Puppy 4.2 Beta2 Bugs & Fixes

[WhoDo]

I have just uploaded the second Beta version for Puppy 4.2 Deepthought with Seamonkey and Claws mail. There are still a very few issues with this one although it's very, very solid:

Known issues:

1. There are three desktop icon themes - Deepthought, l'Orange and Stardust - they still aren't in sync yet, but I'm working on that now that bug chasing has slowed and there is a little more time.
2. Blinky starts up but disappears after any jwmconfig change
3. I still haven't set /usr/share/doc/home.html as the default home page for Seamonkey. It's there and contains the link to the puppy web portal but you'll need to add it manually to test.

RoxRightClicks and icon2desk now work as they were intended by their authors, HairyWill and Zigbert respectively. New applications include Pwidgets (1.5), Clock-skins Changer (0.1), Icewm (1.2.36-v8.0) and CUPS has been upgraded to the latest and greatest from ttuuxxx.

Coolpup has continued to submit a host of back-end updates as have aragon and ttuuxxx. All have my sincere thanks for their support of the project. Zigbert, trio, 01micko and tasmod are churning out new widgets like a butcher churns out sausages, so be sure to try some of their offerings included in this release as well as downloading more from the Eye Candy thread.

Mirrors:
1. http://puppyisos.org/isos/2009-01-to-06/4.2-beta2/ (user=puppy pwd=linux)
2. http://www.pkagfiles.net/puppy-test/
3. http://www.puppylinux.ca/puppyfiles/test/

If the mirrors don't show the Beta2 yet it's probably because the admins haven't had time to move the files to the download area ... try again later.

This release is 99.85Mb, including CUPS, and I still have to find room for RemaX (Remaster Express from pa-mcclamrock).



Enjoy!

[ttuuxxx]

Fleas/Bugs found
- changed two jwm config manager panels, error message appeared
- bug with wireless driver rtl8187




Software
FoxitReader PDF 1.8MB pet, great for the repo. (window users will like this)
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... h&id=15480

ttuuxxx

[ttuuxxx]

Good to see things are moving along, Hope all works well
Thanks WhoDo
ttuuxxx

[ttuuxxx]

Ok I'm over it, WhoDo please next-time delete all the printing packages and use the ones from the server, Thanks
Glad to see the icons are fixed, and the shutdown/refresh menu stays in place, overall were a few steps closer

ttuuxxx

[01micko]

WhoDo

Ditch all your clockskins. I made some minimalistic ones that look quite niiiiiice, even a puppylogo one. You'll save a hundred k. Clockskins average around 15-20k each, my minimal ones are less than 2k each, and with trio's clock skin chooser it makes changing them a breeze. We can make pets of say 5 skins each and they will install into the Pwidgets app and are readily available in the gui.

Just my $0.02.

[Lobster]

Congratulations to everyone
Posting from Beta 2 now
When I changed to two panels (see pic) I got an error message
but the panels came up anyway. (sorry to start with a bug)

We have two orange icon themes?
I find the 'original' icon theme to be the best we have produced

Been playing for about an hour.
Seems very different to 4.12
With the polish for the RC1 we will be well on track to a very pleasing 4.2

The Beta really felt good when I changed to IceWM
I feel that IceWM is the more developed window manager - maybe that should be the default..The advantage of JWM - faster on slower machines and discontinued development . . .

woof woof

[ttuuxxx]

Congratulations to everyone
I feel that IceWM is the more developed window manager - maybe that should be the default..The advantage of JWM - faster on slower machines and discontinued development . . .

woof woof

I agree of course, , Plus there really isn't any speed differences, there was a test done on here, and yes jwm was a tiny bit faster but we are talking almost not even measurable, if we were computers it would e different.
looking forward to beta 3
ttuuxxx

[WhoDo]

Ok I'm over it, WhoDo please next-time delete all the printing packages and use the ones from the server, Thanks

Ummm... that's EXACTLY what I did! You mean go back to the earlier version of CUPS? That didn't work anyway, at least not for me! If there is anything amiss with CUPS in 4.2Beta2, then we need to look again at the packages provided. I didn't want to risk any cross contamination so I deleted ALL of the old CUPS packages from the Unleashed tree and added back the 6 packages you supplied plus libgnomeprintui which is evidently required for Abiword. Don't give up, mate. It's almost there.

Glad to see the icons are fixed, and the shutdown/refresh menu stays in place, overall were a few steps closer

Icons are only partly fixed. I'm still working on standardising icon theme requirements, etc. I'm in the process of documenting which icons go where and what they're used for (except of added application icons, of course).

[WhoDo]

When I changed to two panels (see pic) I got an error message
but the panels came up anyway. (sorry to start with a bug)

That error message in your pic is typical of a corrupt JWM or Gtk theme. Change back to default in JWM and see if the error repeats.

We have two orange icon themes?
I find the 'original' icon theme to be the best we have produced

Do you mean the "original" Deep Thought theme or the "original" l'Orange theme in your screenshot?

The Beta really felt good when I changed to IceWM
I feel that IceWM is the more developed window manager - maybe that should be the default..The advantage of JWM - faster on slower machines and discontinued development . . .

Wash your mouth out with soapy water! ... or risk a visit from the Simpson's angry mob that chased me when I suggested only 1 desktop as default! If you think the 3 or 4 angry puppians who came after me were something, wait till the nearly 50% of Puppy's JWM users get wind of your treasonous statement!

[trio]

Well, now the icewm looks right...I think i'm sticking to it...it just goes well with the sidebars.. Love it, thx tuxxx

[WhoDo]

Ditch all your clockskins. I made some minimalistic ones that look quite niiiiiice, even a puppylogo one. You'll save a hundred k. Clockskins average around 15-20k each, my minimal ones are less than 2k each, and with trio's clock skin chooser it makes changing them a breeze. We can make pets of say 5 skins each and they will install into the Pwidgets app and are readily available in the gui.

It may come to that, micko. At 99.85Mb Beta2 is fairly hefty and I still have to find room for RemaX.

There is still some other fat in there too. I included 3 icon themes, just as a talking point. I included lots of Gtk, JWM and Icewm themes, too. None of them are what you'd call BIG, but every little helps.

There are also a few too many games as well. They'll be pared back for the Final release. And there is an extra wallpaper or two that could make the ultimate sacrifice for expedience. Where there's a will there's a way!

[WhoDo]

@ttuuxxx - just noticed a few things about CUPS in Beta2.

1. You had me include Ghostcript-8.63-1.pet when Ghostscript-8.64.pet is available. Should I add the later one instead for the next release?

2. You didn't mention cupsusb but I DID include that as well.

3. openssl is at 0.9.8e because 0.9.8j threw up some missing dependencies when building from Unleashed.

Hope that helps in the bug chase. I'll trial it here and see what happens. At least I know I'm getting the CUPS management page, but I haven't tried to add my printer with it yet. I wasn't even getting that far before - 404 Not Found error.

Cheers

[Lobster]

That error message in your pic is typical of a corrupt JWM or Gtk theme. Change back to default in JWM and see if the error repeats.

was OK when I followed your suggestion

Do you mean the "original" Deep Thought theme or the "original" l'Orange theme in your screenshot?

The original icon theme in 4.1 (see image)

Regarding window managers. JWM is the default at the moment but if having two we should go with the better one as default (many will never change from the default)
From my experience of the Beta, IceWm feels and looks better, simpler and more usable. Some will even love that citrus theme that had me running for sunglasses . . .

[ttuuxxx]

Some will even love that citrus theme that had me running for sunglasses . . .

Well the whole theme was only 10kb uncompressed and when I made it, I started with the orange mat kind of finish on the taskbar, then I was thinking what in the world will go with something that looks so orange?, then a flash happened, orange well lemons and limes of course, So then I went with that, first I tried the menu as yellow, wow that was really bright so I went lime green. That made a world of difference believe it or not. I'm sure it will brighten up someones day, My 6yr old daughter said 'Daddy how it you do that?? That looks great' So if you have any young kids say 10yr or younger ask them, I bet they think its great, funny how peoples taste change over the years. Well if your ever feeling down, just change you theme to 'Citrus' and use it for about half an hour I bet you'll feel better once you change it back to your default theme, LOL
ttuuxxx

[ttuuxxx]

@ttuuxxx - just noticed a few things about CUPS in Beta2.

1. You had me include Ghostcript-8.63-1.pet when Ghostscript-8.64.pet is available. Should I add the later one instead for the next release?

2. You didn't mention cupsusb but I DID include that as well.

3. openssl is at 0.9.8e because 0.9.8j threw up some missing dependencies when building from Unleashed.

Hope that helps in the bug chase. I'll trial it here and see what happens. At least I know I'm getting the CUPS management page, but I haven't tried to add my printer with it yet. I wasn't even getting that far before - 404 Not Found error.

Cheers

1
Hey WhoDo yes the 8.64 should go it, it was by accident that I forgot that one, It gets a bit confusing, because my main building pc I use all the time for just about everything, I sometimes use the the mulimedia pc to test packages, since that one runs live anyways off a remastered disk
But for this cups thing, I take over my wifes pc late at night when she doesn't need it, I do store a bit of printing pets on it, but its usually the only xp system in the house with a printer, so I figured all the latest was there, I tried out all 6 packages on alpha 4 and cups worked perfectly, so I loaded filezilla on the wifes pc and uploaded the packages, somehow overlooked the newer ghostscript I made, but like I said it worked, beforeI can upgrae to 4.2b2 on my main building pc I have 2 packages to put together and over 300 items in my root directory to sort out, files, pets, sources what a mess. So I'll work on that.


2. You didn't mention cupsusb but I DID include that as well.
-->Its included already in the last cups I uploaded last night, 1 less package
ttuuxxx

[01micko]

In 420 beta 2 now, There is an ongoing bug with wireless driver rtl8187. Maybe Tempestuous can fix it. It doesn't work with ndiswrapper either.

[ttuuxxx]

In 420 beta 2 now, There is an ongoing bug with wireless driver rtl8187. Maybe Tempestuous can fix it. It doesn't work with ndiswrapper either.

I'll post a summary on the first page
ttuuxxx

[Lobster]

Yes the Citrus theme will be loved in some cultures and age groups. The themes in IceWM are a good balance, covering a variety of states of consciousness, from psychedelically inhibited to lemon flashback They have that Puppy 'feel good' factor. I like them a lot. The default (when entering IceWm) is a great choice.

Another topic, personally I do not like the clutter of the widgets (that is me) BUT most people will find them great - so they should be there by default in my opinion - even though I will turn them off.

Ttuuxxx what do you feel are the priorities for the next RC release?

[pa_mcclamrock]

PUPPY 4.2 BETA2 NOTES

On the bright side, I see no remaining Tcl/Tk problems, xpad doesn't come up automatically, the IceWM taskbar is considerably less cluttered, and it has the indispensable Show Desktop icon. Almost two-thirds of the taskbar is now available to show running apps--still short of the more than 80% I get on my ruthlessly stripped-down taskbar in Puppy 4.1.1, but a big improvement. Everything else that worked before, I'm assuming, still works. The good news is very good indeed.

On the dim side, the IceWM Shutdown menu item is still the same, it's still confusing, and I still don't see how to restart IceWM except by restarting the X server. Users who install software with PETget will not be pleased to be told they have to restart the window manager to see the new menu item, and then not be able to see how to do it! This really needs to be changed!

On the pale side . . . are the GTK+ themes. There are a lot more of them, they're not bad at all, and Stardust looks even better with a lighter gray background . . . but they all seem to have pale, un-vivid backgrounds except MurrineShadow, which veers way too far in the opposite direction. Would you like me to finish (quickly) tweaking some or all of my six new, colorful Clearlooks themes (see screenshots: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 5&start=15), only about 3 KB total .PET, and submit them for inclusion?

And now . . . drum roll . . . can I print, or not? Printer is turned on (Brother HL-5140 monochrome laser). I select "Setup CUPS printing." I do want to add a new printer. CUPS window appears, considerably better-looking than the one in Puppy 4.1.1. It's a bit disconcerting to see the old purple xmessage window telling me to click on 'Manage Printers' when I should click on 'Administration' in the new window, but I readily figure out what to click.

I then click "Add Printer" and am pleased to see some big text telling me what username and password to enter, which I proceed to do. I select "LPT #1" under Local Printers, pausing only briefly to note that "unknown" is misspelled in "pdf writer (unkown)" [sic]. I enter the printer name and note that the connection, /dev/lp0, appears to be correct.

I reach the page with the list of brands of printers, and I'm pleased to see that I can use a driver specifically for the HL-5140 instead of having to use the HL-1240 driver, so I do. I don't know why there need to be two drivers, one English-only and one not, but I figure the English-only one will probably be simplest for testing, so I select it. (One little thing: the scrollbar on the driver list wasn't visible initially, and I had to move the bottom scrollbar to see it.)

I click Add Printer, accept default options, learn that they've been set successfully, and see my new listing for "BrotherHL5140 (Idle, Accepting Jobs, Not Shared)." I decide to keep the CUPS window open to see if it will show me any information in the event that the printing still doesn't work. I open AbiWord, which has been known to print text correctly even though, not long ago, it gave me a disgusting black blob instead of the image in my personal letterhead. I type a bit of text in AbiWord, and make sure everything looks OK in Page Setup and Print Preview.

Now comes the moment of truth. I click Print, select BrotherHL5140 which AbiWord says is "Ready," and click Print again. I wait. Nothing happens. I look at "Jobs" in CUPS. No jobs are shown. I look at "Printers" in CUPS. Status is "Paused, starting GPL Ghostscript 8.15.2..."

I run "ps" in rxvt and see that the following relevant processes are running:

22230 root 2652 S /bin/sh /usr/sbin/cups_shell
22389 root 3916 R /usr/sbin/cupsd
22396 root 105224 S bareview http://localhost:631/

But they don't include "ghostscript," or "gs," or "gsc." I verify that ghostscript is installed and the ghostscript executable (/usr/bin/gsc) is present; it is.

I look at the CUPS error log. Here's what it says:

Code: Select all

E [22/Feb/2009:12:11:29 +0800] Unknown browse protocol "@CUPS_DEFAULT_BROWSE_LOCAL_PROTOCOLS@" ignored!
E [22/Feb/2009:04:35:22 +0800] Unknown browse protocol "@CUPS_DEFAULT_BROWSE_LOCAL_PROTOCOLS@" ignored!
E [22/Feb/2009:05:05:22 +0800] [Job 1] Unable to open device file "/dev/lp0": Permission denied
E [22/Feb/2009:05:05:42 +0800] Returning IPP client-error-bad-request for Get-Jobs (ipp://localhost/jobs) from localhost

I look at the permissions for /dev/lp0 and note that they're 660 (not executable), while the permissions for /dev/lp1 are 777 (executable). Before I tried to print, though, the permissions for both were 777.

This exhausts my knowledge of why the printing doesn't work. I would very strongly recommend that there should be a third beta in which everyone reports that the printing does work. The main goal of all these 4.2 alpha and beta efforts, we should keep in mind, is not to get done quickly or to keep Puppy under 100 MB; it is to produce a superb little distribution in which, so far as humanly possible, everything works. The world will little note nor long remember whether Puppy 4.2 is slightly under or slightly over 100 MB, nor whether it comes out slightly before or slightly after Easter 2009--but everyone will notice whether the printing works or not, and the predictable reaction will be most unfavorable if it doesn't.

As for keeping Puppy under 100 MB while including Remaster Express: well, I'm a lawyer and a software hobbyist, not a professional programmer; lawyers learn how to re-examine and re-characterize rules and facts when appropriate (and sometimes when not appropriate). I think it would be appropriate to re-characterize the self-imposed 100 MB limit as a limit on what is loaded into RAM (which is important for the purpose of running Puppy on older computers without a lot of excess RAM)--not a limit on the total size of the ISO, which will easily fit on a CD in any event. If the package lists were put into an "extras" directory as I recently proposed in the "Beta1" thread, only a small amount for the "RemaX" script itself would be added to what goes into RAM, and the re-characterized 100 MB limit wouldn't be exceeded.

Isn't that the most appropriate characterization in light of one of the primary purposes of Puppy--Your Honor?

David McClamrock

[ttuuxxx]

Yes the Citrus theme will be loved in some cultures and age groups. The themes in IceWM are a good balance, covering a variety of states of consciousness, from psychedelically inhibited to lemon flashback They have that Puppy 'feel good' factor. I like them a lot. The default (when entering IceWm) is a great choice.

Another topic, personally I do not like the clutter of the widgets (that is me) BUT most people will find them great - so they should be there by default in my opinion - even though I will turn them off.

Ttuuxxx what do you feel are the priorities for the next RC release?

Well I would say:
- Cups is one, Icewm should now finally be finished:),
- The icons that WhoDo is working on should be working fully, I do think its a mess moving bins around to just to change a theme might have sort of implications 126 bins etc in /root/my applications/bin is a bit unusual, most wouldn't look at that location for those thing. I strongly feel we should just revert back to the standard icon switcher, and stop complicating the file system even further. Things should be simpler.
The way I have the taskbar setup on icewm, its not going to change, because those are fixed, but the menu icons will, but still is it really worth it?
-wireless issues,
- I would like to see the repo updated so the all the new packages that aren't installed by default could be downloaded by the puppy package manager, Also the mplayer in the repo, hasn't worked from day 1 and only needs the .desktop file altered to actually have it working, so that should be fixed.
- Plus theres one little 'show stopper' application left to be added, but thats Top level Secret. it might take me a couple of days to get that setup its small but time consuming. But thats all I can say about it <-- Little teaser
as long as we wait atleast a week before the next release, we should be doing very well.
ttuuxxx