Slacko 5.7 final - 8 March 2014

[gcmartin]

FYI

Just a note: Anyone can use PAE or non-PAE and will get identical packages, services, and subsystems NO MATTER how little or how much RAM you have.

PAE takes advantage of a feature in the Intel/AMD CPUs to allow RAM access. A few PC CPUs dont have this feature, yet most in the world do. PAE's advantage is that it doesn't care how much RAM you have as the hardware will make all of the RAM the PC has available to your PCs.

The original 486 architecture did NOT have this additional feature. In 1995 AMD, first, Intel next, began building PCs with the feature.

BOTH non-PAE and PAE distros, again, provide exactly the same operations, look, feel, services, subsystems and applications! EXACTLY the same. And, you will NOT lose or gain anything magical whether you use one distro or the other.

From the system's ability to let one achieve a work objective, neither denies that.

There have been measurements all over the PC world from 1996 - 2010, including here in Puppyland which have shown that PAE has NO negative impact versus non-PAE if your PC is built with the CPUs that contain it. In fact, all assert that the hardware does what its suppose to, while the OSes, in some cases show improvements with PAE operation on PCs with less than 1GB RAM. This information is published all over the internet. Some show much gains, other show little, but all show that the architecture works. And, authors of these reports have feelings about this too...some accurate...some not so. There are even some that points to some words as having some meaning that they perceive as correct, while the industry has measured and found the hardware performance proper and without penalty.

Architecturally, PAE hardware will access ALL RAM no matter how little or how much you have. PCs which do NOT have the feature cannot present much more than 3.5GB to the OS. That's all there is.

Advice: If you have a system which can run both distros, YOU CHOOSE and feel comfortable that what you choose will run to meet your needs.

Developers: Have made their distros with both in some cases as they recognize that some community members have PC whose RAM exceeds 3GB. As such, they help the community by providing the PAE version knowing full well that PAE works on over 99% of the PCs while not providing any negative impact to use. They do so to benefit users.

In reality, RAM consideration should NOT enter the discussion as it has been shown to not matter in measurements.

This is post's subject is published, again, because the topic continues to be a hotbed for some and it really shouldn't be. If you have a PAE PC...You choose either distro. If not, you have NO choice.

FYI

[James C]

There have been measurements all over the PC world from 1996 - 2010, including here in Puppyland which have shown that PAE has NO negative impact versus non-PAE if your PC is built with the CPUs that contain it. In fact, all assert that the hardware does what its suppose to, while the OSes, in some cases show improvements with PAE operation on PCs with less than 1GB RAM. This information is published all over the internet. Some show much gains, other show little, but all show that the architecture works. And, authors of these reports have feelings about this too...some accurate...some not so. There are even some that points to some words as having some meaning that they perceive as correct, while the industry has measured and found the hardware performance proper and without penalty.

In the interest of fairness all information should be presented.

Yes,there are studies and tests that conclude that PAE has no negative impact on computer performance. However,there are plenty of studies and tests that do show a negative impact. Such as...
http://askubuntu.com/questions/151068/f ... vs-non-pae

But this requires slightly more overhead over non-PAE, which can lead to slightly decreased performance.
Here's a very simple explanation: in non-PAE mode, a 32-bit CPU must lookup (access) two tables to access a physical memory address; in PAE-mode, it must lookup three tables to do so. The one additional lookup requires some (very small) extra time, thus imposing additional overhead.
At the end of this answer are two images from the Wikipedia PAE article, illustrating the above point.
NX/XD bit: The PAE kernel also supports the No-eXecute/eXecute-Disable bit on 64-bit processors; this can help prevent some kinds of virus/malicious attacks (buffer overflows), but IMO this doesn't matter much when choosing 32-bit kernels for Ubuntu.
...but in practice this overhead is negligible (almost nothing)...
Phoronix has done a number of tests over the years which show that on systems with 4GB or less, the PAE kernel may be at most approximately 5% slower than the non-PAE kernel. This is only for a specific test application; the usual difference is less than 1%.
Tests for 12.04 LTS - 8 GB system!
Tests for 11.04 - 4 and 8GB systems

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... 3264&num=1

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... ae64&num=1

Phoronix has done a number of tests over the years which show that on systems with 4GB or less, the PAE kernel may be at most approximately 5% slower than the non-PAE kernel.

Even 1% could be significant on a low-ram computer.

Red Hat is fairly well-known in the Linux world...

http://people.redhat.com/nmurray/RHEL-2 ... epaper.pdf

The performance impact is highly workload dependent, but on a fairly typical kernel
compile, the PAE penalty works out to be around a 1% performance hit on Red
Hat’s test boxes. Testing with various other workload mixes has given performance
hits ranging from 0% to 10%.

There's lots of evidence to support both sides of the matter but let the user decide for themselves.But to say,or omit, that there is any evidence of a performance penalty is disingenuous.

[Puppus Dogfellow]

Slacko Puppy 5.7 PAE and Non-PAE plus respective devx.sfs mirrored

[James C]

There have been measurements all over the PC world from 1996 - 2010, including here in Puppyland which have shown that PAE has NO negative impact versus non-PAE if your PC is built with the CPUs that contain it.

Using absolutes when evidence exists to the contrary may cause these little disagreements. Users are free to choose and use the version thay want....but full information should be disclosed.

Hopefully on to other more important things......

There are even some that points to some words as having some meaning that they perceive as correct, while the industry has measured and found the hardware performance proper and without penalty.

[PaulR]

My savefile problem has returned with 5.7. As I mentioned it further up this thread I thought I'd post here rather than in Bug Reports.

Booting off a USB, saving using the defaults (admin, 512mb, no encrypt etc) to sda1 (formatted ext4 and having just Linux Mint installed). Tried saving Puppy in ext2 and ext4 format with and without additional characters in the savefile name.

This is the non-PAE version on a Thinkpad T42 1GB - Puppy isn't installed in any way.

Not sure if this is any help, I'm afraid I don't know where to start looking...

Code: Select all

▶—— /initrd/tmp/bootinit.log ——◀

'FATAL' messages may be insignificant.

hwclock: can't open '/dev/misc/rtc': No such file or directory
mount: mounting none on /proc/bus/usb failed: No such file or directory
Bypass looking for vmlinuz on sda1
missing argument to `-iname'
missing argument to `-iname'
missing argument to `-iname'
missing argument to `-iname'

I can mount and browse the slackosave file I created at first shutdown and it all seems to be ok.

Paul

[gcmartin]

No problem @James C. As I have expressed over and over which you dont like. But, there is much accuracy in what I shared. Again my last sentence summarizes, saying,

... This post's subject is published, again, because the topic continues to be a hotbed for some and it really shouldn't be. If you have a PAE PC...You choose either distro. If not, you have NO choice.

Doing my best to put this whole discussion behind us on what runs on 32bit PCs. You show RedHat, and in the past I have shown both Intel and AMD. In fact they produced lab reports as far back as 1995 when they presented to Industry leaders showing no loss and in some cases greater benefit. You believe whomever you want and you are free to interpret as well.

Let's move on.

You and I help developers when we test their creations to validate functionality and stability.

My advice to membership who have questions on this remains the same. "You choose! And in 99% of the cases, you can use either with no expectation of penalty while getting stable service."

[j3nnydeguzman]

Hello, I tried using linux and downloaded slacko 5.6 and I noticed that website texts appear different from browsing with chrome in windows.
Does anybody know how I could make my chrome browser look the same as when browsing with windows xp?
Here's a comparison:

windows:


slacko:


Also, do I need to install some drivers? Maybe NVIDIA? Because, it feels like a brand new installed windows XP without graphics drivers installed yet.


And is there a virtualbox sfs already for slacko 5.7? I downloaded virtualbox-4.3.8.sfs from http://shinobar.server-on.net/puppy/opt/ but it doesn't work with 5.7 so i moved back to 5.6... It says problem with kernel something and need build module..

[nooby]

I've testedSlacko 5.7 and are very disappointed.
Failed to find the trusty old WMPlayer or what the name is.
I fail to understand P-music. Too complicated to get for this newbie.

It takes forever to load a mp3 pr mp4 file and are not tintuitive to use for me.

I know Zigbert as a very friendly caring person so no criticism to him at all.

His preferences and mine are totally opposite. I did not find wmplayer
in the repo either not even VLC player. Which is demanding for me to use
but many times easier than P-misc and loads fast and not super slow.

So I stick with using Lucid which have wmplayer already installed?

Lucy worked effortlessly playing almost any kind of music files
that I fed it with, no delay or problem.

[zigbert]

nooby
You are absolutely right that pMusic is made to fit my personal request. On the other hand, most of the added code is to support others requests. And it would be very kind of you if you could offer some time to make pMusic better. I am very comfortable with the fact that you prefer another player, but still, - disappointed users are those who can help me to take the right decisions of how pMusic should act. Sometimes it is all about a developers choice of how things should work, but still; apps may evolve to a stage that pleases both of us.

I would be thankful if you describe your disappointment in the pMusic forum thread. Please be as specific as possible. Remember - we might have different ways to do things, and maybe I haven't seen the way you do things. It does not take forever to load a mp3 for me, so obviously we don't press the same buttons.


Sigmund

[playdayz]

IMHO, Pmusic is an extraordinary achievement. It has been a treat to watch it develop over the years. The only problem I ever had with it is that because it is written with scripts instead of compiled it cannot (or could not) handle very large music collections (mine is around 7,000 tracks). I have mentioned this to Zigbert and he is quite forthright about this. I have always wondered if those scripts could be somehow compiled. Anyway, I usually used Audacious, which was/is available for Lucid and probably is or could be available for Slacko. I *think* nooby might mean "Gnome Mplayer" which was the default music player in some versions of Lucid. Gnome Mplayer is present in Slacko as the default video player and could be set as the default music player.

Add: Menu -> Setup -> Default Applications Chooser -> Audio Player (pull down menu and choose Gnome Mplayer).

[nooby]

Thanks Playdays. That would solve part of my problem
the other most likely a kind of catalogging that Sigmund
wants or prefer while I have that catalog alread in the Dir
ready to be used.

So how do I set it to not do catalog of records

I did mean GNU yes. I have to know what it is named
and then write that as the default music player as well.

Any suggestion what it might be?

But I got so sad and disappointed it maybe is too late
to repair my feelings. I am a bit too sensitive obviously.

I had longed for to have two OS both Lucy and Slacko
but my lack of knowledge broke the trust for Slacko.

You need to know too much to make it behave.

Sigmund like you told me I did write in the pmusic thread.

Will look for answer there

[slick-puppy]

Hi,
Does anybody have a version of VLC with DVB working in slacko 5.7?

My normal pet "vlc-2.0.3_twoflower.pet" won't even open.

thanks

dc

I also had issues with every vlc I installed trying to play a recorded .ts from a satellite. Although every version would open for me I received an error " unable to decode mpgv audio or video ". Being that I tried several versions and received the same error I assumed the problem might be external with ffmpeg so I uninstalled ffmpeg and installed ffmpeg and vlc from here and everything works for me now:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... -slacko14/

ffmpeg-2.0-i686-s14.0.pet
ffmpeg_DEV-2.0-i686-s14.0.pet
vlc-2.1.0-i686-s14.pet

Since I installed all at the same time I still do not know exactly where the problem was. People at compile time on vlc choose to compile ffmpeg with vlc and others choose to use external installed ffmpeg.

[gcmartin]

Sorry: moved to Pmusic thread.

[majorfoo]

Anyway, I usually used Audacious, which was/is available for Lucid and probably is or could be available for Slacko

I also like Audacious and have just installed Audacious-3.2.3-2 pet in Slacko 5.7 FInal.I don't remember where I downloaded the pet from.
Did not have any problem with installation or with playing of mp3 files

[Billtoo]

Anyway, I usually used Audacious, which was/is available for Lucid and probably is or could be available for Slacko

I also like Audacious and have just installed Audacious-3.2.3-2 pet in Slacko 5.7 FInal.I don't remember where I downloaded the pet from.
Did not have any problem with installation or with playing of mp3 files

I installed audacious from PPM in Slacko 5.7, it's working well.

[nooby]

Thanks for letting me know about Audacious.
Does not that one spend some several minutes to list
all the files under the Music Dir?

[DC]

Hi slick-puppy,
How do you uninstall ffmpeg? I tried installing over the top and that did'nt work

thanks

dc

I also had issues with every vlc I installed trying to play a recorded .ts from a satellite. Although every version would open for me I received an error " unable to decode mpgv audio or video ". Being that I tried several versions and received the same error I assumed the problem might be external with ffmpeg so I uninstalled ffmpeg and installed ffmpeg and vlc from here and everything works for me now:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/pe ... -slacko14/

ffmpeg-2.0-i686-s14.0.pet
ffmpeg_DEV-2.0-i686-s14.0.pet
vlc-2.1.0-i686-s14.pet

Since I installed all at the same time I still do not know exactly where the problem was. People at compile time on vlc choose to compile ffmpeg with vlc and others choose to use external installed ffmpeg.

[slick-puppy]

Hi slick-puppy,
How do you uninstall ffmpeg? I tried installing over the top and that did'nt work

thanks

dc

I uninstalled the ffmpeg version in the menu:

Menu --> Setup --> Remove built in packages

There was two installed but it only allowed me to uninstall one. That left ffmpeg-0.11.2 installed. Then I was able to install the newer pets I downloaded.

Be advised I had to scale my processor from 80% to 50% in the menu:

Menu --> System --> CPU Frequency Scaling tool

And also adjusted the cache in vlc for the higher bit rate feeds in vlc to display properly with out jerking.

Mplayer2 (Not mplayer; it has some issues with high bit rate feeds) actually uses less resources and plays some tp's that vlc will not; I use it more often than vlc.

[nooby]

Help me spot what goes wrong. To me these look identical
apart from 5.6 and 5.7

title slacko-5.6 Puppy Linux
kernel (hd0,0)/slacko-5.6/vmlinuz PMEDIA=atahd PDEV1=sda1 psubdir=slacko-5.6 pfix=fsck
initrd (hd0,0)/slacko-5.6/initrd.gz

title slacko-5.7 Puppy Linux non-Pae
kernel (hd0,0)/slacko-5.7/vmlinuz PMEDIA=atahd PDEV1=sda1 psubdir=slacko-5.7 pfix=fsck
initrd (hd0,0)/slacko-5.7/initrd.gz

The older one works well but the new one fail to go pass
Automatic logon. While the old one do it instantly.

So it looks to me that slacko7 is different internally ?

[DC]

Hi slick-puppy,
Tried your way did not work for me. So read some more and started again.
loaded
qt-4.8.2.sfs and vlc-2.0.3.sfs - works fine
tried
qt-4.8.2.sfs and vlc-2.1.0-i686-s14.pet - works
qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.8.2-i686-s14.sfs and vlc-2.1.0-i686-s14.pet works

so it seems my problem was the missing qt files and the BBC is working in VLC at 01:43 in the morning.
And the bonus is I'm now running VLC 2.1.0

thanks
dc

I uninstalled the ffmpeg version in the menu:

Menu --> Setup --> Remove built in packages

There was two installed but it only allowed me to uninstall one. That left ffmpeg-0.11.2 installed. Then I was able to install the newer pets I downloaded.

Be advised I had to scale my processor from 80% to 50% in the menu:

Menu --> System --> CPU Frequency Scaling tool

And also adjusted the cache in vlc for the higher bit rate feeds in vlc to display properly with out jerking.

Mplayer2 (Not mplayer; it has some issues with high bit rate feeds) actually uses less resources and plays some tp's that vlc will not; I use it more often than vlc.