Some thoughts about this subforum and two browsers for Puppy 4.x (Dillo 3.1.1 and links 2.29)

[tommy]

I'm quite amazed seeing that this subforum dedicated to very old computer hardware was recently created. Puppy has moved towards the future, I thought that talking about new Puppies able to run in old 'junk' PCs was a matter of the past.

Yet, I'm not surprised that after little time, this subforum counts more posts than the 'Legacy' subforum section that exists from the beginning of the 'post-Murga-forum-era'. I think this is due to the fact that Puppy began his story building a reputation of being a 'low resources operating system' that still today has. The interest that many forum users show in this subforum means that there is still today a need: the need for software able to run in very, very old hardware. The reasons could be different. I can think of people who can't afford to buy new computers; people who don't want to contribute to electric waste pollution; people interested in 'retrocomputing' etc.

That said, I see that this subforum topics show two ways to achieve a similar target:
the way of creating new and modern Puppy releases for old hardware;
the way of uploading software for very old Puppy releases who where known to run well in old hardware.

Both ways are valid and I'd really like to contribute to the former way, but I know nothing of creating a new Puppy release. That's why I will try to contribute with the easier latter way.

Now, whoever, like me, owns a tad of PCs builded from 1997 to 2005 knows that the most versatile Puppy has proved to be the 4th version, and its derivative ultra-light puplets
Turbopup extreme" made by synth
and the 'gtk1.2' Pulp003 by zenfunk. I've run Pulp on a 24MB Ram Pentium 133MHz PC and no swapfile!!!

So here are three .pets to let Puppy 4.2 to be able to browse the modern SSL/TLS web

Dillo 3.1.1 :
https://sabercathost.com/iuYO/dillo-3.1.1-i686.pet

openssl 1.1.1w :
https://sabercathost.com/eiPK/openssl-1.1.1w-i486.pet

links 2.29 with graphics enabled (just run 'links -g' in a terminal console) :
https://sabercathost.com/iuYS/links-2.29-i486.pet

I have compiled them in Turbopup using stock puppy 4.2 devx, adding fltk 1.3.8 to compile dillo 3.1.1 and adding Perl 5.10 to be able to compile openssl-1.1.1w .

Updated certificate authorities .pet is here:
https://sabercathost.com/eiNQ/ca-certificates.pet
please open a console and run

Code: Select all

update-ca-certificates

after installation.

A side note about the reason why I chose not to compile Palemoon or Firefox or Seamonkey:

1) It's a PITA to compile modern browsers needing recent glibc and make them capable to run in Puppies who have older glibc; old-forum user watchdog could do this time-consuming task, but I'm not so skilled like him;

2) I find that old SSE-capable CPUs (from Pentium III 450MHZ to Pentium IV 2GHz) struggle a lot to render pages using modern 'full-featured' browsers. Loading a single HTML5.0 + javascript page on a sub-gigahertz CPU can take so much time that you'll hate surfing the WEB. With links and Dillo browsing the WEB is a lovely and fast experience even using the oldest Pentium PC I have !

[wizard]

@tommy

Spent a lot of time using Puppy 4.1.2 and even set up a Pentium 2 laptop file server using it;.

I find that old SSE-capable CPUs (from Pentium III 450MHZ to Pentium IV 2GHz) struggle a lot to render pages using modern 'full-featured' browsers

Exactly correct, those computers can still be useful (have several of them), but many internet task are now beyond their capability.

Thanks
wizard

[mikewalsh]

@tommy :-

You might be interested in this one, from @darry19662018 :-

Puppy 4.3.11 "The Phoenix" (with glibc 2.19 upgrade)

We had a LOT of fun playing around with this one! Read the thread through; this was responsible for the development of a few concepts I use regularly these days....

Mike.

[wiak]

Even for releases not intended for low-powered machines I think the likes of links is a useful default small but capable browser app. For one thing, it is good to keep distro downloads as small as practical, but since the use of zstd compressed sfs addons for increased responsiveness, downloads can be 10 to 20 percent larger so leaving a large browser out at that stage is an appropriate strategy. It is also the case that some prefer firefox based browsers yet others want chrome or chromium varieties so best that users install their preferred browser choice later.

[dancytron]

Even for releases not intended for low-powered machines I think the likes of links is a useful default small but capable browser app. For one thing, it is good to keep distro downloads as small as practical, but since the use of zstd compressed sfs addons for increased responsiveness, downloads can be 10 to 20 percent larger so leaving a large browser out at that stage is an appropriate strategy. It is also the case that some prefer firefox based browsers yet others want chrome or chromium varieties so best that users install their preferred browser choice later.

I like links as a local html viewer too.

No need to crank up Chrome, especially on an old computer, just to read an html file.

[Overdrive5]

@tommy :-

You might be interested in this one, from @darry19662018 :-

Puppy 4.3.11 "The Phoenix" (with glibc 2.19 upgrade)

We had a LOT of fun playing around with this one! Read the thread through; this was responsible for the development of a few concepts I use regularly these days....

Mike.

Hey Mike and Everyone,

I tried the archive.org links in this post and they are now dead. Not sure what happened.

I'm trying to find the best pup for a recently donated 2003 celery with 384MB ram Dell laptop.

Friendly-Jammy32 worked but wanted to try others before I settled on anything to install.

Guess I'll try S15Pup32 next....

[Wiz57]

@tommy :-

You might be interested in this one, from @darry19662018 :-

Puppy 4.3.11 "The Phoenix" (with glibc 2.19 upgrade)

We had a LOT of fun playing around with this one! Read the thread through; this was responsible for the development of a few concepts I use regularly these days....

Mike.

Hey Mike and Everyone,

I tried the archive.org links in this post and they are now dead. Not sure what happened.

I'm trying to find the best pup for a recently donated 2003 celery with 384MB ram Dell laptop.

Friendly-Jammy32 worked but wanted to try others before I settled on anything to install.

Guess I'll try S15Pup32 next....

While I use S15Pup32 myself, and usually do recommend it, I'm not sure with your 384mb RAM if it is "best" or not. I run S15Pup32
with only 1 gig RAM and a 1 gig pupswap file, works well enough for my limited needs for a "second" device. For this limited amount
of RAM, might look for an older Pup, like maybe Slacko 6.3.2, which I've used some, but not much for web browsing.
What specifically would you like to do?
Look through the archives linked here https://archive.org/details/puppylinux for the older Pups...maybe something in the
ScPups or the Slackos.

[mikewalsh]

@Overdrive5 :-

Yeah; I forget exactly what's been happening with archive.org.

If you're interested in the "Phoenix", I've got a copy of the final release of this one.....I think Darren went up to v3 with it. That's the one I've got, anyways.

I can put a copy up at MediaFire, if you'd like. Let me know what you want to do, please......and I'll see what I can do.

Mike.

[Wiz57]

@Overdrive5 :-

Yeah; I forget exactly what's been happening with archive.org.

If you're interested in the "Phoenix", I've got a copy of the final release of this one.....I think Darren went up to v3 with it. That's the one I've got, anyways.

I can put a copy up at MediaFire, if you'd like. Let me know what you want to do, please......and I'll see what I can do.

Mike.

The archive.org site has been dealing with off and on DDoS attacks, similar to the Palemoon repositories that are currently offline.
Archive.org was hit worse though, and parts of it are just now coming back online.

[Overdrive5]

@Overdrive5 :-

Yeah; I forget exactly what's been happening with archive.org.

If you're interested in the "Phoenix", I've got a copy of the final release of this one.....I think Darren went up to v3 with it. That's the one I've got, anyways.

I can put a copy up at MediaFire, if you'd like. Let me know what you want to do, please......and I'll see what I can do.

Mike.

Thank You Mike. That would be wonderful.

Can never have enough iso's in my bag of tricks. Eh?

[Overdrive5]

@tommy :-

You might be interested in this one, from @darry19662018 :-

Puppy 4.3.11 "The Phoenix" (with glibc 2.19 upgrade)

We had a LOT of fun playing around with this one! Read the thread through; this was responsible for the development of a few concepts I use regularly these days....

Mike.

Hey Mike and Everyone,

I tried the archive.org links in this post and they are now dead. Not sure what happened.

I'm trying to find the best pup for a recently donated 2003 celery with 384MB ram Dell laptop.

Friendly-Jammy32 worked but wanted to try others before I settled on anything to install.

Guess I'll try S15Pup32 next....

While I use S15Pup32 myself, and usually do recommend it, I'm not sure with your 384mb RAM if it is "best" or not. I run S15Pup32
with only 1 gig RAM and a 1 gig pupswap file, works well enough for my limited needs for a "second" device. For this limited amount
of RAM, might look for an older Pup, like maybe Slacko 6.3.2, which I've used some, but not much for web browsing.
What specifically would you like to do?
Look through the archives linked here https://archive.org/details/puppylinux for the older Pups...maybe something in the
ScPups or the Slackos.

Thanks for the input @Wiz57. I have a few Slacko 6.x's & 5.x's I will test as well.

Just trying to see how much I can coax out of this dinosaur....

[Wiz57]

Hey Mike and Everyone,

I tried the archive.org links in this post and they are now dead. Not sure what happened.

I'm trying to find the best pup for a recently donated 2003 celery with 384MB ram Dell laptop.

Friendly-Jammy32 worked but wanted to try others before I settled on anything to install.

Guess I'll try S15Pup32 next....

While I use S15Pup32 myself, and usually do recommend it, I'm not sure with your 384mb RAM if it is "best" or not. I run S15Pup32
with only 1 gig RAM and a 1 gig pupswap file, works well enough for my limited needs for a "second" device. For this limited amount
of RAM, might look for an older Pup, like maybe Slacko 6.3.2, which I've used some, but not much for web browsing.
What specifically would you like to do?
Look through the archives linked here https://archive.org/details/puppylinux for the older Pups...maybe something in the
ScPups or the Slackos.

Thanks for the input @Wiz57. I have a few Slacko 6.x's & 5.x's I will test as well.

Just trying to see how much I can coax out of this dinosaur....

Let me know how it goes! I might have another couple of things to try, like a kernel swap in S15Pup32 that I use, which after boot only
uses a bit over 95000kb ram, as opposed to the 125000kb or so used by the latest kernel! One recommendation I can make now, no matter
which Pup you try, with limited RAM, always boot up with the "nocopy" kernel line option. This prevents the puppy sfs files from being
copied into RAM, may take a bit longer to extract and load to the resulting file system of the running Pup, but saves some 250MB RAM!

[wizard]

@Wiz57

uses a bit over 95000kb ram, as opposed to the 125000kb

Shouldn't that should be 95kb and 125kb?

wizard

[Wiz57]

@Wiz57

uses a bit over 95000kb ram, as opposed to the 125000kb

Shouldn't that should be 95kb and 125kb?

wizard

Yep, sheesh...bits, bytes, kb 95kb and 125kb

[mikewalsh]

@Overdrive5 :-

Okay. Well, here's a link for the 'Phoenix'4.31(2019)v3.iso. This was the final rebuild/re-master Darren went to on this one, IIRC...

https://www.mediafire.com/file/2q3r25zn ... 3.iso/file

Enjoy.

Mike.

[Overdrive5]

@Overdrive5 :-

Okay. Well, here's a link for the 'Phoenix'4.31(2019)v3.iso. This was the final rebuild/re-master Darren went to on this one, IIRC...

https://www.mediafire.com/file/2q3r25zn ... 3.iso/file

Enjoy.

Mike.

Hi @Mike, Thanks for the ISO. I'll tinker with it later in the week.

@Wiz57 Well, so far Slacko 6.3.2 has been the most reliable. But I am now finding out this Dell Inspirion 1100 Laptop may have a baked motherboard. During my tinkering, I discovered the cpu fan was locked. Had to take it apart to unlock the fan. But that makes me wonder how long it has been like this. Probably why they donated it to me. Anyway it is a 50/50 shot whether I can boot to a correct Xwindows desktop no mater which puppy I throw at it. So I think it is going to be flaky at best. But I will give Phoenix'4.31(2019)v3 a shot to see if it helps any.

Ok, by now we are *way* off topic for this thread. Apologies to @tommy for the drift. But thanks everyone for the guidance!

[Wiz57]

@Overdrive5
Just for kicks and nostalgia, lol, I booted into my Slacko 6.3.2 32 bit...found a couple of old pet files for Dillo and Netsurf...by golly,
it does browse, simple sites anyhow such as this one and a few others!

[Overdrive5]

@Overdrive5
Just for kicks and nostalgia, lol, I booted into my Slacko 6.3.2 32 bit...found a couple of old pet files for Dillo and Netsurf...by golly,
it does browse, simple sites anyhow such as this one and a few others!

@Wiz57

Yeah, I just loaded up Dillo on Friendly Jammy32. Posting from it now.

Very suprising how little ram/cpu it uses!

This Dell Inspiron mainboard is baked for sure.

Crashes after about a half hour.

Time to part it out on Ebay.

Learned a few things though on this "Tinker Venture". LOL!

[Overdrive5]

@Overdrive5
Just for kicks and nostalgia, lol, I booted into my Slacko 6.3.2 32 bit...found a couple of old pet files for Dillo and Netsurf...by golly,
it does browse, simple sites anyhow such as this one and a few others!

@Wiz57

Yeah, I just loaded up Dillo on Friendly Jammy32. Posting from it now.

Very suprising how little ram/cpu it uses!

This Dell Inspiron mainboard is baked for sure.

Crashes after about a half hour.

Time to part it out on Ebay.

Learned a few things though on this "Tinker Venture". LOL!

Everything but the mainboard that is.