Do Derivative Developers have a right to complain?

For talk and support relating specifically to Puppy derivatives
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soundNICK
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john biles

#16 Post by soundNICK »

John - TeenPup was the first derivative I used for any amount of time.
It was a best answer, five yeras ago, for an inexperienced puppylinux user...
lots of good packages pre-installed... fit on a CD... all around a good
distro.

Now, if youre asking for help developing your own project, the "official puppy
team" isnt necessarilly the best place to look... they are busy with their own
projects, and generally arent looking for new direction.
IMHO, the best way to get developer help is to cooperate with other
derivative developers... but still, puppylinux isnt what most imagine... there is
lots of breakage and lots of problems with most puppy distros... we always
need to ask: "why am I asking these people ?".
More to the point of your original inquiry - maybe it should be "IS THERE
ANYBODY OUT THERE WHO CAN HELP ME FIX problem X or Y ?". You
never really ask about any specific problem... prolly a good idea on public forum.

After using TeenPup, I settled on several debian-based puppylinux distros...
and, as solid as these have been, Im still seeing answers to problems I asked
for help with five years ago - just now showing up or fixed in these.
PCs have been here for 30 years, not 300... public distributions are still
something to gawk at (ooo a little pun there : -) and, as weve all seen, the best
of commercialware is often far short of our expectations.

John, I liked your approach with TeenPup... simple interface... working
programs... no emphasis on flashie or impressive looking features.

Good luck whatever it is youre looking for. Someday there will be a
GeriatricPup maybe ? : - )

soundNICK

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john biles
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#17 Post by john biles »

Hello Everyone,

pemasu wrote,
I have noticed that puplet builder and coders have relationship. Puplet builder creates updated build and coders get working distro which has their products and also updates included. Coders also poke inside the hood and find issues which mere gui user dont notice. It happens all the time.
Very true, the average User doesn't realize how much time and effort is spent on the smallest detail to bring the working Apps that users take for granted.

How many times has a App been uploaded as a Pet only to be discovered that it opens, shows a nice User Interface (GUI) but doesn't do anything else because the user uploading either doesn't realize or has forgotten to include it's "Backend" and was more excited by what they've created then giving the Pet the testing it needs.

Lothar wrote,
Now John, I wouldn't do that. Making a point, is all.
No worries, you didn't offend me at all, thought your comments were funny.

soundNICK wrote,
John, I liked your approach with TeenPup... simple interface... working
programs... no emphasis on flashie or impressive looking features.
There's no use adding fancy features / effects for the Hardware TEENpup and now Legacy OS are targeted at. Adding these features / effects would make Legacy OS unusable on the very Hardware it was developed for.
It is more fun to improve, modernize Legacy OS without upping the Hardware requirements. This is also one of the reasons why a number of Applications are older versions then expected. While they might come with less features than their later versions, the basics are still there allowing access to a usable application on the old Hardware.
Legacy OS 2017 has been released.

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Colonel Panic
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#18 Post by Colonel Panic »

Some good points there, John, the trouble is that the later versions of Abiword and Gnumeric offer genuine improvements over their predecessors which I've come to find indispensable.

You can now open and save Open Office files properly, for example, and Gnumeric now comes with an auto-set function for the column width which the earlier versions didn't. For that reason I tend nowadays to either use Open Office (or Libre Office) in whatever Pup I use, or opt for one of the later Puppy versions with the more current version of Gnome Office included.
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.

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john biles
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#19 Post by john biles »

Hello Colonel Panic,
I agree most of the time each new release of an app brings improvements. My skill, time require I focus on Legacy OS as a whole and not just on an application here and there.

I know Puppy on a whole has moved on allowing the inclusion of newer versions of apps with more features. May be one day I'll grab the latest and greatest Puppy fill it up with useful current apps and surprise you all. But for now I can only offer Legacy OS 2 and upcoming Legacy OS 4. :D
Legacy OS 2017 has been released.

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sheepy
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#20 Post by sheepy »

I agree, John.
I did most of the developing of my derivative by tinkering until I eventually figured it out on my own, or finding threads that dealt with something in the same area, which eventually helped me reach my destinations on some occasions.

Making a Puppy derivative is a privilege <3 Long live Puppy.

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Colonel Panic
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#21 Post by Colonel Panic »

john biles wrote:Hello Colonel Panic,
I agree most of the time each new release of an app brings improvements. My skill, time require I focus on Legacy OS as a whole and not just on an application here and there.

I know Puppy on a whole has moved on allowing the inclusion of newer versions of apps with more features. May be one day I'll grab the latest and greatest Puppy fill it up with useful current apps and surprise you all. But for now I can only offer Legacy OS 2 and upcoming Legacy OS 4. :D
Point taken John. Any news on Legacy OS 4? How's it coming along?
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.

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john biles
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#22 Post by john biles »

Hello Colonel Panic,
Legacy OS 4 Mini is sitting at 481mb's in size. Just putting the finishing touches on it now. With family, work and life, this has been a slow build.
Not long to go. Working on some icons I don't like at the moment...
Legacy OS 2017 has been released.

nooby
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#23 Post by nooby »

John what you say here is the truth!
the average User doesn't realize how much time and effort
is spent on the smallest detail to bring the working Apps
that users take for granted.
So the solution is to always do what is fun for the Dev and not fun
for the user because too many users are like spoiled children not
knowing how much effort is needed to do anything in computing.

So if one are in it for the fun then that is the right attitude. To be in it
having a hope to satisfy the spoiled User then one goes down the road to hell.
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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Colonel Panic
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#24 Post by Colonel Panic »

Just a quick update to what I said above; I've now discovered that Libre Office will save to Open Office 1.0 format (.sxw and .sxc), which unlike more recent versions of the OpenOffice format will open in older versions of Abiword and is quite adequate for what I need. So, problem solved :)
Gigabyte M68MT-52P motherboard, AMD Athlon II X4 630, 5.8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive running Ubuntu 16.04.6, MX-19.2, Peppermint 10, PCLinuxOS 20.02, LXLE 18.04.3, Pardus 19.2, exGENT 200119, Bionic Pup 8.0 and Xenial CE 7.5 XL.

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