Pussy: potentially a Puppy with a perfect package manager

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aarf

#1621 Post by aarf »

@sickgut just in case you miss this posted by broomdodger at bkblog http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/0 ... spberry-pi

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sickgut
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#1622 Post by sickgut »

Pussy-pie: Analogue TV out (PAL/ NTSC) vs HDMI

Having to take a moment (turned into a couple of days) to consider what way to go with this. I could have different desktop environments and resolutions for TV out and HDMI or i could make sure everything is viewable with the lowest denominator ie: TV out....

If i go with a TV friendly desktop, this means dealing with a resolution of 600 and something x 400 so. There are a few apps that dont scale down to this low resolution. Airstrike is one of them. There are very few games that are ready to go on the Rasp and it would be a shame to miss out on Airstrike. This app wants 800x 600 atleast and there is no way to scale it down. Maybe beside its JWM menu entry i should have a note in brackets stating that its not suitable to use on a TV screen such as:

JWM -> Programs -> Games -> Airstrike (HDMI only)

As far as offering support for an OS goes, its best to exclude something than have to spend 6 hours a day explaining something because its not working.

I could have a separate TV entry in the JWM menu, this would pretty much duplicate everything except for the apps that wont work correctly with the low resolution.

Also the browser choice will be Dillo and Seamonkey or Firefox rather than Dillo and Midori. I figure if you need to do something that Dillo cant do then you wont mind waiting an extra few seconds for a proper browser to load. Midori cant run Java and there are other things it cant do.

Another thing i have decided on is that Pussy-Pie automatically overclocks the Rasp to 800Mhz, this is the default factory "safe" overclock and it is a noticeable improvement. I cant help thinking that if 1Ghz clocking was stable, then 80% of the performance issues would be solved. Maybe someone will release a tiny heatsink and fan for the CPU.
I will have a menu option or catroll-panel option to use standard 733GHz clocking.

I must admit, the lack of fully supported video acceleration in the Raspian OS has annoyed me. With all this bragging about the GPU..... the only catch being... you cant actually use the GPU. The 256MB RAM in the "B" version is more than enough and compared to a 733MHz ARM CPU in a cheap Android tablet, compiling things is much much much faster. I personally will be happy to get this Pussy-Pie OS finnished and done, im sick of dealing with this thing. Its a cheap PC that is being marketed as actually being useful but its not. However its a fine server and ill use mine for that.... it sucks at everything else. Actual video drivers would make it more useful, but not useful to the demographic that its marketed at, people learning BASIC and C++ and Python dont care about OpenGL.
*rant over*

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one thing it seems to be good at

#1623 Post by dancytron »

One thing it seems to be good at is being a thin client.

I can run rdesktop with my windows XP machine and it is totally pleasant to use speedwise except video. Even if I log on to the Pi with VLC from the Windows XP computer and open rdesktop inside the VNC session it is still usable.

If I can get it to be a print server too, then I'll have freed my laptop from the desk and I'll keep it.

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Re: one thing it seems to be good at

#1624 Post by sickgut »

dancytron wrote:One thing it seems to be good at is being a thin client.

I can run rdesktop with my windows XP machine and it is totally pleasant to use speedwise except video. Even if I log on to the Pi with VLC from the Windows XP computer and open rdesktop inside the VNC session it is still usable.

If I can get it to be a print server too, then I'll have freed my laptop from the desk and I'll keep it.
Hmmmmm

Yes, thin client stuff should be fine, but would be alot better once we get accelerated video drivers for the so called "bad ass" GPU.....

Maybe once the vid drivers are sorted, video stuff should be better.

The only ready to go Pussy that i have ready for the Rasp is the server edition but it doesnt have VNC or any obvious print server software. I know nothing about CUPS and VNC... however, any self respecting server OS should have both of these.

looks like ill have to hit the books.

im more than annoyed with the GPU driver situation, this alone is stopping the Rasp Pi from being a Playstation 2 quality games console.

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#1625 Post by dancytron »

I don't think video ever works right over Windows Remote Desktop/rdesktop. I used to use it a lot in an old job and what I saw on the Pi was it working well in all respects.

If you are going to test it, some versions of Windows are crippled. Here's the patch I used. http://deepxw.blogspot.com/2009/04/univ ... patch.html

edit: I've tested some thin client stuff on the R. Pi. There are several vnc clients. All of them were either too slow or very primitive. The primitive one was xvncviewer . To scroll, you have to use right and left click. One directvnc didn't work. I found the bug report, which has been fixed but not updated in Debian and told the guy on the R. Pi website who followed up with whoever.

One thing that did work fast enough was xrdp, which is a linux server for Windows remote desktop clients.

So far then, you can windows remote desktop in and out of the pi and you can vnc in, but can't vnc out because the clients are lousy.

edit again: Also this page has all kind of information on setting up xrdp and an compiling/installation script I am running now to see if it works.

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New direction

#1626 Post by sickgut »

Hi people

I apologize for the ever changing future of Pussy Linux.
After an overdose of coding and 9 months of a coding holiday, i figured that the current Pussy version would be an end of line and ultimately scrapped and i would remake the whole thing.

This was premature of me, and maybe i came back too quickly as i realize now that i was being way too critical of the OS as a whole and i couldnt see the Pussy Cat Forest for the trees. After actually being impressed by the OS as a whole, due to me firing it up and tinkering a little, it all came rushing back to me and i do see the potential again and the playful hacker deep within me was telling me to go for it once again.

The Debian Squeeze based core of the OS is still reasonably current and is well supported as it is still the officially supported stable version by the Debian team.

There is still one last hurdle for the current Pussy to jump over. Yes Pussy is a ready to go server, and there is a rough Puppy equivalent and a version designed to add as much functionality as you can fit on a standard live CDROM. There is also a USB and or HDD image version.
What else is there? What more can we achieve with Pussy?

A live DVD version! Fit as much functionality into a DVD as possible. I do not know of any other OS that takes up an entire DVD that would be slimmed as much as Pussy. The mind boggles. This equates to Pussy Xtra being upto 6 or 7 times larger. I feel that it is possible to have pretty much anything you could think of on the one OS. The entire Debian Squeeze repository installed on one OS may be a bit of a stretch, but with squashfs compression and my slimming techniques, its possible to add another 10 - 20GB of applications.

The Pussy-Pie project has been put on hold until there are GPU drivers for Debian/ Raspbian. There is a server version all ready to be dowloaded from the website. This does have a GUI and it is a good base for a user who would like to build upon it.

I have already started work on the DVD version of Pussy. There will also be an .img version of it released that will fit on a 4GB USB drive or as a stand alone OS on an internal HDD. Dual booting with GRUB is still for the more advanced users.

There is a large gap in my knowledge of what the current applications people are using with Linux. If there is something you would like added, then please post here. Also we arent limiting ourselves to only using Debian Squeeze applications. Static apps are fine too.

The newer 64 bit Pussy using the Wheezy base will happen, but only after the live DVD version of the current Pussy is finished.

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Re: New direction

#1627 Post by greengeek »

sickgut wrote:There is a large gap in my knowledge of what the current applications people are using with Linux. If there is something you would like added, then please post here.
I would really like to see a version of Softmaker Office (I think Barry incorporated the free 2008 version in one release...). I just can't seem to get a decent level of stability with LibreOffice, and depending on what I am doing I find that Abiword is either too feature limited or too slow, or has display defects. (Actually for 95% of my work I really want a quickloading "wordpad" replacement that has no fancy stuff, yet can read/write .rtf format without problems. The more capable Office program would only be needed for more complex documents)

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Re: New direction

#1628 Post by sickgut »

greengeek wrote:
sickgut wrote:There is a large gap in my knowledge of what the current applications people are using with Linux. If there is something you would like added, then please post here.
I would really like to see a version of Softmaker Office (I think Barry incorporated the free 2008 version in one release...). I just can't seem to get a decent level of stability with LibreOffice, and depending on what I am doing I find that Abiword is either too feature limited or too slow, or has display defects. (Actually for 95% of my work I really want a quickloading "wordpad" replacement that has no fancy stuff, yet can read/write .rtf format without problems. The more capable Office program would only be needed for more complex documents)
YES!!!

There seems to be nothing that exists between the slimmed leafpad or GEdit or whatever and the bloated Abiword. Windows wordpad really is the best all rounder

Does anyone have experience with things like KOffice? i know not of such things

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#1629 Post by rokytnji »

that exists between the slimmed leafpad or GEdit or whatever

Code: Select all

:~$ apt-cache policy geany
geany:
  Installed: 1.22+dfsg-2
  Candidate: 1.22+dfsg-2
  Version table:
 *** 1.22+dfsg-2 0
        500 http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ testing/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
http://www.geany.org/

Just in case I guess. I use it along with leafpad in AntiX.

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#1630 Post by sickgut »

rokytnji wrote:
that exists between the slimmed leafpad or GEdit or whatever

Code: Select all

:~$ apt-cache policy geany
geany:
  Installed: 1.22+dfsg-2
  Candidate: 1.22+dfsg-2
  Version table:
 *** 1.22+dfsg-2 0
        500 http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ testing/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
http://www.geany.org/

Just in case I guess. I use it along with leafpad in AntiX.
sweet, i didnt realise that geany was in the debian repos, im pretty sure that geany will be added to Pussy. Maybe this will also aid just that little bit more with people who crossover from Puppy to Pussy.

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#1631 Post by sickgut »

Thanks again to Saintless, another major issue/ bug has been sorted.

Bugs number #4 and #5 may be solved reasonably soon due to the below boot code:

------------------------
title Pussy Linux Beta 2
root=(hd0,0)
kernel /live/vmlinuz boot=live config persistent swapon quickreboot noprompt autologin username=root password=pussy toram=01-merged.squashfs
initrd /live/initrd.img
boot

------------------------

Notice the toram=squashfile.squashfs tag. This tells Pussy to only load this single squashfs file when using the copy to ram boot method.

bug #4, commonly referred to as the Nooby bug (ie. inability to write to the boot partition if its a NTFS and the Pussy OS is installed there), can potentially be solved because once the OS has been copied to RAM, there is no need for it to mount the NTFS partition even if it is the boot partition.

But copy to RAM already works doesnt it? Not entirely, but it will now that the toram tag has been discovered and when a patch has been implemented to Pussy.

This is how we get to bug #5: Copy to RAM copies the entire boot partition that Pussies live media exists on to RAM, not just the OS.

The problem with bug #5 is that HDD installed Pussies couldnt use copy to RAM in most cases because the RAM would be completely filled then it would error out and then resume with a normal non copy to RAM boot. However, CDROM copy to RAM still worked fine as there was only a few MB of stuff on there other than the main OS.

Nothing has been fixed just yet, but it will be soon now a solution has been found.

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#1632 Post by saintless »

Hi, Sickgut,

if Pussy linux has only one squash file the toram boot option works well for HDD install. Yet I'm not sure you will be able to use live-rw save file placed on NTFS partition without troubles. I had a successful test once as far as I remember but I didn't try to experiment much more with live-rw on NTFS.

About loading more squash files on the fly puppy has such an option and I'm sure it is possible for Debian also. If there is a way to do this on the fly Pussy can have more than one squash files and only the first small one to be copied with toram option.

Regarding Pussy linux DVD version - one possibility is to merge the current CD version in one squash file and to create second squash file containing everything new. This way you will have the original CD version ready for use from the DVD version. Maybe adding more games will be good idea for the DVD version.

You might find useful this script from SFR added to Pussy linux. It makes right button click copy paste option possible for ROX. See my last post on this page:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... start=1530

Cheers

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#1633 Post by sickgut »

I apologize to peeps out there looking forward to the Pussy-Pie Xtra (GUI + all the apps) the Raspbian OS that i am basing it on doesnt have an accelerated video driver yet. This is important to get the correct driver. If i was to finish the OS now, i would just have to redo it again when the driver is released..... Pussy-Pie server is finished and available as well as a bland stripped down base OS ready to download on the website. The Pussy-Pie server does have a GUI and is a very good base for Rasp owners to build on.
The Pussy-Pie project has been put on hold, pending release of the GPU drivers.

Also note, the official debian ARM repos do not work on the Rasp Pi, so the Raspbian repos are your only source of working prepackaged apps you can install via apt-get. The debian repos are slowly being compiled for the Rasp Pi. If you install a package and you get a segment fault error, you are using a binary file that is not compiled for the Rasp. There seems to be one trillion types of ARM CPU and the official debian repos do not support the coding of the Rasp Pi ARM CPU.

Another thing:
There seems to be a mass outage of alot of servers on the internet right now and alot of name servers arent working. If you cant access the www.pussycatforest.info website, then try the direct ip address:

http://199.101.96.85

Also i have decided to dedicate alot of time and effort into making the existing Pussies awesome and sweet. Soon ill be adding google ads and a paypal donation link. There will be a Pussy Premium package for sale (after i finish the DVD version)......

Why pay for something thats free?

1.) Actual paper manual for Pussy
2.) A USB stick and a DVD and CDROM will be included and tested as working.
3.) There will be support available when quoting your supplied serial number. The support is direct one on one with me personally via skype and or email.
4.) The cost is very cheap, i am planning on selling this package at cost of the materials + $5 or so. The sale price could be as low as $15 and without the support package, only $10 or so. No one is getting rich selling something for $5 profit and no one is getting ripped off. The non support package will basicly be at cost. The Documentation will be the most expensive part, i dont know how im going to do it yet.

I am not saying you need to pay for Pussy, its free to download, every version of it.

The premium package is just a service i will provide so newbies can have a working Pussy USB stick with no fuss and or CDROM and DVD. The only money being made if from official one on one support, and go ahead .... dare tell me that dealing with newbies asking constant questions isnt worth $5 that i would make from it. Ofcause newbies can get support here, however the support package i offer is guaranteed one on one with myself, some people might think its worth it, some might not. I personally bought a Red Hat 9 premium boxed edition with really thick manuals and 8 CD's and a few DVDs in a nice box and a free support ticket for $290, i want to be able to offer the same thing for one 20th of the price.

One of the features of the DVD Pussy will be preconfigured MIDI and Jack and every available software synth, this is my forte.... i know about the music/ sound stuff.... however for art and video i will need to consult with someone.

Back to work :)

Also check out my new creative outlet:http://www.thepussycatforest.info/verse/comic/

A comic strip that contains spiritual themes and poetry set to a backing sound track.

I have finally learned that constructive recreation and creativity is not a distraction from work, but an aid.

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#1634 Post by greengeek »

sickgut wrote:The Documentation will be the most expensive part, i dont know how im going to do it yet.
Do you mean the paper cost will be expensive? Or the actual time in production of the textuals? Most people would be happy to get a pdf version I imagine, unless you specifically wanted to use paper in an effort to avoid further unauthorised dissemination.
I have finally learned that constructive recreation and creativity is not a distraction from work, but an aid.
Sounds like a good head space to be in. Very positive. Are you able to bottle that sentiment and sell it alongside Pussy? I'll have a litre please.

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#1635 Post by sickgut »

greengeek wrote:
sickgut wrote:The Documentation will be the most expensive part, i dont know how im going to do it yet.
Do you mean the paper cost will be expensive? Or the actual time in production of the textuals? Most people would be happy to get a pdf version I imagine, unless you specifically wanted to use paper in an effort to avoid further unauthorised dissemination.
I have finally learned that constructive recreation and creativity is not a distraction from work, but an aid.
Sounds like a good head space to be in. Very positive. Are you able to bottle that sentiment and sell it alongside Pussy? I'll have a litre please.
re: paper manuals

its the actual physical cost of a bound book or sheets of paper. I have a lot of PDF books etc but i never read them, however i read my books that have paper many times over. This may be a personal preference. Also if someone only has one computer and breaks their Pussy Linux's boot procedure and cant read the PDF then a book is always better.
I plan on developing Pussy full time and using it to support me. However Pussy will always be free and i will never charge a fee to download it, i will charge a fee for everything else, because they cost money. Shipping CD's/ DVD's, manuals USB sticks, SD cards are all exchanged for relevant currency.

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#1636 Post by cthisbear »

" i will charge a fee for everything else, because they cost money.

Shipping CD's/ DVD's, manuals USB sticks, SD cards are all exchanged
for relevant currency. "

""""""""

Nothing wrong with that....keep on developing it mate.

Chris.

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#1637 Post by sickgut »

i have found a company here in australia that will be able to provide printed boxes, cd/ dvd's etc and customized USB sticks as well as manuals etc. However, i havnt found any good sticker (small stickers to put on your computer like the Intel Inside (TM) but with some Pussy related slogan) supplier that is cheap and willing to do the smaller size(s).

Im going to get CDs and DVDs printed and suitable packaging etc... but the DVDs and CDs i order will be blank (not design/ label blank... i mean data blank) so when anyone orders Pussy on CD/DVD ill burn the latest version on the media and then ship it. This will be best other wise i may be caught holding 100's of Pussy OS DVD's that are out of date because a newer version has been released.

Pussy downloads are still going strong, so far this month there has been more than 50GB downloaded from the website.

[Edit:] its the 29th of September and so far this month 75.1GB of pussy has been downloaded :)

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#1638 Post by sickgut »

As mentioned before, im currently adding to the pussy-xtra iso to create a jam packed DVD version....

Packages added so far are:

mozilla-plugin-vlc - play media embedded in websites like .wav or .mp3
rosegarden - music composition and MIDI workstation
audacity - digital audio workstation/ wave editor
mypaint - paint program
jack - MIDI connection kit
qjackctl - utility to manage jack
beep - type beep at the console and the pc speaker will beep
bb - demo of libaa ascii graphical library set to music
xsidplay + libsidplay2 + sidplay-base - X and console C64 music player
dcraw and fraw - read raw image data from files or cameras
cups-driver-gutenprint (included cups) - more printing functionality
escputil - epson printer maintenance utils
photon - a static HTML gallery generator
blender - no idea, some people have requested it before 3D modeling??
wimgs3d - same kinda thing as blender i think

gimp plugins:
gimp-data-extras- An extra set of brushes, palettes, and gradients
gimp-dds - DirectDraw Surface) plugin for the gimp
gimp-resynthesizer: Gimp plugin for texture synthesis
gtkam-gimp -gimp plugin to open digital camera pictures
gimp-gutenprint - print plugin for the GIMP
gimp-gmic - GIMP plugin for GREYC's Magic Image Converter
gimp2.0-quiteinsane: A Qt based SANE plugin for GIMP 2.0
gimp-plugin-registry - repository of optional extensions for The GIMP
gimp-gap - gimp animation package
gimp-ufraw - gimp imported for raw camera images
abr2gbr - Converts PhotoShop brushes to GIMP
gimp-dcraw - GIMP plug-in for loading RAW digital photos

Planning on adding all the soft synth software and a large repository of free music in midi/ mod/ sid formats also QB64, similar to MS Quick Basic.

If anyone here wants anything added at all then please post. The idea is to be left with a completely full DVD iso that lets you do absolutely everything possibly imaginable all in one OS. Im adding all the video/ drawing and music stuff first.

Also there will be every popular modern browser installed with 2 versions of Firefox, one will be the older iceweasel in the debian squeeze repos simply to add a little backwards compatibility and so that the user can get support from the debian chat chans if need be, because they support that firefox version.... and the newest one.

Its going to be quite a task to fill the DVD iso

Im still waiting for proper debian drivers for the Rasp Pi GPU, until that happens, the pussy-pie project is on hold, altho the pussy-pie-server is all ready to go and is available for download.

Ill check in again when i have more news.

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#1639 Post by greengeek »

sickgut - if you are struggling to fill the dvd can I make a suggestion - I would love to see PXE ability built in - by which I mean that the dvd would contain the live Pussy OS, and also the PXE server functionality (with autostart-at-boot), plus also a copy of the Pussy OS already modified to be netbootable. (I have recently done this with my modified version of PupServer435 and it works well).http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=80620

This would mean that the live dvd would immediately be able to serve Pussy across the home network to any other machine that wanted to boot from the network via PXE (eg: a diskless machine, or thinclient etc).

The user would not have to do any modifying of the pussy files to make them netbootable - it would already have been done and they are just sitting waiting on the dvd ready for a pxe request.

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#1640 Post by sickgut »

greengeek wrote:sickgut - if you are struggling to fill the dvd can I make a suggestion - I would love to see PXE ability built in - by which I mean that the dvd would contain the live Pussy OS, and also the PXE server functionality (with autostart-at-boot), plus also a copy of the Pussy OS already modified to be netbootable. (I have recently done this with my modified version of PupServer435 and it works well).http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=80620

This would mean that the live dvd would immediately be able to serve Pussy across the home network to any other machine that wanted to boot from the network via PXE (eg: a diskless machine, or thinclient etc).

The user would not have to do any modifying of the pussy files to make them netbootable - it would already have been done and they are just sitting waiting on the dvd ready for a pxe request.
i wll do some experimenting, a few things there i will need to learn

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