Well Since the first time I downloaded puppy over 2+yrs ago i liked it and wouldn't install it, It looked too much like the windows 95, the 1.0 series, But every time a newer release would come out i would give it a shot.
Then one day someone added icewm to the mix of things and then i really started taking notice, Until one day 2.15ce came out and boom hit it me like a ton of bricks, time to convert 1 of my 3 window's pc's to Linux. (I also had tried over 40 other Linux distro's by that time.) I just loved the look and feel of it, and well i installed it to my multimedia pc that i use for watching movies on tv, Man what a surprise the tv-out work without any other drivers, with my AGP ati radeon 7200 video card.
Sadly I upgraded my multimedia pc to a am2 amd with a ATI pci-express with tv-out. Well lets just say no matter what i did, or who tried to help, Nothing, so i bought another pci-express video card made by Nvidia and still nothing, I also tried other linux distro's before that also to try to get it going.I went to NVIDIA, ATI and downloaded the lastest drivers etc and nothing, I went to the chat support at #XORG and nothing.
sadly I had to install windows again and it worked with both cards. But i had this feeling not to shoot my cards down on the table just yet.
Well i was liking puppy a lot at the time and from day one i always wanted to make my own derivative, I'm not bad with graphics, i have a well rounded knowledge of computers.
So a light bulb went on my head. Time to make your own derivative. Maybe it was a way for me to put some spark back into the whole puppy linux thing, My wife hated the idea, because all the time it would take and she wanted me to finish building the 5th bedroom, (I've been doing it on and off for over 3yrs,lol more off then on
)
I knew Puppy 3.0 was coming out very soon and couldn't wait, Then I heard it was released,
Day 1: I downloaded it and went nuts, 20hrs the first day trying to figure out what i was going to make, different thing like graphics and multimedia, etc,
Day 2: I spent 19Hrs redoing what i did the previous day and started over again, Icewm was hard to get working at the right height 31pixels not 21 pixels. and the start menu button wouldn't change with the themes. What a pain.
Day 3: Another 19.5hrs by now my wife was right crazy at me, I just wanted it the way i envisioned it. It started looking and feeling like a replacement for 2.15ce and thats what i wanted. It ran like a charm, very fast, very stable, just right. I was really tired in the end, I ate in front of the pc, i went nowhere, my wife would say "We'll you get out of you hole already",lol I remastered it, tested it and released it And Fire Hydrant was born.After the first day I found out that a couple of default application shortcuts were broken so i quickly fixed it, I also heard that a PPoE flaw was found in 3.0 Puppy and that i had the same flaw, so i added that to the fix, and remastered it. I then released it. Not 10 mins after the second release was live i found 1 more broken short-cut. That really got me, so once again i fixed it and released it.
to bring this long story to a end this is what has been added to Fire Hydrant:
Firefox, flash, java, plus thunderbird, sunbird and lightning so you can get your mail and your calendar in one application. plus icewm, and 19 themes, a few new games in the firefox "tools" menu, xmms with a sony skin, Limewire, shutterbug, Gimpshop, Yahoo messenger, aMSN messenger, Flash for Linux(F4L), Galculator, and desktop icons, PPoE fix, etc a lot was added and no scripts removed. oh ya pidgin auto login to #puppy linux, and of course xgalaga. and firefox i added 2 skins and some games in the tools menu.
this is what was removed:
Sea Monkey, inkscape, abiword plugins, gtkfish, netsurf, gemgame, boehm-ge, bubble game, rubix cube, tkmines, ical, gnumeric
As long as people show interest in Fire Hydrant I'll keep this project up and going, I do have some real good idea's for future releases but, well have to wait and see
Its been a love hate thing.
Ps remember the pci-express problem? well once i loaded my Fire Hydrant up, I said to myself, i haven't tried puppy 3.0 or tv-out yet. but hey might as well give it a shot. switched the tv to AUX. s-video loaded Fire Hydrant generic drivers on boot and the screen came on.
Perfect picture , I was spell bound. I let out a big YESSSSS and deleted windows once again. LOL. funny, i was ready to leave puppy, because of this, and give up on Linux for a while, i made a derivative that really works well, and boom just like that, I'll give 100% anytime to make puppy a better operating system, my wife still thinks I'm nuts, but i know I'm just hooked on it.
Have fun and a nice day ttuuxxx
www.ttuuxxx.com home of Fire Hydrant