Pussy: potentially a Puppy with a perfect package manager

For talk and support relating specifically to Puppy derivatives
Message
Author
User avatar
sickgut
Posts: 1156
Joined: Tue 23 Mar 2010, 19:11
Location: Tasmania, Australia in the mountains.
Contact:

#1711 Post by sickgut »

Xtanova wrote:Hi sickgut

Sorry about your frustration with Debian wheezy .. for my assumption if Debian performance is getting to be unreliable, no wonder if users will move to other distros than Debian and Ubuntu like Mageia.

Forgive me for my random wondering ..I'm just a newbie .. but why LMDE 201204 is non of your choices..It has casper like ubuntu, and if I'm not mistaken it can be added to grub2 menu.

Code: Select all

menuentry "Linux Mint Debian (LMDE) 64-bit" {
#linux /casper/vmlinuz rootfstype=vfat boot=live live-media-path=/casper quiet splash --
linux /casper/vmlinuz boot=live live-media-path=/casper quiet splash --
initrd /casper/initrd.lz
casper rw persistence can be added after boot.

There is a Dev got inspired already by Puppy and AntiX, and made a stripped version of LMDE: http://www.swiftlinux.org/
Target Markets

Windows users, especially Windows XP users
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS users
Linux Mint users with computers that just barely meet hardware requirements
Puppy Linux users who want a larger software repository for the more specialized applications available
antiX Linux users who want better hardware/codec support for things like watching DVDs
Users of forensic/recovery live CDs
the only way to make an OS how i want it to be is start with the absolute barest essentials. Starting with Linux Mint would mean i would need to strip everything out till its a 80mb or so shell and then start again.

User avatar
sickgut
Posts: 1156
Joined: Tue 23 Mar 2010, 19:11
Location: Tasmania, Australia in the mountains.
Contact:

#1712 Post by sickgut »

At present im still waiting for the persistence to be introduced to Debian Live Wheezy. i may have been overly critical of the Debian Live ppl as wheezy isnt actually the stable flagship yet, its still a "testing" release.

I figured i would go ahead with Wheezy because we could add the compressed save file method from Pussy to this, but there is a limitation, if you use it for a while more and more adds up in the live/cow dir and this is not dumped to the hdd and the ram cleared. Even if you have a swapfile, the RAM gets all used up, unless there is an actual live-rw persistence in real time. Even when you do create and or update a compressed save file in Pussy, it still doesnt flush the live/cow that lives in RAM and has a copy of everything that has been written to the virtual "filesystem".

Then i took a look at Ubuntu and the 12.10 edition, while not a LTS does actually work but there is a terrible price to pay. Wheezy boots and uses 50mb of RAM, Ubuntu 12.10 boots and uses 160mb of RAM. Wheezy only uses 20mb or so more RAM than Squeeze did, but Ubuntu is such a hog that the battle has been lost before its even begun.

There is a pic on the website showing Pussy using only 42mb of ram while running all the xorg and server stuff..... if we use Wheezy this may be 62mb, if we use Ubuntu, this will be more like 200mb.

So basically I am waiting for the Live Persistence problem to be solved in Wheezy and to use Wheezy as the base.

the debian live team assure me that it will be solved soon and that the new system will also have backwards compatibility with the old live-rw system. The live-rw system will be used instead of the newer persistence.conf setup that is too fiddly. Once this persistence prob is solved in Wheezy, we are back to business as usual.

in the mean time im just waiting. Best to do something properly rather than start using Ubuntu as a base and then start again when wheezy is fixed.
Last edited by sickgut on Fri 30 Nov 2012, 11:06, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
sickgut
Posts: 1156
Joined: Tue 23 Mar 2010, 19:11
Location: Tasmania, Australia in the mountains.
Contact:

#1713 Post by sickgut »

i think i will adopt the following slogan as gospel for Pussy development:

"Its best to do something properly than to use Ubuntu".

User avatar
sickgut
Posts: 1156
Joined: Tue 23 Mar 2010, 19:11
Location: Tasmania, Australia in the mountains.
Contact:

#1714 Post by sickgut »

double post, plz remove

User avatar
darkcity
Posts: 2534
Joined: Sun 23 May 2010, 19:16
Location: near here
Contact:

#1715 Post by darkcity »

Some people are saying Ubuntu 12.10 is a security risk because it sends anything you type into the dash search to a Canonical server (by default).

User avatar
david_katelansky
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri 18 Dec 2009, 04:34
Location: Margate, FL
Contact:

...and it's easy to install on a hard drive

#1716 Post by david_katelansky »

I followed the advice on http://pussycatforest.info and it was really easy installing Pussy Linux to my hard drive. I already had Legacy OS4 installed on my hard drive, so I booted up Legacy OS4 and

(1) created an ext2 partition on my hard drive

on a Windows system
(2) downloaded pussy-xtra-beta-preview2.iso
(3) downloaded http://www.thepussycatforest.info/windo ... .9.0.7.exe
(4) used the installer from step (3) to install the iso from step (2) to a usb flash drive (used an old one - just 1 GByte).

went back to the Legacy OS4 system and
(5) copied the flash drive from step (4) to the partition from step (1)
dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/dev/sda4 bs = 4096
(6) Edited the GRUB menu list, /boot/grub/Menu.lst
and added this entry

title Pussy Linux
rootnoverify (hd0, 3)
chainloader +1
boot


...and that's all it took. I now have Pussy Linux installed to my hard drive. It booted right up, and everything still ran.

User avatar
sickgut
Posts: 1156
Joined: Tue 23 Mar 2010, 19:11
Location: Tasmania, Australia in the mountains.
Contact:

#1717 Post by sickgut »

darkcity wrote:Some people are saying Ubuntu 12.10 is a security risk because it sends anything you type into the dash search to a Canonical server (by default).
wouldnt surprize me.

Ubuntu is tryng to be as corporate as possible and to become something "other" than linux.

There are a few things similar to this. You cant take things for what they appear to be. Think the worst and it will generally be true and still things will pop up and be discovered that will blow your mind even more.

No doubt these aspiring corporate wannabes will gather funding however they can, legal, semi-legal and covert.

Take TOR for instance. It claims to offer users protection and security by bouncing your information from lots of proxies. The only problem is that everything you do is being tracked by TOR and everything you send and receive is tracked. TOR really exists for the purpose of blackmailing people with money who may be looking at banned/ blocked/ socially unacceptable material. You only need to blackmail one rich guy and the whole thing is worth it.
That being said, if your poor they will probably leave you alone.

And so, im waiting to do this properly with a "more" "trusted" debian OS. Hopefully wheezy live system will be working soon. Wheezy is worth the wait. I cant believe i was actually considering Ubuntu.

User avatar
sickgut
Posts: 1156
Joined: Tue 23 Mar 2010, 19:11
Location: Tasmania, Australia in the mountains.
Contact:

Re: ...and it's easy to install on a hard drive

#1718 Post by sickgut »

david_katelansky wrote:I followed the advice on http://pussycatforest.info and it was really easy installing Pussy Linux to my hard drive. I already had Legacy OS4 installed on my hard drive, so I booted up Legacy OS4 and

(1) created an ext2 partition on my hard drive

on a Windows system
(2) downloaded pussy-xtra-beta-preview2.iso
(3) downloaded http://www.thepussycatforest.info/windo ... .9.0.7.exe
(4) used the installer from step (3) to install the iso from step (2) to a usb flash drive (used an old one - just 1 GByte).

went back to the Legacy OS4 system and
(5) copied the flash drive from step (4) to the partition from step (1)
dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/dev/sda4 bs = 4096
(6) Edited the GRUB menu list, /boot/grub/Menu.lst
and added this entry

title Pussy Linux
rootnoverify (hd0, 3)
chainloader +1
boot


...and that's all it took. I now have Pussy Linux installed to my hard drive. It booted right up, and everything still ran.
Nice!
You should find that the compressed save file method will work fine, look for it in the catroll-panel.

good to see that HDD Pussy is able to be done. its not that it cant be done, its just that it scares newbies to do that technical stuff and to be honest, yes, you can bone your Windows and make it not boot if you get it wrong. However, running Pussy as a single OS is easy, just dd the .img verison to your HDD and boom, it will work.

i would like to hear any feed back you would like to provide.
Pussy in the form you are using is now a year old since its last update.

new Pussy will begin soon, as soon as debian live wheezy is working with its live saving system and things like the RoxFiler focus bug will be fixed. Pretty much everything will be fixed that is a known bug, but possibly the newbie level HDD install with dual booting with windows will remain something to chase for.

in the meantime, i will market Pussy as a Live distro made for USB sticks and Live DVD/ CD and for single OS HDD install.

Nice to see people wanting to use Pussy

nancy reagan
Posts: 544
Joined: Thu 22 Jan 2009, 14:20

another apt-get test iso

#1719 Post by nancy reagan »

Though I barely understand what you tweakers are talking about I thought it might be interesting to point you to the apt-get precise test iso, in -however French- forum ?


http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=82708

User avatar
sickgut
Posts: 1156
Joined: Tue 23 Mar 2010, 19:11
Location: Tasmania, Australia in the mountains.
Contact:

Re: another apt-get test iso

#1720 Post by sickgut »

nancy reagan wrote:Though I barely understand what you tweakers are talking about I thought it might be interesting to point you to the apt-get precise test iso, in -however French- forum ?


http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=82708
i made a apt-get addon package for puppy lucid (puppy 5.0) and it doesnt work properly, yes it works but on with applications that do not expect to use anything specific to the apt-get repo distributions (ubuntu or debian) kernel. If you apt-get vlc for instance, you end up with a non bootable system as it expects the debian or ubuntu kernel to be there but these apt-get puppies are compiled with the puppy kernel that is stripped as bare as possible and is ultimately incompatible with any major distros repository. Note that it only takes one program installed from the debian or ubuntu repos that has in it a script that overwrites a puppy specific script and you have an unbootable system. However, xaos and nano and small programs like this work ok if installed with apt-get.

this fail on my part is what spawned Pussy Linux. You need the your OS to have the same kernel as the applications you are installing via apt-get expect you to have.

im not saying its not a useful feature for a puppy OS to have, im saying its not a 100% solution and i am aiming for 100% :)

User avatar
sickgut
Posts: 1156
Joined: Tue 23 Mar 2010, 19:11
Location: Tasmania, Australia in the mountains.
Contact:

#1721 Post by sickgut »

hi people

debian live wheezy B2 has been released, i will test this today and it may very well have fixed the non persistent features. I hope this one works. Its about 80mb larger than the previous wheezy live iso i have tried so something is very different.

if this works then the world is ours. mwuahahahahha.
world domination, a seat on the united nations, the right to conduct a private army, fame, a street named after us, infact a whole city named after us with streets named after pussy linux developers, constant donations of nice kittens to raise our moral, 2% of the worlds total GDP donated to our private accounts, a big budget movie detailing the take over of the world by pussy linux and pussy becoming the number one used OS in the world and making MS and Apple go bust. And thats all in the first month, even before the first new Pussy version is released.... MWUAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

User avatar
sickgut
Posts: 1156
Joined: Tue 23 Mar 2010, 19:11
Location: Tasmania, Australia in the mountains.
Contact:

HDD install, maybe?

#1722 Post by sickgut »

not having any luck with persistence with this new debian live

however i have stumbled across something that i misunderstood previously

normal debian live iso's have hdd installers built in.
i figured i couldnt use this because of my modifications and there seemed to be all the included packages in the /pool/ dir of the iso. However these are not actual packages needed to run the OS, they are just the .udeb packages that are only used during HDD installs, and the actual OS that gets installed is the same as what is in filesystem.squashfs

if i am correct here, and i keep pussy in one squashfs called filesystem.squashfs, this info would be installed to the hdd and...........
this is HDD install in action.

the install process lets you partition, format and install grub or lilo, the whole thing.

im sure this will work but i have been wrong alot in my life so quote me at your peril, however.... with newbie level hdd installs being the only problem that i see has been holding pussy back being potentially solved here, i am quite excited.

altho this hdd install method is rather old school, it is still hdd installing. Most distros including puppy let you run the live OS, then click an icon and the hdd install starts, but this old way you need to select install at the grub menu where you usually select to boot pussy with copy to ram or not or with persistence or not etc.

ok ppl ill keep yall informed

User avatar
atv
Posts: 27
Joined: Wed 16 Nov 2011, 15:44
Location: Tambo, Ecuador

Debian unstable breanch

#1723 Post by atv »

I will either need to move to a new live base such as Ubuntu... the thought makes me puke on myself and break out in boils of sulfur.
This work seems interesting...did you look into it?
Release Notes for siduction 2012.2 - ...Riders on the Storm. Siduction is a full live-distribution with an integrated installer, based on Debian's unstable branch, and we try to release snapshots quarterly.

Siduction 2012.2 Razor-Qt is the latest flavour that joins our regular release cycle after seeing a dev-release in the summer. Razor-Qt is a new fast/light desktop environment using the QT4 toolkit.
http://siduction.org/index.php?module=n ... 15&lang=en

User avatar
sickgut
Posts: 1156
Joined: Tue 23 Mar 2010, 19:11
Location: Tasmania, Australia in the mountains.
Contact:

Re: Debian unstable breanch

#1724 Post by sickgut »

atv wrote:
I will either need to move to a new live base such as Ubuntu... the thought makes me puke on myself and break out in boils of sulfur.
This work seems interesting...did you look into it?
Release Notes for siduction 2012.2 - ...Riders on the Storm. Siduction is a full live-distribution with an integrated installer, based on Debian's unstable branch, and we try to release snapshots quarterly.

Siduction 2012.2 Razor-Qt is the latest flavour that joins our regular release cycle after seeing a dev-release in the summer. Razor-Qt is a new fast/light desktop environment using the QT4 toolkit.
http://siduction.org/index.php?module=n ... 15&lang=en
i assessed the viability of an intermediate release that would be based on Ubuntu rather than Debian Live but there are some glaringly obvious things that make this a bad idea:

When compared to Debain Live Wheezy, Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10 uses way more RAM in its barest form. Debain Wheezy uses less than 50mb RAM, while Ubuntu uses 230MB or so. If building on this with Xorg and server apps running in the background etc the Debian Wheezy would bloat to maybe 120mb of RAM to boot to the desktop, while Ubuntu would be 400MB, making it completely impractical for computers with 256mb RAM, even 512B RAM would be struggling once you click on something and actually want to run or use a program. Ubuntu just gets more bloated the more you add to it, while Debian remains much slimmer.

Ubuntu packages are much bigger than Debian ones, this means that it would be near impossible to make a complete solution OS fit on a CDROM, while the Debian based solution (take the Pussy Xtra for example) fits snugly on a CDROM.

The next version of Ubuntu will not support Live running from a DVD, also it will no longer fit on a CDROM. Have a look at what Ubuntu have planned, its sickening. This means that if i did make an Ubuntu based OS, it would be a dead end once off. I would rather start out how i would like to continue rather than distro hop for every release.

Ubuntu OSes now track all your keystrokes and uploaded them to a server so that they can provide a "service" and your commonly entered words are entered into the Ubuntu search options. Ubuntu has nonfree firmware in their kernel.

Altho Debian Wheezy Live isnt ready yet, it can be used without persistence and it is very fast. There is a noticeable drop in performance when moving to Ubuntu. This equates to an added 15 secs bootup time, and that is to a bare OS with no desktop. The current Pussy Xtra boots in 11 seconds on my low end laptop and this is faster than most puppies, infact its one of the fastest booting linux OSes in in the world. It would be a step back to pad this out to half a minute.

If i was to move a head with an Ubuntu base, it would be a waste of time because as soon as the Debian Live Wheezy was fixed i would start all over again and use that.

A brief preview of Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10 as a desktop system was a joke. It was so broken that it was a joke. There are intolerable performance issues, for instance, with a quadcore AMD FX CPU and 8GB RAM system, pressing f2 + ctrl + alt to bring up a terminal login, there was a 20 second delay. It seemed there where bugs in every app i used and looking on the forums, the constant theme seemed to be that there was no interest in fixing bugs but users are told to wait for the next Ubuntu release. Even one of the oldest demos, the "BB" demo (ascii art using libAA graphical demo with music) didnt work. The response from devs? who uses those kinds of apps anyway?

Ubuntu simply releases a new version every 6 months and doesnt fix their existing versions. Take Ubuntu 12.04 for example, if you use the small standard iso, there is a 2 or 3 minute pause while it searches for network while booting. This is a LTS release, meaning long term support, however there is no interest in fixing this bug.

If using Ubuntu, the new version of Pussy Xtra would not fit on a cdrom, i would either have to remove half the applications or migrate to a dvd instead.

Pussy is 100% debian compatible and if i used Ubuntu then it would be 100% Ubuntu compatible. This is no Dpup or Upup or Puppy Lucid where its built from debian or ubuntu packages but the rest of the OS is custom Puppy scripts and custom Puppy kernel and therefore breaking compatibility with their parent OSes. These OSes are not 100% debian or Ubuntu compatible. Pussy is 100% compatible with its parent OS, and users can even login to debian support chat rooms and any advice given will work. !00% debian kernel and nothing in it break any compatibility at all. This is not a hybrid OS, just a very wise use and bending of Debian, make to kind of feel like using Puppy, the same speed, almost the same disk footprint but better software compatibility, it even uses less RAM than Puppy. 42MB is enough to boot to full Xorg desktop with all the server stuff running in the back ground. Puppy doesnt even boot with 42MB RAM.

sorry for the rant but turning to Ubuntu is out of the question, and i feel dirty for even considering it.

User avatar
sickgut
Posts: 1156
Joined: Tue 23 Mar 2010, 19:11
Location: Tasmania, Australia in the mountains.
Contact:

#1725 Post by sickgut »

new release of debian Live Wheezy B2 still doesnt have persistence working.

I could using live-build scripts to force this but this moves us away from 100% compatibility and will isolate users from getting advice from debian support chat rooms.

It is possible to implement my own live saving system (take compressed save file in the current Pussy for example) but this is only practical with high ram systems as the copy on write resides in ram and you eventually run out of ram, unles the copy on write (cow) is somehow purged at the discretion of the user. This would again, break our 100% compatibility with Debian.

Example: You have 256mb RAM, the OS is taking up 120MB and you are downloading a 1gb file. The download gets part the way through and just stops, this is because there is no legit persistence and nothing is being constantly saved to disk, its being saved to ram, you cant fit 1GB file in 256mb RAM.

Squeeze is a dead end and does not have the features needed for Puppy to power ahead and become better. Looks like waiting for Wheezy is the only option.

Ok peeps, ill check in later on.

User avatar
david_katelansky
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri 18 Dec 2009, 04:34
Location: Margate, FL
Contact:

Saving a Pussy Linux session

#1726 Post by david_katelansky »

I'm seeing some posts about Pussy Linux sessions not being saved to the live-rw file. I don't have any experience with saving to the live-rw file because I went the full install route. I created a partition on a flash drive, called live-rw. My sessions get saved automatically to the flash drive, even though the install is on my hard drive (as promised on http://thepussycatforest.info).

User avatar
sickgut
Posts: 1156
Joined: Tue 23 Mar 2010, 19:11
Location: Tasmania, Australia in the mountains.
Contact:

Re: Saving a Pussy Linux session

#1727 Post by sickgut »

david_katelansky wrote:I'm seeing some posts about Pussy Linux sessions not being saved to the live-rw file. I don't have any experience with saving to the live-rw file because I went the full install route. I created a partition on a flash drive, called live-rw. My sessions get saved automatically to the flash drive, even though the install is on my hard drive (as promised on http://thepussycatforest.info).
Glad you are having success. I am not very articulate when i explain things. If you have the live-rw file on any partition and it is not placed in a directory then it will work, however this has its drawbacks and its benefits. You can backup all your saved date by zipping and copying or just copying the one file to somewhere else for future reference but with FAT partitions having limit of 4gb singular file sizes, all of a sudden live-rw file doesnt look so attractive.

Your method of using a dedicated partition is better in my opinion. However now you have a successful HDD install, you may find that the compressed save file option in the catroll-panel will work nicely as well. This is more of an easy remaster tool than a save file method tho.

I think currently the only bug in the standard pussy-xtra2 that may be noticeable is the rox filer focus problem, but this will be fixed in the next release.

its strange, its been a year now since pussy was last updated and when googling it, i see more people are talking about it than ever and the downloads from my website certainly have been rather steady. I spose some plants still grow even when you dont water them. I think pussy is a cactus.

User avatar
greengeek
Posts: 5789
Joined: Tue 20 Jul 2010, 09:34
Location: Republic of Novo Zelande

Re: Saving a Pussy Linux session

#1728 Post by greengeek »

sickgut wrote:I think pussy is a cactus.
<<Owwwwch>>

User avatar
david_katelansky
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri 18 Dec 2009, 04:34
Location: Margate, FL
Contact:

I found Pussy Linux While Binging

#1729 Post by david_katelansky »

Sickgut,
I'd been in the Windows world for about two years, and hadn't touched Linux during that time. ...but when I started using Linux again, I binged (still MS affected) the Puppy Linux forums and came across a really great looking cat picture. That's what got me interested in Pussy Linux; the cat close up from your desktop.

Dave

nooby
Posts: 10369
Joined: Sun 29 Jun 2008, 19:05
Location: SwedenEurope

#1730 Post by nooby »

Sickgut, AFAIK didn't someone at the Debian Chat promise that in future
they will allow one to be frugal booting and root and still be able to save
to a save file. But lately you seems to have got inside info
that that promise was reconsidered and the Devs changing mind on it?

Is that something you wild guess or did you get in contact with one
of those that really know how they talk about it officially?

Would be sad if they have that incredibly locked view on it?
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

Post Reply