Some sorted notes
General » Things that I find Interesting » Puppy Linux History
http://trobin.proboards36.com/index.cgi?board=inthings&action=display&thread=1144678164
Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 10:09am
June 18, 2003Puppy version 0.1 placed on the Internet for download.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 10:10am
June 23, 2003
Version 0.2 released.
Puppy now boots off a CDROM, as well as any USB device. File image.gz is 18.6M, vmlinuz is 1.1M.
IMPORTANT: I have made some changes to the structure of directories and config files, so if you are upgrading from v0.1 and will be using the same flash card "home device" as before, please erase all files on it first(you can leave vmlinuz and ldlinux.sys on it so it remains bootable, but wipe everything else. Then copy the new image.gz and syslinuz.cfg onto it). I do intend that once the structure is settled on, this kind of thing won't be necessary, and upgrading will be a simple matter of replacing the old image.gz with the new one.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 10:11am
une 29, 2003
Version 0.3 now available. Major visual and feature enhancements. image.gz is now 18.7M.
Flash card:
If you are upgrading from an earlier version, please erase all files on it first. You can leave vmlinuz and ldlinux.sys on it so it remains bootable, but wipe everything else. Then copy the new image.gz and syslinuz.cfg onto it.
CDROM:
If using a floppy disk as home device, please erase it.
I do intend that once the structure is settled on, you won't have to wipe your personal files.
Some brief (and important) release notes:
The Gaby personal database is now nicely integrated with the Spruce email program, however the telephone feature needs attention (ie, doesn't work).
In Fvwm95, the "Restart WindowLab" item in the "Start" menu is supposed to restart with the WindowLab window manager running, except it doesn't.
The "Start/Settings/Screen Setup" item is mostly functional, but don't press the "Browse..." button as it hangs Fvwm (CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE will get you out).
A useful note about the Endeavour file manager. Before collapsing a directory tree, click outside it first. If a directory inside is highlighted, Endeavour hangs.
Another useful note about Endeavour. For cd-Puppy using a floppy disk as "home device", when you exit Endeavour you will be asked if you want to unmount "fd0" --say no.
The Fvwm95 taskbar looks just like Windows 9x, and is configured to auto-hide. I find this to be a bit tricky to use, but I think that it is a matter of technique --move the mouse pointed down to the bottom of the screen fairly quickly helps, maybe. I don't yet know how to change this behaviour.
To connect to the Internet, use the "ppp" program in a terminal window as described on the main Puppy page. "Start/Network..." menu does have items for invoking "ppp", however the connection step doesn't work (so don't use it!).
Hopefully all these issues will be resolved by the next release!
A couple of interesting points about images.
- If you choose "Image browser" from the "Start" menu, and go to /usr/share/images/, then right-click on an image, you can make it the desktop background image --however it isn't saved.
- If you want to take a snapshot of the screen or parts thereof, open Xpaint. It has a nice screen capture facility. --it would be nice if both of these features could be invoked direct from the commandline, so they could be put into Fvwm95's menu ...anyone interested in
hacking some code?
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 10:12am
July 09, 2003
Uploading Puppy version 0.4 today, to this website. image.gz is 18.6M. Not yet on Ibiblio -- for convenience, I will place the ready-made live-CD ISO on Ibiblio very soon. A couple of issues:
For some unknown reason, the ABS spreadsheet program's startup splash window won't go away --seems to be waiting for something. The fix for now is to quit ABS then restart, then the splash window does go away.
The MP console text editor still as a couple of issues, one of which is not all the menu shortcut keys work as the Fvwm95 window manager has hijacked them. Also, always close MP from the menu rather than the close-box.
Issues number 3, 4 and 5 of the previous v0.3 release still apply.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 10:15am
July 23, 2003
Puppy version 0.5 is released. image.gz is now 20.4M. Great new applications, and autodetection of hardware (read the news items below). A couple of issues:
If upgrading from v0.4 and Puppy is installed in a permanent flash card or hard drive, please delete the .etc/ and .amaya/ folders and .fvwm95. Then to upgrade just download the new image.gz and replace the old one.
Feedback on hardware problems requested! Puppy should autodetect sound and ethernet cards. From the Fvwm95 window manager "Start" button, select "Programs/Accessories/Hardware probe". This will enable you to examine your hardware and driver modules, plus has a help page.
A small point. The docs for Ted wordprocessor mention that you should always close Ted from the menu, not via the window close-box nor by exiting the window manager.
I have played around with the default window sizes, to setup Puppy to work nicely on a minimum screen resolution of 800x600. When you first start Puppy, you will be given a choice of video modes. "0x114" will give you 800x600x16, that is, 16-bit color. If you must run at 640x480, then you will have to mess around with default window sizes --look for the word "geometry" in ~/.fvwm95.
Another small point. When open a plain HTML page in Amaya, uses bitmap fonts, then scales them, default size is too small, headings look jagged. CSS pages have nice scaled fonts. Looked around the settings, couldn't see how to fix it.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 10:17am
August 24, 2003
Puppy version 0.6 is now uploaded. image.gz is now 21.9M, and the cd-puppy.iso is 23.1M. Read the release notes for v0.5 (23 July 03), they also apply to this release if upgrading.
I have also uploaded "mozilla-0.9.8.tar.gz" (8.5M) and "libstdc++.so.zip" (217K). This is for experimenting with Mozilla. Unzip the libstdc++.so.zip file to libstdc++.so.5 and place it in /usr/lib. The Mozilla tarball uncompresses to a folder named "mozilla", and place that anywhere. Inside the mozilla folder is a script named simply "mozilla" that can be executed to start Mozilla. You can only do this if your Puppy installation has a home device or Linux partition with adequate storage capacity, such as hard drive or flash card. Note, do not uncompress Moz while in Windows --you must be running Linux, and you must uncompress into a Linux partition, such as ext2 or umsdos.
So why version 0.9.8 of Moz? Three reasons.
- Firstly, I tried v1.4, however it simply refuses to run --no error messages, just exits immediately.
- Secondly, v1.4 is about 30M, whereas v0.9.8 is about 24M, both compiled without mail/news but they do have Composer (for WYSIWYG HTML editing).
- Thirdly, the Adobe SVG viewer v3.0 works with Moz v0.9.8, but the Moz/Netscape developers in their wisdom made major changes in v0.9.9 that rendered the SVG viewer useless, in fact it caused Moz to crash. The new Adobe beta v6.0 does work with recent Moz's, however there is no Linux version. Recent Moz's do have inbuilt support for SVG but require a special version of the Libart library and the SVG support is incomplete.
The end result of all of this is that I know the old Moz v0.9.8 is quite good, as is the SVG viewer v3.0, so that's what I've chosen. I'm not suggesting that Moz should be in future versions of Puppy, this is just for experimenting, as I personally do want a good web browser and I'm not satisfied with Links, Hacked Links or Dillo in their present states. There are some other possibilities, that use the Moz rendering engine with a leaner user interface.... if we could get the size down to around 12M, we can just increase the ramdisk size a bit and put it in (Remove Hacked Links and Amaya frees up several megs).
My apologies: The Puppy Start button has a "Help" item, which brings up an intro page and links to all the HTML doc pages. The intro page states that Puppy is version 0.5, whereas of course it is now v0.6. As it took me 3 hours to upload the latest version via my slow Internet connection, I'm not going to fix that tiny little oversight.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 10:21am
October 06, 2003
Have uploaded v0.7.2. The compressed filesystem image.gz is now 26.7M, the live-CD iso is 27.9M. To upgrade from an earlier version, delete the .etc folder and .fvwm95.
There are two more boot parameters that can be passed in from isolinux.cfg or whatever is the boot manager.PKEYS specifies the default keyboard, for example "PKEYS=us". If variable is not specified, default is "us". PROOTFS specifies the filesystem to be mounted on /root, for example "PROOTFS=ext3". If not specified, the default is "umsdos".
There is now a CD-burner and CDROM Wizard, which eases the user through configuring the CD drives for normal data read-only access, music playing, and CD-burning (writing).
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 3:07pm
October 24, 2003
Puppy v0.7.4 has been uploaded. Filesystem image.gz is 26.5M and the live-Puppy ISO is 27.5M. Release notes:
Upgrading from a previous version, delete .etc folder and .fvwm95rc.
If you wish to connect to the Internet by dialup analog modem, please unplug any Ethernet network cable, as Puppy senses its presence during bootup.
Puppy now has DHCP and Samba clients, so you can get onto a LAN and presumably the Internet (untested). Any feedback on configuring these most welcome! I have created a page with step-by-step instructions to experiment with connecting two PCs together, one running Puppy, the other running Windows: http://www.pupweb.org/puppy/networking/win98/win98-config.htm">Testing Puppy-to-Win networking.
I have not yet looked at other Internet access modes, especially ISDN, DSL and pppoe. The kernel has ISDN support compiled in and pppoe support disabled, which was the settings in Redhat 8.0, reflecting I guess the fact that it originates in the USA. I plan to recompile the kernel (again) with support for ISDN/DSL/pppoe as modules.
The hardware database is still incomplete. I most especially need to know if Puppy doesn't load kernel driver modules for your sound and ethernet (network card). It would be most helpful if you have another Linux distro installed and can tell me what drivers it loads, and also send me the vendor:chip numbers for sound and ethernet as reported by the Puppy Hardware Probe (see Control Panel menu).
The Video Wizard has a button for setting monitor frequency, however it appears to be not working.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 3:11pm
November 04, 2003
Puppy version 0.7.6 released. The image.gz file is 34.3M and the live-Puppy cd-puppy.iso file is 35.4M. Release notes:
>Please read the release notes for v0.7.4, as they apply to this version also.
The ISO file is bigger, as Konqueror-eweb browser and Scribusdesktop publishing are now included. Yet, the ramdisk is smaller, at only 48M.
We have the Mozilla< web browser and
Incidentally, the name "Puppy" was chosen as it implies small, however, there is a real live pooch with the name of Puppy. He is a Chihuahua and owned by my daughter, and "Puppy" is his actual name. He is the official Puppy Linux mascot. For some snaps of the real Puppy: "http://www.pupweb.org/puppy/amy/index.html">www.pupweb.org/puppy/amy>
Planned for immediate future: I want to get the ramdisk down to 32M, to work in PCs with only 64M of RAM. The new system of mounting a file on /root opens up possibilities for very easy installation onto a hard drive -- I'll investigate this, also installation onto a Zip disk. I'm tied up this weekend, but back onto the Puppy project on Monday!
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 3:14pm
November 18, 2003
Puppy live-CD version 0.7.8 uploaded. The ISO is now 41M, and has the "kitchen sink" in it, including Mozilla web browser and Scribus desktop publishing. Release notes:
To run Puppy, just burn the cd-puppy.iso to CD and boot up your PC from the CD. That's it, Puppy will run and if all is well you will be in a graphical environment with sound, etc., all automatically detected.
Your PC must have a minimum of 128M RAM. Maybe Puppy will work in a bit less, such as 96M (hint: reduce shared video RAM to a minimum, in BIOS setup, say 4M). The CPU must be a 686 Pentium II class minimum (I have tried a Cyrix 6x86, that works).
If bootup went smoothly, Puppy should have created a 128M file (named "pup078") on your hard drive, mounted on /root as an ext2 filesystem, so you can be off an running using Puppy without having to do any further installation. If your PC does not have a vfat, ext2/3, or reiserfs partition, Puppy will be unable to create this file -- Puppy currently cannot use a ntfs partition.
This version of Puppy runs in a 48M ramdisk. Yes, Mozilla, Scribus, everything, the entire filesystem, is in the ramdisk, so no application has to ever be loaded off the hard drive. This means speed, speed, speed! (Also, you can remove the CD after booting Puppy)
Note: I plan to design Puppy to run on PCs with very little RAM, as little as 32M. I'm reluctant to predict anything, as this is basically a fun project and I follow whims, but roughly this is what to expect in the next release. Plus, I plan to look into networking a little more, especially pppoe.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 6:12pm
December 22, 2003
Puppy version 0.7.9 is uploaded.The ISO file is 44.2M. Release notes:
General » Things that I find Interesting » Puppy Linux History
http://trobin.proboards36.com/index.cgi?board=inthings&action=display&thread=1144678164
Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 10:09am
June 18, 2003Puppy version 0.1 placed on the Internet for download.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 10:10am
June 23, 2003
Version 0.2 released.
Puppy now boots off a CDROM, as well as any USB device. File image.gz is 18.6M, vmlinuz is 1.1M.
IMPORTANT: I have made some changes to the structure of directories and config files, so if you are upgrading from v0.1 and will be using the same flash card "home device" as before, please erase all files on it first(you can leave vmlinuz and ldlinux.sys on it so it remains bootable, but wipe everything else. Then copy the new image.gz and syslinuz.cfg onto it). I do intend that once the structure is settled on, this kind of thing won't be necessary, and upgrading will be a simple matter of replacing the old image.gz with the new one.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 10:11am
une 29, 2003
Version 0.3 now available. Major visual and feature enhancements. image.gz is now 18.7M.
Flash card:
If you are upgrading from an earlier version, please erase all files on it first. You can leave vmlinuz and ldlinux.sys on it so it remains bootable, but wipe everything else. Then copy the new image.gz and syslinuz.cfg onto it.
CDROM:
If using a floppy disk as home device, please erase it.
I do intend that once the structure is settled on, you won't have to wipe your personal files.
Some brief (and important) release notes:
The Gaby personal database is now nicely integrated with the Spruce email program, however the telephone feature needs attention (ie, doesn't work).
In Fvwm95, the "Restart WindowLab" item in the "Start" menu is supposed to restart with the WindowLab window manager running, except it doesn't.
The "Start/Settings/Screen Setup" item is mostly functional, but don't press the "Browse..." button as it hangs Fvwm (CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE will get you out).
A useful note about the Endeavour file manager. Before collapsing a directory tree, click outside it first. If a directory inside is highlighted, Endeavour hangs.
Another useful note about Endeavour. For cd-Puppy using a floppy disk as "home device", when you exit Endeavour you will be asked if you want to unmount "fd0" --say no.
The Fvwm95 taskbar looks just like Windows 9x, and is configured to auto-hide. I find this to be a bit tricky to use, but I think that it is a matter of technique --move the mouse pointed down to the bottom of the screen fairly quickly helps, maybe. I don't yet know how to change this behaviour.
To connect to the Internet, use the "ppp" program in a terminal window as described on the main Puppy page. "Start/Network..." menu does have items for invoking "ppp", however the connection step doesn't work (so don't use it!).
Hopefully all these issues will be resolved by the next release!
A couple of interesting points about images.
- If you choose "Image browser" from the "Start" menu, and go to /usr/share/images/, then right-click on an image, you can make it the desktop background image --however it isn't saved.
- If you want to take a snapshot of the screen or parts thereof, open Xpaint. It has a nice screen capture facility. --it would be nice if both of these features could be invoked direct from the commandline, so they could be put into Fvwm95's menu ...anyone interested in
hacking some code?
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 10:12am
July 09, 2003
Uploading Puppy version 0.4 today, to this website. image.gz is 18.6M. Not yet on Ibiblio -- for convenience, I will place the ready-made live-CD ISO on Ibiblio very soon. A couple of issues:
For some unknown reason, the ABS spreadsheet program's startup splash window won't go away --seems to be waiting for something. The fix for now is to quit ABS then restart, then the splash window does go away.
The MP console text editor still as a couple of issues, one of which is not all the menu shortcut keys work as the Fvwm95 window manager has hijacked them. Also, always close MP from the menu rather than the close-box.
Issues number 3, 4 and 5 of the previous v0.3 release still apply.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 10:15am
July 23, 2003
Puppy version 0.5 is released. image.gz is now 20.4M. Great new applications, and autodetection of hardware (read the news items below). A couple of issues:
If upgrading from v0.4 and Puppy is installed in a permanent flash card or hard drive, please delete the .etc/ and .amaya/ folders and .fvwm95. Then to upgrade just download the new image.gz and replace the old one.
Feedback on hardware problems requested! Puppy should autodetect sound and ethernet cards. From the Fvwm95 window manager "Start" button, select "Programs/Accessories/Hardware probe". This will enable you to examine your hardware and driver modules, plus has a help page.
A small point. The docs for Ted wordprocessor mention that you should always close Ted from the menu, not via the window close-box nor by exiting the window manager.
I have played around with the default window sizes, to setup Puppy to work nicely on a minimum screen resolution of 800x600. When you first start Puppy, you will be given a choice of video modes. "0x114" will give you 800x600x16, that is, 16-bit color. If you must run at 640x480, then you will have to mess around with default window sizes --look for the word "geometry" in ~/.fvwm95.
Another small point. When open a plain HTML page in Amaya, uses bitmap fonts, then scales them, default size is too small, headings look jagged. CSS pages have nice scaled fonts. Looked around the settings, couldn't see how to fix it.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 10:17am
August 24, 2003
Puppy version 0.6 is now uploaded. image.gz is now 21.9M, and the cd-puppy.iso is 23.1M. Read the release notes for v0.5 (23 July 03), they also apply to this release if upgrading.
I have also uploaded "mozilla-0.9.8.tar.gz" (8.5M) and "libstdc++.so.zip" (217K). This is for experimenting with Mozilla. Unzip the libstdc++.so.zip file to libstdc++.so.5 and place it in /usr/lib. The Mozilla tarball uncompresses to a folder named "mozilla", and place that anywhere. Inside the mozilla folder is a script named simply "mozilla" that can be executed to start Mozilla. You can only do this if your Puppy installation has a home device or Linux partition with adequate storage capacity, such as hard drive or flash card. Note, do not uncompress Moz while in Windows --you must be running Linux, and you must uncompress into a Linux partition, such as ext2 or umsdos.
So why version 0.9.8 of Moz? Three reasons.
- Firstly, I tried v1.4, however it simply refuses to run --no error messages, just exits immediately.
- Secondly, v1.4 is about 30M, whereas v0.9.8 is about 24M, both compiled without mail/news but they do have Composer (for WYSIWYG HTML editing).
- Thirdly, the Adobe SVG viewer v3.0 works with Moz v0.9.8, but the Moz/Netscape developers in their wisdom made major changes in v0.9.9 that rendered the SVG viewer useless, in fact it caused Moz to crash. The new Adobe beta v6.0 does work with recent Moz's, however there is no Linux version. Recent Moz's do have inbuilt support for SVG but require a special version of the Libart library and the SVG support is incomplete.
The end result of all of this is that I know the old Moz v0.9.8 is quite good, as is the SVG viewer v3.0, so that's what I've chosen. I'm not suggesting that Moz should be in future versions of Puppy, this is just for experimenting, as I personally do want a good web browser and I'm not satisfied with Links, Hacked Links or Dillo in their present states. There are some other possibilities, that use the Moz rendering engine with a leaner user interface.... if we could get the size down to around 12M, we can just increase the ramdisk size a bit and put it in (Remove Hacked Links and Amaya frees up several megs).
My apologies: The Puppy Start button has a "Help" item, which brings up an intro page and links to all the HTML doc pages. The intro page states that Puppy is version 0.5, whereas of course it is now v0.6. As it took me 3 hours to upload the latest version via my slow Internet connection, I'm not going to fix that tiny little oversight.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 10:21am
October 06, 2003
Have uploaded v0.7.2. The compressed filesystem image.gz is now 26.7M, the live-CD iso is 27.9M. To upgrade from an earlier version, delete the .etc folder and .fvwm95.
There are two more boot parameters that can be passed in from isolinux.cfg or whatever is the boot manager.PKEYS specifies the default keyboard, for example "PKEYS=us". If variable is not specified, default is "us". PROOTFS specifies the filesystem to be mounted on /root, for example "PROOTFS=ext3". If not specified, the default is "umsdos".
There is now a CD-burner and CDROM Wizard, which eases the user through configuring the CD drives for normal data read-only access, music playing, and CD-burning (writing).
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 3:07pm
October 24, 2003
Puppy v0.7.4 has been uploaded. Filesystem image.gz is 26.5M and the live-Puppy ISO is 27.5M. Release notes:
Upgrading from a previous version, delete .etc folder and .fvwm95rc.
If you wish to connect to the Internet by dialup analog modem, please unplug any Ethernet network cable, as Puppy senses its presence during bootup.
Puppy now has DHCP and Samba clients, so you can get onto a LAN and presumably the Internet (untested). Any feedback on configuring these most welcome! I have created a page with step-by-step instructions to experiment with connecting two PCs together, one running Puppy, the other running Windows: http://www.pupweb.org/puppy/networking/win98/win98-config.htm">Testing Puppy-to-Win networking.
I have not yet looked at other Internet access modes, especially ISDN, DSL and pppoe. The kernel has ISDN support compiled in and pppoe support disabled, which was the settings in Redhat 8.0, reflecting I guess the fact that it originates in the USA. I plan to recompile the kernel (again) with support for ISDN/DSL/pppoe as modules.
The hardware database is still incomplete. I most especially need to know if Puppy doesn't load kernel driver modules for your sound and ethernet (network card). It would be most helpful if you have another Linux distro installed and can tell me what drivers it loads, and also send me the vendor:chip numbers for sound and ethernet as reported by the Puppy Hardware Probe (see Control Panel menu).
The Video Wizard has a button for setting monitor frequency, however it appears to be not working.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 3:11pm
November 04, 2003
Puppy version 0.7.6 released. The image.gz file is 34.3M and the live-Puppy cd-puppy.iso file is 35.4M. Release notes:
>Please read the release notes for v0.7.4, as they apply to this version also.
The ISO file is bigger, as Konqueror-eweb browser and Scribusdesktop publishing are now included. Yet, the ramdisk is smaller, at only 48M.
We have the Mozilla< web browser and
Incidentally, the name "Puppy" was chosen as it implies small, however, there is a real live pooch with the name of Puppy. He is a Chihuahua and owned by my daughter, and "Puppy" is his actual name. He is the official Puppy Linux mascot. For some snaps of the real Puppy: "http://www.pupweb.org/puppy/amy/index.html">www.pupweb.org/puppy/amy>
Planned for immediate future: I want to get the ramdisk down to 32M, to work in PCs with only 64M of RAM. The new system of mounting a file on /root opens up possibilities for very easy installation onto a hard drive -- I'll investigate this, also installation onto a Zip disk. I'm tied up this weekend, but back onto the Puppy project on Monday!
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 3:14pm
November 18, 2003
Puppy live-CD version 0.7.8 uploaded. The ISO is now 41M, and has the "kitchen sink" in it, including Mozilla web browser and Scribus desktop publishing. Release notes:
To run Puppy, just burn the cd-puppy.iso to CD and boot up your PC from the CD. That's it, Puppy will run and if all is well you will be in a graphical environment with sound, etc., all automatically detected.
Your PC must have a minimum of 128M RAM. Maybe Puppy will work in a bit less, such as 96M (hint: reduce shared video RAM to a minimum, in BIOS setup, say 4M). The CPU must be a 686 Pentium II class minimum (I have tried a Cyrix 6x86, that works).
If bootup went smoothly, Puppy should have created a 128M file (named "pup078") on your hard drive, mounted on /root as an ext2 filesystem, so you can be off an running using Puppy without having to do any further installation. If your PC does not have a vfat, ext2/3, or reiserfs partition, Puppy will be unable to create this file -- Puppy currently cannot use a ntfs partition.
This version of Puppy runs in a 48M ramdisk. Yes, Mozilla, Scribus, everything, the entire filesystem, is in the ramdisk, so no application has to ever be loaded off the hard drive. This means speed, speed, speed! (Also, you can remove the CD after booting Puppy)
Note: I plan to design Puppy to run on PCs with very little RAM, as little as 32M. I'm reluctant to predict anything, as this is basically a fun project and I follow whims, but roughly this is what to expect in the next release. Plus, I plan to look into networking a little more, especially pppoe.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 6:12pm
December 22, 2003
Puppy version 0.7.9 is uploaded.The ISO file is 44.2M. Release notes:
This version is still "Redhat based", meaning that Puppy requires a i686 class of CPU minimum.
Minimum RAM requirement is 128M, except for the new lo-RAM USB installation.
There is now a script that makes it very easy to install Puppy on a USB memory device, such as a Flash card. Furthermore, the script has an option of a lo-RAM installation, which will work on PCs with much less than 128M -- a minimum has not yet been tested. This script is in the "Utilities" menu.
The remaster-CD script has been updated and generally fixed up. It is also found in the "Utilities" menu.
This version does not have TCC. Nor CUPS/XPP/pt-print.
The live-CD bootup may not have automatically recognised any USB memory devices. If you need to mount a USB memory such as a Flash card, first type at the command prompt "modprobe usb-storage" -- then the Puppy Hardware Probe should recognise the card. Note that the USB-installation script loads this driver module automatically.
I am developing a new version of Puppy that will run on a i486 CPU, however that has hit a snag -- Gnotepad crashes whenever text is pasted from the clipboard. So, that branch is on hold for now.
Puppy has the Mtools package, but not as yet the documentation. I had to throw in the Mtools applications as they are required by Syslinux, which in turn is required by the USB-installation script. Mtools is a bunch of DOS-equivalent utilities.
You guys who want to install Puppy on a Flash card will be very pleased with this new script. Puppy normally loads the entire filesystem into ramdisk at bootup, however the lo-RAM option leaves the bulk of the files behind on the Flash card, in the form of a read-only compressed filesystem. Normal bootup from Flash takes forever, but the lo-RAM installation boots much much faster, since there is less to load into ramdisk, however, applications are slower to start, as they have to be fetched off the Flash card. The operational slowdown is only slight, except for some apps -- normally Mozilla takes about 3 seconds to load on my 1.2GHz Celeron system, but 13 seconds for the lo-RAM installation. Once loaded though, Moz performs as normal.
- So, I guess, only choose the lo-RAM option if you have to, or you get too frustrated with the slow bootup, or you just want to try it!
- Note, Puppy will use 45M, and I recommend a 128M Flash card so that you have a decent amount of space for personal data.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 6:18pm
February 01, 2004
Puppy version 0.8.0 released. The live-CD iso file is 41.6M. Version 0.7.9 was compiled on a Redhat 8.0 system, and this version is completely rebuilt based on the uClibc C library and a custom root filesystem. Release notes:
As this version is a complete rebuild, there may be quirks that weren't there before -- let me know.
To bootup from the live-CD, the PC must have at least 128M RAM and must have a hard drive partition of type vfat, ext2/3 or reiserfs with at least 256M free space. ntfs partitions not yet supported. Puppy will create a file on the hard drive partition in which to store your personal data -- if Puppy is unable to find a suitable hard drive partition, Puppy will still run but your settings and files will not be saved.[/li]
If you have used a previous version of Puppy, note that there is not yet an upgrade mechanism. Puppy will create a file named "pup080" on the hard drive and this is a "clean slate", meaning that you will have to reenter email accounts etc.
Working with floppy disks has become very easy. The Utilities menu has a nice script for formatting floppy disks. A floppy disk does not have to be mounted to read and write files, thanks to
MToolsFM, a nice GUI file manager designed especially for accessing floppies -- look in the File Management menu.[/li]
The Graphics Management menu has acquired a neat little RGB color picker.
Mozilla has been upgraded from v0.9.8 to v1.0.2. Note that choosing a certain version of Moz is basically a tradeoff between size and features. Even old versions of Moz are bloatware, and each successive release is bigger by many megabytes.
Puppy v0.8.0 is designed to work on a i486 CPU minimum, however this is untested and there may be some issues with running on anything less than a Pentium 1. I need feedback about any applications that misbehave (like crash) on a i586 or i486 system. As I was compiling on a Pentium IV system, I'm not sure if some apps got compiled with i686 optimisations without me realising it (I was learning about this issue as I went along!).
Previously, the title-bar of GTK applications displayed the text "Untitled". This is now fixed, and the correct title displays for each window.
The Utilities menu has a script for installing Puppy on a IDE/ATAPI Zip drive, labelled Install Puppy on Zip drive. I recommend that you choose the lo-RAM option even if your PC has 128M or more, as bootup speed is much improved.
Sylpheed mail and news has been upgraded to v0.9.8a. Amaya has been upgraded to v8.2.
I have removed the mp console text editor and replaced it with aee. There is a problem with the pull-down menus in mp, which I hope to fix, and bring mp back.
I have removed the Cheops network tool, as I cannot compile it. I will tackle it again soon.[/li]
[li]I have removed Sportal (real-time file monitor) and gmas (displays text files) as they crash.
Xcal, the calendar and diary program, has one small problem -- don't press the "Help" button, as the program will crash.
The Modem Wizard was misbehaving with some modems, now fixed.
Scribus desktop publishing is removed. I may make this available as an external package. Scribus uses the Qt libraries and it is all too large. Puppy is focussed on Xaw and GTK-1.2 GUI apps only.
There is now a very tiny serial port terminal emulator called Picocom.
Shared library management is slightly broken, which is an issue with version 0.9.24 of uClibc. It refuses to search anywhere other than /lib, /usr/lib and /usr/X11R6/lib.
There is no printer support. I intend to review the choices and bring it back soon.
There is a small "hiccup" with installing external packages. The procedure is that an external package, for example sane.tgz, is downloaded and placed in /root/my-applications, then the PC is rebooted. If the PC hangs during reboot, just press CTRL-ALT-DEL and it should then be ok.
There is a problem with shutdown. If you get a message like "kernel panic: tried to kill init", don't worry, as this is only an issue happening in the ramdisk. I am investigating the shutdown script and hope to fix this.
Gyach, the Yahoo chat program, has been removed, as it cannot connect to the Yahoo servers anymore (or so it seems). Yahoo has recently been modifying the logon process so that only their own software can connect. I guess that this is because Yahoo is a commercial operation. Puppy still has Xchat and Mozilla's inbuilt chat module, to connect to a huge range of free chat servers.
Puppy no longer uses the neXtaw library. Replaced now by Xaw95.
This version of Puppy runs in a 53248 Kbyte ramdisk (52M). If Puppy is installed to USB drive or Zip drive with the lo-RAM option, the ramdisk is only 9.2M as most of the files are kept on the drive in a readonly compressed file.
[p]Note that most of my effort since the last release has been in recompiling for a i486 target system based on uClibc, and a lot of other issues remain to be tackled, such as improved hardware detection and networking. I will now get onto these.[/p]
[p]Mozilla v1.0.2 has its own Internet Relay Chat. Puppy already had Xchat, so that makes two. I don't use IRC programs myself, so I need feedback. Is the Moz chat module better than Xchat? Should we give Xchat the heave-ho?[/p]
[p]This total rebuild of Puppy has been codenamed "hairy nose", and this release is hairy nose Puppy, to distinguish from earlier builds based on Redhat. The development environment used to compile Puppy applications is not another distro, but is a custom root filesystem put together by Erik Anderson, the main developer of uClibc (www.uclibc.org) -- as this is not a regular distro, to give it a name I have code named it hairy nose Wombat.[br /]
Hairy nose Wombat is a ext2 root filesystem that can be placed into a hard drive partition, mounted, then you can "chroot" into it, then compile apps for Puppy. It is possible to boot directly into it from a boot manager, however I have Slackware 9.1 installed and I chroot from Slack, which has certain advantages.[/p]
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 7:21pm
February 14, 2004
]Puppy v0.8.2 released. The live-CD ISO file is 42.4M. Release notes:
Please read the release notes for v0.8.0, as most still apply.
Bluefish v0.7 is now in Puppy, not as an external package but inbuilt. Now there is an incredible choice of HTML editors. Bluefish is for people who like to work with the code, in contrast with Composer and Amaya that are WYSIWYG (though Amaya does have a very nice code window).
Puppy now has scalerx, which is a lovely utility for scaling up the size of png images without jagged edges.
Puppy has a new HOWTO page on multimedia. First-time users, be sure to click on Start/Help menu to see Puppy's wonderful documentation.
Heaps more hardware detection, particularly for sound and ethernet. The latest version of libhardware fixes a problem with partition detection (see notes below).
There is now a basic upgrade mechanism. For people who have Puppy already installed, even if you have used only the live-CD (no earlier then v0.8.0), now you will not lose earlier settings (email accounts, personal data, etc). Puppy will backup the previous /etc folder to /root/etc.bak and /root/.fvwm95rc to /root/fvwm95rc.bak (config file for the window manager) and substitute with the latest out of image.gz. So, if you have edited any of these, you can get them back. Note that this is not likely to be of any concern to casual users -- all you need to know is that all your email will still be there after you upgrade! (see further notes below)
Puppy now has rdesktop, for remote connection to a Windows PC. This enables you to run Windows applications, that is, they run on the Windows machine but appear in a window in Puppy. Not yet tested.
I have written a script to backup files to CD, called Puppy backup to CD.
I have installed eciadsl, which is for Internet connection with USB ADSL modem. As with Roaring Penguin PPPOE, I have just installed it, untested, and there is no entry in the menu. Both of these packages have shell scripts for configuration. I have installed the docs for both. For eciadsl, there is another package of "drivers", which are files with names like "synchnn.bin" where the "nn" is a two-digit number -- you will need to download this yourself and study how to use it.
As Sportal is no longer with us, I have created a couple of scripts, Monitor X log and Monitor kernel log, launched from the Utilities menu.
An extra note on the upgrade mechanism. The version of Puppy is in the file /etc/puppyversion, and Puppy checks this when booting up to see whether you have an older version of Puppy installed.[br /]
- The entire /etc folder is backed up as /root/etc.bak, and the upgrade mechanism is currently primitive, meaning that you do have to reinstate anything previously changed in /etc. For example, the Modem Wizard creates /etc/modemdevice, and you will need to run the Modem Wizard again. Ditto for the ISP dialup, the dialup account will have to be recreated.[br /]
- In the case of live-Puppy, that is, booting off a CD, v0.8.0 creates a file named pup080 on your PC's hard drive, and the latest version of live-Puppy will use that same file. This differs from earlier versions of Puppy, that always created a new file thus ignoring any earlier personal settings or data.[br /]
In summary: burn the latest live-Puppy CD, bootup, and all personal stuff is still there.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 7:24pm
February 28, 2004
Puppy version 0.8.3 released. The live-CD ISO file is 43.2M. Release notes:]
Puppy now has Gicq, a ICQ client, and Gequel, a mySql client.
Gyach, a Yahoo chat client, has returned. This is version 0.9.7, the latest, that fixes the Yahoo login problem (Yahoo had changed their protocol).
There is a script to install Puppy to floppy disks, Install Puppy floppy disks, and the remaster-CD script has been overhauled and now allows far greater modification of Puppy such as addition and removal of applications.
The Links web browser is available as an external package.
Dillo web browser has been upgraded to the latest version, 0.8.0.
See also release notes for v0.8.2.
]PDQ print management is back, however it is not yet fully configured. If there is anyone reading this who has prior experience with PDQ, or even extensive Linux printing configuration experience with other printing systems such as lprng, you are most eagerly invited to help us. I have tested XPDQ printing to a plain text printer, but I don't know how to setup so that all apps in Puppy can make use of the Ghostscript drivers and PDQ. Another thought is that I would like to utilise PDQ-O-Matic at the LinuxPrinting website, but Puppy doesn't have Perl. Also, I have only tested printing to a parallel-port printer, not USB.]
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 7:26pm
[h4]March 20, 2004[/h4]
[font color="#ff0000"]Puppy version 0.8.4 released[/font]. Live-CD ISO file is 44.8M. Release notes:
[ul]
Please be sure to read the Release Notes for v0.8.3, as many still apply.
More ethernet, sound and USB chips detected.
The Utilities menu now has a script to resize the file mounted on /root (created when live-CD Puppy first boots) ...for now, treat it as experimental. It's called Resize PFILE.
The Lucent Linmodem (software modem) now works. The Lucent DSP software modem chip range is popular in internal PCI analog modems, so it is very good news that Puppy can now use these modems.
We have a new game! It's name is Xbubble -- great fun.
Puppy also has acquired an outliner, called Knowde. Great for jotting down notes, ideas, phone numbers, brainstorming, etc.
Puppy has a new Ethernet/network Wizard, available in the Networking menu. If your network card did not get detected at bootup, this script may be able to find the right driver. Furthermore, this script can configure the network connection, with simple questions.
Refinement of automatic backups of some config files when updating Puppy to a later version.
LinNeighborhood should now work, as the awol Samba client programs have been put back in.
I have temporarily removed the "Secure telnet" entry in the Internet menu, as it was not working properly. This used the host-connect program. Note, you can still run ssh from the commandline.
I have added Gtail to the Utilities menu. This can monitor the tail-end of any file in real-time, and can also monitor stdout of a program.
I have added a small console application called disktype. This identifies the filesystems on a drive. I plan to use this in the wizards.
Also have added some networking applications. LinPopUp is a clone of WinPopUp and can send messages over a network, using Samba. mpcb is an application for sharing the clipboard over the network -- there is also a Win32 version available. Both of these are untested.
For the live-CD, the kernel driver module usb-storage.o doesn't get automatically loaded. If you wish to access USB memory devices, such as a flash card, first type "modprobe usb-storage" at the commandline. Then, the Puppy mount/unmount utility will recognise any USB storage partitions. There is a problem with automatically loading usb-storage.o at startup, that I hope to resolve.
[/ul]
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 7:37pm
April 20, 2004
Puppy version 0.8.5 released.The live-CD ISO file is 45.2M. Release notes:
[ul]
For those who already have Puppy installed on Zip, USB storage, or hard drive, just copy the image.gz file from the CD (after burning cd-puppy.iso to CD) to replace the previous one. For those people who have been following Puppy development by booting up from the live-CD, no problem, just boot up from the new CD and all your old data will still be there.
Puppy now has X11-Basic, a surprisingly powerful yet simple and compact programming environment.
Puppy now has mp v3.3.0 console text editor, the latest.
There is now a script, Install Puppy hard drive, in the Utilities menu. See notes below.
The Puppy drive mount/unmount script has been improved.
USB keyboard and USB mouse should now work.
Ethernet/network Wizard has been improved. It should be better when used with two network cards. It may now work for a PCMCIA network card.
There is now ssh-gui, a secure telnet program.
MToolsFM is a file manager, in the File Managers menu. MToolsFM is a GUI frontend for MTools, and has now been expanded to access floppy, Zip, USB and vfat/msdos hard drives, all without needing to mount (or unmount them). An absolute delight to use. As this is new, if anything needs tweaking let me know.
A newcomer is Gtimer, for timing the duration of anything. See notes below.
[/ul]
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 7:41pm
May 21, 2004[/h4]
Puppy version 0.8.6 released. Live-CD ISO file is now 49.4M. Release notes:
[ul]
For those who already have Puppy installed on Zip, USB storage, or hard drive, just copy the image.gz file from the CD (after burning cd-puppy.iso to CD) to replace the previous one. For those people who have been following Puppy development by booting up from the live-CD, no problem, just boot up from the new CD and all your old data will still be there. Note that the ramdisk size is now 57344 Kbytes.
Puppy now has the Tcl/Tk programming langauge, and BWidget, tix, FTP,
Tkhtml, Img, combobox extension libraries.
VisualTcl and specTcl, GUI builders for creating Tcl/Tk applications. I intend to keep only one of these, whichever is voted as the best.
ML, text editor with syntax highlighting of Tcl code, with procedure jump-to.
tkConvert, units converter.
regexpviewer, regular expression evaluator. The Help menu also has a regular expression HOWTO.
Slidedraw, slide presentation program, like Powerpoint.
CDTAR, another backup program (Puppy already has bkup2cd).
TkZip, another archiver program, handles bzip2, tar, gzip, zip, cpio archives (Puppy already has Xtar).
setvol, console utility to set and get the audio volume.
mp3shell, mp3 audio player, frontend for mpg123.
tkXMLive, WYSIWYG XML editor.
tkmasqdialer, share a modem on a network for Internet access (client only).
Roaring Penguin PPPoE frontend, PPP-over-Ethernet ADSL Internet access. Not yet tested.
tkPaint, vector graphics editor (Puppy already has Figurine).
Help menu HOWTO programming and multimedia pages updated.
There was a problem with the manual configuration option of the Ethernet/network Wizard. Hopefully that is now fixed.
The anti-virus program F-Prot can now do download of the latest signature-files, if you are connected to the Internet.
You wheel/scroll mouse should now work. The guys on the Puppy Discussion Forum report that the mouse needs to be moved slightly while rolling the scroll wheel.
[/ul]
Vppp and Scout are also in Puppy, but not in the menu. Vppp is a analog modem Internet dialup program, but needs some work, hence is included for experimental purposes. Scout is a web browser, written in Tcl/Tk, also not fully functional and included for experimental purposes.
[font size="+1"][font color="#660000" size="+1"]Do you have any Tcl/Tk programming skills?[/font][/font]
Maybe I could interest you in getting involved with Puppy:
Scout is a tiny web browser, that uses the Tkhtml and FTP libraries. Basically, Scout works, but not properly. I am interested in using Scout as Puppy's internal HTML help viewer, but when I open a HTML file, only the first graphic image displays. Also, there is a problem with relative links, and I need to change into the directory with the HTML file before invoking Scout for the relative links to work. Scout is supposed to store stuff into /root/.Scache/ folder, but doesn't. Scout can be found at /usr/local/bin, and would need to be copied elsewhere for editing as all of /usr is read-only. Fonts are jagged, as not using a scalable font -- maybe get the font selection capability out of Slidedraw to fix this.[br /]
If you want to see how good a web browser written in Tcl/Tk can get, look at BrowseX.
Slidedraw is a presentation program, like Powerpoint, but nowhere near as sophisticated. Slidedraw has enormous potential. I have already modified Slidedraw to use the netpbm package rather than ImageMagick for manipulating and importing images and also for creating a background pattern (so doesn't use the libsld.so library file). It may seem very ambitious, but I can see Slidedraw evolving into a nice desktop publishing system and also a wordprocessor -- what about incorporating the WYSIWYG XML capability of tkXMLive into Slidedraw, or maybe the Tkhtml widget?.[br /]
Slidedraw is to be found at /usr/lib/slidedraw/ folder, which is readonly so not possible to edit. I suggest install Slidedraw on a host Linux system and edit it there -- Slidedraw should even work on MS Windows. Note that Slackware 9.1 has a very old version of netpbm that is not suitable -- peculiar that they haven't updated it.[br /]
The Slidedraw website is [a href="http://www.pragana.net/slidedraw.html"]www.pragana.net/slidedraw.html[/a]
If you want to do any development on a host Linux or even Windows system, and your distro doesn't have Tcl/Tk installed, or is missing some extension libraries, I suggest download the package from ActiveState. This is a binary package complete with all the extensions. Puppy is using Tcl/Tk version 8.4.6. The ActiveState site is: [a href="http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActiveTcl/"]www.activestate.com/Products/ActiveTcl/[/a]. Otherwise, individual packages should be locatable via sourceforge.net.
Re: Puppy Linux History
Post by Trobin on Yesterday at 7:43pm
June 25, 2004
Puppy version 0.9.0 released. The live-CD iso file is 48.7M. This is a new complete rebuild, compiled on Mandrake 9.2. Release notes:
[ul]
For anyone upgrading from an existing USB, Zip or hard drive installation of Puppy, please upgrade both image.gz and vmlinuz files. Puppy is still using the Linux kernel version 2.4.22 but I recompiled it for a default ramdisk size of 61440 Kbytes. If your isolinux.cfg or syslinux.cfg file has a "ramdisk_size" entry, either change it to 61440 or delete it entirely. Puppy users booting off the live-CD can ignore this advice.
For anyone upgrading from an earlier version and who has installed the Links or SANE external packages, please go into /root/my-applications and delete them. They are compiled for the uClibc library and will not work in Puppy v0.9.0. You can obtain the latest external packages from the download site. Note, the F-Prot
external package is ok and does not need to be updated.
The main web browser is now Skipstone. This is a fast frontend for Mozilla. There is one very important issue: do not use Skipstone in tabbed-window mode, or if you do, don't zoom the display. There is currently a problem with the combination of tabbed-view and font zoom that causes Skipstone (and Mozilla) to crash. I know this is a hassle: I personally love the tabbed-view, so I will be giving it a very high priority to fix!
Handling of sound is now very well catered for, with the Snack audio library that handles many formats including AU, SND, WAV, MP3, and AIF, and various GUI applications. There is play.tcl, a console player, snamp.tcl, a GUI player, and XS, a sound recorder and editor.
The ICQ chat client Gicq has been replaced with Alicq, as a report on the Forum was that the former didn't work properly. I am not into ICQ, so haven't tested Alicq -- let me know how it goes!
Puppy now has Cheops, a network exploring and monitoring tool, a kind of "Swiss army knife" for networking.
The Samba client application nmblookup was missing from the previous version of Puppy, seriously compromising the operation of LinNeighborhood. Now the "network neighborhood" should be fully functional.
Removed applications are Mozilla, Mozilla Composer, specTcl, visualTcl. Note that the "guts" of Mozilla is still there, to drive Light and Skipstone. There are still three HTML editors in Puppy, the WYSIWYG Amaya, Bluefish and Gnotepad. specTcl and visualTcl are GUI-builders for Tcl/Tk programming, a bit too much of a luxury for Puppy, but maybe I'll bring one of them back, if there's room.
Ogle, the DVD video player, now has a nice GUI frontend, called Ogle_gui.
There was a problem with the Network Wizard when doing manual setup of a gateway. I think that is now fixed.
The first time you run Puppy, there is a selection of keyboard layouts for you to choose from. Previously, you had to type a two-letter response, such as "us" ("us" was also the default). Now, there is a much larger selection, and a window displays allowing selection by arrow-keys then ENTER key, which hopefully any keyboard layout can handle (as Puppy initially boots up with "us" layout).
Some applications have been updated to the latest versions: Sylpheed v0.9.11, Dillo v0.8.1 and Amaya v8.5.
The install-Puppy-to-hard-drive script in the Utilities menu now has an option for a conventional installation without a ramdisk. This is recommended for those who want to hack/develop Puppy, as /usr folder is read/write.
[/ul]
For Puppy-watchers, just to let you know what is planned, I have this highest priority to-do list planned for v0.9.1:
[ol]
Resize ntfs partitions, so that Puppy can be installed on systems with only a ntfs partition.
Write a download manager, to replace Skipstone's skipdownload, one that works the way I want.
Investigate the Mozilla font problem that causes crashing, and get anti-aliased fonts to work better.
Investigate using a later version of Mozilla.
[/ol]
Other items planned for the near future:
[ol]
Clicking the help button in Xcal, the calendar program, crashes it. Will fix.
Upgrade to Linux kernel 2.4.27, and improve hardware auto-detection.
Fix printing.
Improve font rendering in Amaya.
[/ol]
When you test v0.9.0 and anything urgent turns up, let me know, preferably via the Forum, and I'll consider adding to this to-do list. As this is a complete rebuild, there could be some problem there that I missed while testing.
Various external packages, including Links and SANE will be uploaded soon.
Source code and scripts for compiling your own Puppy, so far tested on Mandrake 9.2 only, will also be uploaded soon.
posted by Trobin | 11:39 PM
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