EasyPup 2.5.1 with rejuvenated multisession-DVD

[BarryK]

This is one for the old-timers, those who like the multisession-DVD mode, in which the sessions are saved back to the DVD. I wrote about this early in 2008:

https://bkhome.org/archive/puppylinux/multi-puppy.htm

It did get forgotten somewhat over the years, but still has some dedicated users. Gee, those were the days -- a PC with 256MB RAM!

Anyway, I have had a good look at it, and fixed and enhanced it in EasyPup. Here is a post outlining the improvements, three "goodies":

https://bkhome.org/news/202012/easypup- ... -mode.html

Download EasyPup 2.5.1, French, German and English builds:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/easypu ... ter/2.5.1/

Reckon some people will like the lockdown mode. Here is a snapshot:

easypup-multi-lock.jpg (37.42 KiB) Viewed 3639 times

...all internal drives are disabled.

[BarryK]

I should mention, after some reading comparing DVD-R and DVD+R, it seems that DVD+R is preferable.

However, some early DVD burner drives may be fussy and want only one of those type. DVD-R came out first, so some drives may only burn to them.

Also, some laptop drives are not capable of burning multiple tracks, that is, multisession -- I had that experience with my laptop back in 2008. It may just have been early laptop drives, or a particular brand of drive.

My Lenovo desktop PC, purchased in January 2020, has a laptop style thin-profile DVD drive, that happily burns multiple tracks on both DVD-R and DVD+R.

[BarryK]

We have a problem with 2.5.1 kernel panic on some hardware:

https://easyos.org/forum/showthread.php ... 10#pid1310

easyPup 2.5 has an older kernel, 4.19.157, and that booted for Rodney. 2.5.1 has a 5.4.81 kernel, Rodney gets a kernel panic.

Sage also tested, found 2.5.1 boots on some old PCs, not all.

Let me know if you get a kernel panic, I will try and figure out where the kernel is going wrong, is there some configure setting in the 5.4.x kernel that is doing this, or will I have to stay with the 4.19.x series?

[BarryK]

EasyPup is now deprecated, see blog post:

https://bkhome.org/news/202012/easypup- ... cated.html

EasyOS is the way to go:

viewforum.php?f=63

[petihar]

Hello Barry,
Great job... EasyPup 2.5.1 works perfectly on my old Aspire V5 acer. I particularly appreciate BluePup for the bluetooth management. I "have fun" to customize in my own way... however I encounter two little problems:
1- impossible to get transparency on the urxvt console.
2 - Impossible to remove the "defaultbrowser" icon on the desktop.
Maybe you could help me
Yours sincerely petihar

[BarryK]

Hello Barry,
Great job... EasyPup 2.5.1 works perfectly on my old Aspire V5 acer. I particularly appreciate BluePup for the bluetooth management. I "have fun" to customize in my own way... however I encounter two little problems:
1- impossible to get transparency on the urxvt console.
2 - Impossible to remove the "defaultbrowser" icon on the desktop.
Maybe you could help me
Yours sincerely petihar

I would like to help, but feeling somewhat overloaded right now. Also, unless someone wants to take on maintaining EasyPup, it is going to be history. My enthusiasm often exceeds the time that I can put into development, and still have a life. So, reining things in. I have had requests for 32-bit EasyOS, but sorry, can't do that either.

Ongoing, it will just be EasyOS x86_64, and might do a aarch64 build for the rpi3/4.

Regarding urxvt transparency, that is a more generic problem, not just EasyPup, so maybe someone knows the answer.

[Trobin]

Barry wrote
"Also, unless someone wants to take on maintaining EasyPup, it is going to be history."

I just wanted to thank you for Easypup.

[thinkpadfreak]

I, too, would like to thank Barry for EasyPup.

I use official Puppies and EasyPup side by side. It is one of my favorites.

[mikeslr]

@ Puppytrue,

Per pages on its website, the Linux version of metatrader runs under the 32-bit version of Wine. FWIW, metatrader 5 is better than metatrader 4 for your objective. Both will have to be run under Wine, and neither under Wine supports MQL5 Market. See "Known Issues" https://www.mql5.com/en/articles/625?ut ... .mt5.linux and similar on the metatrader 4 Linux info. But, on WineHQ, metatrader 5 receives a "Gold" rating, using Wine 5, https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager. ... &iId=19984: Click "Test Results". Metatrader 4 only a "Silver". [If you have to run programs under Wine, always check WineHq Test Results for information unless there's a portable version of the program. Wine Devs and testers do not report on portable programs, which --being 'self-contained'-- often run better. Unless you're prepared to debug problems, no purpose is served in attempting to run a program under wine when 'experts' haven't been able to. Portable-Windows programs, on the other hand, as they do not 'write to Window's resgistry' can be downloaded and tested in a couple of minutes; safely because even if they don't work you can just delete the folder they've been installed into].

I don't have EasyPup set, nor any interest in adding it to a menagerie whose maintenance is already excessively time consuming. But if EasyPup is a 32-bit operating system, getting metatrader running should be easy. If EasyPup is a 64-bit system, you'll need to find and load EasyPup's 32-bit compatibility SFS and configure it*. But I'll assume a 32-bit. So:
You'll find a link to version2013's wine builds here, viewtopic.php?f=142&t=103. Clicking the "Wine Packages" link will take you here, https://version2013.yolasite.com/page1.php#wine. You'll notice a lot of underlined numbers, e.g. 5.22. Each is a link to a different build. The person reporting success at WineHq was using a version from the 5 Series, so I'd select the last of the 5 Series Version2013 built, the aforementioned 5.22 and click it. That takes you here, https://version2013.yolasite.com/page1.php#wine-5.22. On Version2013's Website, > are links. You just have to figure out which link to follow. You don't want one that has "64" in its name as these are to 64-bit Wine builds. If you follow the Information link you'll discover that builds ending with v.3.1 and v.3.2 were compiled under tahrpup and that attempts at compiling under earlier Puppies --which would have born designations v1 or v2-- failed. Hopefully, probably, the updated version of EasyPup will be able to use the libraries compiled under tahrpup. The trailing .1 & .2 designates 'stripped' or 'not stripped' with the notice that 'not stripped' is recommended if assistance from WineHQ is sought. The probability of anyone at WineHQ being able to figure out what could have gone wrong with Puppys' unique way of doing things being nil, I'd choose and click the > in front of the 5.22 v.3.1.pet which takes you to its download page. After downloading the pet, go here, https://version2013.yolasite.com/page1.php#wine and locate and the wine_extras-v2.1.pet link. That pet creates Wine menu entries.
After you download and install the wine pet, open a terminal and type, without the quotes, "wine winecfg" to create the 'prefix'/folder which will hold you windows programs and create the links between wine and your OS.
After that you should be able to just download the metatrader 'exe', and click it to install it. IIRC, you don't have to associate 'exe' files-type with Wine. But, if you do, Right-Click the exe, select "set run action" and type "wine " in front of the "$@", then click Use Command.

Set run action to Wine.png (30.09 KiB) Viewed 2480 times

Obviously, once everything is running smoothly don't forget to Save to your CD/DVD.
-=-=---
EasyPup is not a version of EasyOS. EasyOS's strength is its ability to isolate applications or entire operating systems in containers. But Wine is not an ordinary application. It is rather a framework --an application layer-- which sits on top of and must communicate with a Linux operating system. So, it can't be isolated. However, running EasyOS one of the operating systems SFSes which you download and use from its container is the 32-bit racy. That racy may be able to use the wine 5.22 pet by following the above recipe. The alternative would be to remaster a 32-bit Puppy, or a 64-bit Puppy with 32-bit compatibility installed, then use the remastered puppy_version_number.sfs in EasyOS's create container application.
@ Barry K. I have yet to find ANY EasyOS where the desktop Wallpaper of the contained OS doesn't get screwed up. If that bug can't be solved, maybe eliminate Wallpaper altogether. Desktop icons, and even panels with launchers, aren't necessary: perhaps convenient and aesthetically pleasing, but not necessary. To access applications all that is necessary is a "Start" or Right-Click-desktop popup Menu. That is certainly preferable to GUIs lost in confusion.
* again @ puppytrue: I have no idea how gjuhasz creates and implements the 'intrusion-detection-and respond' profiles in puli. Hence, no way to transport it to other Puppys. But keep an eye out for my response to your query on its thread. Configuring the 32-bit compatibility layer will be discussed there.

[oui]

As a lot of old users did understand in the past, read English, especially long texts, continues to be a big problem for me as I did never learn other English than the BASIC English from Ogden. Short texts are generally no problem as my knowledge from French, my mother tongue, and German, my family tongue, are perfect and writing German well, I am able to use Germanic expressions in English, and write not correct and absolutely not best English with "my" subset of the beautiful tongue of W.S..

So I did discover now 9 months later the real scope of that thread searching an other thing in duckduckgo...

and that page https://bkhome.org/news/202012/easypup- ... -mode.html, and, in that page, the green marked text (*1 in that information of Barry about the difference between CD drives, CD-RW reading and writing drives and modern DVD drives.

this year were a bad year for us all because of the Corona pandemic. the pandemic continues as no really secure vaccination or middle against it exists.

in rich countries, we can today start a new begin. that is not true in poor countries.

and there are phenomenal quantities of old PC's and hardware's not used in those countries because a lack of performance.

those stuff would be precious for poor people: children, to better their learning and formation, as well as poor and/or older people to participate a bit to the growing and progress in the world going on the web and getting more information and interactive exchanges.

but old PC's are now a sometime as a terrible problem for finders of old hardware willing to give them to such children or poor or older persons as they are rarely yet able to continue to go directly online, the Operating Systems are to old, and, next difficulties

it is terribly difficult to identify the real possibilities at actual time because of really totally obsolete of the hardware.

Yes I know "hardinfo". it is a good tool.

but it would be much easy, a lot much easy, to offer a modern easyPup on the PC being able to read / write with about ALL drives and to recognize itself immediately if the limit of the 256 MB RAM named by Barry is available (for easyPup, no question: if it starts, they are available else no way as easyPup is a 64 bit OS! I assume they were never serious 64 PC without less RAM . The question continues to be interesting: What is the matter with the billions of old PC's with only 32 bit CPU's waiting in the houses for destruction as they seem not to continue to be used in the future . I find this development very, very bad!).

such a easyPup would also be a really way and system not to really test somewhat, but to pragmatic try:

- it starts, it works, it is good -> give it!

- it does not -> perhaps no good idea to give it (use only the parts to repair or update other hardware?)!

~~~~

(*1 I am not certain, reading that text, if easyPup is able to manage the read and rewrite eventually a lot of successive times as on a real HD but on CD-RW's (is that also a multi-session for English people?) or if easy-Pup only did not write multi-session on DVD