DingoPlus

[jakfish]

Hi, drbongo,

Success. I brooded about this puppy_save problem until I decide to repeat HPUSB/DingoPlus install on XP Home (which I had already done with my original Crucial Gizmo 1GB), but install everything on a cheap MP4 player, 1GB.


Lo and behold, it installed DingoPlus with a save file. I then copied all files from the MP4 player to the Gizmo and everything's fine. Which is insane, really. I have no idea why it worked on one and not the other.

But I'm in. For the record:

1) DingoPlus and Asus 900 talk very nicely re: video resolution. Choose 12**x768 and it looks great on the 900 screen

2) no sound on the ASUS 900 (perhaps Puppy 4.2 will have the right Alsa module)

3) all installed apps work fine

4) wireless setup a breeze

5) Conky for Puppy4 (the rebuild, not the original 1.51; I downloaded it from another thread) works

6) Yes, OO is bloated but everything about it works well on the ASUS 900. Thesaurus and Spelling (once you choose the specific language) work, and that's not always the case. You did a nice build

A couple of suggestions:

1) I would love to use the SeaMonkey email program, and wonder why you went with the other. It's fine, works with IMAP too, but it would be nice to have a tandem

2) I imported the black Pupeee desktop background since that shows the white text much better. Perhaps a darker background should be available

Finally, could you point me towards a link for Seamonkey AddressBook?

Again, congratulations on a well-built OS,
Jake

[drbongo]

Jakfish

Thanks for the feedback. I am glad you got it working in the end. I hope it was worth the effort.

I don't have access to a 900 series, and at the moment have no intention to buy one as the whole point of the eeepc for me was the portability and flash drive etc.

I chose to keep the original puppy 4 e-mail client because I actually prefer it to the sea-monkey equivalent. I am not even all that keen on the sea-monkey browser but it does the job and I ran into problems when trying to replace it with firefox and/or opera. I decided it was better to have a working sea-monkey than a buggy firefox/opera.

I am considering adding conky to a future build, and adding extra desktop backgrounds is very easy. However I do not have a URL for the sea-monkey address book.

drbongo

[jakfish]

I ended up installing SeaMonkey 1.1.11, which does fine in your build, and gives me the SeaMonkey AddressBook, a far better GUI for Contact Cards, IMHO, though the Outlook CSV import is a little more intimidating than Osmo's.

(for Outlook Importers, export file from OL, but OPEN first in Excel, (also: highlight first column of Names to search and delete annoying commas), and save. A direct import from OL to SM is buggy, gives too many false categories in Mapping. Opening/Saving in Excel 2003 appears to clean up the file)

I don't care much about the loss of sound, but I do wish I could toggle off/on the WiFi. At this point in Puppy/ASUS 900, wifi control is BIOS-only.

But thanks again for an OS that made my Linux introduction easy, given that I still don't know how to pronounce the word.

Jake

[Nevermore]

hello i've been testing dingo for a couple of days and i must say it works PERFECLY on my eeepc
however i have a couple of small requests for the next version:

1)is it possible to add amsn to it? it would be nice to use the webcam!

2)ayttm works with icq too, yes is not nice like pidgin but is faster and effective, i suggest a switch

3)it would be nice to have a way to turn off wifi, i tried the hotkey, fn-F2 alt-F2, no way to turn it off, this way is impossible to use on a plane..

4)what about suspend? is it possible to have it too?

5) one important one, is there any cpufreq module available in order to tweak the battery even more?

that's all

[drbongo]

I have discovered a small bug in the Puppy Package Manager in the latest version of DingoPlus. I had eliminated this bug in the first version, but stupidly forgot to fix it when I fixed the ipw3945 bug.

Basically when you open the Puppy Package Manager, there is no listing for Puppy 2 and 3 packages. This is not the end of the world as you can still instal them from the Puppy Software Installer.

I will upload a new iso with this bug fixed tomorrow (9:00am 28/07/08) but in the meantime there is a simple fix. Download this very small file (15kb) from:

http://www.rnc.ac.uk/mct/linux/dingoplu ... ckages.zip

Unzip it and place the two text files in the (hidden) .packages folder in your /root folder. Click on the eye icon on the toolbar to reveal the hidden folders.

Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

drbongo

[drbongo]

Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions. I will certainly take these into consideration when creating the next edition which will probaby be based on 4.1 etc.

In the meantime I am concentrating on making sure there are no serious bugs or compatibility problems with the current version. I hope to have a special edition featuring extra applications for computers with 1gb of ram soon.

drbongo

[Nevermore]

hello
i installed AMSN but the webcam is not detected, i made sure it on in bios but still no way...

another problem, after installing the snack libraries the sound works, but the mic doesn't..
i tried with alsamixer to turn on the microphone but it didn't work, also tried to change the device in amsn didn't work...

still needs some work

[drbongo]

I have just uploaded a special edition of DingoPlus featuring the Battle of Wesnoth turn based strategy game.

http://www.rnc.ac.uk/mct/linux/dingoplu ... esnoth.zip (321mb)
04a3c2eeaf465c7f327bff067cd3767f dingoplus-wesnoth.iso

This has exactly the same applications as the original DingoPlus with the addition of SDL and The Battle of Wesnoth. I have modified the Battle of Wesnoth so that it starts in windowed mode because it cannot handle the 800x480 resolution on the Asus Eeepc. However you can navigate the start screens by enlarging it to 1024x768 by pressing alt and left mouse in the bottom left corner, dragging it to the top right corner and dragging the corner of the window.

Once you have started the game you can then maximise the window again and navigate by using the cursor keys to scroll around the map and hotkeys to play the game, and you can use Ctrl+Z/X to zoom in and out if you want.

Have fun,

drbongo

[drbongo]

Nevermore,

I have not tested the video camera yet, but I have installed the drivers for it. I did not include any applications that used it. I will certainly look into this as I am thinking of including skype in a later version.

[drs]

DrBongo,
I installed DingoPlus this weekend (the usual way that I install Puppy...the frugal install). and I am a happy EEE user!

DingoPlus has practically everything that I normally use...all that I had to install was firefox ( I can't find any mini themes for Seamonkey).

The only problem that have found is that more than once after I shut down, the power remains on and I have to press the power button to force the light off. My changes are saved, though. I'll keep an eye on this to see how often it happens.

Suggestions for the 1 GB version.
1. Firefox preloaded with a small theme like tinyfox or minifox. These are really useful on the small EEE display.

2. JRE. Necessary for OO Base.

3. Some of the multimedia stuff on Firehydrant puppy.

[drbongo]

I have noticed that the light sometimes stays on, but not always. I don't see this as a major bug, but I will certainly look into it as soon as possible. If I can recreate the effect at will then I will probably be able to change it.

I will have another look at some of the extras in the pupeee repository, I am sure there was .rc file concerning shutdown. If anyone else finds a solution please post it here.

Many of the people having problems with DingoPlus are those using it on the 900 series or other brands of laptop altogether.

I have already tried installing the openofficeJRE and it caused some dependancy problems. It is something I will have to look into.

This is my first attempt at a puplet, and I have only been using Puppy regularly for about 12 weeks, so I am quite pleased with my progress and feedback received so far. I have learnt more about linux. jwm and puppy in the last 12 weeks while trying to remaster DIngo than I have in the past 4 years.

drbongo

[Nevermore]

yes it happened to me a couple of times
i had to turn off via the button.
i managed to make the mic work by playing alsamixer, it was hard and the result is not super but it does work..
the output is pretty noisy and low
was totally unable to get the system recognize the webcam
i agree about the mini theme, if it was possible to keep seamonkey better, otherwise FF3 with a mini theme.

[mdisaster2]

Sometimes I have the shutdown issue with Xandros as well, but rather than a freeze it seems a long shutdown - after a few minutes the machine does turn itself off. Only once I had to use the switch (the disk ligkt was stuck, which doesn't happen in regular shutdowns).

Plus, I am not 100% sure, but I think it only did that when running from battery, or possibly when running from battery with the AC plugged in. I don't remember slow shutdowns when running from AC with the battery removed, which is how I use my eee at home.

[brfsa]

This looks really nice.
im downloading now... currently i have gentoo on my eeepc 701

Skype would be a really good addon for next 4.1.
or does it already have it or is the package available?

what about WPA/AES and WPA2/AES? does it work ?

thanks again for this great work.

[darwinev0lved]

Hi I'm running Dingoplus on an eee701 and its great. One irritant though is the Puppy Package manager: I can't see the bottom bit of the screen, I gets cut off just below "Welcome! To" so I can't see any installed packages.
Is anybody else having this problem?
Possibly related is when I run XorgWizard, it doesn't offer me the 800/480 resolution option but if I run xvidtune it says
HDisplay: 800
VDisplay 480
So I'm guessing that the resolution was detected correctly?

Oh and if I run Xvesa, then I can select 800/480 - but still can't see the Puppy Package Manager.

Thanks, Jon

[drbongo]

This is not strictly a bug in Dingoplus, because the new puppy package manager does not allow you to resize the frames and even if you maximise it the frames remain the same size. I found that if I hid the taskbar I could see the very top entry of the installed apps window. I think you can also remove apps from the command line, but I don't remember how.

Have you tried clicking on the bottom left corner of the window while holding down alt, moving the window to the top right corner and then dragging the window into a larger shape. This works with other large windows if they are not maximised!

drbongo

[darwinev0lved]

Thanks for the quick reply. Unfortunately that trick doesn't work.
It's no big deal (though a fix for 4.1 would be great) - space with Puppy, even on the 2G is ample I was just filled with the desire for neatness!

[drbongo]

I have decided to freeze further development of DingoPlus until the release of Puppy 4.1!

This mainly to a lack of time due to family/work commitments but also because it is relatively stable and 4.1 should resolve most of the issues which are generic to Dingo rather than specific to DingoPlus. I am hoping that 4.1 will support dual core processors and the Asus Eeepc out of the box and then I can concentrate on simply adding applications that many people want but are (quite rightly) not included in the default Puppy distribution. In the meantime I will start to play with/test the 4.1 alpha image and install DingoPlus onto my main work/home machines which is the only real way to test it thoroughly.

If I use it at work and home exclusively any serious bugs or limitations will soon emerge. Thanks to everyone who has downloaded it and provided feedback and suggestions for future versions. I will keep monitoring the forum and try to fix any existing bugs and include requested software if at all possible and/or appropriate to the purpose of DingoPlus and a 256mb size limit for the main version. (I may exceed this for special editions).

drbongo

[jakfish]

I use DingoPlus whenever I'm working on battery. It's a great build, thank you.

For the next release, my own fingers are crossed for sound and wireless toggle in the 900 machine, but that's it--the rest of it can stay the same as far as my own needs go.

(I just got DP to print wirelessly to an XP-connected printer, I was amazed)

Best of luck,
Jake

[larrykin]

I am a relative newbie to Linux generally and am on a steep learning curve. I have a new eeePC901 which came with Windows installed. I have since added a 8gb SD card and have been attempting to get DingoPlus operational on the SD card. I have everything installed and it boots ok but I cannot get it to recognise the inbuilt wifi. I have tried the atl2 module as suggested but it still fails to recognise the network. Is there a different module required for the 901?

Thanks

Larrykin