Slacko Beta 1

[BarryK]

I'm trying out Slacko on the Pentium D machine, and have found that while my Netgear WN111v2 USB wireless dongle works on a pfix=ram boot, it doesn't when booting from a pupsave. It works fine in XP and Luci/Lupu.

I've noticed that when the dongle isn't working, there are some modules not shown in the Kernel Modules screen in HardInfo:-

aes-generic
arc4
ecb
ar9170usb

These all appear to be connected with making the dongle work and the fact that they're not listed when rebooting would probably explain the non-functioning network connection.

Interestingly, there is one module listed in the pupsave boot that doesn't appear in pfix=ram - carl9170.

Have you tried plugging it in after bootup, as well as having it already plugged in at bootup? Sometimes it makes a difference.

[01micko]

Was wondering if Slacko will be addressing the problem of having more than 3.5GB of ram?
As discussed here:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=67707

Not initially bigpup.. I'm pretty happy with how this kernel is performing. That doesn't mean to say I won't try out a later kernel with PAE enabled, but at the moment there are other priorities. I do tend to agree with Linus on that one too though, if if you have over 3gB RAM it's likely your system supports 64 bit.. then why not use a 64 bit OS? We have 2 very good ones in development as in LHP and FatDog. Actually FD-511 is a stable release.

I'm sure one day in the not too distant future Woof will move to 64 bit compatibility making development of 64 bit Pups all the easier. Hats off to kirk and TazOC.

[01micko]

Hey 01micko, I just wrote a new package building tool called Builder (here and a set of build scripts for all my puplet's packages.

This time it's way simpler and lighter than Puppizard ... and it produces PET packages instead of its own format. The packages are automatically stripped and split to EXE, DEV, DOC and NLS.

To rebuild Window Maker (my love!), I created a directory, put the build script there and ran this:

Code: Select all

buildpkg windowmaker-crm.sh

The result is 4 ultra-stripped PETs, in about 10 minutes (after all, it's a git checkout over a slow internet connection, on a netbook ). I rebuilt all my distro's packages in about 20 minutes, which isn't bad at all.

Have you considered putting a Window Maker package in Slickpet? I wrote a really fast menu generator for it in Perl (and I don't even know how to code in Perl ) and I think it could be a nice, lighter alternative to JWM/ROX. Now it's also easier to build it.

hah.. that was a bit of fun.. and if I had more time I would explore more!

Bit geeky for a noob though, I think noobs, especially Windows, Ubuntu, Fedora, Gnome, KDE, Mac refugees prefer a panel with a "start" button and a few icons. I like the animated effects though and it is blazingly fast! Certainly JWM has it's limitations.. I wish Joe had more interest but I have had no response to my emails. I am a bit committed to jwm by default at the moment, mainly due to time constraint, but hey, wmaker is very cool and if it can be bent into a more conventional shape then I can see a future for your "new love"

Cheers, and thanks for the heads up.

[rcrsn51]

I'm trying out Slacko on the Pentium D machine, and have found that while my Netgear WN111v2 USB wireless dongle works on a pfix=ram boot, it doesn't when booting from a pupsave. It works fine in XP and Luci/Lupu.

By any chance, did you do a frugal install and forget to include the zdrv file?

[tasmod]

Just for you Lobster, a pet of drive icons with red and green 'flags'

[Volhout]

01micko,

PlayDayz posted in his 2HD thread that he invited people to start testting Slacko, as it is the "next" puppy, following his lucid528.

I hope I don't offend anyone by asking a very basic question. What is Slacko ?? Your post #1 shows "it's time to test" but no reference in what Slacko is. I understand it is based on Slackware, but why use slackware ? Is it targetted to be smaller? faster? targetted to newer hardware (-or to older hardware) different apps? nicer graphics? More support for different hardware?

Can you point me to some basic info about Slacko ?

Volhout.

[mave]

Hi,

trying Slacko Beta 1 on my Thinkpad T61 (1400x1050) gets this:

1. booting fine, xorgwizard => setting to 1400x1050, 24), firstrun-dialog
2. after setting details (here: german keyboard...) Puppy is asking to restart X-Server => OK
3. uuups: text-screen has changed (smaller)
4. xorgwizrad again (?), okay: setting again 1400x1050,24
5. crashing graphic no.1
6. after some sec. crashing graphics no.2
7. only hard reset to go on...

mave

[nooby]

why use slackware ?

My very naive take on Devs is that them do things because it makes them happy coding or combining what others have coded. So my best answer is that them do it because it feels good doing it.

But seen from a more practical view them maybe looked at Debian and realized that there are others already using Debian repo. Then there is Arch and that one seems too hard nut to crack so only Slackware was what felt fun to go into?

Am I wrong? The best answer is that them are motivated from within and the best motivation is that it feels good!

[enhu]

Nice.
Im still using 311. And transmision is faulty sometimes.

[Iguleder]

I am a bit committed to jwm by default at the moment, mainly due to time constraint, but hey, wmaker is very cool and if it can be bent into a more conventional shape then I can see a future for your "new love"

I didn't say Window Maker should be the default, but it definitely needs a place in the Puppy universe - either as a PET, SFS or as a puplet (that's something I'm already working on).

I wrote a menu generator for it in Perl, which creates a menu that reloads automatically, so no need to restart the window manager and get your desktop messed up once you install a package.

I updated the build script to download and integrate the menu generator in the package, so you get an all-in-one Window Maker PET ready to rock

I also wrote other scripts, for stuff like emelFM2, so I could build some spup packages.

[sfoster]

Hi 01micko,
hmm, xvesa reboot seems to be working, strangely wihout any bootcodes (found out by accident)...weird, I could have sworn I tested xvesa already, will experiment some more in a few hours and post if I can. Xorg still doesn't work at all, bootcodes didn't seem to change anything.
--S

[aarf]

Nice.
Im still using 311. And transmision is faulty sometimes.

this torrent
http://www.torrentdownloads.net/torrent ... nti+stress says need to upgrade transmission to a some later version of something. haven't got the exact message now as there are no seeds.

creating folders and download directories dont always appear to be what is selected when adding. however did get 1 torrent (knoppix6.7)down successfully .so that two tries in total.

[01micko]

hmm, xvesa reboot seems to be working, strangely wihout any bootcodes (found out by accident)...weird, I could have sworn I tested xvesa already, will experiment some more in a few hours and post if I can. Xorg still doesn't work at all, bootcodes didn't seem to change anything.

just to be clear, Xvesa is a completely different X server not included in Slacko. There is a driver/module called Vesa which usually works when the desired driver fails. It is a Xorg module.
Ok, good it seems to work. In PPM you can search for "radeonhd", there is a driver for it but left out by default. It is somewhat deprecated however may work for some users

I updated the build script to download and integrate the menu generator in the package, so you get an all-in-one Window Maker PET ready to rock

Ok, will rebuild and test, of course it can be in PPM

Im still using 311. And transmision is faulty sometimes.

It is an old transmission package included by default, due to size. There is a more recent version in PPM

trying Slacko Beta 1 on my Thinkpad T61 (1400x1050) gets this:

I will have a more in depth look later.

I hope I don't offend anyone by asking a very basic question. What is Slacko ?? Your post #1 shows "it's time to test" but no reference in what Slacko is. I understand it is based on Slackware, but why use slackware ?[snip]

No offence taken by anybody I expect.
Well you got the bit right about using Slackware binaries/packages. They seem to work very well. I am happy if this thing runs on a P3 with 256 RAM all the way up to a modern machine. That said, it won't run on everything. There will be some hardware that fails, it is the nature of things. However we do our best to get it to run on everything.
Also, this showcases the power of woof. It also showcases that Puppy built form Slackware stuff is still Puppy. It's no more Slackware than Lupu is Ubuntu. There is a mindset out there that "Puppy is based on XXX distro" (XXX being whatever flavour bins are used at the time) which simply isn't true. It just uses those bins to take advantage of the repos. Don't think Slackware has much in the repo? Take a look in PPM .
Another thing.. Puppy needs to keep moving. The debian "Squeezed" derivatives made by Iguleder/pemasu/stu90 are great, advancing Puppy just as this is doing.
Ubuntu at the moment, for me at least is in the "too hard" basket. I chose to support this version.
I hope this goes some way to answering your query.[Update: This snippet is quoted in the main post]

Just for you Lobster, a pet of drive icons with red and green 'flags'

Unfortunately Rob, your nice icons will get deleted! Barry has a new system in place where each iconset get's "overlayed" (drive icons only) to facilitate a one click unmount. Read more in Barry's Blog.

aarf, see reply to enhu

[01micko]

Well, I can't turn my back for a couple of minutes and there is already another distro.

Installed FRUGAL Lin'N'Win
Activated my application environment.
Apart from following issues applications seel to work.

1 - libgtkspell library is missing. needed for pidgin.
2 - the battery icon is there but still white, as reported before.

Béèm.. don't think this was ignored!

I will adjust pet.specs for pidgin, may even compile latest and add libgtkspell as a dependency, should download automatically, maybe I can force pidgin to use system hunspell? Anybody know?

Also, I went with vattery because the powerapplet_tray was failing on my eee where it worked in old spup-100 series. I recompiled in Slacko but it still failed. You can try it if you want http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis ... 2-spup.pet It can coexist with vattery with some creative scripting in /root/Startup. For testing, please delete /root/Startup/vattery.sh.

Let me know if it works

[shinobar]

Petget freezes at installing any pets under PUPMODE=13(flash).
It freezes at line 230 in installpkg.sh:

Code: Select all

  busybox mount -t aufs -o remount,udba=reval unionfs / #remount with faster evaluation mode.

Slacko alpha and also beta 1.

It seems hardware specific...
My 2 PCs freeze but another 1 PC is no problem.

The freezing 2 PCs are intel X38 and intel P45, both have Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX, and may have marvel ide bridge.

The freezing 2 PCs are P5Q SE and P5E mother boards both from ASUS.
I used nv driver and vesa, seems no matter with the X driver.
I tried Lucid Puppy 528 and Wary 513, both have no problem.
I suspect some hardware and kernel issue.

EDIT: Racy Puppy 5.1.110, kernel 3.0.7 with unionfs, has no problem.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 142#577142

[sfoster]

Hi 01micko,
I found the radeonhd driver and got it working, however when I try to restart X, the same thing happens. I also found out that the xvesa module (your clarification is duly noted) doesn't seem to play nice with acpid, because when I closed the lid to my laptop and reopened it, the computer wouldn't come out of standby properly. It worked ok with the other radeon drivers.
Regarding the acpi daemon, this is the first variant of ANY version of puppy I have tried where the wifi light on my control console works when the radio is turned on, or for that matter the first puppy to automatically go into standby when I close the lid. The wifi light is picky though, only works sometimes. I haven't managed to intentionally duplicate the circumstances yet (I have by accident a couple of times).
yours,
S
EDIT: confirmed xvesa/acpi problems by running with acpi=off, no problems after that

[James C]

Playing around with an old machine so, Slacko Beta 1....live pfix=ram.Sound,internet and display good on initial boot.


VIDEO REPORT: Slacko Puppy, version 4.99.1

Chip description:
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)

Driver used by Xorg:
intel

Video mode used by Xorg:
Resolution: "1024x768" Depth: Depth 24

...the above also recorded in /tmp/report-video

-Computer-
Processor : 2x Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
Memory : 2066MB (150MB used)
Operating System : Unknown distribution
User Name : root (root)
Date/Time : Mon 22 Aug 2011 11:06:12 PM CDT
-Display-
Resolution : 1024x768 pixels
OpenGL Renderer : Unknown
X11 Vendor : The X.Org Foundation
-Multimedia-
Audio Adapter : HDA-Intel - HDA Intel


VGA compatible controller : Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller
Audio device : Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller
Ethernet controller : Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet Controller

# free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 2066480 451836 1614644 0 58040
Swap: 0 0 0
Total: 2066480 451836 1614644

[tasmod]

Hi Mick,

When do they get deleted? I've been running them ever since posting and they are still there, even after many reboots and shutdowns.

I'll take a look at Barry's Blog.

[tasmod]

OK, got it.

However the icons won't be deleted but now have an 'invisible' unmount action.
Left clicking the top right of my icon where the 'X' was originally will unmount the drive.
This is what Barry intended with the 'X'

I suppose I could add a small green 'ball' at this point.

This is how it works with me at the moment. Anyone else concur?

EDIT:
A quick glance. It appears the intended action by Barry is not being carried out in delayed run script regarding" icon_switch_cli "
It should delete the icons.
Barry reports in his 'replies' in his blog that this was a hopeful hack

EDIT AGAIN:
Ah, just noticed first line above his notes in delayed run. Pupmode=5
Live CD or USB only

[tasmod]

OK.
With a frugal install, Barry's implementation of vovchiks png overlay routine is not working. Something I think he will change.

In the meantime here's a 'ball' drive icon and a green 'X' overlay should you want that version.

Just copy across to /usr/local/lib/X11/pixmaps.

As Barry intended, just left click on the ball and the drive will unmount.