(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

So I was thinking of getting an MK802 II if I could afford one, mostly because I seem to remember hearing that it was possible to run a variant of PupPi on it. So I hop over to eBay and the first listing is this one...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/251301439828

What the heck? Somebody is selling (it's a nominal fee, and it's on eBay, so I guess I don't mind that part) a CD of Puppy tweaked specifically for the MK802, etc., models... veeeeeeeery interesting.

I don't think he's on this forum, either. (I'm going to message him about that.)

Anyone know of anything similar, and is this sort of practice generally frowned on here (I suspect that it is, but I'm not 100% certain)?

Boy I hope this doesn't turn into a proper dustup...

starhawk wrote:Somebody is selling ... a CD of Puppy tweaked ... Anyone know of anything similar

yes (selling a tweaked version of Puppy) ...http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=611778#611778

As an update, I sent the fellow a message via eBay, inviting him to join here. I fully expect he'll decline, but if he joins, let's hope he doesn't (stupidly) try to make money here as well. I seem to remember one fellow on here attempting to pull that, and IIRC it did NOT go well at all.

Although... given the price he's charging, I suspect the cost only covers materials and shipping, and he's not making more than a token profit at most.

Given that, he's probably just playing distributor and someone else did the tweaking and doesn't know about that listing. Alternatively, he could be doing the tweaking and either (a) getting instructions from a post on a blog somewhere (the MK802 versions he's tested on are a bit old, so this is actually not unreasonable) or (b) he did it himself and just wants the word out regardless of how much dough it makes for him.

In any case he's small potatoes at best, and I'm not exactly worried or (significantly) troubled -- mostly my reaction was one of surprise. I actually asked him if he could whip me up a working version for my CX-01 "Android Cloud Stick"... we'll see what he says.

Most folks on eBay seem to check their messages late at night or early in the morning (my time -- US Eastern) so I expect I'll have an email from him waiting for me when I get up tomorrow. We shall see.

I see nothing wrong with someone selling a CD of Puppy for a nominal price.
There is an outfit that advertises CD/DVDs for sale on DistroWatch so how is this much different?

Just my opinion,of course,but I agree with 8-bit .While Linux is open source and can be downloaded on the internet this doesn't mean the downloader can make it work properly.What I believe you are paying for here is "expertise"and this "expertise" is what keeps every human being gainfully employed in whatever craft they choose.If I needed this Puppy,I wouldn't hesitate to purchase it.cheers

It is a valuable service for someone that has one of those devices and doesn't have a CD burner or a decent internet connection. I don't see anything wrong with it either. If I remember right, there used to be a place on the Puppy website itself to buy a version preburnt to cd.

But when someone starts exploiting free software to the point where it becomes almost malicious and deceitful like what was shown in this post http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 778#611778 then it becomes a little ridiculous. I was quite a bit pissed when I first saw that they were selling a (barely) modified version of Puppy for 80 bucks which is completely ridiculous especially when there are literally a dozen or so of better options for free. Even with those custom usb sticks and them covering shipping costs it can't possibly cost them more than 15 to 20 dollars to produce apiece. Plus they grossly misrepresent the product such as acting like Tor is the end all for encryption and privacy while browsing; not even close, or how they recommend bcrypt for file encryption which I guess is fine for your average wanna keep your kids out of your porn stash but don't even add in any high security encryption programs like Yapet or cryptkeeper (ENCFS GUI) or anyway to connect to a secure VPN (PPTP which is built into most puppies was proven to be very insecure some time ago). Ok rant over.

DistroWatch today shows "Simplicity.". Seems nice.

DPUP5520 wrote:... they recommend bcrypt for file encryption which I guess is fine for your average wanna keep your kids out of your porn stash ...

To be fair Bcrypt uses blowfish encryption at 448bit , so if you choose a decent passphrase it’'s as secure as the industry-standard AES 256-bit ... https://www.schneier.com/blowfish-products.html

( despite what was said on the TV show "24" :¬)

Why did you attach a BCrypted jpg image file with no provision to be able to view it?
Are you looking for someone to crack bcrypt to be able to view that image?
It just looked like a waste of forum space.

8-bit wrote:Why did you attach a BCrypted jpg image file with no provision to be able to view it?.

If DPUP5520 was correct about Bcrypt (Blowfish) being a poor encryption methodthen I wouldn't need to post the key.

The password I chose is 5ce8c032433c114e77acd086ee5633672c3efa8b
[ which is the SHA-1 of the word "Tetraodontidae" (without quotation marks, case sensitive ). ]

My internet drops out on occasion and I loose the ability to view new messages after a dropout when I am logged in.
The new message counter is reset when I log back in so I missed your reply with password.

Nice picture of a Blowfish by the way!