Vanilla Dpup 11.0.x Development Builds

[Duprate]

Hi Dimkr! Today I installed version 11.0.141. As usual, I removed all Firefox-esr. I also took the opportunity to remove the waybar that I hated and reinstall the sfwbar. Everything working perfectly!

[d-pupp]

@dimkr I installed 11.0.142
It is very fast even on this old dual core from 2009
firefox works. Thanks for fixing that.
A few observations
waybar is using titles for active apps and the button are all different sizes often pushing the tray item off the screen. Maybe it just me I was changing colors
When running full screen I have no access to either the launcher top bar or the menu with out minimizing
Is there a way to add a bigger selection of fonts to waybar?
I personally like the color emoji better.

[dimkr]

waybar is using titles for active apps and the button are all different sizes often pushing the tray item off the screen.

Yes, this is a known issue with waybar.

When running full screen I have no access to either the launcher top bar or the menu with out minimizing

Even if you press F11?

Is there a way to add a bigger selection of fonts to waybar?

The font used is defined in ~/.config/waybar/style.css, you can install and use any font you like. I went with a single icon font for the default waybar configuration, to reduce size.

[d-pupp]

@dimkr Thanks for the info.
I can't remember if F11 worked but Alt F1 did. I'll have to try it out.
Do you know off hand if the labwc floating app menu can be added to the launcher?

My first attempt to test out workspaces on waybar didn't go well. Have you tried it out yet?

[dimkr]

Do you know off hand if the labwc floating app menu can be added to the launcher?

Had this setup early in sfwbar days, I'm trying to restore this for use with waybar. For some reason labwc crashes, I have a lot to investigate.

My first attempt to test out workspaces on waybar didn't go well. Have you tried it out yet?

Not yet, I want to finish some other things first.

[rockedge]

@dimkr probably asked this a thousand times already...but....

can you please post some instructions on how to get this image file installed as 1. HDD frugal 2. dd'd to a usb drive but mostly I wanna run this as a QEMU vm. Basically some steps to install Vanilla in print ( however virtual it is).

What problem with FR are you trying to solve?

Same stuff as you are. And on the other hand nothing.

[dimkr]

1. HDD frugal

Currently it's unsupported - you'll need to replace grep '^disk 1' with | grep '^disk ' in /usr/sbin/bootflash (show all drives, not just removable ones). Beware: bootflash repartitions the drive and creates new file systems.

If you don't want to use bootflash because you want to partition yourself or whatever, install it the way you'd install Puppy - copy vmlinuz, initrd.zst and ucode.cpio to the boot partition, then the SFSs to some partition (same one or not) and configure the boot loader to boot vmlinuz with initrd.zst and ucode.cpio. You can use most Puppy boot codes, https://github.com/vanilla-dpup/woof-CE ... t-codes.md.

I strongly recommend you not to put it on an internal drive and use a flash drive instead, in case it eats your data.

mostly I wanna run this as a QEMU vm.

Nothing special -

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 -drive format=raw,file=vanilladpup-11.0.*-bios.img

or

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 -drive format=raw,file=vanilladpup-11.0.*-uefi.img -bios /usr/share/qemu/OVMF.fd

You can also dd the image to a flash drive and use -drive /dev/sdb, etc', so the VM thinks the flash drive is a hard drive.

[dimkr]

11.0.143 will replace wofi with a horrible horrible horrible hack that shows the labwc menu

[TerryH]

You can use most Puppy boot codes, https://github.com/vanilla-dpup/woof-CE ... t-codes.md.

Fro people who may install to an internal flash based ssd, is ataflash still a valid bootcode in vanilladpup11?

[dimkr]

Fro people who may install to an internal flash based ssd, is ataflash still a valid bootcode in vanilladpup11?

Yes, the various pmedia= values are mostly meaningless (as in Puppy).

Those that consist of 3 letters followed by "flash" activate PUPMODE 13 if a save file/folder is found (instead of 12), those that begin with "usb" restrict search for the main SFS on USB devices (if pupsfs= is not specified), and pmedia=cd activates search for save files/folders on all partitions (if psave= is not specified but search for saves is not disabled through pfix=ram).

If you want to speed up boot, specify both pupsfs= and psave=. If you do this (a good idea in general), pmedia=ataflash is equivalent to pmedia=usbflash and even pmedia=xyzflash.

If you want PUPMODE 13 instead of 12, specify pmedia=ataflash or anything else that ends with "flash", no matter what kind of drive it really is.

Besides the effect on search for files during early boot and choice of PUPMODE, pmedia= doesn't affect anything.

[TerryH]

Thank you, the request was only to check that PUPMODE 13 would still be valid.

[d-pupp]

Here is a little test I ran on waybar style.css.
I noticed that when I changed to dark mode text without a entry in style.css changed. So I have commented out all color and background-color tags and it seems to work. I can change from normal to dark mode without editing /root/.config/ waybar style.css

Code: Select all

* {
    font-family: FontAwesome, sans-serif;
    font-size: 14px;
}

.bar1 {
   /* background-color: #303030;
    color: #FFFFFF;*/
    border-top: 1px solid #DEDDDC;
}

.bar2 {
    background: none;
    color: #F6F5F4;
}

.bar2 * {
    font-size: 32px;
}

button {
  /*  background-color: #303030; */
    border-left: 1px solid #FFFFFF;
    border-radius: 0;
    border-bottom: 4px solid #E1DEDB;
}

button:hover {
   /* background: #A0A0A0;*/
    border-bottom: 4px solid #CDC7C2;
}

#taskbar button.active {
  /*  background: #303030; */
    border-bottom: 4px solid #3584E4;
}

#custom-launcher, #clock {
    padding: 4px;
}

I did make one other change on line 23 I changed border: none to border-left: 1px solid #FFFFFF
That creates a divider that I like.
I hope other's will test it out and see if it works for them.
d-pupp

[geo_c]

@retiredt00 You'll see the partitions inside the image after losetup -fP --show /path/to/image

I just mounted the img and copied these files to my internal hard drive, with the intention of copying to a USB flash, but thought why not just write a stanza and boot it from the internal drive, but I saw you suggesting running from flash so as not to bork data. Was that just for a particular case, or is not a good idea to run this Development build as a standard frugal install just yet?

[dimkr]

or is not a good idea to run this Development build as a standard frugal install just yet?

This. I'm not aware of a particular open bug that may cause data loss, etc', but this is not based on Debian stable and has lots of new code without years of battle-testing (like the old, slow but known-to-work save2flash), on top of recent software all the way down to the kernel. Nobody is doing QA and catching the big bugs before they bite you.

I'm daily driving 11.0.x so I can find bugs and get them fixed, but it's up to you to decide if you want to take a risk, and find ways to reduce the risk (like booting from another drive and never touch a drive with important stuff).

[dimkr]

11.0.144 changes the way save2flash flushes changes to disk: each changed file is flushed to disk before save2flash continues to the next file, reducing the risk of data loss when sudden power loss leaves you with partially flushed changes in many files, or even worse: truncated or enlarged files with zeroed-out regions. This should also reduce the chance of freezing when running from a slow USB 2 flash drive (I can feel the difference) because changes are flushed to disk gradually and not buffered in RAM for a long time, then flushed to disk in in one big and slow operation that eats 100% of I/O bandwidth. Saving is still super fast, but everything seems to be more responsive while saving.

11.0.145 will add an alternative vertical waybar preset and a tool to switch between presets. This should be nice if you have a low resolution display and want extra vertical space: for example, to scroll less often when reading or editing long text.

[rockedge]

11.0.144 changes the way save2flash flushes changes to disk: each changed file is flushed to disk before save2flash continues to the next file, reducing the risk of data loss when sudden power loss leaves you with partially flushed changes in many files, or even worse: truncated or enlarged files with zeroed-out regions.

Excellent! It is a good improvement in the save scheduling. Does it increase the duration of the save cycle enough to notice? I personally would accept the extra milliseconds for the safer mechanism.

will add an alternative vertical waybar preset and a tool to switch between presets.

Good idea, The machine I run Vanilla Dpup's on has lower res so I am in that boat!

[dimkr]

Does it increase the duration of the save cycle enough to notice? I personally would accept the extra milliseconds for the safer mechanism.

save2flash already has the optimization of saving just the changed regions instead of rewriting complete files on every save, so it's very fast.

This change probably makes save2flash marginally slower because the bottleneck is the flash drive's writing speed (not the extra CPU cycles needed to call fsync() multiple times). I can't say I feel any difference, other than improved responsiveness while save2flash is running (this flash drive is really terrible: now I can start an application without waiting for save2flash to finish before the window appears), and the safety advantage is a really nice bonus.

[d-pupp]

@dimkr I just downloaded 11.0.145
I like the menu thanks for that.
I do have one issue. I used the save folder from the download and it stops asking for a password. It doesn't seem to matter what I type or don't type I get Failed to add key: Operation not supported. It them dumps some log file and pauses 60 seconds before booting normally.

[dimkr]

@d-pupp If you copied the save folder from the image to a partition (I don't understand why, because it's empty), you'll need to either 1. enable support for encryption on this partition using tune2fs 2. remove .pfscrypt from the save folder or 3. just delete the save folder and create a new one.

[geo_c]

To anyone that knows...

I copied the files for VanillaDpup11 to a USB flash and ran grub2config bootloader and got the following stanza:

Is this sufficient to properly boot, or do I need other parameters, like for the cpio, etc?

Code: Select all

menuentry 'VanillaDPup11 (sdb2)'{
  search --no-floppy --set=root --fs-uuid [geo_c's uuid]
  linux /vmlinuz     pmedia=usbflash pfix=fsck
  initrd /initrd.zst
  

[dimkr]

Is this sufficient to properly boot

Yes, it should work.

But
1. initrd /ucode.cpio /initrd.zst can improve stability or security
2. pupsfs=UUID and psave=UUID can reduce boot time
3. pfix=fsck only enables file system repair on the file system inside save files - if you want fsck on the partition you're saving to (the partition where you put a save file or folder), use pfix=fsckp or pfix=fsck,fsckp

[d-pupp]

@d-pupp If you copied the save folder from the image to a partition (I don't understand why, because it's empty), you'll need to either 1. enable support for encryption on this partition using tune2fs 2. remove .pfscrypt from the save folder or 3. just delete the save folder and create a new one.

I copied the empty save folder because I noticed a few versions back that my changes were not be saved. It never created a new save folder when I rebooted. I haven't checked shutdown. If I use my old save folder it works normally.
Am I missing something??

[dimkr]

Am I missing something??

Yes, the prompt that offers you to create a save folder at shutdown is gone. Now there's a tool that creates save folders.

viewtopic.php?p=122071#p122071

[d-pupp]

Yes, the prompt that offers you to create a save folder at shutdown is gone. Now there's a tool that creates save folders.

Thanks dimkr I found it.
Menu > setup > pupsave. Very easy to use.

[geo_c]

I got the latest build running on a USB flash drive, a pretty slow drive, but it works.

For the longest time I was using the wrong uuid in the stanza and didn't know it, so I switched to menu.lst. I'm typing from Firefox now and will report back after I use the OS awhile.

But in getting the boot stanzas right I made two menu.lst stanzas and in the one that works I took out the ucode stanza, because grub was saying I needed to provide an absolute path or blk device, and I wasn't sure on the syntax of that.

Should it be initrd [uuid]/VanillaDpup-11/ucode.cpio ?

But it booted anyway without the parameter. Then it asked for a password, not knowing what it should be, I tried root which didn't work. It threw up some red errors, which I'm now forgetting, then paused for 60 seconds.

Then booted. I'm not sure that's a good thing. But as I say. I'm typing from it now. And unfortunately I have to go to work.

[dimkr]

Then it asked for a password, not knowing what it should be

If you wrote the image to a flash drive as-is, password is woofwoof. Otherwise, it should ask for a password only if you created an encrypted save file/folder, and password should be what you chose.

[d-pupp]

@dimkr I really like this little OS of yours.
I'm just wondering what are your plans for dpup 11?
Are more of the Puppy apps going to be included like the password manager? What about the office suit included or add on by some portable app?

[dimkr]

I'm just wondering what are your plans for dpup 11?

The main goals, which are simplifying the build system, minimizing the 'Puppy secret sauce' (no exotic PUMODEs, no PPM, ...) and building a Wayland-native desktop, are mostly complete.

I think we have a viable project here, one that can be maintained easily and doesn't have old code holding it back. Everything performs well and the new features (encrypted save folders, display settings, save2flash optimizations, ...) all seem to work.

I'll restore Geany once it's back in Debian and I'd like to have some word processor and spreadsheet, but abiword is very unstable and I prefer not to add something that doesn't work well. I won't add any traditional Puppy stuff that uses gtkdialog, that's for sure (but gtkdialog will stay included to provide some backward compatibility).

Other than these missing applications, I don't have any clear next steps. It's mostly polish, bug fixes and optimization from here. I prefer to keep it simple and boring, and let others use this as a base to build something more flashy with more applications or whatever.

[d-pupp]

@dimkr What about tools to configure language, keyboard, timezone, startup files any plans there?
I currently set the timezone with dpkg-reconfigure tzdata. It seems to work well and can be done with a simple script non interactive. Is this the way you would set the timezone or does it really matter?

[dimkr]

@dimkr What about tools to configure language, keyboard, timezone, startup files any plans there?

Yes, but not everything Puppy has. Many of the old 'wizards' are broken or not very useful (otherwise we'd see bug reports).

I think I'll start with mouse/touchpad settings, then keyboard settings.