The future of the forum and about the structure

[wiak]

It does not cost much of an additional effort putting a clear sentence in the landing page and as well as giving a design look that hints the professional, not amateur/toy, nature of the operating system.

Except you seem to miss the fact that the landing page is intended for the forum more generally. It is not concerned with the nature of any one of the forum's featured distros, which all have their own attractions and major differences from each other. None want brought down as somehow amateur; they are all too good for that and the names people choose for the distros is entirely up to themselves. But certainly cute and cartoonist can and does put off some seriously skilled and more general Linux users who have plenty of outside professional choices available to them anyway.

I'm not myself into the cute and cuddly when it comes to my Linux needs and usage so the landing page should not be unprofessional in approach because that would negatively effect all forum distros.

Puppy or FatDog or EasyOS or DebianDog or KL can individually portray themselves as they wish, but the landing page is for all forum distros - that is a different matter.

[Governor]

should be taken seriously

"Should" is a very strong word, Puppy is a do-ocracy: developers choose if, when and what to work on. The Puppy homepage must not generate unrealistic expectations.

Moreover, most of these developers are amateurs (not professional developers who either work or worked in the field) or professionals that don't do their hobby development with the same quality standards as the development work they do for living. You can call it 'professionally developed' but it's an empty statement because none of the processes, roles, etc' are actually there.

Yes, I understand, and I am grateful that you point this out. However, IF the goal is to make Puppy more professional and more popular, steps must be taken to make it more user-friendly, and there needs to be a consensus on basic standards. If the standards are not met, a distro would be classified as unfinished and will be listed as unfinished or experimental on the forum and would not be listed at: https://distrowatch.com/.

Another thing is, mistakes ought be corrected ASAP after they are pointed out, hopefully by a willing volunteer. While people are generally very helpful, which I am thankful for, there seems to be a strong resistance to acknowledge and fix mistakes, unless there is a bug in the programming that breaks a procedure.

In the GUI backup procedure, there are two serious mistakes; I mentioned one already, and I repeat here the first one:
It is a serious (and absurd) mistake in the GUI to NOT inform the user that a compressed backup cannot be booted from.
It is an error, which causes users to reject Puppy. Developers need to take this type of error seriously.
What does the user do next? They delete Puppy and move on to another distro, never to be heard from again.

Pupsave Backup-Compress.png (215.47 KiB) Viewed 283 times

The second mistake is while the user can name the backup file whatever they like, there is no mention that the backup file must conform to a specific naming convention,
where the first part of the name (including the hyphen), must not be changed, ie. dpupbw64save-BKP.2024.06.21-13.42

Therefore, the user should not be allowed to change the first part of the filename in the dialog box. And this information should appear to the user along with the warning about compressed backups not being bootable (mentioned above).
Cheers!

[amethyst]

I am not saying we need to change/amend anything, but to give hints to new users that do not know already the great reputation of our operating system that is worth to spend some time to know them better. The way in which this should be done is up to debate, mine are just ideas and opinion, I am talking about "a sentence" , "fonts" , "nice professional icons in the landing page". That is all. You are welcome

I prefer that they keep the Puppy section as is as well as the Puppy logo of the forum itself as this will be beneficial to all distributions on the forum (established and known brand coming over years).

@amethyst it looks like there is a misunderstanding between us. I am not saying to change puppy linux's logo. I am referring about ideas for the landing page. When I talk about icons I am not referring to logos but to icons to put into the landing page bullet points, something like this for instance. And , when talking about the bullet points, which by the way are already there in the current https://puppylinux-woof-ce.github.io/ , my proposal is to put an highlight about the fact that our distros, despite their "cute" names, are professional and valid ones.

I don't care about the other distro's or what they want to do with it as long as Puppy keeps its well-established original brand name and logo. Don't mess with things that have been working for over 20 years. As I said, these other distributions still need to grow their brand names (some don't have any) and popularity and that is going to take time and effort although sharing a forum of a well-established distribution like Puppy should give more exposure to them so that should be to their advantage as they are basically sharing or having access to Puppys original user base at least. People looking for Puppy Linux will land on this site and also see the other no brands.

[darksun]

@amethyst I do not know why you keep quoting me with the statement you do not want puppy's logo and brand to be changed, that is not my intention, that is not what I am writing

@wiak you wrote

Except you seem to miss the fact that the landing page is intended for the forum more generally

that is exactly what I am advocating for the landing page to be, so I do not know why you are stating that I am missing this fact. Also because the forum also hosts other operating systems so

@Governor please refrain to post technical issues in this thread, you are OT. Thank you.

[Governor]

@amethyst I do not know why you keep quoting me with the statement you do not want puppy's logo and brand to be changed, that is not my intention, that is not what I am writing

@wiak you wrote

Except you seem to miss the fact that the landing page is intended for the forum more generally

that is exactly what I am advocating for the landing page to be, so I do not know why you are stating that I am missing this fact. Also because the forum also hosts other operating systems so

@Governor please refrain to post technical issues in this thread, you are OT. Thank you.

Off topic? What is the point of restructuring the forum? Is it not to attract and keep more users? Don't you think fixing mistakes will do that?
I believe more developers/programmers will be made aware of these important issues here, rather than in some obscure thread..
I made my point, so now everyone can forget all about it and return to business as usual. I am still waiting for a volunteer to step forward and fix these issues, but I am not holding my breath. Good luck!

[wiak]

Governor, off topic is off topic. It is pretty obvious to you, surely, that all the posts here are about the landing page and not about any technical fault you wish to bring to people's attention about one of the various forum distro types. Put you question regarding distro type Puppy Linux in the appropriate technical area within that distro's forum section please.

[wiak]

As I said, these other distributions still need to grow their brand names (some don't have any) and popularity and that is going to take time and effort although sharing a forum of a well-established distribution like Puppy should give more exposure to them so that should be to their advantage as they are basically sharing or having access to Puppys original user base at least.

Go and preach that to the only couple of dozen people that regularly login here. ...sigh...

And as a KL developer you surely know very well that I couldn't care less about your claims that your favourite forum distro type has some wonderful reputation. That has nothing to do with landing page one way or the other. The devs of your distro have their own forum area to make whatever claims that they wish. It wouldn't bother me personally if your favorite distro was retired (and whatever reputation you imagine it still has with it) owing to having no devs. KL development goes on actively and regardless.

KL devs do not want their efforts diminished by cute cuddly images which, if you truly enjoy that reputation, please request your distro devs (whoever) to keep that kind of description safe within their own section. I do not want that reputation or brand way of thinking for my firstrib-based distros, which I always make perfectly clear are not based on any other forum distro and do not appreciate the attempted connection/ brand marking! We are not Puppy and do not want to be!

I used DebianDog for around six years prior to creating FirstRib design, and these are derivations of debian live, but FR started actually as an experiment to use Void Linux static package manager via busybox and as an overlayfs with huge numbers of numeric addon layers. Means nothing to me if FirstRib continued to be discussed on this forum or not, but the forum leader wants it featured here to increase forum activity and because they like FirstRib build methodology.

But dream on, though try to realise (maybe try coffee to wake yourself up) that Linux is just a hobby for all of us here and no one at KL cares about your favorite distros good or bad reputation/branding. Has no meaningful effect on anyone unless they are hallucinating about grandeur.

[amethyst]

You should be thankful of having the opportunity to sail on the coattails of such a well-established and successful distribution like Puppy Linux. The way that you don't want to give Puppy Linux any credit at all is really disgusting. Puppy Linux is the reason for this forum to be here in the first place, never forget that.

[wiak]

I have no idea why amethyst is insisting on using this landing page thread discussion to per usual moan about KL and how grateful we KL devs should be. Could anyone shut him up?

Meanwhile I'm wondering if we could refer to KL on the proposed landing page as KL CocaCola from now on since apparently I'm supposed to be worried about it's 'branding'? Or KL KokakoLa?? or KL KookakoaLa??? - but not the last... I became a vegetarian when I was 19 years old. Could have hot branded it as (cuddly) KoaLa Linux I suppose except neither myself or main team are Australian...

[dimkr]

Could anyone shut him up?

You, you're an administrator here. You can ban everyone who doesn't think like you, change the forum title, write long posts and thank yourself.

[wiak]

Puppy Linux is the reason for this forum to be here in the first place, never forget that.

The first distro actually featured on this forum was FirstRib (which is why I'm a founding admin) - irrelevant tho. Try to keep your posts on topic if you can stop dreaming

[wiak]

Could anyone shut him up?

You, you're an administrator here. You can ban everyone who doesn't think like you, change the forum title, write long posts and thank yourself.

Great point I should consider that advice but it is also off topic here. This is about landing site (EDIT: forum structure) matters. Give up on your destructive gang capers - you have already failed and the forum is now a better place, but wants to see if a landing page could usefully find people the distro sections they are interested in. Perhaps you need a place for your debootstrap debiandog-like vanilla dpup, but this is wrong thread to ask for that.

Edit: Oops, sorry. This is the one about structure requests - fire away with vanilla dpup wishes!

[amethyst]

Puppy Linux is the reason for this forum to be here in the first place, never forget that.

The first distro actually featured on this forum was FirstRib (which is why I'm a founding admin) - irrelevant tho. Try to keep your posts on topic if you can stop dreaming

Fuck off

[geo_c]

@Governor
for clarification on your request see this post: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic. ... 25#p140525

[dogcat]

Puppy Linux is the reason for this forum to be here in the first place, never forget that.

The first distro actually featured on this forum was FirstRib (which is why I'm a founding admin) - irrelevant tho. Try to keep your posts on topic if you can stop dreaming

This forum is puppylinux.com, not whatever url it was before it became puppylinux.com
Puppylinux.com has always featured Puppy Linux as top dog.

[rockedge]

This forum is puppylinux.com, not whatever url it was before it became puppylinux.com

It was murga-linux.com/puppy......which still works because I added a URL rewrite rule to keep millions of links to it on the Internet working.

puppylinux.com was like an abandoned ship moored in the backwaters of some distant harbor. It did not become what is now until I aquired control of the domain name.

This was the de facto URL at the time; Try it out -> http://murga-linux.com/puppy

Puppy Linux was a sub-directory

[dogcat]

This forum is puppylinux.com, not whatever url it was before it became puppylinux.com

It was murga-linux.com/puppy......which still works because I added a URL rewrite rule to keep millions of links to it on the Internet working.

puppylinux.com was like an abandoned ship moored in the backwaters of some distant harbor. It did not become what is now until I aquired control of the domain name.

This was the de facto URL at the time; Try it out -> http://murga-linux.com/puppy

Puppy Linux was a sub-directory

I wrote that puppylinux.com has always featured Puppy Linux as top dog. I was commenting on the url, this url has always belonged with Puppy Linux and has featured Puppy Linux.This forum, your forum, running as puppylinux.com included. https://web.archive.org/web/20120701000 ... ylinux.com

I think you do a bang up job running it too.

It is interesting that you are going to reassign the puppylinux.com url as a launch page for the different sections of the forum. That was what puppylinux.com was originally used for so it will have gone full circle and returned to its roots /~ and your Puppy Linux forum will become a sub-directory? Wouldn't it be cool to somehow make the current Puppy Linux forum once again a sub-directory of murga-linux.com! and have everything redirected from the proposed puppylinux.com launch page I am babbling too much here going back into nostalgia mode and I realise the load on a server hosting both sites would require a ton of resources to maintain it at the current level you now have it performing at. Maybe the next guy that saves the Puppy Linux forum will do that