DistroWatch needs a newer Puppy version listed for Puppy Linux!!!!!

[retiredt00]

Finally this thread is getting somewhere!
Nice work!!
Thank you

[pp4mnklinux]

@retiredt00

Finally this thread is getting somewhere!
Nice work!!
Thank you

(now It's the time to let distrowatch know it, so puppylinux os will earn users)

edited....

It could be interesting to remember this post, because the rules vary depending on the user... don't they?

viewtopic.php?p=107941#p107941

[wiak]

Looking at the ongoing good development of Vanilla Dpup development version 11, which its creator says looks increasingly like Puppy (but with near all modern aspect including labwc, Wayland, debian package management via, like DebianDog, debootstrap core build, and so on; and no X, JWM, Rox...), it seems to me that is the future Puppy for Distrowatch (albeit really a look-alike to a great extent under the hood). Being specially crafted as a Puppy lookalike Vanilla Dpup really is targetting Puppy (unlike distros like DebianDog and FirstRib-based/KL) so looks to me like that will become the alternative Puppy of the future. A case of Puppy traditional is dead, long live Puppy (if you don't need JWM/Rox in your definition of what is Puppy).

In my view that development/move from traditional woof-CE Puppy design is a good thing, even though Vanilla Dpup is declared also as not 'being' Puppy (but I can't see how traditional Puppy could survive in that Vanilla Dpup alternative world, but nor do I see anything malicious in that new circumstance). One reasonable question would seem to be, will the woof-CE successor to BookWormPup adopt code from Vanilla Dpup and chase its tail - surely not??! A second question comes to mind: since some Puppy enthusiasts are more interested in a Puppy that has Slackware roots, what is the future for that line, since I have seen no Vanilla Slacko under development at all?

I think it is in the What's Up thread that some seem to be discussing Slax (also for its Debian variant, but apparently has a Slackware variant yet again). Perhaps we thus don't need to worry about any future Puppy Slacko since people can use Slax (Slackware edition) instead? However, that would surely result in less forum participation here (more for Slax).

I know it may seem unlikely, but I could see myself becoming somewhat a fan of Vanilla Dpup - I certainly admire the work, but that is purely for technical reasons, and I am absolutely fine with it taking over from old Puppy builds, which have seemed a dead end for a long time because of the stick in the mud technical viewpoints of some of the louder of its remaining old users.

[dimkr]

a Puppy lookalike

Every distro with floating windows with borders, a panel and a menu is a Puppy lookalike.

This is a screenshot of a distro without what many would consider to be defining characters of Puppy:
1. No desktop icons
2. No icons in the menu, and the menu doesn't have subcategories
3. Everything is flat, no gradients, few colors - doesn't have Puppy's early 2000s aesthetic
4. No conky or any other system monitor
5. No tray icons
6. No window titles in taskbar
... and you call this a Puppy lookalike.

I feel like you're constantly pushing this idea that all distros are the same, that differences don't matter and everything is just a LEGO piece that can be swapped with something else that's developed "upstream" by somebody else and happens to be packaged by somebody and available in package repos of some repo. The differences do matter, when they're good differences. If a build system, no matter how good, spits out a Puppy with Xfce, then this Puppy is going to consume more RAM and more CPU than a Puppy without a DE, and that's almost a certainty. And people write their own window manager, their own text editor and whatever because they're different and perhaps better in some ways.

I don't see many developers and projects that focus on finding way to reduce CPU and RAM consumption, the two resources that are non-upgradable (or upgradable to a certain limit) in old computers. Most distros that advertise themselves as "lightweight" or "power efficient" don't do much in this area, they just trade GNOME for LXDE or whatever and replace the logo of the parent distro with something else. Such differences don't really matter because they're not real or significant enough, the developers of such distros just trust users not to measure actual resource consumption. But sometimes distros have something special about them, some real advantage or extra value, and describing a distro as a "lookalike" of another distro (that's very different both visually and under the hood) and bringing up this "nah, all distros are rubbish" argument can be dismissive.

[wizard]

Most distros that advertise themselves as "lightweight" or "power efficient" don't do much in this area, they just trade GNOME for LXDE or whatever and replace the logo of the parent distro with something else

Absolutely, start running any of the distros billed as "lightweight" on real low power hardware (not in a VM on a powerhouse computer) and you'll appreciate what a great job the Puppy devs have done. Look at things like:
-cpu usage
-ram usage
-drive install space
-system responsiveness
-included programs and utilities

Those and a lot of other unique advantages put Puppys in a class of their own and that's IMO what needs to be preserved here.

Thanks
wizard

[wiak]

Every distro with floating windows with borders, a panel and a menu is a Puppy lookalike.

Oh I agree entirely. That's Windows 95 isn't it, or is it 98?

I feel like you're constantly pushing this idea that all distros are the same, that differences don't matter and everything is just a LEGO piece that can be swapped with something else that's developed "upstream" by somebody else and happens to be packaged by somebody and available in package repos of some repo.

You can "feel" what you like, but no, it doesn't matter to me at all if people think distros are all much the same albeit for different desktop or a case of frugal or full, or if they imagine everything made more unique is better. Totally irrelevant to me so you imagine too much, but that's because you want to complain I guess - I have no idea why you seem to feel that need, but whatever...

I don't see many developers and projects that focus on finding way to reduce CPU and RAM consumption, the two resources that are non-upgradable (or upgradable to a certain limit) in old computers. Most distros that advertise themselves as "lightweight" or "power efficient" don't do much in this area, they just trade GNOME for LXDE or whatever and replace the logo of the parent distro with something else.

Are you talking about Linux Mint XFCE? A re-badged kind of Ubuntu. Great distro though; I use it most all the time.

Me personally? Perhaps I don't see the amount of RAM and CPU saved as terribly significant nowadays on most computers I use. I suppose if I was crazy interested in a couple of hundred MB RAM saved or something out of my machines total 8GB RAM (16GB, 32GB, and 48GB for the case of three other machines) I'd have sleepless nights trying to figure how to get that first boot RAM down a bit, but then I stop dreaming and run my Chrome or Firefox browser and discover one or two extra tabs consumes more than I was fretting about. I guess that part of things isn't really my hobby any more - the days of Pentium III are long over for me. Having said that all my machines seem to run very efficiently, but sometimes the desktop environment does seem to 'slow' things down a bit, but hardly a lot - KDE Plasma seems to have improved a lot of late; XFCE works fine on any and all laptops in my house (though I do regret it isn't looking like a Wayland edition will truly arrive any time soon).

I haven't really compared the RAM/CPU of Vanilla Dpup with any other forum offering; might shave a bit off I suppose, and well done if that is true, but that much isn't needed in actuality for my own uses. Thanks anyway. Maybe I should compare the statistics, but comparisons aren't really the name of the game for me anyway - I'm not in an Olympics race of any kind despite the season for sport.

[dimkr]

it doesn't matter to me at all if people think distros are all much the same albeit for different desktop or a case of frugal or full

Distro x that is basically distro y but with a "frugal installation" feature, preinstalled Xfce and a different name/logo is basically ... x with Xfce plus "frugal installation", no? Features are not emergent properties that just "happen" when a build system spits something, somebody needs to develop features for them to exist. Now you're not only denying the need for actual distro development, but also denying the need for software development in general.

Distros vary in many ways, not just different DEs and frugal/not. But distros with Xfce (especially those derived from Debian) are not THAT different, some developers describe their distros as "lightweight" only because they use Xfce. Run a single ps aux and you'll see mostly the same init system, the same daemons and whatever, and no "secret sauce" for low resource consumption.

Puppy is way more than Debian plus frugal installation, and anyone who denies this is just too lazy to look at the not-hard-to-find details. I don't understand the fascination with taking distros and adding the frugal installation feature, at the cost of inability to update the kernel through the upstream distro package manager and other shortcomings: if that's the only thing you're missing in these distros, fine for you I guess, but some of us want a lightweight and portable distro, one that comes with lightweight applications and simple tools that get the job done (and Puppy happens to have such things).

I haven't really compared the RAM/CPU of Vanilla Dpup

You haven't compared the feature set, haven't compared resource consumption and even haven't compared appearance. Everything is pitch black and everything is similar when you close your eyes, I guess.

[rockedge]

Perhaps I don't see the amount of RAM and CPU saved as terribly significant nowadays on most computers I use.

With the machines I have I must keep the RAM values and CPU performance in mind.......to even run a browser or QEMU I need to keep the initial amounts of RAM and CPU loads to a minimum. The OS can't be heavy on RAM for it's own processes at idle. My machines range in RAM from 1G to 16 G

My Dell laptop in the garage is an Windows XP era device build year 2008 and made it through living in a pre-school until 2018. Effective usable RAM 786 M.

I can surf with the latest Firefox using KLV-Airedale as the OS on it. KLV is kind a snappy actually running on it.

[Peppermint]

Distrowatch has a "Recent Related News and Releases" section for Puppy.

"Bookworm Pup64" is not on the list.

If it is available,shouldn`t it be listed above Puppy Linux 22.12?

Also,

Please note ---the Distrowatch Puppy introduction screen

has a photo of Bookworm Pup64!!

Anyone intrested in Puppy for the first time,may

-----------disappear.

[pp4mnklinux]

Distrowatch has a "Recent Related News and Releases" section for Puppy.

"Bookworm Pup64" is not on the list.

If it is available,shouldn`t it be listed above Puppy Linux 22.12?

Also,

Please note ---the Distrowatch Puppy introduction screen

has a photo of Bookworm Pup64!!

Anyone intrested in Puppy for the first time,may

-----------disappear.

Really ??? I can't belive it!! It must be an error, 4 sure.

What can we do? I encourage u to continue with this brainstorming (490 posts & counting) in order to correct this situation.

[wiak]

Puppy is way more than Debian plus frugal installation, and anyone who denies this is just too lazy to look at the not-hard-to-find details. I don't understand the fascination with taking distros and adding the frugal installation feature, at the cost of inability to update the kernel through the upstream distro package manager and other shortcomings: if that's the only thing you're missing in these distros, fine for you I guess, but some of us want a lightweight and portable distro, one that comes with lightweight applications and simple tools that get the job done (and Puppy happens to have such things).

Number one is that Puppy is a single-user system, which is fine for most of us just sitting at our own desktop, but makes Puppy no use for lots of cases such as (but certainly not at all only...) in teaching Linux...

Also, you exaggerate the difference that is Puppy, at least in terms of it being 'better' than other Linux distros. In practice the two components of Puppy Linux that define it to users are its impressive frugal install flexible and functional capabilities and, as you say, the many simple tools that forum members have made for it. However, similar tools can be and are made for most any distro; in fact most forum-developed tools can be ported to work without much effort, usually, on any Linux distro (which is certainly what we do in FR/KL, but lots of the utility tools I use, were always made for general Linux use as far as possible, though I did port several specially for use on Puppy; sharing of utility apps is not single-direction: most of what we make started life as something like a piece of underlying command-code, found via googling, on the likes of general Linux resource stackoverflow. Linux collaboration is indeed a great thing. Those who want to break standards and claim their system is 'different' can be a royal pain in practice. Insulting upstream developers by implying they don't know how to tune what they produce for RAM/CPU and so on is daft.

The stick in the mud JWM/Rox nonsense never really did define Puppy, but tended to force that definition in a limit-its-development manner.

Note that I really don't claim to develop distros - that's not my thing. A lot of your comments should be made to some named others rather than picking myself, but I suggest looking in the mirror first about the quality of your own distro look and feel if you do that. I myself am really only interested in some system-related and core build matters, occasionally produce an unpolished FR/KL distro as an exemplar for others to take over since these others are far better at polishing up to general forum member wishes standards. I am fine with rough and ready user interface, but really want particular frugal install functionality. As far as I see it, building a distro should be a team effort since team members come and go but the distro can go on for years after regardless.

[dimkr]

Number one is that Puppy is a single-user system, which is fine for most of us just sitting at our own desktop

Why is the single-user thing problematic?

There are at least 3 ways to understand this statement,
1. Puppy can only be used by a single interactive (human) user
2. Puppy doesn't have privilege separation between applications, daemons and interactive users
3. Puppy auto-logins so anyone who can boot your Puppy can touch your personal files

1 is easy to "fix" by having multiple saves, one per user. If they're encrypted, they're password protected and users can't touch each other's stuff. Today's Puppy supports this, if somebody wants to use Puppy in multi-user fashion.

2 is wrong.

3 is true only if you don't have disk encryption and screen locking (basic security measures any IT person would recommend). With disk encryption,
1. You must enter a passphrase to unlock the user's personal files
2. If you steal the disk with Puppy installed, the personal files are encrypted and you'll need to break encryption

teaching Linux...

Define "teaching Linux". You can learn C, learn shell scripting, learn kernel development, learn how to use apt ... there's so much you can learn on Puppy. You can't learn how to use systemctl to administer a distro with systemd, that's true.

the two components of Puppy Linux that define it to users are its impressive frugal install flexible and functional capabilities and, as you say, the many simple tools that forum members have made for it.

That's your opinion.

My opinion is that
1. You undervalue the importance of the preinstalled stuff Puppy ships with - for example, some Puppy builds ship with an old but small and lightweight deadbeef with the PipeWire plugin backported from later versions (a "best of both worlds" scenario): you can find many audio players in other distros, but not many will be as small and lightweight as this deadbeef package (which is part of woof-CE). Again, not everything is a LEGO piece with drop-in replacements, and Puppy has many micro-optimizations and small features (some are transparent to users) that make a big difference together, and they're scattered in many places in woof-CE.
2. Frugal installation has many implementations across many distros, some implementations are better and some are worse in terms of saving speed, reliability and flash media wear over time - there's plenty of room for optimization and simplification there. If you truly believe that this is the best feature of Puppy and the main (only?) possible justification for the existence of such a distro, I wonder why you don't spend your time on building one (!) excellent implementation of this feature (that truly goes above and beyond Puppy's implementation) and integrating it into distros like Puppy, instead of developing more build systems and more distros that basically clone the same idea with the same problems. If we want to improve Puppy we need to focus on quality, not on the quantity of similar things of similar quality.

[wiak]

You clearly know next to nothing about Linux admin from the point of view of a professional IT career. As with Microsoft, to get a job as a sys admin engineer, life is all about passing certification exams both practical assessments and theory.

Perhaps you should educate yourself on that market need, rather than misunderstand the need for multi-user system support throughout all certification professional programs. Red Hat Engineer certification is certainly the dominant one taught in polytechs and university programs around the world; on a huge scale, actually, along with Cisco network certification programs, but there are some easier, less brand specific certification programs too, but all such Linux courses require multi-user as major pre-requisite. Nothing to do with the simple needs of forum members!!!

A comparison of some certification alternatives is touched upon here:
https://www.tealhq.com/certifications/l ... inistrator

Even, long ago, when I often stuck to using the likes of Puppy 2.17 the distro was near useless in Linux courses designed to train certified Linux engineers and sys admins. I told my students where to download Puppy, but most of them didnt bother, since didnt allow them to undertake most parts of course work. Redhat wasnt using systemd back then - was plain old sysVinit; that has nothing to do with the overall issue though it is true that substantial experience with systemd is essential nowadays if anyone wants a job in any IT department unless only using Microsoft Networks, which would be unusual since Linux rules a big slice of the data comms related network infrastructure.

Great news is that forum distros FR/KL and DebianDog are excellent for Linux Certification related endeavours. There is something for everyone here.

[dimkr]

certified Linux engineers and sys admins.

Inability to use Puppy to study for Red Hat certification exams for RHEL admins is a very weird thing to name as a major disadvantage of Puppy.

[wiak]

certified Linux engineers and sys admins.

Inability to use Puppy to study for Red Hat certification exams for RHEL admins is a very weird thing to name as a major disadvantage of Puppy.

Really!?? I think it is you who is a bit blind thinking that. I had literally hundreds of students doing these courses and that was only one education institute; every major such institute in the world has (mainly young in their twenties) students studying for such certification. We are talking about millions of up-to-date, mainly young, Linux users. It was a huge market then, and it is bigger now.

Not at all just RHEL of course; ANY Linux certification theory and practical exams. Puppy was unfortunately simply no use for these students; FR/KL and DebianDog are useful and for RHEL the KL_Fedora releases fit the bill perfectly in a Puppy-sized, overall more functional, distribution. Just a fact, sorry.

The home user hobby market, and just general home desktop usage, is an entirely different proposition - Puppy is fine, as are many other similarly sized and functional distributions. I guess I just don't care about fan-boy type marketing - it doesn't matter what distro anyone chooses to use in reality. Very few distros compile their own repos anymore; Puppy doesn't. There is no need to do that, but nothing wrong with doing it either (despite limitations to the approach unless a big team of developers are able to cope with the sheer number of available packages out there).

[dimkr]

certified Linux engineers and sys admins.

Inability to use Puppy to study for Red Hat certification exams for RHEL admins is a very weird thing to name as a major disadvantage of Puppy.

Really!?? I think it is you who is a bit blind thinking that.

I have many servers, none of them run Puppy or a graphical desktop of any kind. I need a distro with frequent security updates all the way down to the kernel and firmware (+ Secure Boot, capsule update, etc'), and very few packages installed. It can't be Puppy. I don't see a reason for somebody interested in professional IT, especially production servers, to use Puppy in a professional setting and even for learning purposes (unless Puppy is running in production). If you want RHEL, go get your RHEL developer subscription, it's free, and study for your exams on RHEL.

For a personal computer, a home server or whatever, it's a different story, I see nothing wrong with choosing Puppy.

[retiredt00]

A comparison of some certification alternatives is touched upon here:
https://www.tealhq.com/certifications/l ... inistrator

Really!
Not to mention the failure in Large Language Model Certification!

No sysadmin at all, eh?
I was hopping to supplement my pension with lille bit of UNIVAC administration but puppy is useless for VMOS too if understand correctly.

Oh well, I'm glad you have all clarified the admin/server/certification issues that was at the back of every puppy's (like) user mind
No wonder that these useless distributions are not in distrowatch.

[wiak]

The home user hobby market, and just general home desktop usage, is an entirely different proposition - Puppy is fine, as are many other similarly sized and functional distributions.

My goodness, even my words seem to be getting almost copied now! Almost flattering... well not though:

For a personal computer, a home server or whatever, it's a different story, I see nothing wrong with choosing Puppy.

[BologneChe]

The level of discussion...

[pp4mnklinux]

The level of discussion...

This is the level: "when education lost the war"

Please, is there any way to stop notifications from "Distrowatch needs a newer puppy version listed for puppy linux"?

Is there anyway to stop receiving notifications from "whats up in puppy world"?

[fredx181]

Well, yes, too much off-topic here (i.e. battling going on, with lots of sarcasm and distrust).
But also contains useful info and opinions, please all focus on that !!

[pp4mnklinux]

Well, yes, too much off-topic here (i.e. battling going on, with lots of sarcasm and distrust).
But also contains useful info and opinions, please all focus on that !!

It is possible it's the moment to demonstrate we are in democracy and all users have the same value in this forum.

SOME OF my posts have been moved, SOME moderators had modified/changed titles....and as you can read here viewtopic.php?t=10292#p107941 SOME people told me I must follow the rules .

@fredx181 , @bigpup are all users the same or not?

Are there SOME users who don't need to follow the forum rules they agreeded to follow??

It smells bad, doesn't it?

@mikewalsh, @wizard ??

What a pity @amethyst is not here at this forum, it could be interesting to heard his oppinion.

[fredx181]

It is possible it's the moment to demonstrate we are in democracy and all users have the same value in this forum.

My posts have been moved, moderators had modified/changed titles....and as you can read here viewtopic.php?t=10292#p107941 some people told me I must follow the rules .

@fredx181 , @bigpup are all users the same or not?

Yes, of course all users are the same (well.. should be !).
Often it's difficult to decide what's a violation of the forum rules, I guess (at least for me, I'm more of the benefit of the doubt type ).

My posts have been moved, moderators had modified/changed titles....and as you can read here viewtopic.php?t=10292#p107941 some people told me I must follow the rules

.
Btw, looking there: viewtopic.php?t=10292#p107941 most users (and also moderators) posting in that thread were defending you (including me).

[sonny]

@dimkr

"When you're young, you look ahead. When you're old, you look back."

Dim, I can see a generational gap here.
The young are more visionary; the old are more nostalgic.
You guessed it: we have two distinct mentalities or mindsets in the kennels.

You can't teach an old 'puppy' new tricks, can you?

[rockedge]

@sonny @dimkr

Making me feel old and useless and everything is shit.......... You don't need a lot of English to understand that or no?

Maybe we could get some University interested in guiding further development that might have some computer science students who'll want learn something more than Android, Red Hat, Apple and Microsoft operating systems. Hands on ready to go in any direction...........

Bland bleak and less than.........if no one is doing anything now or in the last decade what's the point?

@pp4mnklinux

I never move any topic or post unless specifically asked too. Never changed a single title. Your F#$#-ing welcome.

[dimkr]

You can't teach an old 'puppy' new tricks, can you?

More often than not you can't, but maybe you can find a way to push them to their corner so they stop barking at the young puppies while they're developing new tricks.

[sonny]

I have no control over other people's feelings, so I can't be held responsible for them.
"Look back" implies that old people tend to consider their own LEGACY before going
away without regrets. It is just a reality of life.

Note: I do know Puppy Linux is ideal for gramps but I do not know who's who here

[wiak]

You can't teach an old 'puppy' new tricks, can you?

More often than not you can't, but maybe you can find a way to push them to their corner so they stop barking at the young puppies while they're developing new tricks.

And now we have age-ism, no better than racism. Old guys can talk about their age, and that of their peers, and the oft similar but oft different effects that can inflict upon them. Fine, why not - that's the age we are. But when someone says they are young and thus they claim in a class of visionary, there is something socially very wrong there. And who are supposed to be the non-visionaries amongst the old granpas? What corner are tbey to be pushed into?

No doubt about some old stick in the mud attitudes, but not so sure the young are proving more visionary. Different personality traits sometimes, certainly. There is intolerance of age evident. Certainly it would in some ways be nice to be 31 again, but 40 years too late that for me, but there are others here that are far older than me and some of them visionary indeed. How about racism? You want to try that strategy too? Anyway, as a 71 year old, in pretty good physical health, and sharp enough to not worry about little sonnys I'm also impossible I'm glad to say to be pushed into any corners by age-ist remarks. Bring it on.

[sonny]

Age-ism?

You mean this?

ageism.png (68.78 KiB) Viewed 1487 times

[wiak]

And what exactly is meant to be the point of that grandpa-friendly certified post?

And why all the big bold letters, which don't seem tohave any obvious point either?

It is one thing to relevantly refer to that grandpa cerified marketing rubbish, but another when nothing but unadulterated ageism going on.