Vivaldi Browser in QuickPet, Official Repos

[Puppyt]

Hi Puppians -
my request regards updating official Puppy QuickPet and repositories with the Vivaldi browser https://vivaldi.com. Failing that, a nice tutorial on how to prepare/convert DEB packages etc to enable start menu inclusion, desktop icons and so forth would be handy I think. Cheers

[bigpup]

Things do not work quite that way.
Software has to be compiled, for specific versions, of Puppy.
It really depends on the software, if it will also work on other versions of Puppy.

There are 4 versions of Puppy, that have the Quickpet feature.

What specific Puppy version are you using?

The name of the Puppy iso, is best to give us.
That will tell us everything we need to know, about the version.
Name, 32bit or 64bit, and what version release of it.

[Puppyt]

Hi bigpup,
thanks for your reply. Currently I'm typing from Vivaldi 3.6 which I installed via DEB https://vivaldi.com/download/ in DevuanPup64. There was a condition to set in the config file to enable running from root without sandboxing which I outline here viewtopic.php?p=19892#p19892. The need for such a workaround surprised me - I've been away from Puppy Linux for the best part of a year and wasn't aware of these developments.
I thought Vivaldi might make a compelling choice for addition in the Puppy repository. Cheers

[mikewalsh]

@Puppyt :-

Mm. By & large, m'colleague's comments about compiling hold true. However, this is not so much the case with browsers.....Chromium-based clones in particular.

The Chromium Project is, as is generally known, Google's R & D department for the Chrome browser. Chromium is where all the cutting-edge ideas, fixes, patches, workarounds, etc., are tried out for the first time. Invariably, Chromium is compiled against - and expects to find itself running under - the very newest of everything. You would expect that this means those alternative browsers built around the same code-base would, like Chromium itself, only run under the newest OSs.....but of course, this isn't so.

In almost every case, developers of 'clones' (as I call them) take the source code & re-compile it, usually to run under rather older dependencies, etc.....the idea being to make their browsers available to a wider user-base; of course, here in the Linux world in particular, not everyone religiously upgrades to the very newest of everything the instant it becomes available. Yet they can still run their same, favourite browser.....

My Vivaldi-portable package will, to the best of my knowledge, run under Fossapup64 9.5, Bionicpup64 8.0, Xenialpup64 7.5, and, with a few tweaks, run under Tahrpup64 6.0.5 & 6.0.6. And the 32-bit variant will run under the 32-bit versions of the above-mentioned Pups, too.

Mike.

[mikewalsh]

@Puppyt :-

I guess most of us probably learnt packaging the same way. By taking a known, working package, extracting it, and studying the way it was constructed.

The actual packaging itself isn't hard to learn. Every Puppy contains the tools to do so by default. The skill, I think, comes in deciding, and figuring out, just what an application needs to run in a given Puppy; requirements can vary from Pup to Pup, though many dependencies are common to all.....much of the X-server display stuff, for example.

Beyond that, you need to work out exactly where, and in what directories items need to be placed. Do I need sym-links? Have I got permissions right, or ownership? Am I going to pack it as a .pet package, or do I want an SFS instead? Or, as in the case of portable packages, tarballing is often required. And so on.....

Personally, I don't think it's something that's that easy to teach. Beyond that, once you've created a few packages, everybody develops their own individual "work-flow"; working directories (where to put them, how many do I need.....what size); sometimes, you find script items can often be re-used (with modifications).

If you need to compile something before you can start to assemble your package, prior to building it, well.....that's a whole 'nother ball-game on its own..!

And not everybody's cut out to do this stuff. It takes a peculiar level of patience to build software packages.....and to get them right, so's they work.

Mike.

[Puppyt]

@@mikewalsh,
hey thanks for your contributions, mike - and in strange co-incidence I followed your adventures in AppImages and mirrored them with PortableApps in my Win10 environs. I haven't been back to Puppy on a committed basis for well over a year, so dipping my toes I've missed seeing your Portable Vivaldi package - I will track that down and investigate (in due course) how you might have got around the "no support for running from root without sandboxing" issue.

Spot ties me in knots. Cannot understand nanny-state "protections" that counter Puppy's "run from root" freedom ethos. With great power comes great responsibility of course...

I was able to get Vivaldi going on a recent Pupplet (DevuanPup64) after I had trouble with a BionicPup64 pupplet from the Hungarian Puppy Linux group that looked like a great base for my project (dosbox, wine, java etc all built in) - but it was shacked with spot-related protections and a nightmare for my rusty problem-solving abilities.

Now with my suggestion of Vivaldi as a more permanent possibility as a supported browser in the official Puppy canon (like seamonkey, dillo in golden times past, various editions of Iron, Chromium, FF ESR etc (from memory - back writing from the dark side in Win10 at present)) was due in part to the reported/purported philosophies of Vivaldi (e.g., https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-mail-t ... l-preview/ - not a great link to *stated* philosophies and goals but a good history of the ethos in action I think).
I quite understand the issues and efforts with maintaining Puppy repos - I developed my own dingo-era Pupplet back in the day, and keeping up-to-date with the 15 or so specially-selected software and their dependencies rapidly made me feel very much like the Dutch fable about fingers and holes in protective levees. So I appreciate the nature of volunteering pets/sfs to the 'official' Puppy canon, Cheers

[mikewalsh]

@Puppyt :-

Well, in my own case - after receiving tons of help in the early days, and being so pleased to find an OS that not only was capable of running, OOTB, on elderly problematical hardware, but was actually fun to use, too - I found myself wanting to contribute back to the Puppy "do-ocracy" in some shape or form.

I, too, wanted to get a couple of specific packages working in the Pups I was using at the time. Not finding any packages that actually worked, I thought, "If others can build packages, why can't I?" I unzipped other packages; looked at how they were constructed; read a lot, and absorbed some of the techniques that were needed for package-building; learnt how to track down deps that might be needed, etc, etc..... I found out, quite by accident, that I had something of a "knack" for it. The rest, as they say, is history.....

If you want any specific pointers, I'm quite happy to share techniques, Don't hesitate to ask; the more of us that can help re-stock the available Puppy software "pool", the better for all of us in the long run.

Mike,

[Feek]

About half a year ago I tested Vivaldi browser. In Bionicpup64 and UpupBB I discovered a tool to get Vivaldi via PPM. The tool was called "get vivaldi browser" or something like that (I'm not in Puppy right now) and I think it was in one of the Puppy´s repos. I installed it and ran it. At first it asked if you want a stable version or some other, then downloaded it and created sfs. If I remember correctly, the browser version was always the last stable.

[bigpup]

Fossapup64 9.5 has Vivaldi as a option download and install in Quickpet->Browsers