pcPuppyOS RC5 - Maximum Testers Requested!

[friedsonjm]

Well, if I had realized we would go to 'RC5,' RC1 etc. would have been named differently! In any event, Jeremy has burnt some more midnight oil, and produced what 'might' be final, for now... I would really like to get maximum tests run on this version!

I'm traveling, and will get this all uploaded to pcPuppyOS.com asap, but in the meantime, pcPuppyOS with a new winetools addon and
the RC4 to RC5 xdelta patch have all be uploaded to caneri's server [thanks as always!].

jf

EDIT: Now can be downloaded at http://www.pcpuppyos.com

or

ISO:
http://www.puppylinux.ca/pizzasgood/pcp ... 01-rc5.iso
http://www.puppylinux.ca/pizzasgood/pcp ... so.md5.txt
.delta file:
http://www.puppylinux.ca/pizzasgood/pcp ... _RC5.delta
WineTools addon:
http://www.puppylinux.ca/pizzasgood/Win ... igured.pet
http://www.puppylinux.ca/pizzasgood/Win ... et.md5.txt

If you already have the .iso file from RC4, you don't need to download
the new iso. Instead, you can download the pcpos_RC4_to_RC5.delta
file, which is only 24 MB. To apply it, put both it and the old iso in
the same directory. Then run this:

xdelta3 -d -s pcpuppyos_3.01-rc4.iso pcpos_RC4_to_RC5.delta pcpuppyos_3.01-rc5.iso

[EDIT: The line above may appear word-wrapped; should be run as one command.]

When it finishes, you should have a fresh shiny pcpuppyos_3.01-rc5.iso
file, who's md5sum should match the one liked to above.


Changes since RC4:

corrected errors in install script
set default fallback WM to starticewm
fixed dev environ
upgraded Pebble to 1.0
added "pretty" syslinux config - makes cd and usb boots better
looking, and lets usb boots add options
updated firefox to 2.0.0.12
updated wine to 0.9.55
added pcPuppyOS.com to bookmarks
updated clamav to 0.92.1 and updated dailies (Feb 15, 2008)
modded remaster script to work from HD and to accept an ISO rather
than requiring the original CD

---Jeremy

[Sit Heel Speak]

I have not downloaded the rc4-to-5 yet, so disregard whatever of this no longer applies...

In the IcebergX theme, after giving it my font tweaks, even without doing the five dpi settings and without adjusting gamma, it is dropdead gorgeous. However, one request: how do I get the titles on inactive windows to display in black, rather than the almost-invisible default silver? I would like the active window's title to remain in white as it currently is.

The round clock does not remember between boots, where I drag it to on the desktop.

Rox takes 20 seconds to start. This is on a P3-1GHz with 1 GB of RAM and a total 1.8 GiB of swap partitions, coexist (a.k.a. frugal) install to a 1 GB vfat partition with a 256 MB savefile (yes, it's cramped, but should that matter?). Turning off any combination of one or two of the swap partitions, down to 128 MB of swap, does not improve the Rox start speed. Might this have to do with the fact that my system has a total of 17 mountable partitions?

I'm also eager to know if the default background is available "in blank form" together with the "smeary" font used to identify the Puppy version, so that I may customize the background's Puppy-version label for the individual user?

[friedsonjm]

The round clock does not remember between boots, where I drag it to on the desktop.

Move the clock, close it down, then restart it or wait until next boot and it will be in place!

So much for what I know... Jeremy will have to answer the hard stuff..

jf

[Pizzasgood]

My email must have gotten wordwrapped. The correct command to use the xdelta patch is supposed to be all one line:
xdelta3 -d -s pcpuppyos_3.01-rc4.iso pcpos_RC4_to_RC5.delta pcpuppyos_3.01-rc5.iso

how do I get the titles on inactive windows to display in black, rather than the almost-invisible default silver? I would like the active window's title to remain in white as it currently is.

Edit /root/.icewm/themes/IceBergX/default.theme. IceWM considers inactive items to be "normal" (I suppose because you can have many of them, but only a single active item). So change this line:
ColorNormalTitleBarText="rgb:c0/c0/c0"
to
ColorNormalTitleBarText="rgb:00/00/00"

The round clock does not remember between boots, where I drag it to on the desktop.

It only saves it's position when you close it by right-clicking it, or if you modify it's config file by hand (/root/.GtkBasic-Analogclock/windowposition.txt).

Rox takes 20 seconds to start. This is on a P3-1GHz with 1 GB of RAM and a total 1.8 GiB of swap partitions, coexist (a.k.a. frugal) install to a 1 GB vfat partition with a 256 MB savefile (yes, it's cramped, but should that matter?). Turning off any combination of one or two of the swap partitions, down to 128 MB of swap, does not improve the Rox start speed. Might this have to do with the fact that my system has a total of 17 mountable partitions?

I have no idea, sorry.

I'm also eager to know if the default background is available "in blank form" together with the "smeary" font used to identify the Puppy version, so that I may customize the background's Puppy-version label for the individual user?

The background itself is just the /usr/share/backgrounds/blue.jpg image expanded to 1024x768. The "text" was an image that Friedsonjm emailed me. I added that to the image using a combination of alpha transparency and one of the layer filters (probably multiply or overlay). Then I might have run the "blur" filter in Gimp over the whole thing to smooth it out a little.

[klu9]

Coblitzed links

ISO
http://coblitz.codeen.org/www.puppylinu ... 01-rc5.iso

DELTA
http://coblitz.codeen.org/www.puppylinu ... _RC5.delta

WINETOOLS ADD-ON:
http://coblitz.codeen.org/www.puppylinu ... igured.pet

[Roger Hunter]

I've tries rc4 and now rc5 with no success.

Rc5 gets all the way to installing grub and refuses to continue. Keeps going back to the first menu item. Once I quit out of that, it won't reboot. I have to shut down the machine and restart.

I'm running an old Gateway P4 with 700+Mb RAM and 2 IDE HD. I'm trying to install on hda17

Roger

[friedsonjm]

Downloads and installs OK to my test system, except that I have to use XVESA and switch to XORG manually after installation, which is not new on my old ATI system.
I'm doing a full install, wipe, simple grup, install to MBR. What are you trying?
jf

[Roger Hunter]

Prretty much the same. I can't get past the grub install screen so don't know about the rest.

Roger

[klu9]

I see 2 different MD5s.

On the PCPuppyOS webpage you give:

Code: Select all

652f187d87532c22bd4a55279e6af177  puppy-3.01-Firefox.iso

but the md5 you link to above (on puppylinux.ca) is:

Code: Select all

189e023682851d1bae2528390776d0e8  pcpuppyos_3.01-rc5.iso

The second one (189e etc.) is what I get when I check my download. Is that right? If so then I'll upload a torrent.

[friedsonjm]

I see 2 different MD5s.

On the PCPuppyOS webpage you give:

Code: Select all

652f187d87532c22bd4a55279e6af177  puppy-3.01-Firefox.iso

but the md5 you link to above (on puppylinux.ca) is:

Code: Select all

189e023682851d1bae2528390776d0e8  pcpuppyos_3.01-rc5.iso

The second one (189e etc.) is what I get when I check my download. Is that right? If so then I'll upload a torrent.

Yikes! Thanks, gotta go fix that... FIXED thanks!

jf

[klu9]

My email must have gotten wordwrapped. The correct command to use the xdelta patch is supposed to be all one line:
xdelta3 -d -s pcpuppyos_3.01-rc4.iso pcpos_RC4_to_RC5.delta pcpuppyos_3.01-rc5.iso

2 suggestions on that:

1. try the "Code" formatting here in the forum, e.g.

Code: Select all

xdelta3 -d -s pcpuppyos_3.01-rc4.iso pcpos_RC4_to_RC5.delta pcpuppyos_3.01-rc5.iso

EDIT: nope, that still word-wraps. I've seen other forums where the Code format doesn't wrap, but creates a scroll bar if the code goes for long without a true line break.

2. Just make the file names simpler. I always forget how to copy & paste into a terminal, and I kept screwing up an xdelta operation once doing it by hand because of the long complex filenames... until I just renamed all the files (in the pointy-clicky file manager, not the terminal) to "a1.iso, a2.delta, a2.iso". It made getting the command right a hell of of a lot easier. And I just renamed them back after the operation.

[klu9]

Yikes! Thanks, gotta go fix that... FIXED thanks!

so it's the 189e one, great.

Here's a torrent for it:
Page for PCPuppyOS 3.01 RC5 torrent on The Pirate Bay
Direct link to PCPuppyOS 3.01 RC5 torrent

Folks,

• If you don't have PCPuppyOS yet, get it with the torrent.
• If you have it already, help others get it by downloading and running the torrent and choosing the ISO's existing location on your hard drive as the "Save... " location. That's called "seeding".

[klu9]

Anyone with the RC5 ISO, please seed the torrent!

In an hour I've got to disconnect & take my laptop to work, where BitTorrent is blocked.

But looking in my torrent program, it seems I am the only person seeding this file, with 8 people downloading from me.

I know I'm not the only person with this ISO; someone, anyone, everyone with it, please please please seed it!

Just click on this direct torrent link, and in your torrent program's "Save" location dialog, point it to the existing ISO on your hard drive. That's it.

[friedsonjm]

I am seeding and uploading; will leave on as much as I can. jf

EDIT: as of Noon 18 Feb 08, torrent availability is pretty good; three seeds at 100%.

[TheKid7]

I have RC5 on one of my PC's. It just upgraded from RC4 (File wipe/install option rather than upgrade). I have been using PCPuppyOS for simple things like web surfing, DOC writing, DOC to pdf, etc. I have not had encountered problems that I know of.

What are some tips for a Linux Newbie on how to Test RC5?

Also, I was unable to play a DVD Movie on RC4 (I haven't tried RC5 yet) because of what appears to be a lack of DVD codecs. If it is a codec problem where can I download the codecs?

Thank you.

[Roger Hunter]

Finally, after wasting 4 CDs and downloading 3 different versions I've got PCPuppyOS up and running.

it has some peculiarities. It doesn't seem to understand large HDs. My 200Mb IDE drive is partitioned from hda1 to hda18. I have WinXP and Win98SE in the first 2 partitions with the rest devoted to Linux distros. hda5 is Puppy 2.14, my favorite. I wanted to put PCPOS in hda17 but it failed several times. Finally I noticed that ROX wasn't reporting anything beyond hda16. (2.14 can see them all) so I installed to hda13. That finally worked after several attempts

Roger

[friedsonjm]

Finally, after wasting 4 CDs and downloading 3 different versions I've got PCPuppyOS up and running.

it has some peculiarities. It doesn't seem to understand large HDs. My 200Mb IDE drive is partitioned from hda1 to hda18. I have WinXP and Win98SE in the first 2 partitions with the rest devoted to Linux distros. hda5 is Puppy 2.14, my favorite. I wanted to put PCPOS in hda17 but it failed several times. Finally I noticed that ROX wasn't reporting anything beyond hda16. (2.14 can see them all) so I installed to hda13. That finally worked after several attempts

Roger

Just out of curiosity, what kind of file system on each HD?

[Roger Hunter]

The linux partitions are ext3. hda11 is the swap file. There may be a reiserf in there somewhere. hda1 and 2 are fat32 and so is all of hdb which is an 80Gb containing D: and E: for the two windows partitions.

Roger

[Roger Hunter]

Make that a 200Gb main drive with 10-20Gb partitions.

Roger

[friedsonjm]

Roger, Jeremy sent me the following comment:

Puppy 3.xx doesn't ship with device nodes in /dev/ for anything higher than hda16.
Also, it only has up to 9 for hdb, hdc, and hdd. Similar
situations with the sda designations. The command mknod can be used
in conjunction with /proc/devices to add more, but I don't remember
the exact command. If he looked it up,
or copied in the correct file (/dev/hda17) from another Puppy, he'd
have to do that to both the LiveCD before installing, and then to the
new installation before rebooting (I think, but wouldn't hurt at all.
Easy too: once he has one copy in the LiveCD he can just re-use it).

NOTE: He can't just rename an existing node. I'm nearly certain that
that wouldn't work. If I remember right, the name of the node is
irrelevant; hda16 will still link to hda16 if renamed hda17. He needs
to either create a new hda17 or copy that specific file from the old
Puppy and hope it works (probably will, easy enough to test: just try
mounting the drive).