POP!_OS

[mikeslr]

Like much else, I stumbled upon this. I was aware that System76 manufacture 'pure' LInux computers. I was unaware that they had been publishing an OpenSource Linux operating system you could download and install on your computer.

They got into the OS publishing game, I think, when Ubuntu dropped support for the Unity desktop; or something like that. At any rate, System76 has taken the gnome-desktop under its wing and now employs gnome 40 as its Standard GUI. Click the following link to get an idea what they've done with it; but only in the latest version, 21.10:
https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/spai/q_glossy ... esktop.jpg
OOTB it supports tiling. What looks like cairo-dock at the bottom can opens apps, themselves; but the middle icon which looks like a cube opens a display of folders containing categorized application, Anyone familiar with Android would feel right at home. It goes without saying that it also supports virtual desktops. That dock's location and size is configurable. While I was able to operate the GUI via a mouse, I suspect that it can also be used by those who have 'touch-screens'.
Pop!_OS provides access to Ubuntu's repos via apt, and a Pop!_shop which anyone familiar with Google's Webstore will recognize. Pop!_store integrates synaptic with Ubuntu's regular and Flatpak repos. Additionally, from Ubuntu's repos gnome-software-manager can be installed providing even more package management options. [Edit: further reading suggest that it may break things. But synaptic can be installed]. Discovered the latter while looking for some way to execute shell commands. The Pop!_Store, itself, doesn't appear to provide applications to do so. But someone on reddit posted about the gnome-software-manager workaround.
AppImages are also supported. From Pop!_OS burned to a USB-Key via rufus. I wonder if EasyDD would have worked --rufus did not offer the option NOT to format the entire Key as an ISO96xxx device, I could access AppImages on my hard-drive (selected partitions mounted automatically) and run several.
Portables, however, could not be initiated via their 'launch-scripts': hence my above search. Oddly, however, in several instances where Mike Walsh packaged an AppImage as the 'motor' for a portable, those applications could be initiated by clicking the enclosed AppImage. What is lost, of course, was isolating such application's configuration files and caches within their own folders.

Pop!_OS has numerous methods for encrypting, up-to-and-including the entire drive on which it is located.

Edited: See wiak's post following. I guess I was wrong. Pop!_OS does not employ systemd.
It is published in three 'flavors'; one for RasberryPI; and one each for intel and nvidia graphic managers.
An interesting distro for someone having far greater skill than I to explore as a potential Woof candidate; or as a "debian-dog".

[mikewalsh]

Interesting, Mike.

As someone who regularly reads many of the tech blogs, I've been aware of the existence of Pop!_OS for a while. However, I was NOT aware that it could be downloaded & installed separate from its System76 "integration".

Looks.....different, I'll give it that! I might give it a try myself. Thanks for the 'desktop' link.

(I suspect the reason for the inability of the 'portables' to launch from their respective 'LAUNCH' scripts boils down to permissions. Pop!_OS being built around a true multi-user OS - with the user having the usual limited permissions - it probably doesn't like the Puppy 'root' permissions all these are built with.

I wonder if they would work if you prepended 'sudo' to the Exec lines..?)

T'other Mike.

[wiak]

Pop!_OS does not employ systemd. It is published in three 'flavors'; one for RasberryPI; and one each for intel and nvidia graphic managers.
An interesting distro for someone having far greater skill than I to explore as a potential Woof candidate; or as a "debian-dog".

OK, just for you, I've done it: via weedogit.sh auto-build WDL frugal install script - so same save persistence mechanisms, parameters, and overlay methodology as used in KLV-Airedale, which means several of the fredx181 contributions to that will also work when ported to the resulting WDL_popos64 frugal installation, which as I explain is best NOT made on a SLOW usb2 flash stick, which I regrettably did!: viewtopic.php?p=49926#p49926

Maybe most hard drives will be fast enough (and faster system than my old rubbish dev laptop) and maybe even usb3 flash, but NOT usb2... no no no no no
It DID work though. I'm still in pain. By the way, it very much DOES use systemd though.

[sonny]

I wanted to like POP!_OS and Zorin. But "System76" & "Mr. Zorin" scared me away...

[mikeslr]

Pop!_OS does not employ systemd. It is published in three 'flavors'; one for RasberryPI; and one each for intel and nvidia graphic managers.
An interesting distro for someone having far greater skill than I to explore as a potential Woof candidate; or as a "debian-dog".

OK, just for you, I've done it: via weedogit.sh auto-build WDL frugal install script - so same save persistence mechanisms, parameters, and overlay methodology as used in KLV-Airedale, which means several of the fredx181 contributions to that will also work when ported to the resulting WDL_popos64 frugal installation, which as I explain is best NOT made on a SLOW usb2 flash stick, which I regrettably did!: viewtopic.php?p=49926#p49926

Maybe most hard drives will be fast enough (and faster system than my old rubbish dev laptop) and maybe even usb3 flash, but NOT usb2... no no no no no
It DID work though. I'm still in pain. By the way, it very much DOES use systemd though.

Thanks, wiak. I'll give it a try as soon as my mind clears enough to incorporate the info on your linked post.

[wiak]

Pop!_OS does not employ systemd. It is published in three 'flavors'; one for RasberryPI; and one each for intel and nvidia graphic managers.
An interesting distro for someone having far greater skill than I to explore as a potential Woof candidate; or as a "debian-dog".

OK, just for you, I've done it: via weedogit.sh auto-build WDL frugal install script - so same save persistence mechanisms, parameters, and overlay methodology as used in KLV-Airedale, which means several of the fredx181 contributions to that will also work when ported to the resulting WDL_popos64 frugal installation, which as I explain is best NOT made on a SLOW usb2 flash stick, which I regrettably did!: viewtopic.php?p=49926#p49926

Maybe most hard drives will be fast enough (and faster system than my old rubbish dev laptop) and maybe even usb3 flash, but NOT usb2... no no no no no
It DID work though. I'm still in pain. By the way, it very much DOES use systemd though.

Thanks, wiak. I'll give it a try as soon as my mind clears enough to incorporate the info on your linked post.

You can forget the info - too much to read. Just download the weedogit.sh script into an empty directory and run it. Sit back and have a coffee whilst it does its stuff. The rest becomes obvious
viewtopic.php?t=5206 for brief details and then, script download is at: viewtopic.php?p=50074#p50074

Presuming that is you already have a copy of previous weedogit.sh. New version coming later today or tomorrow so not uploaded yet - only difference is it can now weedog a dozen different major distros in similar fashion - useful hopefully for those who like testing 'other' distros and want to employ them in forum frugal install fashion.

[wiak]

Hopefully I've managed to now improve weedogit.sh auto-frugal-installer shell script. More details, currently/temporarily 'Sticky' here: viewtopic.php?p=50075#p50075

[hundido]

Pop OS became my new daily driver recently, after I couldn't get Manjaro to run Civ 6 on Steam and still can't get anything Puppyish to do some things I need. I like it.

[mikeslr]

Thanks again, wiak. Your weedogit.sh script seems to have done all the heavy lifting. A really great application.
I was sort-of compelled to take your advice "Sit back and have a coffee whilst it does its stuff". It was my wife's birthday so we went out for dinner. I left weedogit running and when I came back the folder I had named poppup64 was populated as shown in this screenshot:

POP-OS Folder Top Level.png (26.53 KiB) Viewed 1372 times

And the terminal was displaying suggested menu entries to be added to grub4dos or grub.cfg. Nice touch. All I had to do was copy it for future reference and for adding to my boot-loader's menu.lst/grub.cfg. Which is when things went South.
The terminal was, I think, urxvt but in any event required that lines be selected then a middle-click to copy. Select went OK. Middle-click terminated the terminal without having copied the lines into the clipboard --at any rate not so I could paste them anywhere.
I hate urxvt. In theory I understand 'Middle-Click'. But my fingers haven't gotten the message. I always install lxterminal and make it default. But under my Voidpup64 that choice didn't stick. [Will have to look into that].
At any rate, my suggestion for "improvement" of weedogit.sh is to add a line to 'echo' the suggested stanzas* to /root or /root/my-documents* with the terminal just displaying a notice where they will be found. [On second thought, write a text file within the folder which weedogit has populated. That would also work if weedogit was run under an OS which doesn't use /root as its user's home folder].

So my assignment for today is to review my notes and forum posts to figure out how to write a listing to grub.cfg (and menu.lst while I'm at it).

I see that there's a current discussion of the klv-airdale thread, viewtopic.php?p=50182#p50182, about the meaning of all the possible arguments in such stanzas*. If I find anything useful, I'll post something there.

----
* Per https://www.britannica.com/art/stanza "a division of a poem consisting of two or more lines arranged together as a unit..." Well, I know a 'menu-listing' is not a poem. But I can't think of a better word to describe the structure of a 'menu-listing'. Suggestions welcomed.

[mikeslr]

Well, despite the discussion here, viewtopic.php?p=50182#p50182 hand-writing a menu entry was pretty easy. This booted into my 'frugal' Pop!_OS:

menuentry 'PopOS'{
search --no-floppy --set=root --fs-uuid MINE FROM THE LISTING OF A PUPPY
linux /poppup64/vmlinuz-5.15.15-76051515-generic w_bootfrom=/mnt/sda3/poppup64
initrd /poppup64/initrd.gz
}

Now to see if
(a) I can make heads-or-tails out of the different "w_changes=RAM?" commands*; and
(b) vmlinuz-5.15.15-76051515-generic be simplified to just vmlinuz so as to avoid scrivener errors.

My hunt for info may not have been an entire waste of time. But as noted in my prior post, I'll discuss the results of that search on the above thread.

-=-=-=-=-=-
* wiak, stop reading my mind and providing answers before I can even ask. viewtopic.php?p=50221#p50221

[wiak]

w_bootfrom=/mnt/sda3/poppup64

Yes, this method of specifying w_bootfrom directory location does usually work, but if the drive is usb then sometimes the underlying computer randomly changes the designation; meaning on some boots it refers to the drive as sda on other boot sometimes refers to it as sdb. i.e. that method is not guaranteed consistent.

More reliable therefore is to find the UUID of the partition (using blkid command) and then using the following grub config format (per that post I guessed your mind with):

viewtopic.php?p=50221#p50221

So I get automatic save persistence (into folder upper_changes on my hard disk) when booting with grub menu.lst:

Code: Select all

title KLV-airedale64
  find --set-root uuid () f69e84fc-6a11-4025-a93b-516b1a12c87f
  kernel /klv/vmlinuz w_bootfrom=UUID=f69e84fc-6a11-4025-a93b-516b1a12c87f=/klv
  initrd /klv/initrd.gz

or if grub.cfg I use (albeit with your own system uuid of course):

Code: Select all

menuentry "KLV-airedale64" {
  insmod ext2
  search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set  f69e84fc-6a11-4025-a93b-516b1a12c87f
  linux /klv/vmlinuz w_bootfrom=UUID=f69e84fc-6a11-4025-a93b-516b1a12c87f=/klv
  initrd /klv/initrd.gz
}

Yes you can then add upstream Linux kernel specific grub kernel line arguments, and/or specific WDL init special arguments for the likes of running in RAM mode or save persistence to RAM only (i.e. arguments such as: w_changes=RAM2). For official kernel type arguments I normally look here (detailed and you need to research the meanings and use): https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.14/a ... eters.html

By the way, good idea to write out these grub-related 'templates' to the frugal install directory. I'll implement that in next release in addition to a couple of new distros for weedogging such as TerryH-used PCLinuxOS.

I also hate urxvt for interactive use, by the way. Who would ever want to have to click two mouse buttons at the same time - I find that very tricky. So, I too immediately install something like lxterminal if similar powered terminal not available; fact is it isn't a big install and it pains me that it (or similar) is not default in all Puppies, exactly for the reason you state - urxvt alone is the opposite of user-friendly and thus counter to Puppy's design objectives. I suppose on user-friendly distros users aren't expected to use terminals... I don't know any distro on which I find that true, and basic use of terminals is pretty simple anyway - you don't need to be a hard-core dev to enter a quick command..... (or cut and paste something from one - as long as something like lxterminal and NOT urxvt).

[Grey]

basic use of terminals is pretty simple anyway

I'm used to urxvt and its menu (CTRL+right click). However, I recently launched Manjaro (KDE flavour) in Qemu and saw Yakuake (drop-down terminal emulator) working there. I press F12 and terminal "slides" down from the top of the screen. Impressive, what can I say.

[ninjanoir78]

I tried to install pop os many times on 3 systems in the last month and it is impossible. Always the pop os initramfs screen at boot, I tried any possibility about that, nothing happened.

I don't really know how to resolve that

[mikeslr]

I tried to install pop os many times on 3 systems in the last month and it is impossible. Always the pop os initramfs screen at boot, I tried any possibility about that, nothing happened.

I don't really know how to resolve that

You really haven't offered anywhere near enough information for us to do more than offer our sympathies.
If your problems are with Pop!_OS, itself, than your best bet is to seek advice on a Pop!_OS forum or blog.
I know the Pop!_OS.isos can be burnt to a USB-Key and that there are several Windows programs (rufus recommended) and several Linux applications to do that. I always recommend trying to boot from a USB-Key first. Not every Linux will function from every computer. But it's odd that you've had problems on three systems.
One of the potential problems of getting a system to boot is properly configuring a grub4dos menu.lst or a grub2 grub.cfg. First burning to a USB-Stick avoids that as the 'burning' program/application knows how to write a boot-loader to a USB-Stick and associated listings for those operating systems it supports.

If your problems were with a Puppy, I'd suggest that you start a thread in either the Beginner's Section of the Forum or the specific Section for that Puppy. But only after you read bigpup's post, "Information we need to help you" viewtopic.php?p=816#p816 so as to know what information to include in your post. And in posting, also keep in mind the rule of thumb "One Post, One problem". Discuss only one system per post. bigpup's advice should be followed when seeking advice on other forums, or seeking advice on this forum about operating systems other than Puppys.

Have you tried using weedogit.sh, viewtopic.php?p=50075#p50075 per its instructions to deploy Pop!_OS to a hard-drive?
If, having tried it, you still have problem(s) I'm not sure where on this Forum you should post about it. A weedoged POP!_OS is neither a Puppy, nor a Dog, nor even one of the Weedog system created and maintained by any of us. It just happens to be a Linux Operating system which can be weedoged.
Perhaps wiak (creator of weedogit) or rockedge (forum Administrator) have a preference.
I think, from half-a-world-away, I hear wiak mubbling under his breath. But I can't tell whether he mumbled "No good deed goes unpunished" or "Now, what have I gotten myself into?"
So, before doing anything else, try booting POP!_OS via a USB-Stick, directly --not using weedogit to deploy it. As TerryH's thread about pclinuxOS suggest, viewtopic.php?p=50134#p50134, and following, weedogit, itself, will not solve OOTB problems peculiar to a specific operating system.
Make a note of every thing you do; and every bit of information displayed which may suggest what goes wrong.

[wiak]

I think, from half-a-world-away, I hear wiak mubbling under his breath. But I can't tell whether he mumbled "No good deed goes unpunished" or "Now, what have I gotten myself into?"
So, before doing anything else, try booting POP!_OS via a USB-Stick, directly --not using weedogit to deploy it. As TerryH's thread about pclinuxOS suggest, viewtopic.php?p=50134#p50134, and following, weedogit, itself, will not solve OOTB problems peculiar to a specific operating system.

Hmmm, yes (as I mumble to myself). If your problem is that POP!_OS doesn't boot in itself on any of your system even when installed directly using POP!_OS recommended installation procedures that is nothing to do with me. For that you should seek resolution on POP!_OS forum.

If you make a frugal install of POP!_OS distro using the weedogit.sh utility I provide on this forum, and something wrong with the WDL boot part of it, this (Puppy Forum -> Other Distros) is the thread to raise your issues. But please understand that it is very possible (even likely) that I myself don't regularly (or maybe ever) even use most of the distros weedogit.sh may be able to help frugal install - I just supply that script as something I believe some here will find useful sometimes since the final build result is the sort of typical in own directory frugal install we tend to prefer here (and can use all the same 'tricks' and boot/save-persistence-related utility apps as for example KLV-Airedale, which is currently being community developed).

What I can say definitely is that the 'WeeDogged' POP!_OS worked fine on my two very different laptops here, but that doesn't mean it will work on everyones hardware of course.