Vanilla Upup 22.04.61

[dimkr]

Any volunteers to fix PPM?

[artemis]

i have over the months put some thought into the matter and have already gotten my feet wet with the code some what. but i have also been starting a new job, and that will be occupying much of my thoughtspace for the near future.

still, if i have the place for it, i would like to fix it, at least where it fails for my own usings. but i do not like to make promises until i know i can keep them. so for now i will not commit to such things.

if i did, i think i would like to first take the PPM internals and replace them with using pkg subcommands. then focus on fixing bugs i have encountered with pkg with dependency resolution, breaking when too many packages are installed (see viewtopic.php?t=5686) and so on. and from there we could add more pkg features into the ppm gui. that way the efforts benefit both people. but of course this is not the thread of that development to happen, so i will also post this elsewhere so I don't forget.

[Clarity]

Any volunteers to fix PPM?

@dimkr, @peebee @666philb @01micko

Does the work done by @mistfire and @sc0ttman provide the universal solution that I think WoofCE wants?

Curious if this resolution could address PPM and package-management concerns. Further, they, too, may be GITHUB users.

And for all users and developers on this Puppy Linux forum, you might find this video of interest for Package management as a simpler solution.

[wiak]

And for all users and developers on this Puppy Linux forum, you might find this video of interest for Package management as a simpler solution.

Interesting. I've heard of Homebrew, but never once looked into it. Nix is mentioned in some of that videos comments. They 'seem' a bit similar, but I haven't worked out what they do really. Main question I have is - do they install all deps for a package into the directory reserved for that package? If so the resulting distro would be a large one of course (a bit like using Flatpaks and so on), and then wouldn't probably be of much interest as a package manager for a Puppy-like-sized distro.

[mistfire]

Any volunteers to fix PPM?

@dimkr

What fixes needed for PPM? Just curious

[dimkr]

@mistfire All the PPM haters have evaporated or something, but it's easy to find UI bugs in PPM. For example, if you install a package, you must restart PPM to make it appear in the list of packages that can be removed. Also, it's easy to find packages it fails to install.

I'm fixing these two in https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/3317, just because I'm nice:

https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... ssues/3188
https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... ssues/3115

But I don't volunteer to test PPM in all possible use cases, find more bugs and fix them.

[Clarity]

@dimkr are you aware of the Package management (PM) work of @mistfire ?

If not, and you have a few moments, take a look with the inlook of whether it would be a good General PM for the varied WoofCE PUPs created.

Just a note as it appears to handle several PMs including PETs bringing a level of consistent package integration to the various systems.

[dimkr]

@dimkr are you aware of the Package management (PM) work of @mistfire ?

Yes, I'm aware of it, and I don't like it for the same reasons I don't like PPM. It's a different thing but the fundamental problems are mostly the same: it's also a shell script, it doesn't understand multilib, it doesn't understand the idea of a package that depends on option 1 or option 2, the UI is slow because it's a shell script with gtkdialog, and so on. A package manager that tries to emulate apt will always be slightly broken and inferior to apt. It's a complex piece of software, not something you can easily replace with a shell script and expect the same degree of reliability and performance.

I don't mind including pkg in my builds, under 4 conditions:
1. pkg is configured so it doesn't mess with .deb packages at all and gdebi stays the default handler for .deb files
2. PPM becomes an optional rather than mandatory component of woof-CE, so I can leave it out
3. pkg gets properly integrated into woof-CE (specifically, into rootfs-packages)
4. All problems and new features in pkg are documented and prioritized via GitHub issues, and it doesn't receive any unexplained changes (the various "fix x", "update y" changes people push into parts of woof-CE that affect everyone)

[wiak]

@dimkr are you aware of the Package management (PM) work of @mistfire ?

Yes, I'm aware of it, and I don't like it for the same reasons I don't like PPM. It's a different thing but the fundamental problems are mostly the same: it's also a shell script, it doesn't understand multilib, it doesn't understand the idea of a package that depends on option 1 or option 2, the UI is slow because it's a shell script with gtkdialog, and so on. A package manager that tries to emulate apt will always be slightly broken and inferior to apt. It's a complex piece of software, not something you can easily replace with a shell script and expect the same degree of reliability and performance.

I don't mind including pkg in my builds, under 4 conditions:
1. pkg is configured so it doesn't mess with .deb packages at all and gdebi stays the default handler for .deb files
2. PPM becomes an optional rather than mandatory component of woof-CE, so I can leave it out
3. pkg gets properly integrated into woof-CE (specifically, into rootfs-packages)
4. All problems and new features in pkg are documented and prioritized via GitHub issues, and it doesn't receive any unexplained changes (the various "fix x", "update y" changes people push into parts of woof-CE that affect everyone)

I think that plan makes sense. I agree that PPM is far from ideal and pkg only makes that a bit better and on systems that use apt, neither are a reliable replacement. But they do have that special advantage they work across Pups of different types and pup users are used to them.. I am sure whatever slows them down could be improved substantially eventually (C code for some parts maybe, or I read suggestion that awk might help in some areas - not that awk is particularly fast either...).
I've long advocated for using official package managers rather than apt (and that was part of the reason I worked on FirstRib root filesystem builder script, back in early 2019) to usually use busybox and upstream package managers to get the WeeDog-initrd-related distro built (though not always and not forced as only option).

I only support the idea of continuing to include PPM/pkg in Puppy Linux distro itself because that is what people expect in a Pup - a common to all (however imperfect) package manager that continues to handle Puppy dotpet package format - but for deb packages should avoid using PPM/pkg when on a dpkg/apt capable Pup and important to limit possible damage PPM/pkg installs could otherwise mess up dpkg database correctness for sure. Mixing package managers in that way is definitely far from ideal - very different approach to sandboxed off applications via containers, or Flatpaks, or Snaps and so on, which are designed not to mess with the underlying distro repo package manager. But it is Puppy and that kind of crazy any-thing-goes mentality is part of its history - if you don't want that craziness one option is to use, as I said, DebianDogs if you want truly multi-user capable dpkg/apt package management distro.

But aside from the good or bad of PPM or pkg themselves, there is a big plus advantage to using simple dotpets specially crafted for Puppy Linux and installed via PPM/pkg: you can cut them down better than easily done with deb packages downloaded from official repos (yes, still need to protect dpkg database somehow if you can). The official deb packages may be compiled with dependencies you could get away with not having in a smaller compile sometimes and dotpet installation then allows someone interested in making a lean and mean Puppy to do so. So despite the reliability of dpkg/apt, the use of upstream repo packages (no matter how they are installed) can increase size/dependencies bloat - might not matter to you, but will to some. It is a pity dotpet contents get mixed into the usual /usr/bin, /bin and so on filesystem locations - better if they could be somehow separated (and tons of dotpets in existence already write into /usr/bin and so on...) - a container for dotpet PPM installations of some sort or another, maybe, that somehow doesn't mess with dpkg/apt installed components - but that sounds complicated to me.

[williams2]

@wiak said

not that awk is particularly fast either

awk is a compiled from source executable, and as such, can execute as fast as any other gcc compiled executable.

For example, I used to burn cd/dvd optical disks, some time ago.
I would usually test the burned disks using cdck
I pretty much ignored cdck's pronouncements of the burned disk's quality,
and displayed the results graphically.

cdck would output millions of data points..
Most of the data points were read directly from the optical drive's buffer, in ram, which is very fast.
The interesting points are when the next block of data is read into the ram buffer. Those values can show whether the block of data is read once, or if the imperfect data block needs to be read more than once, to read the data block correctly, to match the data blocks checksum.

Those data points read directly from the ram buffer, do not need to be plotted, and the points that were read directly from the ram buffer don't need to be in the file output by cdck, making the file much smaller.

This awk command reads the data in the input file and copies only the first and second numbers (the third numbers are not needed) to the output file. Something like this:

Code: Select all

awk '$2>1000{print $1,$2}' <input.file >output.file

The thing is, I wrote and compiled a gcc program to read the numbers and output only the lines with the second number greater than 1000. The awk command was almost as fast as the gcc program, no more than 1 percent difference. I tried other languages, like Freebasic and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(pr ... _language) which were not any faster.

For example, this is a graph of the time it took to read each data block from the disc. You can see the straight horizontal line at the bottom of the graph, which shows the times to read from the buffer in ram. The curved line at the top of the graph are the times it took to read a data block from the optical disc to the buffer, which is the data that you do want.
Below is a Verbatim DataLifePlus with the blue azo dye. These are good discs, as you can see from the graph.

verbatim-datalifeplus-azo-cdr.png (19.23 KiB) Viewed 3743 times

Below is a Fuji disc, made by Reitek. This is not a good disc.

fuji-ritek1a.png (22.13 KiB) Viewed 3743 times

Below is a Memorex disc burned 16x speed. Slower is not always better. This is not a good disc. The millions of superfluous points that were the times it took to read the line from the ram buffer were filtered out by awk

memorex_burned_at_16x.png (26.07 KiB) Viewed 3743 times

The point is, I found awk to be about as fast as a gcc executable compiled from source.
Why not, the awk executable also was compiled from source by gcc.

[wiak]

The point is, I found awk to be about as fast as a gcc executable compiled from source.
Why not, the awk executable also was compiled from source by gcc.

You are correct. I wasn't thinking. Or at least I was thinking of awk being used for pattern matching but still part of bash script (which is the slow part of course). If whole thing written in awk then fast like C almost so that is what slow pattern matching part of PPM could do with (or in C or whatever).

[dimkr]

Let's not forget that PPM downloads packages sequentially (so it doesn't utilize available bandwidth) and that's only one design sin among many, while some performance-critical parts are already written in C.

[mikeslr]

See my post here, https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=7077 and next post on that thread for suggested other tools.

[RyPuppy]

Installed Vanilla Pup from
https://github.com/dimkr/woof-CE/releas ... .04.61.iso.

Laptop : HP Pavillion x360 with TouchScreen.

Did a manual install by copying all the .SFS files into partition SDA6:/VanillaPup/ along with initrd and vmlinuz.
Booting successfully by adding the following GRUB entry
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
menuentry "0. Vanilla Pup 22.04.61 - Puppy Linux - [SDA6]" {
set root=(hd0, gpt6)
linux /VanillaPup/vmlinuz psubdir=/VanillaPup pmedia=atahd pupsfs=sda6
initrd /VanillaPup/initrd.gz
}
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Directory SDA6: /VanillaPup
bdrv_vanillapup_22.04.61.sfs
fdrv_vanillapup_22.04.61.sfs
puppy_vanillapup_22.04.61.sfs
zdrv_vanillapup_22.04.61.sfs
initrd.gz
vmlinuz
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Issues

1. Cannot find the option to configure WiFi network
- Puppy Setup -> Internet ==> can enable / disable Wired/Wireless Network. No Configuration option

2. Making configuration changes results in System Freeze.
- Can only move the cursor. System does not crash but ZERO response when clicking any of the menu items.
- I have to Hard Reboot by pulling the plug. Usually the last configuration change does go through and gets saved.

I am also running FossaPup on this machine with ZERO issues.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[RyPuppy]

I would like to Boot "vanillaupup-22.04.61.iso" from GRUB Boot Loader.

I have had partial success so far...

Partition
SDA5: Ubuntu : /boot/grub/grub.cfg ==> Grub Boot Loader config file
SDA6: /ISOFILE/vanillaupup-22.04.61.iso ==> Vanilla Pup ISO

#===========================================================
# Menu Entry to Boot Vanilla Pup ISO
#===========================================================

menuentry 'A. ISO BOOT VanillaPup.2204 - [SDA6] ' {
set isofn="/ISOFILE/vanillaupup-22.04.61.iso"
echo "---- File : $isofn ---"

insmod ext2
insmod iso9660
insmod loopback

loopback loop (hd0,gpt6)${isofn}

echo '..... Loading Vanilla Pup VMLINUZ .....'
linux (loop)/vmlinuz iso-scan/filename=${isofn}

echo '..... Loading Vanilla Pup INITRD .....'
initrd (loop)/initrd.gz
}
#===========================================================

Above entry boots into VaniallPup Desktop directly and does not provide Installation Options.

Any suggestions on what other flags / options that needs to be included in the above entry ?

[wiak]

First post download link now gives 404 not found.

I realise it was being 'wound down' but didn't know the iso link would go dead.

I presume most recent Pup Jammy is here: https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... 4070206420
Pretty big download; late here, I'll fetch it tomorrow. Checking out the huge kernel/modules.
Didn't wait; I see - includes devx and more.

[gychang]

First post download link now gives 404 not found.

same problem still, where can I download the iso?

[ally]

sadly I missed that download, if anybody has it I'll mirror it

[gychang]

since the first link doesn't work for downloading the iso, one may want to try here....

https://archive.org/details/Puppy_Linux_vanillaupup

[jrb]

since the first link doesn't work for downloading the iso, one may want to try here....

https://archive.org/details/Puppy_Linux_vanillaupup

I see that the latest iso there is vanillaupup-22.04.55.iso, so I have uploaded vanillaupup-22.04.61.iso (30Dec22) to googledrive. I hope that works for everyone.

Cheers, J

[gychang]

since the first link doesn't work for downloading the iso, one may want to try here....

https://archive.org/details/Puppy_Linux_vanillaupup

I see that the latest iso there is vanillaupup-22.04.55.iso, so I have uploaded vanillaupup-22.04.61.iso (30Dec22) to googledrive. I hope that works for everyone.

Cheers, J

@jrb thanks, I had difficulty installing rox and urxvt, using PPM and apt, I prefer these to pcmanfm and lxterminal. Any solution for this?

[dimkr]

@gychang You can grab a development build of jammy64 with X.Org, ROX-Filer, aufs and other traditional Puppy things from https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/w ... ammy64.yml (new build every two weeks). Expect rough corners.

[ally]

@gychang

since the first link doesn't work for downloading the iso, one may want to try here....

the puppy linux archive pages are mine! I've grabbed your copy and am mirroring, thank you

[jrb]

@gychang

@jrb thanks, I had difficulty installing rox and urxvt, using PPM and apt, I prefer these to pcmanfm and lxterminal. Any solution for this?

Removed: see Here for latest release. Here's a local WoofCE jammy build that I've been playing with. It's jwm and rox, has urxvt. Palemoon in the ydrv, mpv for mediaplayer, alsaplayer for audioplayer. Includes peebee's "Get Web Browser" to keep browsers up to date. Give it a try, I'll be happy to share the build files.

[gychang]

@gychang

@jrb thanks, I had difficulty installing rox and urxvt, using PPM and apt, I prefer these to pcmanfm and lxterminal. Any solution for this?

Here's a local WoofCE jammy build that I've been playing with. It's jwm and rox, has urxvt. Palemoon in the ydrv, mpv for mediaplayer, alsaplayer for audioplayer. Includes peebee's "Get Web Browser" to keep browsers up to date. Give it a try, I'll be happy to share the build files.

very good, I will send u a PM.

[Clarity]

Hi @jrb I see the ISO offering you posted in an above post. Is that generated via WoofCE or via a Remaster of some forum distro or via the work done by the KL builders which also generates a great Puppy-type derivative?

Thanks in advance

[wiak]

Hi @jrb I see the ISO offering you posted in an above post. Is that generated via WoofCE or via a Remaster of some forum distro or via the work done by the KL builders which also generates a great Puppy-type derivative?

Thanks in advance

Clarity, the post clearly says local Woof-CE, and there are not at this time at least any Puppy derivatives in KL section; nothing to stop someone starting with a Puppy and creating a KL, but no one has. There seems to be an obsession on the forum for wanting to call every distro discussed on the forum a Puppy, which hasn't been true for over ten years now! Gang mentality. Why are newcomers to this forum continually being given such false information regarding distro designs discussed here? Like some kind of silly mafia protectionism. RIdiculous.

KLA is an unofficial Arch-Linux-derivative, KLU is an unofficial Void-Linux-derivative, KLU-jam is an unofficial Ubuntu-derivative. These are not Pups in any shape or form - they are full multi-user distros that use same package management and underlying root filesystem as their upstream mainstream distro. Main difference from the mainline is simply the heart of the system being FirstRib initrd (plus various utilities from around the forum), which provides them all with full frugal install and optional run in RAM functionality.

Upup, on the other hand, is stated as a Woof-CE-derivative. As for 'official', who really cares?

[dimkr]

If you put something that is not a Puppy in a forum titled "Puppy Linux Discussion Forum", don't be surprised if some people misunderstand it or get confused.

[wiak]

If you put something that is not a Puppy in a forum titled "Puppy Linux Discussion Forum", don't be surprised if some people misunderstand it or get confused.

Clarity isn't confused at all, as well you know. I'm not sure half of these Pups you have made have actually been Puppy Linux (not according to Distrowatch submissions anyway), but who cares. Get confused if you can't handle diversity I suppose - you should have moaned about it ten years ago when the first DebianDogs came out.

Actually I've never quite understood why rockedge insisted on still calling it the Puppy Linux forum. Murga forum had long long stopped being just that. Nostalgia for the old stuff I suppose. EasyOS confuses me though - not even an iso, but I'm just joking.

Anyway, there are so many KL (various) downloads nowadays there doesn't seem to be much confusion.

[dimkr]

Actually I've never quite understood why rockedge insisted on still calling it the Puppy Linux forum.

Why do you insist on putting non-Puppy stuff in this forum, when you can have your own forum? If you move your stuff to a separate forum that doesn't say "Puppy" everywhere you won't have to complain about that "obsession" you see.