a little biggie if you know what I mean. It can sometimes take you weeks to get the confuguration just as you want it. I know I don't want to have to repeat it every six weeks.
I actually tried what I thought was a frugal install but it didn't work. I must have copied the files to the wrong directories. Maybe this could be included in Puppy Universal Installer, or is already there?

Search the forums and you'll see the backup/restore process has been explained before to make the upgrade process easier. I'll mention your suggestion of automating those steps for future upgrades.

thanks for your comments.

[PaulBx1]

Not automounting is by design. Puppy has one of the easiest mounting systems I've seen. However, I'll mention your suggestion for automounting because I've seen a few posts requesting it for removable media.

I don't mind that we move in the direction of Windows for a lot of things (there are good reasons for Windows dominance in the market, and anyway Puppy is for Windows refugees); however I think this is one that should stay "Linux". It is not hard to learn at all and sometimes you want control over what is mounted and what not, without having to physically plug and unplug stuff. After a while you don't want to go back to the windows model.

Anyway, windows does it half-assed: it auto mounts, but still requires a manual dismount (which I bet a lot of people forget to do on USB devices). Going manual both ways just reinforces the correct behavior.

[Billcnz]

Hi guys, I tested moving moving firefox to /usr/lib and deleting the seamonkey directory and re-linking /usr/lib/firefox to /usr/lib/mozilla (if firefox is really going to replace seamonkey in this release then we can save some space and apps that need the mozilla libs can use firefox's).

The fix for flash-9 is tested and working:
(added to start script)

# Include /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins in the plugin path:
if [ "$MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH" ] ; then
MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH=$MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH:${moz_libdir}/plugins:/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
else
MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH=${moz_libdir}/plugins:/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
fi
export MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH

Something that desertpuppy and I noticed is when firefox updates itself it will overwrite this script and loose customizations, to overcome this I renamed the firefox start script to mozilla-bin (also for consistency with what we were doing with seamonkey). You do need to edit another line in the script for this to work:
MOZILLA_BIN="${progbase}-bin"
change to MOZILLA_BIN="firefox-bin"

[veronicathecow]

Manual mount?
Auto mount?
Would it be so hard to add a little setup gui to allow people to automount whatever partitions they wanted on boot up?

Me I want to automount my music.

Also I do a full HDD install and something that preserves setting would be really useful.

K3B is the best burner I have come across and totally reliable. Tried burning a DVD whilst compressing a vob, surfing the net, and watching a DVD all without a single error, I have never been able to do that on any machine or OS!

Love the little timers in 2.15

Would love to see something like Yankee clipper in there (Last 100 clipping stored and easily to hand), I really miss that.

Easy autostart of programs and files IMHO is essential.

many thanks

[veronicathecow]

Another thought!

How about a bare bones and then

PUP collections. People could create collections of add ons. The user would then search the list for the "Collection" that best matched their requirement, click on that and it would install all the .pups (or whatever) in one go. Then afterwards they could add any others .pups that wern't in the collection that they needed.

Or a gui with tick boxes that once programed (A file with this list could also be saved for future upgrades). Then click on create and all the .pups get installed in one go.

Is that a silly idea or impracticle?

[cthisbear]

PaulBx1
"Puppy is for Windows refugees); however I think this is one that should stay "Linux".

I would wonder about being targeted on the Internet if my drives were automounted. Also would Puppy crash because Windows had an error on shutdown?
Chris

[iscraigh]

It looks great, the bcm44 driver still doesn't work with my dell nic, ndiswrapper does so it is no big deal. Like the icon set, the green wallpaper was pretty wild for me and didn't really go with the icon set. Perhaps the same icons a bit greener. Nice having firefox as the default and i really liked the weather extension I wil be adding that to my other boxes. I will continue to play.

Craig

[iscraigh]

Another post reminded me, Murga's autostart pup should be in for sure(size allowing)

Craig

[puppyfan12]

I don't mind that we move in the direction of Windows for a lot of things (there are good reasons for Windows dominance in the market, and anyway Puppy is for Windows refugees); however I think this is one that should stay "Linux". It is not hard to learn at all and sometimes you want control over what is mounted and what not, without having to physically plug and unplug stuff. After a while you don't want to go back to the windows model.

Anyway, windows does it half-assed: it auto mounts, but still requires a manual dismount (which I bet a lot of people forget to do on USB devices). Going manual both ways just reinforces the correct behavior.

I think what we need to do is to take ecomoney's suggestions into consideration. He runs a linux cybercafe in Lincolnshire, England and probably has more experience than most other people on this board dealing with real end users. I do a lot of that on a 1 on 1 basis as well and I can relate to many of his dilemma's he's posted about.

I agree that automounting is not necessary. Automounting is used in windows products and it makes "My Computer" slow and crappy to access and freezes the explorer process when its trying to find media that wasn't unmounted properly. Also, Automounting combined with autorunning applications opens security issues which windows suffers from. (plug in a usb drive with a script that autoruns and copies all their usernames/passwords to the USB drive without displaying any dialogs...thanks futureshop, for those $800 worth of Windows and MS Ofifice license keys...as an example of whats possible)

As has been suggested previously by ecomoney's users this area of puppy needs work in order to remain as secure as it currently is but become as intuitive as windows and mac.

Nathan suggested auto detection/auto mounting requires the hal daemon to run and several distros consider the Hal daemon enough of a security risk that they still refuse to include it.

He also mentioned that he thought someone did a bit of work to create a shell script that periodically scans for newly inserted pendrives, but he didn't know where to start looking for it. Perhaps this is the answer? Then even though the user is presented with the mount window when removable media is detect, they still have to click to mount/unmount the media.

The current method of "Doing nothing" isn't very intuitive for the end user. For the power user it might be an annoyance. Having it as an option to be toggled satisfies everyone.

Manual mount?
Auto mount?
Would it be so hard to add a little setup gui to allow people to automount whatever partitions they wanted on boot up?

Me I want to automount my music.

K3B is the best burner I have come across and totally reliable. Tried burning a DVD whilst compressing a vob, surfing the net, and watching a DVD all without a single error, I have never been able to do that on any machine or OS!

Easy autostart of programs and files IMHO is essential.

I agree completely and that's another suggestion I wanted to add as well. Mut 0.1.1 included in Muppy 006 already detects the drives when they're available. It doesn't automount, however. Couldn't we expand on MUT with a checkbox/option next to the "mount" option called ""automount". All that would do is add the entry for that drive to /etc/fstab for the user doesn't have to manually mount local disks on every reboot or edit any scripts.

I've also heard good things about k3b. How big is it in comparison to the ones currently included with puppy? Do the currently included burning apps give you issues? I can't comment on them as I haven't tried them.

I agree a simple gui for adding startup apps is essential. The average person doesn't need to know about runlevels/init.d and that's not very intuitive.

Hi guys, I tested moving moving firefox to /usr/lib and deleting the seamonkey directory and re-linking /usr/lib/firefox to /usr/lib/mozilla (if firefox is really going to replace seamonkey in this release then we can save some space and apps that need the mozilla libs can use firefox's).

The fix for flash-9 is tested and working:
(added to start script)

# Include /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins in the plugin path:
if [ "$MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH" ] ; then
MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH=$MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH:${moz_libdir}/plugins:/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
else
MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH=${moz_libdir}/plugins:/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins
fi
export MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH

Something that desertpuppy and I noticed is when firefox updates itself it will overwrite this script and loose customizations, to overcome this I renamed the firefox start script to mozilla-bin (also for consistency with what we were doing with seamonkey). You do need to edit another line in the script for this to work:
MOZILLA_BIN="${progbase}-bin"
change to MOZILLA_BIN="firefox-bin"

Sounds good. Is anyone willing to script the process and make a dotpup so more people can test it?

PaulBx1
"Puppy is for Windows refugees); however I think this is one that should stay "Linux".

I would wonder about being targeted on the Internet if my drives were automounted. Also would Puppy crash because Windows had an error on shutdown?
Chris

I don't see the relation between automounting a drive and being targeted on the internet. Can you please provide a link to information that explains further?

ecomoney also made some good points about mouse configuration. Could those mouse configuration options be available as GUI options? That mouse wheel click screws up too many new and elderly users to not consider it.

[PaulBx1]

As has been suggested previously by ecomoney's users this area of puppy needs work in order to remain as secure as it currently is but become as intuitive as windows and mac.

IIRC Knoppix places drive icons on the desktop; when you click them they mount. Maybe I'm not remembering that properly, but it might be worth thinking about. They might be one color (say, red) and also say "not mounted", and when mounted change color to green and say "mounted". That keeps the security while making it easier than searching for MUT or pmount in a menu (MUT's name isn't the most descriptive!) I don't know how flexible you can get with those icons though.

I don't know what the real answer is. I find the concept of manual mounting simple and intuitive, and I think the way Windows does it is asking for trouble. I don't think kids at an internet cafe are going to have any problem with it; it will take them 5 seconds to learn it. Then they will know one of the ancient rites of the unix/linux world.

[veronicathecow]

Although I would still like to see the automount facility PaulBx1 idea also has great merit, so perhaps we could have both. Definitly Red, green icon idea.