Specific older browser onto Bionic/Tahr? (Solved)

[janugsa]

I use a translator to write the text.
Welcome everyone, this is the first time I am writing here.
Venn.
I tried the Newmoon_29 portable browser on tahrpup 6.0.2.
LAUNCH didn't work for me either (it used to work fine). But in the palemoon32 folder next to it, palemoon.bin launches the browser. The difference is the profile location.
Download it again. It worked for me after that.
I tried it on this:
I have an old laptop. CPU 550MHz RAM 256MB, swap 800MB
22 years old. The winchester is even older 26 years old.
The sse browsers work, but they are very slow, so I rarely use them.
The very old wincherter only makes the situation worse, as the swap partition has to be run a lot.
I have Slacko-5.8.10_r7862 puppy on it, made by Sailor Enceladus in late 2019.
I mainly use it to watch youtube or listen to online radio.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[venn]

JANUGSA!!! You have given me new hope for Newmoon! Definitely will give it a try! Thank you so much for replying!

[mikewalsh]

@janugsa :- Hallo.....and to the "kennels" !

Could you do a test for me?

In the NewMoon-portable directory, could you open a terminal (right-clk->Window->Terminal here)? Then type in

Code: Select all

./LAUNCH

.....and hit 'Enter'. Could you please copy/paste the output into your reply? I'm curious to see what we get...

@venn :-

We WILL get you sorted somehow, mate. Thanks for your patience & persevering, so far.... We haven't forgotten you!

Mike.

[janugsa]

Mike Walsh.
On the laptop I have the re-downloaded NewMoon, so ./Launch didn't print anything, but launched the browser. I have deleted the previous NewMoon file that did not start LAUNCH.

[janugsa]

NewMoon portable.
I copied it from Winchester or a flash drive to a sd card. The simlink files were not copied.
Therefore, NewMoon copied to SD card failed. There are no simlink files in the lib folder.
I tried copying NewMoon to SD card on 64 bit and 32 bit puppy.
I think this might be the problem when copying to DVD.

[mikewalsh]

@janugsa :-

If your SD card was formatted as it left the factory - i.e., FAT32 - then it wouldn't work, as-is. FAT32 doesn't support sym-links, y'see...

I'm not sure about optical discs, since they use very odd file-systems.

Mike.

[vtpup]

Kinda a late entry here, but having long experience with a Thinkpad 600e on Puppies for about a decade, I was just wondering re. no USB boot option in BIOS, if you'd ever heard of, or tried Plop?

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/intro.html

[venn]

I cannot tell you how absolutely TRILLED I am to be able to say I am transmitting this message via a ThinkPad T20 running 32bit Tahrpup 6.0.5 + a fully functioning NewMoon 29.4.1 browser! I followed Janugsa’s instructions on going to the Palemoon32 folder to click on palemoon-bin to pull up the NewMoon browser. Clicking on “palemoon” in the same folder also works. I got a confirmation page congratulating me on successfully installing the unofficial version and everything! Mind you, it does take about 20 seconds to display, but the full Internet is there in all its glory.

It is slow, which really forces you to do 1 thing at a time (multiple tabs open is a struggle), but a lot of that has to do with my ISP - it is comparable to dial-up speeds despite being paid for DSL. So I will have to keep a 2nd more modern computer working, because despite being able to get to the main pages - some sites have trouble with the sign-in page, as do pages with a large volume of prefiltering (e.g. KBB). However, MANY more sites are available vs. Opera 12.15, which I supposed will cease to function at all, at some point. So I will definitely get more use out of this machine than I ever expected before I signed up on this forum.

I’ll guess we’ll have a few wrap up comments here, but I consider this matter solved for the most part, so have labeled this thread as such. Thank you to all that contributed - I've learned so much along the way.

Janugsa: In my excitement of your news, I forgot to welcome you to the forum with the cute little welcome sign! And you honoring me with your inaugural post no less! Oh what shame has been bestowed upon me.

Vtpup: No, what is it / does it do?

[vtpup]

Hi venn, congratulations on the browser functionality!

re. Plop...well if I remember correctly, it allowed me to boot from USB key, even though the BIOS didn't support it. I thought you might like to add that functionality, since it was mentioned in your early posts.

If interested read this on the old forum:

https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=711033

And the most recent PLop is in the link I gave a couple posts ago. Hope it's of interest.

[venn]

YES, thanks so much for mentioning it vtpup! I was worried about so often booting from the optical drive in all this testing, so am glad to finally settle the browser issue so I could install it on the hard drive finally to start booting from there. But definitely appreciate having the option to boot from the USB if need be someday! Hopefully I can figure it out, but you might be seeing follow up questions.

[venn]

OK, 1 wrap-up question for Mikewalsh, since you are the 1 that provided the NewMoon download in the 1st place. How do I know when I'm supposed to be downloading the latest version, in case there is an update down the road? Is there some place I should be checking on some regular basis?

[rockedge]

I've used Plop for years. Works really well letting old machines boot from a USB drive when the BIOS does not include a USB Boot option.

[mikewalsh]

@venn :-

OK, 1 wrap-up question for Mikewalsh, since you are the 1 that provided the NewMoon download in the 1st place. How do I know when I'm supposed to be downloading the latest version, in case there is an update down the road? Is there some place I should be checking on some regular basis?

I'd be surprised if we see any further "upgrades" down the line, TBH.

The guy who supplied these builds did so completely out of the blue.....and we haven't seen hide nor hair of him since. I'll do a bit of digging, see if I can find a link to any newer builds, but don't hold your breath!

Mike.

[venn]

Ah, ok - that's fine then don't spend too much time digging. I thought you were going to answer something like the accouncement area. It was just that I did a quick search for newmoon 29.4.1 thinking I'd be directed to some official download site, but basically kept only getting references to palemoon. The closest I could find was
https://repology.org/project/palemoon/packages
But of course I don't really know what I'm looking at. For example, it looked to me like this was a complete listing of the history of palemoon development across different distros, but don't see any listing for Puppy - which makes me think I must be incorrect.

And since the Newmoon I downloaded comes with a palemoon folder, which is what I click on to pull newmoon up, I can't even tell what I should search for - Newmoon or palemoon. So I decided I should just ask you.

[mikewalsh]

@venn :-

Mm. I doubt there's any official repos anywhere for this thing...!!

This is what the Pale Moon team refer to as an 'unofficial' third-party build. Someone who has taken the officially-supplied source code, tweaked the build recipe, set-up the specified build environment, and compiled it primarily for themselves (just to see what happened, like!)

Distribution/sharing would not have been the primary consideration here; rather, building it to work with limited/dated resources & elderly hardware would have been the motivation. Then, many who try such an experiment would discover how resource-intensive compiling a browser really is, and would NOT be looking to repeat such an exercise too often.....

This isn't a commercial or even semi-official project. It's an individual, sharing the successful fruits of their labour.

We were very lucky to get these, at all...

Mike.

[greengeek]

You're very welcome to give it a try. It works fine in Tahrpup on ye anciente Dell lappie, and should even work okay under 32-bit Bionic.

If you're interested, you can obtain the tarball from my MEGA.nz a/c, here:-

https://mega.nz/folder/2GR22bhD#k-jrkegAtcPCMVuyHFY72Q

Hi Mike, Mega tells me the file is no longer available. Am i looking at the correct link?
Cheers!

[mikewalsh]

@greengeek :-

You're very welcome to give it a try. It works fine in Tahrpup on ye anciente Dell lappie, and should even work okay under 32-bit Bionic.

If you're interested, you can obtain the tarball from my MEGA.nz a/c, here:-

https://mega.nz/folder/2GR22bhD#k-jrkegAtcPCMVuyHFY72Q

Hi Mike, Mega tells me the file is no longer available. Am i looking at the correct link?
Cheers!

Refresh my memory, Ian. What are we referring to here? I think you've cross-quoted from a different thread..?

I sometimes re-organise stuff at MEGA.....and don't always remember to update links. It happens.

Mike.

[greengeek]

What are we referring to here? I think you've cross-quoted from a different thread..?

From page 1 of this thread - 5th post down. You were replying to venn and offering the newmoon link.
Cheers!

[venn]

Hey Mike,

I get the same message as Greengeek now too.

RE: not expecting newer versions on NewMoon
I guess I didn’t super expect a really official spot to download new versions (like SourceForge or Distrowatch), just thought there might be some dedicated corner of the internet where folks like me check every once in a while. Something along the lines of some topic board on here, or attempting to keep track of Fenyo’s activity on here (which I couldn’t even figure out how to find the original offerings post, so IDK how promising of an idea that was/is), or like:
https://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/2022/05 ... 1.html?m=1

Thanks for explaining the reasoning - I never would have known compiling takes so much effort based on a quote from you on the 2nd page of this thread:

Why I say there's 4 different SSE-only browsers is this:- An SSE-only build of Pale Moon v27.9.4 has been available for the community since about 2017. "Fenyo" appeared on the forums around the end of last year, and almost immediately offered up SSE-only builds of "NewMoon" v28.17.0 & v29.1.0. Then, a few days later, he added v29.4.1, which is the most up-to-date build we have for these.....and this is the one I've recommended.

With it seeming like a few days to get from v29.1.0 to v29.4.1, I was just thinking at some point something in NewMoon wouldn’t work, they’d fix it, then share it again. Depending on their desire to do so + my still having this computer - it seemed like something I should try to keep track of. But I’ll be happy to get whatever use out of this set up for however long/short that may be.

[mikewalsh]

Whoops!

Sorry, guys; my bad. One of the afore-mentioned reorganisations.....and I forgot to update the link.

I've updated the link in page 1, post #5. It should be:-

https://mega.nz/folder/OWBCHCoL#mtJzHLyd9hjrn4MfpN9lbA

That'll take you where you want to be.

Mike.

[greengeek]

Thanks Mike - will do some testing.
Cheers!