wish list for next puppy release

[37fleetwood]

ok, I would like to revise/clarify my views as i think it may be that what I am saying is not sounding like what i was meaning it to be.
first I really like that Puppy is fast and light and small. that being said I think Puppy sits on a precipice of change. I am of the opinion that there is plenty of room for development for Puppy 3 and 4 for memory challenged machines while Puppy 5 could be more capable. I would never propose that giant programs galore should be added in the base distro but if it takes more size, I think it is worth it to improve hardware support. and other items which make for a more capable base. video drivers, wireless drivers, support for all manner of hardware. one glaring thing in Linux in general is support for mice! why does my mouse do such cool things in windows and nothing in Linux? and 3d video support for video cards. even if these things are not included they need to be easily available
second thing about programs. I don't really care to much which programs are included as long as what I'm looking for is available easily as a .pet. one of the more popular Puppies is NOP which comes fairly stripped of all the programs the base puppy comes with. this is a wake up call, give me a good and solid base and let me pick the packages I want. I absolutely hate the zip program Puppy comes with and always install peazip right away. so this other zip program is running in ram whether I'll ever use it or not and so is peazip which isn't available as a .pet even so I have to install the .pup handler, all running in ram etc., etc.

so in short, my vote is get rid of some of the programs that everyone is impressed that puppy comes with and add support for as much hardware as possible. keep developing puppy 3 and 4 for slower machines and move Puppy 5 up a bit in capability. every day there are less old machines and every day more new machines.
like it or not, hardware is getting more advanced and Linux is right now in the position with compositing of being very seriously a cool alternative to windows and I think that Puppy needs to fill the niche of being a small streamlined distro which people can stick a live disk in their computer and taste compiz, and gimp, and open office, and the list is endless I would have never moved over to linux from windows without the ease of use of Puppy. everyone I show it to is really impressed.
sorry this went so long but I really don't want Puppy to turn into the next Ubuntu which is great but not what Puppy should aim for.
Scott
P.S. my comment about suse being like riding the Queen Mary was not meant to be derogatory I love the smooth seamlesness of Suse, it's just not for Puppy

[cthisbear]

I really think this would be a great tongue wagging release.
Multipup concept as Wolf Pup has previously produced.

Barebones.
Regular.
Cream of the crop release.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=35588

Retro Pup 1.03
Puppy Fancy 1.2.11

" Wolf Pup has done a great job here.
Brilliant idea of combining Puppies.

A community Puppy with this concept would be great.
Multi developers release their concepts on one CD.
5 or 6 different concepts...
like an omnibus of authors with a central theme ...
but each with their own twist on Puppy.

Combined with a Wolf Pup boot script, maybe he'd do another Puplet
of his own....aka White Fang etc. "

Chris.

[vtpup]

Faster drive mounting. On my 1.8 ghz Thinkpad T30, w/ 4.11 it seems like everything is wonderfully fast and responsive, except drive mounting.

There is a very long probe interval whenever you click on an unmounted drive icon. If you need to mount more than one drive, you have to wait for each probe to finish before starting another drive mount.

You can't click on several drives in the PMount window. Clicking on one immediately starts the mount process. Then you have to wait for the probe to finish before clicking on another.

If you plug in a USB drive with several partitons you have your work cut out for you.

[vtpup]

Edited:

I was dead wrong on this one, not actually a problem, sorry, deleted.

[Roy]

It seems the newest direction is the inexpensive Netbook, due to their economy or transportability. Ripple looks like it will support ASUS Netbooks -- becoming very popular, I should think. Personally, I have the Dell Inspiron Mini-9. Puppy 3.xx through Puppy 4.12 Retro will load and run (the new kernel in 4.12 non-Retro will not load), sans support for bluetooth, the 1.3M-pixel camera, and possibly the wireless (I haven't tried the wireless yet -- there aren't THAT kind of "hot spots" in the middle of this war zone).

I've tried (on different computers) everything from Sit Heel Speak's 2.xx Alpha revision to Mark's latest Muppy, with various versions of DamnSmallLinux, Vector Linux, Slax, etc. thrown in the middle -- and I'm hooked on Puppy! You cannot imagine the simple joy that your hard work has brought me during this past year!

With the economy and things being what they are, I truly expect that we will all see more new Netbooks in the near future than anything else, and I would love to see the Dell Mini-9 fully supported. Of course, that's just my 2-cents....

Roy

[ttuuxxx]

It seems the newest direction is the inexpensive Netbook, due to their economy or transportability. Ripple looks like it will support ASUS Netbooks -- becoming very popular, I should think. Personally, I have the Dell Inspiron Mini-9. Puppy 3.xx through Puppy 4.12 Retro will load and run (the new kernel in 4.12 non-Retro will not load), sans support for bluetooth, the 1.3M-pixel camera, and possibly the wireless (I haven't tried the wireless yet -- there aren't THAT kind of "hot spots" in the middle of this war zone).

I've tried (on different computers) everything from Sit Heel Speak's 2.xx Alpha revision to Mark's latest Muppy, with various versions of DamnSmallLinux, Vector Linux, Slax, etc. thrown in the middle -- and I'm hooked on Puppy! You cannot imagine the simple joy that your hard work has brought me during this past year!

With the economy and things being what they are, I truly expect that we will all see more new Netbooks in the near future than anything else, and I would love to see the Dell Mini-9 fully supported. Of course, that's just my 2-cents....

Roy

well when the aspire one came to surface 1 user had a couple of questions, I tried helping him the best I could, then once he received help from tempestuous, I suggested for him to make a release for aspire one, and thats where it all happened, he had lots of interest etc, and today around 3 or so months later, a fully working release.
If your not afraid to get your feet wet, maybe do the same? Well I hope that helps ttuuxxx

[ssme]

with all the highly specific and technical details people are including in the wish list mine is a bit abstract, but if you don't ask...

i'm using puppy with kids, in preschool settings, and i would love to have some sort of 'child mode' where most of the functionality is locked out, so they can't destroy things easily! for example, i would like to start tuxpaint or something and put it into child mode so that the children can't do anything but stay within the tuxpaint window until i press some obscure key combination to unlock the system.

a lot of people use puppy on old machines for their young kids, so this would be really useful.

of course it might already be in there and be really easy to activate. there is no accounting for my ignorance when it comes to linux

[37fleetwood]

ok, I've been thinking, and have what I would consider my wish list and I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of jwm and would prefer something like xfce or lxde. if jwm is kept I would rather see either Thunar or pcman as the file manager as rox is a pain in the rear to browse files with. I like peazip for archives as it handles more types and just works better. I like xmms as a small media player as it is easy to que files or folders in and will recognize m3u files. I would like to see a par program as one of the default programs I usually use Gpar though I'm not real pick as long as it works by clicking a par or par2 file. I tend toward Opera though Firefox is fine. Opera has support for many neat things like bittorrent and podcasts etc. for me something like GQView as a viewer and Gimp as a manipulation program. I like the idea of having a version with the newest kernel and a version retro which can be a little more sparse with some of the traditional smaller programs. maybe someone can come up with community sfs suites such as one for office one for multimedia one for photo editing one for development etc. maybe there could be a cutting edge and retro set of each suite to choose from. me I could use the cutting edge photoediting suite and would be fine with the smaller retro office suite. if Xfce or Lxde are used an sfs for compiz could be put together like WoW has for his unnamed pup. I'll add more if I think of anything but these are the things that would be great for me.
Scott

[Pizzasgood]

I like xmms as a small media player

I love xmms. Unfortunately, it requires GTK, but Puppy 4 only has GTK 2, so it's a no-go. Audacious is a similar relative (xmms -> beep -> audacious) and it does work in Puppy 4, but it's a pain to get running properly and has a lot of dependencies (though some can be disabled). The one I have installed now is good enough for me, but I wouldn't put it in an official Linux distro.

i'm using puppy with kids, in preschool settings, and i would love to have some sort of 'child mode' where most of the functionality is locked out, so they can't destroy things easily! for example, i would like to start tuxpaint or something and put it into child mode so that the children can't do anything but stay within the tuxpaint window until i press some obscure key combination to unlock the system.

Sounds doable. Basically what I'm thinking is you could set up a limited user and make sure any important configuration files for that user are owned by root so the kids can't alter them. Then they can play away. To do administrative stuff, all you'd have to do is log in as root. To simplify things for them, it could be set up to automatically log them in when it boots, and not give them an option to log out. (You could still log in by either using a terminal or by pressing ctrl-alt-f2).

I'm not entirely sure how much you'd have to do to set this up in Puppy. Probably not much. I'll play around with it tomorrow, along with some other related things I've been meaning to look into. I would like to have something like that too, so that when I'm visiting my family and their computers break and they want to use my laptop I can make sure they don't goof anything up. I just won't tell them they're using "Preschooler mode"

[J-Bob]

I like xmms as a small media player

I love xmms. Unfortunately, it requires GTK, but Puppy 4 only has GTK 2, so it's a no-go. Audacious is a similar relative (xmms -> beep -> audacious) and it does work in Puppy 4, but it's a pain to get running properly and has a lot of dependencies (though some can be disabled). The one I have installed now is good enough for me, but I wouldn't put it in an official Linux distro.

i'm using puppy with kids, in preschool settings, and i would love to have some sort of 'child mode' where most of the functionality is locked out, so they can't destroy things easily! for example, i would like to start tuxpaint or something and put it into child mode so that the children can't do anything but stay within the tuxpaint window until i press some obscure key combination to unlock the system.

Sounds doable. Basically what I'm thinking is you could set up a limited user and make sure any important configuration files for that user are owned by root so the kids can't alter them. Then they can play away. To do administrative stuff, all you'd have to do is log in as root. To simplify things for them, it could be set up to automatically log them in when it boots, and not give them an option to log out. (You could still log in by either using a terminal or by pressing ctrl-alt-f2).

I'm not entirely sure how much you'd have to do to set this up in Puppy. Probably not much. I'll play around with it tomorrow, along with some other related things I've been meaning to look into. I would like to have something like that too, so that when I'm visiting my family and their computers break and they want to use my laptop I can make sure they don't goof anything up. I just won't tell them they're using "Preschooler mode"

there's a script called xonemoreuser. If you use that, it's possible to make a limited user.

than you could change the password for root to one they cannot figure out.

I'm hoping for it to be apparent in 3.10.

[technosaurus]

@ssme

your could make backup of pup_save-XXX.2fs to pup_save-XXX.2fs.bak in the way you want it to stay and restore it as necessary

if you really want to get frisky you could modify /etc/rc.d/rc.shutdown to automatically restore it at shutdown using:

Code: Select all

 cp /path/to/pup_save_XXX.2fs.bak /path/to/pup_save_XXX.2fs

I did something similar for my kids but I just got my system like I wanted it using the zdrv_XXX.sfs holdover feature of puppy

rename pup_XXX.sfs to zdrv_XXX.sfs
copy the contents of your pup_save_XXX.2fs to folder "pup"
from the parent directory of "pup" turn it into an sfs file using

Code: Select all

dir2sfs pup

next copy your new pup_XXX.sfs to the same place as it was before you renamed it to zdrv_XXX.sfs (depends on your install method)
now just rename your pup_save_XXX.2fs to pup_save-XXX.2fs.bak so that it doesn't get loaded (you can delete it once you verified that it works)

You will have to create a new pup_save file if you want to save anything but now anytime your pup_save file gets messed up you can simply delete it
or if the kids don't need to save just alter your /boot/grub/menu.lst to use pfix=ram as default boot (and a second one without pfix=ram if you want/need to use it and save stuff)

[Pizzasgood]

Note: this is mostly of interest to people with a box that will pretty much only be used by kids. It isn't set up to be easily switched back and forth between a protected mode and a root mode (unless you enjoy working on the commandline, because you can get to a password-protected root commandline easily). This could be made to work in a dual-use situation without too much work though.


Attached is a tarball containing two scripts: dot.xinitrc and initialize_kids. What you do is extract them, backup your .xinitrc file (it's hidden, so click the "eye" button in the toolbar), then rename the dot.xinitrc file to .xinitrc. Then open a terminal and run the initialize_kids script:
./initialize_kids

What that will do is create a new user named 'kids' with the home directory /home/kids/, copy in some of the settings from /root, and do some slight tweaks to set them up. The modified .xinitrc file will cause the desktop icons and the windowmanager to run as the limited user 'kids' also, so that if they start any programs those programs will be limited to /home/kids and /tmp.

Notice: From the next time you restart X, that will be the default situation. To put it back, you would need to restore the backed up version of /root/.xinitrc and then restart X.

In order to get root-powers, you can either run the command 'su', which will ask for the root password (woofwoof by default), or you can press <CTRL><ALT><F2> to log into a virtual terminal. All commands executed from that terminal will be run as root. Be sure to close the terminal or run 'exit' after finished, so the kids don't take over the system. You can return to the gui from the virtual terminal with <ALT><F3>.


My reccomendation for how to do this would be to first set up a pristine Puppy 4.12. Then install all the games they'll want. Next do the above steps to set up the kids account. Then restart X and you should come up as 'kids' (you can test by opening a terminal and running 'whoami'). Now you can configure the icons, wallpaper, theme, etc. You'll probably also want to edit the file /home/kids/.jwmrc so that it doesn't have any of the extra stuff they don't need. You may also want to disable the option to exit X, since if they did that they could mess around on the commandline as root. And the reboot and shutdown options won't be functioning right because of some permissions issue I didn't bother looking into. If you want them to be able to turn it off, let me know and I'll look into that. Otherwise just open a terminal, run 'su', then run 'wmpoweroff' or 'wmreboot'.

You can change the root password from 'woofwoof' to whatever you want by running the 'passwd root' command.

If they discover that pressing <CTRL><ALT><BACKSPACE> lets them kill X and reach the root commandline, you can disable that feature by editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf and adding this option to the "ServerFlags" section:
Option "DontZap"


Once you have it all working how you want, backup their home directory. As root, run this:

Code: Select all

cd /home
tar czpf kids.tar.gz home/

Now if their home directory gets goofed up, you can restore it by running these commands as root:

Code: Select all

cd /home
rm -r kids
tar xpf kids.tar.gz

One more thing to mention: the 'kids' user cannot mount and unmount partitions, so I set this up to disable those drive icons that show up on the bottom, since they won't work anymore. If you have stuff you want them to be able to access on the drive, you can edit (as root) either the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local or the file /etc/fstab to have it automount. But be aware that you'll need to play with the permissions to make sure they can't wipe out the drive. If it's a windows drive I think all you can do is set it to mount read-only. If it's a linux partition you can set specific locations to be owned by kids (using 'chown') and make sure everything else isn't world-writable (chmod changes permissions).


EDIT: If you right-click in the white-space of a rox-filer window and go to options, you can edit which buttons appear on the toolbar. May be worth removing the "eye" button. Then the only directory they could goof up easily is the /home/kids/Choices directory, which mostly just contains info about the desktop. If you get everything the way you want it, you could run chown -R root:root /home/kids/Choices and I think that would still leave everything working but make it so they can't modify anything in Choices. It will also make it so they can't reorganize the desktop icons.

[technosaurus]

Here is a script I adapted from puppy's remaster script that remasters only the added software/files of your system to an SFS and give you the option to keep hardware configuration files. It is designed for creating puplet addons but would work in this situation also if you choose the hardware specific version... then again you could just to a full remaster an opt for the hardware addition (however I think the /usr/sbin/remasterpup2 script may be broken in that area - it is fixed in my script though - changed the first of two 0s after that dialog to a 1 )

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=37856

[kalvan]

I don't know if a shortcut has been devised for the flash based persistent and or live puppy installs but I would like to profile the setup for my computer and the other computers I use the most to automate the setup of puppy (choice of English, QWERTY, Screen Resolution, and Internet connection, start browser, launch word processor, possibly a torrent software, etc )

I want = Puppy to find the product key for the windows PC I am on and use that to find a existing profile stored on the flashdrive to auto-launch Puppy setup and any programs I might want to launch including starting a internet connection.
If puppy finds an unknown Product key It could offer to create a new profile or to use an existing one adding the New Product key to that Profile or even to create a new one using a old one to base it on.

[rheya]

well, puppy is a small OS , so it couldn't bear toomany programs, besides, it doesn't need them , but I'd love it could work with all hardware ( old and new ) ...
besides I'd like puppy had the newest web browsers and mail client and IM and skype .
these are light programs puppy could permit.
last : I'd prefer puppy would make upgrading and new installed programs easier...( skype IS easy , anyway )

[ttuuxxx]

well, puppy is a small OS , so it couldn't bear toomany programs, besides, it doesn't need them , but I'd love it could work with all hardware ( old and new ) ...
besides I'd like puppy had the newest web browsers and mail client and IM and skype .
these are light programs puppy could permit.
last : I'd prefer puppy would make upgrading and new installed programs easier...( skype IS easy , anyway )

4.2 has the latest Seamokey/mail the latest x-chat, forget about skype as default its too big:) but the pet is in the forum software section somewhere, plus it actually comes as a precompiled application when you download it from skype itself, you can just install it because its a static application.
ttuuxx

[ecomoney]

Suggestions for the next puppy (from me and my users) which I hope will be 4.2.1 (bugfixed 4.2)

-Thorough and complete bugfixing process (see below)

-Easy access to additional applications MOST USED BY END USERS from the desktop install icon, ie

Firefox (2.0.0.20 as its most stable)
Openoffice (preferably 3 series)
Amsn (0.98 beta is quite stable, and has webcam support)
Skype 2
GCompris

NONE of these are currently in the repositories AFAIK

-A reintroduction of a chat client (I hear the latest pidgin has a facebook chat plugin?)

-The new prettier JWM 2.x window manager, which also fixes gxine fullscreen bug - will need testing

-Testing of all filetypes (mimetypes) so they open automatically by clicking on them (i.e. .torrent files) or opening from the browser

There have been some positive suggestions about changes to the development process itself from 4.2.0 - taken from a thread here.

- Pre-release ticklist - Ecomoney

- Whole Forum "sandbox" section for bugs, with "bug per thread" approach, rather than one thread for all bugs -Ttuxxx

- Recruit "Package use experts" (not the compilers) and ask them to take part in testing before development begins - Patriot

- Have a "Testing Manager" to keep track of the testing process, only release when theyre happy too do so...no rush! - Ecomoney

- Make it easy to collect bug reports (default homepage) - James C

- Keep changes/package updates to only the ones needed by Users - Ecomoney

Suggestion: Perhaps Ttuxxx's "no-bling" bugfixed 4.2 could be used as a base...but definitely with the "bling" put back in (pWidgets), perhaps sans Icewm to create space for a chat client (new JWM is pretty enough).

[ttuuxxx]

perhaps sans Icewm to create space for a chat client (new JWM is pretty enough).

Listen Ecomoney what part of what WhoDo said when we started 4.2 did you not get,? he said something like "we are having 2 window manager to ease the transition into Icewm, you and zigbert both get this confused, JWM is on its way out! not new and improved, Its rounded corners, big deal, and to have a transparent desktop that would be unstable and resource stealing crap again. We can put 2 shovels of crap in every release can we? lol
Seriously the applications you place on top are too big for the repo, basically they are more for your own interest we read what you type all the time, Puppy isn't here to serve your clients, it here to serve the general public, And to kill Icewm for another chat client is stupid, don't you see Xchat in the menu?? oh ya I forgot your clients likes Im with voice, why do think this is your own company and your try to run us for your clients needs? man you have gull.
You want us to host like 400MB compressed of software for like 57 applications,
Firefox (2.0.0.20 as its most stable) <-- mozilla no longer supports it. Dead in the water
Openoffice (preferably 3 series) <--- 280MB-/+ lol ya right
Amsn (0.98 beta is quite stable, and has webcam support) <-- every update doesn't work with the previous version. Stupid application.
Skype 2 <--- Get the static bin and install it, No need to host static archives, So tell your clients to download it and run it direct, no compiling needed.
GCompris <--- Very large and unstable kids game for your schools, not puppies agenda.

Next you'll probably want to rename 'Puppy Linux' to 'ecomoney Linux LTD" lol what a FW
We aren't here to turn puppy linux in your own little puplet. Stop using us for your own personal benefits its so transparent.
ttuuxxx

[NathanO]

I am sure this has been requested, but just adding my request for it:

If Pizzasgood would be in a position to keep it up to date petbegone as part of the release would be a big help for a person trying to keep Puppy as small as one can and still add programs that one wants.

I do not need 2 window managers, so being able to remove one of them and all related Eye Candy would be useful. I am sure that other people have other items they would like to remove.

If it could be made part of the package manager would help.

One other idea for the package manager would be to give a discription of what the installed package does such as 'Firefox: Web browser'.

[pa_mcclamrock]

If Pizzasgood would be in a position to keep it up to date petbegone as part of the release would be a big help for a person trying to keep Puppy as small as one can and still add programs that one wants.

The "Remaster Slimmer" feature of Remaster Express ("RemaX custom live-CD creator" under the Setup menu in Puppy 4.2) does basically the same thing as petbegone--lets you uninstall built-in programs in order to remaster a Puppy live-CD that doesn't have them.