Best program for managing photos in Puppy?

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`f00
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#16 Post by `f00 »

Rox and xfe are both great for if you want to mainly use a file manager for simple handling - thumbnail viewing and general file operations in xfe is my preference (usually xfe with the dual panes is more stable and foolproof for me than drag'n'drop with varying rox windows). Rox usually carries a kind of penalty for viewing since in most pups it doesn't automatically 'flush' the thumbnail cache .. view lots of thumbnails and your cache may get quite a bit larger if you don't flush or 'purge' the thumbnail cache (rclick in an empty area of the roxwindow interior->options->thumbnails .. about the middle of that page). If you have loads of storage and RAM, keeping that cache may make sense (or not, depending on how much you need to access it .. think junk in the trunk, it all adds up over time). Think also maybe about a swap file if your RAM seems challenged by your working load (check xload number down in the right part of the taskbar for a rough idea of what's free as you're chugging along doing all that needs done and that just one or two or no, I am so not tired get'er done state of mind).

Either FastStone or IrfanView work well for me in wine (once they load up out of the besottedness of winery, that is). IrfanView is maybe a bit more direct/quicker once you suss the kybd shortcuts and setup (yep, iview32 definitely has a dedicated thumbnail viewing section and pretty sure maybe faststone will set up an export of slideshow with jams/running commentary? and transitions and file-labels/info onscreen if you go in for all that multimedia presentation frippery). Faststone can be kind of a pig depending on your hardware and what you want to do with it. IrfanView kept crashing a few times when I first was trying wine (after reboot it should be better, just like win32 :lol: ). May be best to install, reboot and then get it all set up how you like if you do go with iview/wine...

YMMV &havefun

DMcCunney
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Re: Best program for managing photos in Puppy?

#17 Post by DMcCunney »

tazzels wrote:Hi, I have installed 431 puppy and created partitions on my old 128mb machine. I have a usb drive with hundreds of photos that I need to arrange and sort into slideshows for watching on my PC. In windows I could see small thumbnails and I had a few digital camera progs that I could use. What do I use with Puppy please? I like Viewnior and my slideshows work well on that and if I could see my photos as thumbs in the directories that would really solve the problem. I have tried right clicking on the icon in the program but only a few change. All my edited files show as thumbs.. i.e. If I have changed them in paint shop pro in Windows.
The missing part of this puzzle is what format your camera stores digital images in. There are various programs for Linux that will view image files, including thumbnails, but they make assumptions about the image format, and normally handle things like JPG. If your camera saves pictures as RAW files, I don't know a Linux viewer offhand that will display them.

What did you use under Windows?
______
Dennis

tazzels
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#18 Post by tazzels »

Hi Dennis
What did you use under Windows?
They are all jpg files. if I right click on the icon in Rox I might get just one show as a thunbnail out of thirty files. Sometimes Rox creates a separate thumbnail folder that may have 3 thumbs in it. Its really weird.

I downloaded most programs correctly that people suggested (apart from x file explorer) and the jpg files just showed as lists in those too. However Puppy was corrupted when I switched PC back on today and have had to revert to a previous puppy save. Bit reluctant to mess this one up.

I want to get images showing in Rox first with my basic puppy set up, as according to FLASH he/she has same problem and it may be hardware.
[/img]
Tazzels, can you tell us more about your hardware? I have the same problem, that right-clicking doesn't usually show all images in a directory as thumbnails. Sometimes none of them show.
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This shows a typical view in Rox
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Fossil
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#19 Post by Fossil »

Have you tried GQView? Works fine in 4.1.2
http://ftp.linux.hr/pub/puppylinux/pet_packages-4/
It also has a rudimentary slide show feature.
But, if you literally have "hundreds" of images which have to be turned into thumbnails on a 128 meg machine, the problem may also be memory.

tazzels
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#20 Post by tazzels »

Yes thanks, I have tried gqview as dejan5 recommended that. I am happy with the slideshow viewer in puppy 431 but I just need to see thumbs of my photos so I can organise them. I have a 40 gb hard drive so storage not a problem, neither is memory as I have been running windows xp with panda virus checker, it is just slow! I was able to view my pics as thumbs and run a slide show under windows but internet was painfully slow. I really want to switch to Puppy away from XP

DMcCunney
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#21 Post by DMcCunney »

tazzels wrote:Yes thanks, I have tried gqview as dejan5 recommended that. I am happy with the slideshow viewer in puppy 431 but I just need to see thumbs of my photos so I can organise them. I have a 40 gb hard drive so storage not a problem, neither is memory as I have been running windows xp with panda virus checker, it is just slow! I was able to view my pics as thumbs and run a slide show under windows but internet was painfully slow. I really want to switch to Puppy away from XP
If you are trying to run Windows XP with Panda A/V on a 128MB machine, memory is your problem. XP wants 512MB minimum to think about performing, and is much happier with a gigabyte or two.

The old notebook I run Puppy on has 256MB of RAM, and came from the vendor with XP installed. The person who gave it to me had upgraded to a faster box and said it was "slow slow slow". XP in 256MB? No surprise. I installed Puppy precisely to have something I could use without growing old and gray waiting for things to happen.

Memory might be your problem in Puppy, too. Programs that must create thumbnails may not have the resources needed to do the work.

I just copied a random assortment of photoos from my Windoes desktop over to my Puppy machine. I normally use Xfce4 as my window manager instead of Puppy's default JWM. The photos showed as thumbnails in both Thunar, the file manager provided with Xfce4, and in Xfe. They did not show as thumbnails in Rox, Puppy's default file manager. XnView rendered them as thumbnails fine.

I believe you are running Puppy in a Full install? What sort of swap file do you have? IT might be interesting if you opened a terminal window and ran XnView or whichever from the command line. It will open in a new window, but it may print diagnostic messages to the terminal window that will help you narrow down what is going on.
______
Dennis

tazzels
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#22 Post by tazzels »

Hi Dennis
Memory might be your problem in Puppy, too. Programs that must create thumbnails may not have the resources needed to do the work.
Yes, I think you are right. I am in a bit of a muddle now and need to get my head around this memory issue. LOL That sounds funny.

I am a newbie and I only installed Puppy 431 last week. At first just onto my PC alongside windows. It took me ages to get my 710C printer to work with Puppy and someone suggested defragging and partitioning with GParted which I did and I created 4 partitions as advised, installing from CD rom with the start up in ext2. (BTW The printer did eventually work but the partitioning was not the problem, it was how I was handling the files. I make simple errors because I am not used to Linux)

All looked good and I decided to try to move on to viewing my photos. I installed various programs as recommended but this 2nd Puppy became corrupted probably through lack of memory I guess, as its on a 2gb partition. I have now gone back to the first puppy Puppy1 save which is housed on my now small 10gb windows partition and at least I am back on the web. (which is really fast :) ) Maybe I should now try getting back to corrupted Puppy2 which is on partition ext2 and delete some downloaded programs to create some space. Perhaps it will work again. I have only put one folder of photos onto my PC to get working in Puppy so they don't take up much space.
I believe you are running Puppy in a Full install? What sort of swap file do you have?
I'm sure its not a full install as it runs from CD with puppystart1 on my PC in my windows NTFS partition. My Puppy2 (corrupted) is correctly on my PC on ext2 with a linux swap file whose size is 17gb.. I think it was called a frugal install as I didn't copy any files from CD. I haven't a clue what size swap file puppy1 is using in my NTFS partition or where to find it. It says there is 378m free in the bottom corner. The attached screenshot shows what system info says.
IT might be interesting if you opened a terminal window and ran XnView or whichever from the command line. It will open in a new window, but it may print diagnostic messages to the terminal window that will help you narrow down what is going on.
A good idea but a bit beyond me. I have an rxvt terminal emulator. I may try that when I reboot to puppy2 where the programs are. I have lost internet with puppy2 somehow as part of the corruption.

Thanks for trying the files out for me on your machine. Its great that everyone is so helpful here. Hopefully this info and my struggle to understand this will help others with the same problem.
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This is info on my first puppy that is working from my NTFS windows 5gb partition
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tazzels
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#23 Post by tazzels »

Whoopee... SUCCESS!!!! :lol:

I installed fox library and xfe and selected thumbnails and here they are. It takes at least a minute for them to show though so memory issues maybe? Thanks to Sylvander, Dennis and Foo for help on xfe.

Now I am going to try it all out for a bit and decide which of all those other progs to install into my 'Puppy1'. Something upset Puppy2 so i have to be careful how much I am loading.

Sylvander
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#24 Post by Sylvander »

1. You might want to try:
"Edit->Preferences->Themes".
I'm using KDE3.

2. Click on any black ghostly icons down at the bottom of the Xfe page to change them to white.
That makes the panel above it unhide all hidden files/folders.
Black = hidden.
White = displayed.

3. There's an icon at top right to click to display twin file panes.

DMcCunney
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#25 Post by DMcCunney »

tazzels wrote:Hi Dennis
Memory might be your problem in Puppy, too. Programs that must create thumbnails may not have the resources needed to do the work.
Yes, I think you are right. I am in a bit of a muddle now and need to get my head around this memory issue. LOL That sounds funny.
It can be confusing.

Linux, like windows, is a virtual memory system. RAM is divided into 4K pages, and the OS keeps track of what pages are used by what processes. When more actual RAM is needed for something, the OS takes RAM pages not recently accessed and swaps them out to disk to make room. Under Windows, swapping takes place to pagefile.sys in the root directory of the boot drive. Under Linux, swapping normally takes place to a swap partition. If something tries to access a swapped out page, a "page fault" is generated, and the OS swaps the page(s) back in to RAM. This happened transparently to you and your programs.

Total memory under Windows and Linux is considered to be the amount of physical RAM installed plus the size of the swap area.

This is why the best performance improvement you can make for Windows or Linux is to add more RAM. Memory is an order of magnitude faster than disk, and you want to reduce the amount of swapping the OS must do. More RAM = less need to swap = better performance. On my Lifebook, XP only had 256MB of RAM, and was spending more time swapping than doing actual work. It took a long time to boot, and a long time to actually load programs and use them, because there simply wasn't enough RAM to hold everything needed at the same time.

While extra RAM is available for my old Lifebook, it's expensive, and a 128MB expansion module would cost more than 2GB of RAM for my desktop. I installed Puppy on the Lifebook to get a usable system without spending money on it.

If you can get more RAM for your old Compaq at a decent price, it's recommended.
<...>

All looked good and I decided to try to move on to viewing my photos. I installed various programs as recommended but this 2nd Puppy became corrupted probably through lack of memory I guess, as its on a 2gb partition. I have now gone back to the first puppy Puppy1 save which is housed on my now small 10gb windows partition and at least I am back on the web. (which is really fast :) ) Maybe I should now try getting back to corrupted Puppy2 which is on partition ext2 and delete some downloaded programs to create some space. Perhaps it will work again. I have only put one folder of photos onto my PC to get working in Puppy so they don't take up much space.
Partition size isn't the problem. Puppy in on an 8GB partition here (in a full install) and has no problems.
I believe you are running Puppy in a Full install? What sort of swap file do you have?

I'm sure its not a full install as it runs from CD with puppystart1 on my PC in my windows NTFS partition. My Puppy2 (corrupted) is correctly on my PC on ext2 with a linux swap file whose size is 17gb.. I think it was called a frugal install as I didn't copy any files from CD. I haven't a clue what size swap file puppy1 is using in my NTFS partition or where to find it. It says there is 378m free in the bottom corner. The attached screenshot shows what system info says.
If you are using a Frugal install, I don't believe there is a swap file.

In a frugal install, your user file system is in an SFS file that actually lives on the Windows partition. Windows sees the SFS file as one big file. Puppy sees it as a complete file system with directories and sub-directories, with programs and data living on it.

With only 128MB of RAM, a full install with a swap file might be a better bet for you.
It might be interesting if you opened a terminal window and ran XnView or whichever from the command line. It will open in a new window, but it may print diagnostic messages to the terminal window that will help you narrow down what is going on.

A good idea but a bit beyond me. I have an rxvt terminal emulator. I may try that when I reboot to puppy2 where the programs are. I have lost internet with puppy2 somehow as part of the corruption.
Rxvt is the default terminal emulator on Puppy, and what you get if you open a terminal window. You'll get a bash shell with a # prompt. It's equivalent to doing Start/Run/CMD under XP and opening a window to a C:\ prompt.
Thanks for trying the files out for me on your machine. Its great that everyone is so helpful here. Hopefully this info and my struggle to understand this will help others with the same problem.
It only took a few minutes. I haven't needed to do picture viewing/manipulation in Puppy - my gigabytes worth of digital photos are on the Windows desktop - so while I have the software installed, I hadn't really played with doing it. Reproducing what the other person sees is useful in trying to fix a problem. Sometimes the fact that you can't reproduce it is significant, as you can narrow down the differences between your installation and the other person's, and say "A ha! That's your problem..."
______
Dennis

tazzels
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#26 Post by tazzels »

Hi Sylvander, Thanks for the hints about XFE. I have followed them and very pleased with ease of use. Need to work out how to set it as my default viewer now? Any ideas?

Hii Dennis, I see the need for extra ram and thanks for the helpful explanation about how it works, in the meantime I have installed a new PUPPY3 as a full installation onto sda2 (ext2) partition as you recommended.
Rxvt is the default terminal emulator on Puppy, and what you get if you open a terminal window. You'll get a bash shell with a # prompt. It's equivalent to doing Start/Run/CMD under XP and opening a window to a C:\ prompt.
This was an interesting thing to try and to know about but there were no error messages on opening any of the programs.

Sylvander
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#27 Post by Sylvander »

1. "Need to work out how to set it as my default viewer now? Any ideas? "
See this Post [on my Puppy Linux thread that includes LOTS of goodies]:
Thread on how to use a .PET to make Xfe the default file manager instead of ROX.

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RetroTechGuy
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#28 Post by RetroTechGuy »

CatDude wrote:Hi

Try this XnView
No need for Wine (unless you are thirsty that is :wink: )

CatDude
.
I'll second that one. I really like XnView -- it does basic file cropping, rotations, and color/contrast adjustments. And supports simple drag-and-drop sorting of photos. (and works on WinXP and Win98 as well)

Though be a little careful -- several of the versions I found didn't work/didn't install correctly (and I forget which one that I found, that did work...)

tazzels
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#29 Post by tazzels »

Thanks Sylvander, XFE is now my default viewer, thats much easier as I can understand the file system better. :D

Catdude, thanks for the link to your xnview. Didnt know what to do with the sum you provided? Have just managed to get Xnview working with thumbnails. I had to type in the file path at first as I couldn't get the hang of opening the folders but I've found that out now, its a case of clicking on the arrows :oops: . Its great, my thumbnails opened very quickly. Attached is a pic for you to show my progress so far. :D

Thanks for all the help folks, Its all working well now! I hope this thread helps someone else. Rox still doesn't show thumbs by the way and although xFE does its a bit slow to load them. Xnview is very fast and has lots of other features that I'm off to play with now. BYeeee

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CatDude
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#30 Post by CatDude »

Hello tazzels

Glad you eventually got things sorted.
tazzels wrote: Catdude, thanks for the link to your xnview. Didnt know what to do with the sum you provided?
Let's say you downloaded the file: XnView-1.70-version4.00.pet
into /root/my-documents
If you now open a console/terminal in that directory (Right click and select: Window > Terminal Here)
and type the following into the console/terminal:

Code: Select all

# md5sum XnView-1.70-version4.00.pet
Then hit the Enter/Return key, you should get the following:

Code: Select all

# md5sum XnView-1.70-version4.00.pet
c9fd7292fc4d39b160c76a67a2927d2d  XnView-1.70-version4.00.pet
# 
You would then compare that (c9fd7292fc4d39b160c76a67a2927d2d) with what is in the md5sum file that i provided,
if it is an EXACT match, then your download is fine.
If it is not, then the downloaded file was somehow corrupted, and you would need to download it again.
tazzels wrote: Have just managed to get Xnview working with thumbnails. I had to type in the file path at first as I couldn't get the hang of opening the folders but I've found that out now, its a case of clicking on the arrows :oops: . Its great, my thumbnails opened very quickly.
Yeah, it takes a bit of getting used to, but i think it is worth sticking at it.
tazzels wrote: ...... Xnview is very fast and has lots of other features that I'm off to play with now.
It sure does 8)


All the best
CatDude
.
[img]http://www.smokey01.com/CatDude/.temp/sigs/acer-futile.gif[/img]

Sylvander
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#31 Post by Sylvander »

Alternative methods:
[With both of which I use a terminal run whilst in a folder/window in Xfe]
1. If you don't already have verifypet installed:
A program included in a pet file, to verify that the calculated md5sum of a pet file matches the md5 value included within the file.

OR...
2. To check the md5sum for each pet file is OK.
Use the method shown in item 2 here.

p.s. If you type the 1st few characters of a command in a terminal, then hit tab twice...
The full names of all commands beginning with those characters will be displayed.
Then you can complete the name of the one listed that you want.
Ideally you would type enough characters for there to be returned only the single command/program of interest.
[Because there is only 1 command/prog that begins with that sequence of characters]

If you type NOTHING at all, and hit tab twice, you will be asked if you want to display ALL commands.
Type Y and hit enter, and the beginning af a great list will be displayed.
Just hold down <Enter>, and watch the list grow in length.
Release the <Enter> key when the end of the list is reached.

DMcCunney
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#32 Post by DMcCunney »

tazzels wrote:Hii Dennis, I see the need for extra ram and thanks for the helpful explanation about how it works, in the meantime I have installed a new PUPPY3 as a full installation onto sda2 (ext2) partition as you recommended.
Let us know how it works. Personally, I redid my Puppy installation for 4.31 and went ext4. I see better performance through better disk I/O.

I assume you created a swap partition? I'd make one twice the size of RAM.
Rxvt is the default terminal emulator on Puppy, and what you get if you open a terminal window. You'll get a bash shell with a # prompt. It's equivalent to doing Start/Run/CMD under XP and opening a window to a C:\ prompt.
This was an interesting thing to try and to know about but there were no error messages on opening any of the programs.
There won't always be. But I've seen interesting messages running things from the command line, like indications of missing libraries.

It can be a handy tool in your kit.
______
Dennis

tazzels
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#33 Post by tazzels »

Hi and thanks for the info on verify. I have had a busy time setting up my photo collection. Xnview is so quick to open thumbnails and enables sorting and batch renaming. I have learnt to be careful with that one as I batch renamed 50 photos the same name by accident and lost 49! Still had them on my camera luckily. I have also been playing with the xnview art package and changing one of my photos into a version that I want to paint. See attached pic.

My internet is not quite so fast with the full install but it it ten times as fast as with Windows so I'm not complaining.

Hi Dennis
I assume you created a swap partition? I'd make one twice the size of RAM.
Partition 1 NTFS windows is 10gb,
partition 2 ext2 for puppy is 2gb,
partition 3 is my linux swap and that is 17gb and
partition 4 fat32 is 10gb (thats where I'm storing my photos.

How does that sound?

mawebb88
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Xnview does not work in Stardust 013

#34 Post by mawebb88 »

@CatDude

Just tried your XnView-1.70-version4.00.pet in Stardust 013 but cold not get it to work. Comes up with

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... h&id=26125

but under "Options" there is only "General" and clicking on this crashes it. From a terminal I get the attached output:

Any ideas how to correct this?

Rgds Mike





CatDude wrote:Hi

@ tazzels
Click on Option (as shown in image default.png below)
then select Browser from the list on the left (as shown in image browser.png below),
and click the check box next to Launch Browser at Startup
You can also choose the Startup Directory, i usually have it set to Last Used.

After making these changes, close then reopen XnView.

It should now look something like that in the image browser2.png below,
you can change the layout via View > Layout
You can also change the size of the thumbnails via View > Thumbnail size

Have a good look around in the menu's to see just what this app can do,
you will probably be quite surprised, especially if you look in Tools > Convert > Advanced Operations
In that, you need to select whatever it is you want to do, then click the --> to move it to the righthand window,
then you will get whatever options appear.

Hope this helps
CatDude
.
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its-me-again
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xnview

#35 Post by its-me-again »

hi this works great in puppy 431 and Bruno woo hoo. awesome this is the picasa like, app i was needing. easy simple and straight forward. for anyone. to use. Gimp is to confusing to learn for a lot of people.

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